Top 10 Victories on Change.org in 2010

This was the year our powerfully diverse community hit a tipping point.

Change.org members organized 9,132 campaigns on six continents. Together, we took action nearly 8 million times. A million more people joined our movement. And we’re growing more quickly every day.

We didn’t just fight. Time and time again, we won. In towns and cities all around the globe, Change.org members saw a way their world could be better, organized for social change, and emerged victorious.

To celebrate our successes together, we’ve created a list of 10 of the most inspiring victories on Change.org in 2010.  And if you’re feeling bold, start your own petition — your campaign could be on this list in 2011.

1. Craigslist stops enabling sex trafficking
Change.org members teamed up with anti-trafficking groups in a massive campaign to get Cragislist to shut down their “adult services” sections, which had become the biggest source of ads for sex trafficking victims in the world. After 11,612 Change.org members signed a petition to founder Craig Newmark and a coordinated campaign published letters of protest from girls formerly sold for sex on the site, Craigslist shut down their U.S. based adult ad pages in September — leading to a 48% drop in the overall volume of prostitution ads online and shrinking the online commercial sex industry by a projected $37 million this year.

2. Gay teacher reinstated in Oregon
Seth Stambaugh was a 23-year-old education major assigned to student teach a fourth grade class at the Beaverton School District near Portland, Oregon. After a student asked if he was married, Seth replied that because he was gay, it would be illegal for him to wed in the state. Seth was subsequently removed from the classroom when his comment was deemed “inappropriate” by the district. Over the span of next three weeks, more than 5,000 Change.org members — many of them parents in the district — emailed the district’s superintendent, demanding that he be allowed to teach – and won. As Seth wrote to Change.org members, “It worked! I am back in my original classroom and am thrilled every day that I get to go there.”

3. Drug export banned in the U.K., executions delayed in the U.S.
You can’t kill by lethal injection without sodium thiopental, used to put the victims in a coma before two poisons are administered to kill them. So when the sole American provider ran out of its supply, states like Arizona and California turned to a British company that manufactured the same drug. But Change.org members lobbied British Business Minister Vincent Cable via his personal email address, and successfully compelled him to ban the sale under an old law that forbids the export of “execution equipment” like guillotines. Executions across the U.S. continue to be delayed because of the shortage.

4. Oakland police pledge to end violence against dogs
Mary Kate Hallock returned to her home one afternoon to find that Oakland police – the same force that gunned down eight dogs last year — had shot and killed her 11-year-old yellow lab in her own backyard.  Refusing to wait for another incident, nearly 2,000 Change.org members demanded action to stop the unnecessary shootings. Soon after, the Oakland P.D. announced a partnership with an East Bay animal protection group for a program to train officers in animal handling and behavior. After a rash of animal shootings by police nationwide this year, the Oakland program now serves as a model for other communities.

5. Student rescued from detention and deportation
Twenty-year-old Steve Li, whose parents had brought him to the U.S. from Peru at a young age, didn’t even know he was undocumented until immigration authorities showed up at his door, brought him from California to Arizona, and locked him in a detention center. Just before he was to be deported, his classmates at the City College of San Francisco rallied to win his freedom, launching a petition on Change.org targeting Sen. Diane Feinstein and Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Hundreds of friends and supporters signed, and the two lawmakers passed a bill specifically delaying Li’s deportation. As the DREAM Act – legislation to give undocumented students brought to the U.S as minors a path to American citizenship — languished in Congress, friends and family successfully ran campaigns on Change.org again and again this year to free detained students like Li.

6. CBS backs down from censoring drug-reform ad
CBS ran an infamous anti-choice ad from Focus on the Family during the last Super Bowl, but when the drug policy reform group NORML tried to run ads on the company’s Times Square billboards advocating the legalization of marijuana, the corporate giant censored the group. More than 9,500 Change.org members pushed back, specifically calling out three senior executives at the company. After initially refusing to budge, in the face of mounting pressure CBS reversed its decision and the ad with NORML’s message (“Legalize Marijuana – Billions in Taxes”) went up in New York City.

7. Victories against extreme homophobia in Uganda
In 2010, Ugandan legislators continued to push for a law that would sentence gay people to death or life in prison. Change.org members fought back hard, working to delegitimize Ugandan homophobia using all means necessary.In April, Change.org members successfully lobbied mega-pastor Joyce Meyer, who has a huge following in Uganda, to condemn the legislation. In July, we pushed a Nevada health clinic to stop partnering with a religious institution giving money to anti-gay Ugandan pastors. And in December, thousands of Change.org members compelled Oral Roberts University to drop an anti-gay Ugandan official from its Board of Reference and persuaded a major U.S. international financial conference to disinvite the Ugandan politician responsible for writing the Anti-Homosexuality Bill.

8. Washington Post takes a stand against trafficking
On the heels of Craigslist shutting down their adult services section, Change.org members increased pressure on the Washington Post to stop accepting ads for massage parlors, which frequently serve as fronts for human trafficking operations. The Washington Post had made millions on the ads over the past decade, and refused to remove them even after other papers such as The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and the LA Times stopped accepting the ads. Although the paper had long ignored the demands of activists, with the intensity of 3,400 Change.org members in partnership with the anti-trafficking group Polaris Project, the paper announced in late September that they will no longer run ads for massage parlors. Just as inspiring: The campaigned sparked other efforts against similar ads in other papers across the country, including one targeting the Asbury Park Press in New Jersey.

9. Shark “finning” banned in U.S. Waters
A cruel practice known as shark “finning” — where fishermen slice off sharks’ fins, then throw the fish overboard to bleed to death — is pushing some species to the brink of extinction as more consumers seek shark fin soup. More than 27,000 Change.org members teamed up with Oceana to ask Congress to pass the Shark Conservation Act, which had stalled in Congress for nearly a year. This December, lin response to the surge in pressure from the grassroots, lawmakers finally passed the bill, which aims to prevent shark finning in U.S. waters and urges the Obama administration to apply pressure to countries with less stringent finning bans.

10. Protecting the Ayoreo Indians from a foreign expedition
The Ayoreo Indians live about as far off the grid as any society on Earth. Thanks to our work together, that won’t change. In November, Change.org members helped the indigenous rights group Iniciativa Amotocodi successfully pressure the U.K. Natural History Museum to cancel its scientific expedition to the Ayoreo’s home — the inhospitable forests of Paraguay’s Gran Chaco region. The mission would have risked bringing disease and cultural contamination to one of the few remaining indigenous peoples still untouched by Western society.

Note: Iniciativa Amotocodi is asking Change.org members to speak out again—this time to condemn the Paraguay government’s raid of their office in retaliation for their victory. Add your name today.

Thank you for all you’ve done in the past year.

– The Change.org Team