The problem: Sherwin-Williams and other paint manufacturers were attempting to get out from the $1 billion they would have to pay to remove lead paint from California state buildings. They had lost in the legislature and the courts, but there was still one avenue left to abuse: California’s ballot measure process. The paint makers came up with a dubious ballot proposition that the state of California should pay $2 billion to remove lead paint in the state, without mentioning it was their paint. It collected enough signatures and was headed to the 2018 ballot, sure to cause an expensive, misleading argument over why it was bad for California to remove lead paint from its buildings.

Consumer Watchdog Executive Director Jamie Court asked me to help pull off a last-minute boycott effort to get Sherwin-Williams to pull their own ballot initiative before the June deadline for inclusion in the Fall 2018 ballot measures. This time, however, it was just us. No partners. No coalitions. It was just me and him.

I designed BOYCOTT SHERWIN-WILLIAMS posters and had them printed locally. Over a weekend, I found the six Sherwin-Williams stories around greater Los Angeles and plastered the posters outside the businesses at night (not on any storefronts directly) and collected daytime photographs.

That Wednesday, our Executive Director announced the boycott in the media and we started posting photos of the posters outside Sherwin Williams storefronts on social media. We began a countdown on Twitter to when the boycott would start, and I posted a video of kids posing with our poster calling to join the boycott. We got a few supportive tweets, but it was still only us putting the pressure on Sherwin-Williams.

Thursday afternoon, with fifteen minutes to spare before the deadline, Sherwin-Williams pulled their ballot proposition from the 2018 ballot and accepted that they would have to take responsibility for the statewide removal of lead paint. The cost to get their proposition on the ballot? Over $3 million. What we spent to get them to take their own proposition off the ballot? Less than $1,000.