About

Mission: Ohio Citizen Action organizes and mobilizes people to advocate for public interests. In person, by phone, and online, we engage people in actions that protect public health, improve environmental quality, and benefit consumers. Our campaigns connect Ohioans and build a movement to protect democracy and create a sustainable future.


Since beginning door-to-door field canvassing in 1979, Ohio Citizen Action has made more than 11 million front porch visits in Ohio.

Sending enthusiastic, professional organizers into neighborhoods makes it easy for busy people to protect their own health, rights and interests by preventing abuses of government and corporate power.

We use a strength-in-numbers strategy, focusing the political and consumer power of Ohio families on the problems they care about. We boil down complex issues into everyday language, put them into context, answer people’s questions and motivate people to help.

In addition to the field canvassers, phone canvassers follow up on our door visits, spending more time with people and giving them new opportunities to make a difference. More about field and phone canvassing.

Just a few of our successful campaigns include:

  • Preventing the sale of "Muny Light" (now Cleveland Public Power) to privately-owned competitor Cleveland Electric Illuminating (now FirstEnergy) in the mid-1970s
  • Passing toxic chemical right-to-know ordinances in Cincinnati, Akron and other Ohio cities, which eventually became models for the federal Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act in the mid-1980s
  • Conducting good neighbor” campaigns with some of Ohio's worst-polluting facilities (Sunoco, Cincinnati Specialties, Eramet, et al) which leveraged hundreds of millions of dollars of investment in pollution prevention in the 90s and 2000s
  • Shutting down 22 of Ohio’s oldest, most polluting coal boilers in coalition with state and national groups;
  • Preventing new pollution from proposed (but never built) projects like a 1,000 MW coal plant in Meigs County, a garbage incinerator in Cleveland and a coal-to-liquid fuel plant in Wellsvile;
  • Aggregating Cincinnati residents into an electricity buying group and securing 100% clean, renewable energy to meet their needs; and
  • Defeating a bill that would have repealed Ohio’s energy efficiency and renewable energy standards.

Simply put, we win our campaigns because people care enough to get involved and the personal, immediate nature of field and phone canvassing and digital organizing makes it easy for them. Working together, we amplify individual actions to have greater impact on decision makers.

Year in review

2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2008-2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1975 – 1998