diff --git a/plugins/change.org/changeorg b/plugins/change.org/changeorg
index 49398bbd..79e53a64 100755
--- a/plugins/change.org/changeorg
+++ b/plugins/change.org/changeorg
@@ -28,6 +28,8 @@ GPLv3
 '''
 
 from sys import argv, exit
+import sys
+import codecs
 from os import environ, path, umask
 import re
 import urllib.request
@@ -73,7 +75,9 @@ if environ.get('MUNIN_PLUGSTATE') and write_cache:
     umask(0o077)
     with open(petition_cache_names, 'w') as outfile:
         json.dump(petition_titles, outfile)
-    
+
+# equivalent of passing PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8 to munin
+sys.stdout = codecs.getwriter("utf-8")(sys.stdout.detach())
 
 if len(argv) > 1 and argv[1] == 'config':
     print('''graph_title change.org signature count