FEMINISTS LEAD MASS CLIMATE MARCH and CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AGAINST CITIGROUP, #SUMMEROFHEAT @PlanetOverProfit @Pop4Climate, #NYCCT
On Sunday, the Summer of Heat on Wall Street campaign rolled through the West Village. We met at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Memorial, 23 Washington Pl, New York, NY at 2:00 PM. There, Feminists against Fossil Fuels were joined by hundreds of feminists. Climate Defenders, New York Communities for Change, Mothers Out Front NYC, Climate Families NYC, MADRE, Planet Over Profit, Stop the Money Pipeline, Presente, 350 NYC, 350 Brooklyn, 3rd Act DMV, Connecticut Citizen Action Group, DSA - Ecosocialist Working Group, NYC Metro Raging Grannies led a demo to Citibank CEO Jane Fraser's. apartment on Desbrosses Street, just off the West Side Highway and the water. The chants were many:
“1234 the oceans coming to your door! 5678 you will lose your real estate!”
“Jane Fraser you can't hide, we charge you with ecoside.”
“Hey Fraser, get off it, the planet over profit!”
“Methane Jane, you cant hide we charge you with ecoside.”
“Methane Jane shame on you. We deserve a future too.”
Sitting down in front of her apartment, they sang. “I went downtown to Jane's house and I took what you stole from me, took back my dignity, took back my humanity. It's under my feet. Ain't nobody gonna walk over me.”
The action was the latest, as feminists fought back against the greenwashing and corporate feminism of Citigroup and their CEO, Jane Fraser, the first female CEO of a top-tier Wall Street Investment Bank; Citigroup is the world’s largest funder of fossil fuel expansion. Under Jane Fraser’s leadership Citigroup became the #1 funder of methane gas expansion since 2016, that’s why Feminists are calling her “Methane Jane.”
By 2050, the climate catastrophe may push up to 158 million more women and girls into poverty and see 236 million more face food insecurity. The climate catastrophe, caused by the fossil fuel industry, has a disproportionate impact on women and girls, especially on women of color and women in the global south. The United Nations estimates that 80 percent of people displaced by climate change are women.
Hundreds of Climate feminists demand an end to climate destruction and Wall Street’s funding of fossil fuels. Feminists march from the historic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Memorial to Citigroup headquarters to call out their CEO “Methane Jane,” and demand Citigroup stop funding coal, oil, gas, and petrochemical companies while funding real climate solutions like renewable energy.
Citigroup is the world’s #1 funder of methane gas expansion since 2016 and the second worst funder of dirty energy projects in the world from 2016 to 2023, spending a total of $396.3 billion on coal, oil, and gas. By funding the fossil fuel industries that create extreme climate events, Wall Street and financial institutions like Citigroup are directly responsible for the displacement and impoverishment of millions of girls and women across the globe.
The Summer of Heat on Wall Street is thousands of frontline community leaders, youth, elders, and climate activists coming together in New York City for a months-long campaign of relentless nonviolent civil disobedience. The movement’s main demand is for Wall Street to stop funding the oil, coal, and gas projects that are driving the climate crisis and the related widespread floods, wildfires, deadly air pollution, mass drought, and forced migration that kills and displaces millions each year.
Since the campaign launch on June 10, over 4,000 people have joined protests as part of the Summer of Heat. And over 480 people have been arrested for engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience protests, urging banks like Citigroup to stop bankrolling new coal, oil, and gas.
This is the first time in history that climate activists will hold an entire season of sustained civil disobedience protests targeting Wall Street and big banks for their role in fueling the climate crisis. The Summer of Heat will take place during what climate scientists are already predicting will be the hottest summer on record.
With the conviction that cutting off the flow of money will stop the fossil fuel projects that are burning our planet, campaigners have set their sights on Citigroup after climate activists successfully pressured Barclays and HSBC to take steps toward ending their financing of oil, coal, and gas. Since the Paris Agreement went into effect in 2016, Citigroup has poured $396.3 billion into coal, oil, and gas. Citigroup is the top banking target of the Summer of Heat.
The Summer of Heat campaign follows actions in April when Black and Indigenous climate activists convened an Earth Day hearing confronting Citigroup’s environmental racism, which was followed by two days of nonviolent civil disobedience outside of Citi’s New York City headquarters. Previously, in September 2023, protesters also non-violently blockaded every entrance of Citi’s headquarters. Climate Defenders, Planet over Profit, New York Communities for Change, and Stop the Money Pipeline are convening the Summer of Heat, which has been endorsed by more than 100 environmental and racial justice groups, including Rainforest Action Network, 350.org, Indigenous Environmental Network, Texas Campaign for the Environment, Stand.earth, Friends of the Earth, and the Vessel Project of Louisiana.
From the Bronx to the Gulf South, Black, Latine, Asian, Indigenous, and low-income communities living on the frontlines of the climate crisis – and the ones least responsible for it – face the highest asthma rates and staggering cancer rates while an unprecedented number of people are dying from heat waves. Instead of staying home and hiding from the heat, organizers call on all New Yorkers and climate defenders from across the globe to take to the streets and demand that Wall Street stop destroying our future.
As the arrests began, activists started sing Hot to Go:
“ “You can take me hot to go!" and dancing.
There is always poetry in the light on the water, from the Hudson River to Coney Island, #summerofheat protests, gestures of creative direct action, poems on the waterfront, bodies arrested, some dancing, some singing, people walking the streets, looking at the water, wonderring what will become of us.
The Summer of Heat continues.
So do we with more actions in the coming week.
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