MIGRANTS LEAD A 500 PERSON MARCH URGING CLIMATE ACTION FROM CITY HALL AND CITIGROUP; 13 PEOPLE ARRESTED, #SUMMEROFHEAT
Hey Citi, get off it! Planet over profit.
Migrants lead civil caravan and disobedience protest against funders of climate change. As people across the globe perish or are forced to migrate due to extreme weather events, migrants to call on Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser to stop funding oil, coal, and gas;
Citigroup is the world’s largest funder of fossil fuel expansion causing the extreme weather events; climate is now the leading cause of forced migration
Migrants and climate activists are part of the historic Summer of Heat on Wall Street campaign, with close to 500 civil DC disobedience arrests summer.
The action ACTION was a call for countability from City Hall, Big Oil and Citigroup as part of the 10th week of the historic “Summer of Heat on Wall Street” campaign;
Citigroup is the world’s largest funder of fossil fuel expansion causing extreme weather events; climate is now the leading cause of forced displacement
500 people attended today’s immigrant-led march, calling attention to millions of people who have been displaced by climate disaster worldwide. The march which started at City Hall ended with a moving demonstration in front of Citibank’s HQ in downtown Manhattan, culminating in an act of civil disobedience where 13 people were arrested after blocking the doors of Citigroup, the world’s biggest funder of fossil fuel expansion.
The march was a poignant display of unity and solidarity among a broad range of climate and immigrant rights organizations, showing the broad impact of the climate crisis. With signs that read “Citi Displaces Migrants” and “Migrants Fight Climate Displacement,” protesters demanded accountability from Citibank, Mayor Eric Adams, and Big Oil, for the escalating disasters their actions and policies continue to cause.
Climate is now the leading cause of global displacement, surpassing conflict as the main driver. Migrants and displaced people are not only facing the brunt of climate change, they are also criminalized and scapegoated by local and federal governments, consistently facing threats on their livelihoods. Mayor Adams has blamed migrants for New York City’s fiscal woes and tried to scapegoat them to enact budget cuts to libraries and schools. Adams has also called for modifying New York City’s sanctuary city status that protects immigrants.
By funding fossil fuels, Wall Street and banks like Citigroup, which is the world’s top funder of fossil fuel expansion since 2016, are directly responsible for the climate chaos that pushes working people deeper into poverty and increases food insecurity, violent conflict and the climate conditions that forces them to flee.
PARTICIPANTS: Summer of Heat on Wall Street campaign, Chinese American Planning Council, DRUM, New York Communities for Change, Make the Road New York, Communities United for Status and Protection (CUSP), CWA District 1, National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON), Africans Communities Together (ACT), Rasambleman Pou Ayiti (RPA), Juventud Unida por la Independencia, National Partnership for New Americans (NPNA), Make the Road New Jersey, Undocublack, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Sunrise Movement NYC
BACKGROUND:
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 are calling 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.
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