59 Arrested for Trying to Protect Children
...outside Citi CEO Jane Fraser's luxury apartment in lower Manhattan.
Dear friends,
As with any movement in defense of human rights, there’s a heaviness that comes with climate-justice activism, knowing the forces we’re up against and the sheer injustice and scale of the human tragedy already underway, especially across the Global South, as a result of fossil-fuel driven heating.
But there are times—when we act collectively and powerfully, in real solidarity—when there’s also a curious, indefinable kind of lightness. For lack of a better word, I’d call it spiritual.
This heaviness and lightness were on full display, and fully felt, in lower Manhattan on Saturday, when I and 58 comrades were arrested on the sidewalk outside Citi CEO Jane Fraser’s Manhattan apartment building, calling on Citi—loudly yet peacefully—to stop funding the massive crime against humanity that is global fossil-fuel expansion. We were supported by some three hundred marchers—many from Black and brown frontline NYC communities—all part of the relentless Summer of Heat campaign that has now blockaded Citi’s lower Manhattan headquarters 14 times in the last 7 weeks, resulting in more than 440 arrests and drawing thousands of participants. And the summer is far from over. (Read the latest campaign update.)
Look, to be clear, those of us who were arrested on Saturday had it relatively easy. We were treated, mostly, with kid gloves (perhaps Jane instructed the cops to be nice to us, nothing unseemly on her quiet street, please). We were held in jail for just a few hours, and released with minor charges that will likely be dismissed. As protesting goes, this was pretty soft stuff. The climate-justice movement is capable of escalation, and risks, far beyond this. (Citi, take note.)
So the tactic was soft. But the message was hard. You see, we were led by mothers and children, and at the curb in front of the entrance to Fraser’s building we constructed a solemn memorial—made of toys and clothes and stuffed animals and little shoes—to honor the 20,000 kids who are displaced on average every day due to extreme, climate-driven weather events worldwide, according to an October 2023 report by UNICEF.
Those numbers will vastly increase as fossil-fuel development continues apace, the temperature continues to rise, and global financial institutions like Citi continue to profit from it—all in the face of crystal clear warnings, for years now, from the IPCC and the IEA that fossil-fuel expansion must cease immediately if the worst is to be avoided. The global banking behemoth that Jane Fraser leads—belying her efforts to brand/greenwash the bank as climate-friendly—is the largest funder of new fossil-fuel projects, and the second-largest funder of fossil-fuels overall, since the 2015 Paris Agreement.
Citi is obviously feeling the heat that this campaign is bringing—with five more weeks of summer still to come. You can tell by the fact that Fraser’s security forces are now resorting to clumsy (and utterly predictable) repressive tactics, in collusion with the pros in the NYPD. In the past two weeks, they have repeatedly targeted lead organizers of Summer of Heat with baseless arrests and false charges, including an almost laughably (if it weren’t so serious) bogus charge of felony assault (the Citi security operative claiming to have been assaulted was never touched), and restraining orders to keep these leaders away from the company’s headquarters where protests are taking place. As if this will deter the thousands coming to NYC from all corners of the country to join the campaign.
So where’s the lightness in all this? The children brought it, of course. And it was in the songs we sang—like the rousing old labor movement song, “Rich Man’s House,” reworded as “Jane’s House,” based on the version sung here by Resistance Revival Chorus. (We didn’t sound quite that good! But imagine hundreds of voices singing it with gusto.) And it was in the love and solidarity, passion and dignity, of every person who gathered to send the message to Fraser, herself a mother.
But words can’t capture the inexplicable balance of lightness and gravity. So I’ll leave you with the images below (from the campaign’s volunteer photographers), more of which, along with videos, are posted here by the Stop the Money Pipeline.
There’s still plenty of time to join the Summer of Heat campaign in the weeks ahead. And whether you can join or not, you can support it in multiple ways, including donations to its legal fund or simply amplifying its actions.
Peace and love,
Wen