This summer, ActionAid USA joined more than 100 climate justice and human rights organizations to launch a months-long civil disobedience campaign at Citibank headquarters in New York.
At ActionAid USA, we work for human rights and social justice in coordination with the global ActionAid federation in over 70 countries. We have been alarmed by both the climate emergency and the shrinking civic space for free speech, including the criminalization of protests by governments and global companies around the world.
In the United States there is a long and honorable history of peaceful civil disobedience where civil rights, social and environmental justice and peace activists engage in sit-ins and peacefully occupy a space, refusing to move so that their speech will be heard.
However, last week, Citibank made targeted false accusations in three separate incidents against protesters engaged in peaceful civil disobedience against Citi’s funding for fossil fuel expansion. Citi then asked a judge for a temporary restraining order against two individuals it perceived to be leaders with the clear intent of silencing protesters at its headquarters. ActionAid USA issued a statement condemning Citi’s actions.
Citi will soon learn that a restraining order against two people will not stop a global movement. We urge anyone who can come to New York City on Saturday, July 27, at 11:00 a.m., to join the big march that will start at Citibank’s HQ. This will be a family-friendly event. There will be options to join civil disobedience actions and also ways to participate for those who wish to avoid risking arrest.
We began taking action on Citi this spring because ActionAid’s “How the Finance Flows” report last fall found that Citi is the largest funder among North American and European banks of fossil fuel and industrial agriculture expansion in the global south.
Among the many fossil fuel companies that Citi lends to is TotalEnergies. The company is the developer of several major fossil fuel projects in Africa, such as the East Africa Crude OIl Pipeline, which harm communities in the region while fuelling climate death and displacement globally. In our research we found that out of a total of 2.1 billion dollars that Citi lent TotalEnergies for fossil fuel expansion since the Paris Agreement, 1.4 billion dollars was for the expansion of its global south operations.
After fossil fuels, the second largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions is the industrial agricultural system, which consumes global resources and fails to meet food security needs while displacing the small-scale farmers in the global south who provide food to communities. In our report, Land Grabbing and Ecocide, we showed how Citi fuels land grabbing and deforestation in Brazil through its loans of 1.2 billion dollars to the global agribusiness trader Bunge.
You can join ActionAid’s efforts by signing our petition and helping us send Citibank our demands to end funding for the expansion of fossil fuels and industrial agriculture, which are destroying the climate and harming communities.
