Climate week events
This Climate Week, on Monday, September 23rd, communities from across the Gulf South will confront Wall Street’s environmental racism and demand an end to the destruction of their communities.
For years, communities across the Gulf South have confronted Citigroup for driving environmental racism. Petrochemical facilities and oil and gas refineries funded by Citigroup have polluted the air, land, and water, causing cancer, and asthma in Black and Brown communities in the Gulf South.
Citigroup is the world’s #1 funder of methane gas expansion, including Liquified Natural Gas that is destroying communities and making people sick across the Gulf South. Citi is also the second worst funder of dirty energy projects, spending a total of $396.3 billion on coal, oil, and gas.
This summer, hundreds of people from the Gulf South traveled to New York City to take a stand at the Citi headquarters. Instead of hearing their concerns, Citi doubled down stating that they are “comfortable” with their financing of climate destruction. Now we are returning to Citi to ask the CEO Jane Fraser and her leadership to come down and hear our concerns.
This Climate Week, hundreds of people from the Gulf South are landing in New York again to demand an end to the financing of environmental racism and companies that put short term profit ahead of their lives. We are asking for Citi leadership to come down from their towers and meet with us, face to face. We will not leave until they do.
Citi Standoff: Come Down or Shutdown
Monday September 23 at 10AM outside Citigroup's Global Headquarters (388 Greenwich St, New York, NY 10013)
Citi is leaving frontline Gulf South leaders on read. For months leaders from Louisiana and Texas who suffer from the impacts of fossil fuel development have been trying to schedule a sit down meeting with Citi Executives to discuss the harms their investments are causing in communities across the Gulf South. Back in July several representatives from Citi's PR department met on Zoom with Gulf leaders. Since then Gulf leaders have reached out time and time again to demand a sit down meeting with no success.
Gulf leaders have been left with no choice but to descend upon Citi's Global Headquarters in NYC to demand a meeting. On Monday September 23rd about 50 community members in the fight against fossil fuel expansion in the Gulf will approach Citi HQ in Manhattan in hopes of finally sitting down face to face with Citi leadership. Their desire is simply to discuss the health impacts and environmental destruction that is happening in their communities as a result of Citi's fossil fuel investments.
Organizers from the Summer of Heat Campaign are threatening to shut down Citi HQ if executives refuse to meet with the Gulf leaders. After months of sustained civil disobedience on wall street, Summer of Heat has amassed an expansive coalition consisting of faith leaders, migrants, scientists, youth, elders, and orcas! If Citi executives refuse to meet with the delegation of Gulf leaders, Summer of Heat organizers plan to unleash their coalition on the Citi HQ, blocking the doors until Citi leadership concedes to a meeting or instructs the NYPD to drag away the peaceful protesters.
