NEW YORK—Tensions were high outside of Citigroup’s global headquarters on Friday morning as climate activists blockaded the doors for an hour and hundreds of employees waited in the plaza to get to work.
The demonstration marked the end of the second week of the “Summer of Heat on Wall Street,” a sustained, direct-action campaign targeting financial institutions, with a particular emphasis on Citi for its robust financing of fossil fuel projects, despite stated commitments to a clean energy transition. According to the Banking on Climate Chaos report from the Rainforest Action Network, an advocacy group, Citigroup is the largest financier of companies that expanded fossil fuel projects last year.
This week, youth activists from the Summer of Heat campaign took center stage to critique both the bank’s financing of fossil fuels and its business dealings in Israel during the country’s assault on Gaza, which has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians and displaced nearly 2 million over the past eight months. The activists demand that Citi end all operations in Israel, stop financing arms sales as well as oil, gas and coal projects, and “exponentially” increase financing for renewable energy.
The demonstrators arrived just after 7 a.m. Friday and blockaded the doors using four sections of a model pipeline that read “Citibank Stop Funding Death.” Within 20 minutes, a crowd of Citi employees began to form outside the doors, trying to get inside. Over the next hour, the crowd of employees grew to more than 200.
The New York Police Department took 23 demonstrators into custody by 8:30 a.m., and the protest dispersed. Charges are pending for the arrested protesters.
During the demonstration, activists referenced the severe heat wave impacting millions of people this week across the Northeast, including New York City, where temperatures were slated to hit 98 degrees later in the day. Approximately 350 people, disproportionately Black residents, die each summer in the city due to heat.
“This is Citi’s heat dome—stop burning our home,” chanted the group, holding signs that read “heat wave, sponsored by Citi.”
Friday’s action followed a demonstration Tuesday night. Climate organizers and the pro-Palestine collective PAL-Awda NY—the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation-Awda—rallied outside of Citi’s headquarters for nearly two hours before attempting to launch a sit-in and overnight encampment. Less than an hour into the sit-in, officers from the New York Police Department’s Strategic Response Group ordered the group to disperse and arrested 18 people who remained seated in the plaza area outside of Citi’s headquarters.
Organizers promise to return to Citi throughout the summer.
“We’ll be back all summer long, causing chaos for Citi until they stop creating climate chaos for our communities around the globe,” said Isabella Guinigundo, a campaigner with the Youth Climate Finance Alliance and co-organizer of the week’s actions. “We’ll definitely continue to take youth-led action to end fossil fuel financing as well as military financing.”
The Summer of Heat campaign is organized by New York Communities for Change, Planet Over Profit, Stop the Money Pipeline, Climate Defenders and the Climate Organizing Hub and endorsed by more than 100 other climate and environmental groups.
“We do not want to be here, but we feel we have to,” said New York Communities for Change campaigner Alice Hu at Friday’s rally, amidst boos and heckles from the onlooking crowd. “The fires, the floods, the famines and the mass, forced migration from the climate crisis are because of the $396 billion that Citibank has poured into fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement.”
The effort kicked off in April with two days of nonviolent blockades of the bank’s Manhattan headquarters and a mock environmental justice hearing accusing Citi of bankrolling environmental racism. Last week, activists racked up more than 140 arrests in five days of protests and actions…
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