[Older climate activists gathered in on hundred cities around the
country for a day of action targeting banks that finance fossil fuel
projects. New organization, Third Act, already has 50,000 members.]
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A ‘ROCKING CHAIR REBELLION’: SENIORS CALL ON BANKS TO DUMP BIG
OIL  
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Cara Buckley
March 21, 2023
New York Times
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_ Older climate activists gathered in on hundred cities around the
country for a day of action targeting banks that finance fossil fuel
projects. New organization, Third Act, already has 50,000 members. _

Activists, many of them senior, sat in rocking chairs and cut up
credit cards to protest banks that have invested in oil and gas.,
Credit: Craig Hudson for The New York Times

 

They were parents, grandparents, great-aunts and great-uncles, ranging
in age from their 50s to their 80s and beyond, and together they
braved frigid temperatures to protest all through the night, and to
rock.

Bundled in long johns, puffer coats, layered knit hats and sleeping
bags, and fortified by cookies sent by courier from a sympathetic
supporter, dozens of graying protesters sat in rocking chairs outside
of four banks in downtown Washington for 24 hours, in a nationwide
protest billed as the largest climate action ever undertaken by older
folks.

Calling themselves the Rocking Chair Rebellion, they were part of more
than 100 climate actions staged across the country Tuesday by Third
Act, a protest group for people aged 60 and older, co-founded by Bill
McKibben, the author and climate campaigner.

Their targets were Chase, the subsidiary of JP Morgan Chase, Wells
Fargo, Citibank and Bank of America, the biggest investors in fossil
fuel projects, according to a 2022 report
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the Rainforest Action Network and other environmental groups.
Collectively, the four banks have poured more than $1 trillion between
2016 and 2021 into oil and gas.

“This is the world we helped create,” said Katie Ries, 66, who is
retired from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, as
she sat in a rocking chair outside the Chase branch in downtown
Washington shortly after an unseasonably cold dawn on Tuesday. “When
you put this temporary discomfort in perspective, against what we are
out here for, what we are facing, it just pales, it disappears.”

Formed in 2021, Third Act has some 50,000 members on its mailing list,
according to Mr. McKibben, including a few centenarians. While the
group has staged protests before, sometimes bearing signs
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read “fossils against fossil fuels,” they said that Tuesday’s
actions were the biggest yet, with participants driven in part by the
conviction that it was unfair to lay responsibility for fixing the
climate crisis at the feet of younger generations who will bear its
brunt.
 

“I think anybody is complicit that is not trying to do anything,”
one protester said.   (Photo credit: Craig Hudson for The New York
Times)
Activists sat in three-hour blocks throughout Monday night.   (Photo
credit: Craig Hudson for The New York Times)
“For all their energy and intelligence and idealism, young people
lack the structural power to make change on the scale we need in the
time that we have,” said Mr. McKibben, who is 62, chatting early
Tuesday before an anti-big bank climate rally in Washington’s
Franklin Park. “We all vote, we ended up with most of the resources
in our society. If we’re going to make Washington and Wall Street
change, it’ll take a few people with hairlines like mine.”

The protests came on the heels of the latest dire report 
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the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which forecast that
within the next decade, average global temperatures are likely to
increase by 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, compared
to preindustrial levels and making catastrophic weather events harder
for human and other life-forms to bear. To ward off the worst, nations
must cut greenhouse gasses by half by 2030, the report said, and stop
adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by the early 2050s.

Yet in 2022, carbon emissions hit record highs and the top oil
producers reaped a record-breaking $220 billion in profits
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And though major oil-funding banks are also investing in renewable
energy sources, several protesters dismissed such efforts as
greenwashing. “They’re running ads on TV, a lot of the big oil
companies, about how they’re doing all these environmentally
friendly things, but they’re doing record oil exploration,” said
Fred Solowey, 71. “And then these phony offsets that they use a lot,
to pretend that they’re going to be carbon neutral. It’s
hogwash.”

For the rockers, the goal was to urge people to pull their money out
of the oil-funding banks, and to goose the consciences of bank
executives.

“I think anybody is complicit that is not trying to do anything,”
said Pam Murphy, 64, as she sat outside the Chase branch early
Tuesday, in front of a sign that read “This bank funds climate
chaos.” One rocking chair over sat Susan Flashman, 68, a retired
electrician who lives in Mount Rainier, Md. “We’re the activists,
we’re the boomers,” Ms. Flashman said. “People our age, we’re
just incensed that no nobody’s doing anything. So here we are.”
 

The protests came on the heels of the latest dire report from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  (Photo credit:  Craig
Hudson for The New York Times)
 

Organizers hosted a rocking chair painting party before driving the
chairs to Washington.  (Photo credit:  Craig Hudson for The New York
Times)
Most of the rocking chair activists were from the Washington
metropolitan area, and sat in three-hour blocks throughout Monday
night, though Ellen Barfield, 66, opted to sit multiple shifts from
Monday evening until 5 a.m. Tuesday. She was a night owl anyhow, she
said, and still up for the occasional all-nighter. “It’s better
than a camp chair,” she said, of the seating arrangement, “And
it’s poetic.”

“I mean, our climate is getting worse and worse,” Ms. Barfield
continued. “We are far from doing what we need to do about it. And
these banks are a big part of why, because they keep pouring money
into this horrendous industry. And that has got to change, right?”

Most of the rocking chairs (there were about 50 in all) had been
gathered by Lisa Finn, 57, and her husband, who live outside of
Alexandria, Va., and hosted a rocking chair painting party before
driving the chairs up in a U-Haul.

Along with the rally at Franklin Park (speakers included Ebony Twilley
Martin, the co-executive director of Greenpeace USA; and Ben Jealous
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executive director of the Sierra Club) there were marches featuring
banners, outsize puppets and at least one shofar, and the blockading,
with even more rocking chairs, of Wells Fargo and Chase. One
protester was arrested
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using paint on the street, organizers said.

Before addressing the rally, Mr. Jealous said pressure from older
activists ought to make the banks take notice.

“For the banks, this is a very worrisome signal,” he said. “They
can write off young people, they don’t see them as having a whole
lot of money right now. They know these folks do.”

For his part, Mr. McKibben conceded that closing personal accounts in
oil-funding banks was not likely to impose enough financial harm to
force change, but said that merely underscored the urgent need to do
more.

“We can put serious pressure on their reputations, their images,
their brands, and their sense of themselves,” he said. “Right now,
the most powerful people in the world are deeply complicit in the
gravest crisis that the world has ever experienced. So part of today
is an attempt to rouse these guys to some kind of sense of their place
in history.”

_[CARA BUCKLEY is a climate reporter who focuses on people working
toward solutions and off-the-beaten-path tales about responses to the
crisis. She joined The Times in 2006 and was part of a team that won a
Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on workplace sexual
harassment. @caraNYT [[link removed]] • Facebook
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* Climate Action
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* Climate Activists
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* Environmental Protests
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* Third Act
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* Bill McKibben
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* fossil fuels
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* big oil
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* Rocking Chair Rebellion
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