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For Immediate Release
January, 09 2020, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Jamie Henn, jamie@350.org, 415-890-3350
Gabby Brown, gabby.brown@sierraclub.org, 914-261-4626
25 People Occupy Chase Bank Branch in D.C. as Climate Activists Launch a Major New Campaign Targeting the Financial Industry
he “Stop the Money Pipeline” Mobilization aims to end the financing of fossil fuels and deforestation.
WASHINGTON
Over twenty people occupied a Chase Bank branch in Washington, D.C. today to kick off Stop the Money Pipeline, a major new activist effort going after the financial industry's funding of climate destruction.
The action took place alongside today's Fire Drill Friday protest at the Capitol led by Jane Fonda and allies. Fonda, Susan Sarandon, Greenpeace U.S. Director Annie Leonard, and dozens more marched down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the Chase Bank branch to show solidarity with the protestors inside.
In the end, ten people were arrested for refusing to leave the bank when given a warning by the police. They included 350.org founder Bill McKibben, Friends of the Earth Vice President Liz Butler, Hip Hop Caucus Director Lennox Yearwood, and Divest-Invest Director Clara Vondrich.
Chase Bank is one of the three main targets for the Stop the Money Pipeline because of the bank's outsized role in financing fossil fuel development. Since the Paris Agreement, Chase has provided $196 billion in finance for fossil fuels, 10% of all fossil fuel finance from the 33 major global banks.
Over the coming months, Stop the Money Pipeline will also be targeting two other companies that represent key pillars of the financial sector: BlackRock, the largest single investor in fossil fuels, and Liberty Mutual, a top global insurer of coal, oil, and gas. Activists also continue to put pressure on endowments, pension funds, and other major investors who haven't yet divested from fossil fuels.
Organizations involved in the Stop the Money Pipeline mobilization include Rainforest Action Network, Sierra Club, Greenpeace USA, Sunrise Project, Future Coalition, Divest Ed, Divest-Invest, Native Movement, Giniw Collective, Transition US, 350.org, Oil Change International, 350 Seattle, Center for International Environmental Law, Union of Concerned Scientists, Majority Action, Earth Rights International, The YEARS Project, and more.
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
(415) 977-5500LATEST NEWS
$1.1 Trillion Big Oil Subsidies Spark Fresh Calls for Windfall Tax on Profits From Trump's Iran War
"The $1.1 trillion that governments are pouring into fossil fuel subsidies this year is not a safety net, it is a ransom payment."
Jul 01, 2026
With the US and Iranian governments engaged in 60 days of peace talks, the United Nations' latest projections about the illegal war's impact on fossil fuel subsidies this week triggered new demands for taxing the windfall profits of climate-wrecking Big Oil.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on Monday released "Military Escalation in the Middle East: Cushioning the Global Shock," a report detailing how governments have navigated the "most severe oil supply shock in history," caused by Iran limiting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz in response to the Trump administration and Israel's unlawful assault.
As fossil fuel prices have soared worldwide, the report states, "governments have moved quickly to cushion households and firms from higher energy prices through fuel subsidies, tax cuts, price caps, strategic stock releases, emergency procurement, export restrictions, demand-management measures, and fuel switching."
"While energy subsidies had fallen by roughly half in 2024 as energy markets stabilized, the downward trajectory has sharply reversed," the document notes. "We estimate that global fossil fuel subsidies are currently on track to reach $1.1 trillion in 2026 and could reach as high as $1.43 trillion in a severe scenario where the average oil price reaches $110/barrel... This represents an estimated $410-$740 billion increase from 2025."
UNDP Administrator Alexander De Croo said in a statement that "the global spillover of the Middle East conflict is profound and potentially long-lasting. Developing countries, many already struggling with debt, have temporarily managed to protect people from the worst of the energy shock."
"These countries are doing everything they can, but there is a hidden cost," he stressed. "To deal with today's crisis, governments are postponing tomorrow's investments. Money that should be building schools, hospitals, and clean energy systems is being used simply to keep economies afloat. Without international support, these countries won’t escape the shock. They are absorbing it at the expense of future growth."
"No country should have to sacrifice its future development to manage a crisis it did not create," De Croo argued. "First, we must unlock multilateral liquidity in ways that are easy to access for low- and middle-income countries. Second, we must accelerate investment in renewable energy. Every clean energy investment reduces exposure to future shocks. The crisis has made one thing clear: Energy security and the energy transition are no longer separate agendas. They are one and the same."
In addition to reiterating calls for a just transition to clean energy, the advocacy group 350.org has repeatedly advocated for a windfall profits tax targeting oil and gas giants cashing in on the conflict in the Middle East. Executive director Anne Jellema pushed for such policies again on Wednesday, noting the new UNDP numbers.
"The $1.1 trillion that governments are pouring into fossil fuel subsidies this year is not a safety net, it is a ransom payment," Jellema declared. "Every dollar spent shielding the fossil fuel industry from the consequences of its own price volatility is a dollar not spent on the clean energy systems that can bring costs down for good."
"We need a phaseout to end public subsidies for fossil fuel companies, and a permanent windfall tax on fossil fuel profits," she continued. "Not a one-off levy, but a permanent, legislated mechanism that redirects the extraordinary profits of an industry driving this crisis into the just transition every country needs. That means affordable clean energy, retrofitted homes, and funding to protect people from the extreme weather unleashed by fossil pollution."
In the United States, where President Donald Trump's war has cost Americans tens of billions of dollars at the pump, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) reintroduced the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax Act in March, just weeks into the war.
Backing the bill, Food & Water Watch managing director of policy and litigation Mitch Jones said at the time that "historical evidence could not be any clearer: Big Oil will undoubtedly leverage the current crisis in the Middle East to maximize profit margins, pinching American families and enriching their executives and Wall Street speculators."
"This demands a policy response—namely, a windfall profits tax... which would recover much of these egregious, opportunistic gains and return them to everyday Americans," Jones added. "Fossil fuel companies must be held accountable for the profiteering they are orchestrating as we speak."
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Rep. Joaquin Castro Says ICE Tried to Deport Families to Venezuela After Massive Quakes
"I am calling on the Trump administration to halt all deportations to Venezuela and to shut down the Dilley trailer prison," the Texas Democrat said.
Jul 01, 2026
Congressman Joaquin Castro on Wednesday accused US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials of moving to deport families to Venezuela immediately after last week's devastating earthquakes that rocked the country, killing nearly 2,000 people and wounding more than 10,000 others.
"Just hours after the devastating earthquakes in Venezuela that killed over 1,900 people, ICE attempted to deport children and families from the Dilley trailer prison to Venezuela," Castro (D-Texas) said on social media, referring to the Camp East Montana detention center at Fortb Bliss in El Paso, Texas.
"They were woken up in the middle of the night and sent to Arizona on their way to Venezuela," the congressman continued. "The families were ultimately sent back to Dilley, but worry that they could be deported at any time. It is unthinkable to send children and families, who have committed no crimes, into a country plunged into chaos by natural disaster."
Castro noted that "last week, 146 men, women, and children were deported back home to Venezuela hours before the earthquakes—many are suspected to have been killed."
On June 24, a 7.2-magnitude earthquake centered in San Felipe, Yaracuy—about 100 miles west of Caracas—was followed less than a minute later by a 7.5-magnitude temblor, whose epicenter was also in Yaracuy. Tens of thousands of people are still missing, an estimated 1,000 buildings are destroyed, and basic essential services like water and electricity remain offline in many affected areas.
"These actions are cruel and un-American," Castro said of the post-quake deportations. "I am calling on the Trump administration to halt all deportations to Venezuela and to shut down the Dilley trailer prison."
Camp East Montana, the nation's largest immigrant detention center, is operated by private prison profiteer Amentum Services Inc., which “has a history of health, safety, and other violations of federal law,” according to the consumer advocacy watchdog Public Citizen.
Kyle Virgien, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, called Camp East Montana “nothing short of a civil rights catastrophe.”
The ACLU and other groups are suing ICE and other federal agencies and officials over what the plaintiffs call "inhumane" conditions at the camp.
“Since the day it opened, the facility has repeatedly made headlines for horrific rights violations and even the deaths of three detained people, yet ICE has still evaded accountability for its conduct,” Virgien said.
Castro, who has visited Camp East Montana several times, said after touring the facility in May that “when we look back at this era in American history, we will look back in shame… of the human rights abuses, most particularly against children."
Activists, including Japanese Americans interned by the US during World War II—one of which was located at Fort Bliss—have called for the closure of Camp East Montana and other ICE facilities, which many have compared with the concentration camps in which they were imprisoned in the 1940s.
After the earthquakes, advocates have also renewed demands for the US to end its economic sanctions, which have devastated Venezuela's economy and have been blamed for the deaths of tens of thousands of Venezuelans.
Earlier this year, President Donald Trump ordered an illegal invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, who the US administration accuses of dubious narcoterrorism-related crimes.
While the Trump administration has issued narrow exemptions from sanctions to companies seeking to profit from Venezuela’s political crisis and copious natural resources—primarily oil—these waivers have not delivered broad relief to the people who need it most.
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As Post-Quake Misery Mounts in Venezuela, Demand Grows for Total End to US Sanctions
"Anything short of a full lifting of sanctions will hobble the overall response before it gets off the ground," said a letter sent to Trump and Rubio by a coalition of advocacy groups.
Jul 01, 2026
As death and injury tolls from Venezuela's pair of devastating earthquakes last week continue to rise, a coalition of human rights and anti-war groups called on President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday to lift the US sanctions that have crippled the nation's economy.
"As long as sweeping economic sanctions remain in place and Venezuelan assets remain frozen abroad, reconstruction will be unnecessarily delayed, and millions of people will continue to suffer," said the letter, which was written by Just Foreign Policy, the Latin American Working Group, and Venezuelan American Community Action and shared exclusively with Common Dreams.
It has been signed by more than a dozen other groups, including the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, Peace Action, and the Presbyterian Church's Office of Public Witness.
The earthquakes have killed nearly 2,300 people as of Wednesday, a death toll that is expected to rise, with the number of missing people greater than 40,000, according to an unofficial estimate. The United Nations' resident coordinator said the UN was preparing more than 10,000 body bags for the country "in anticipation of the death toll rising further."
The quakes caused $6.7 billion in damage, the equivalent of 6% of the country's gross domestic product, the UN Development Program estimated last week.
In the letter sent Wednesday, the groups welcomed the State Department's mobilization of support for Venezuela, which has included search and rescue teams, military personnel for disaster relief, and at least $150 million in humanitarian assistance through aid partners and the UN.
But they said, “It is clear that emergency relief alone will not be enough.”
"Venezuela’s recovery will require access to its own financial resources and the ability to import the equipment, construction materials, medicine, fuel, spare parts, and other goods needed to rebuild homes, hospitals, schools, roads, ports, and critical infrastructure," they said.
They said acquiring these needs has been made vastly more difficult by US sanctions that have "deliberately crushed Venezuela's economy, restricting the government's ability to import goods, maintain infrastructure, and deliver basic services to its population."
Even before the earthquakes, they pointed out, nearly a third of Venezuela's population was in need of humanitarian assistance in May, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
They said US "responsibility" for the state of Venezuela's economy has only grown since Trump's operation in January to topple and abduct President Nicolás Maduro.
Despite Venezuela's oil exports rising 25%, its economic growth plummeted to an annual rate of just 2.5% in the first quarter of 2026, according to an analysis of bank data by Francisco Rodríguez, a senior research fellow at CEPR, who said it was "the lowest rate of growth observed since the second quarter of 2021."
"The data suggests the US may be holding Venezuelan oil revenues in deposit accounts and not disbursing them to the Venezuelan government," the letter said, "currently leaving ordinary Venezuelans with too little of the promised economic improvement and directly contradicting the Trump administration's claim that Venezuelans are doing better than ever."
Given the US role in creating these conditions, as well as the role of US sanctions in turning Venezuela's economic crisis in the 2010s into one of the worst depressions of the last 50 years, the coalition said the Trump administration must not continue using economic warfare to force political concessions.
They also condemned calls from Democrats, including Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen (NH) and House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Gregory Meeks (NY) earlier this month, for the Trump administration to "exercise its leverage" on Venezuela's current government, led by President Delcy Rodriguez, to push for democratic elections.
"The primary leverage the US has long held over Venezuela includes indiscriminate economic sanctions, alongside threats of military action that are illegal under US and international law," the coalition said.
"Using economic pressure against a civilian population as a political tool was unconscionable before this earthquake," they continued. "In its aftermath, any call to tighten that leverage, or to attach political conditions to aid or in exchange for a lifting of economic sanctions must be recognized for what it is—an act of collective punishment against long-suffering civilians who should not face further indiscriminate harm due to US policy."
The coalition said that the Trump administration's limited, temporary unfreezing of some sanctions to allow humanitarian relief transactions was "wildly insufficient," as it did not unfreeze other sanctions that have hamstrung Venezuela's economy.
"The Venezuelan government must be free to receive and allocate earthquake relief and to direct humanitarian support to those who need it most," the letter said. "Anything short of a full lifting of sanctions will hobble the overall response before it gets off the ground."
They called for the US to provide "massive humanitarian assistance" without political strings attached.
They also said the US must release Venezuelan oil revenues held in US accounts and pressure other countries like the UK and Portugal to do so as well.
"This is Venezuela’s money, and it is now urgently needed," the groups said. "Withholding it during a national catastrophe of this magnitude is indefensible."
They also called on the US to lift all sanctions on Venezuela, which they said "impede the delivery of humanitarian goods, reconstruction materials, and financial transfers needed for disaster response and economic recovery."
"The United States has a short window to demonstrate that its relationship with the Venezuelan people is not merely transactional," the letter concluded. "The scale of aid must match the scale of the harm the United States has played a role in creating. Anything less would confirm what many Venezuelans already fear: that American concern for their welfare begins and ends where American geopolitical and economic interests do."
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