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For Immediate Release
October, 02 2020, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
Jamie Henn, jamie@fossilfree.media, 415-601-9337
Nationwide Protests at Financial Institutions Call for An End to Funding for Tar Sands Pipelines
Activists target JP Morgan Chase, Liberty Mutual, and BlackRock for funding the Line 3, Trans Mountain, and Keystone XL Pipelines
WASHINGTON
Dozens of events took place across the country today as part of "Stop Funding Tar Sands: Day of Solidarity with Frontline Communities," an international day of demonstrations against the financing of tar sands pipelines that are harming Indigenous communities and the climate.
The protests were coordinated by Stop the Money Pipeline, a coalition of over 130 groups working to end the financing of climate destruction, and linked together in a Digital Rally that went live to protest after protest.
The day's actions kicked off with a protest at BlackRock's European headquarters in London and then moved coast to coast across the United States and Canada.
In Boston, a group led by local Indigenous women, built a mock pipeline outside the headquarters of Liberty Mutual, one of the world's biggest insurers of the fossil fuels driving the climate crisis. Protestors urged Liberty Mutual to stop insuring Keystone XL, cut ties with the tar sands industry, and meet with Indigenous leaders, which the company has so far refused to do. The pipeline was covered in red handprints to represent missing and murdered Indigenous women, a tragedy exacerbated by fossil fuel operations.
"We are here to stand in solidarity with tribal nations who have fought Keystone XL for over ten years," said Eva Blake, Assonet Wampanoag, with the Indigenous Environmental Network. "This pipeline violates treaty rights and sets the stage for more missing and murdered Indigenous women. We have had enough. Liberty Mutual needs to meet with tribal leaders and drop Keystone XL!"
In New York City, dozens of people started the afternoon of protests outside of JP Morgan Chase's headquarters, chanting, "Jamie Dimon, you can't hide, we can see your greedy side!" Chase locked all the entrances to the building to prevent protestors from entering. At the same time, activists from around the country left messages for Chase board members and executives demanding they stop funding fossil fuels. The protestors in NYC then marched on to BlackRock's offices to demand the investment giant stop pouring money into fossil fuels.
In Minnesota, 30 youth leaders blockaded a Chase Bank branch in St. Paul to demand it defund tar sands, respect Indigenous rights, and stop the Line 3 pipeline. Calling in live from the protest, Tara Houska,Couchiching First Nation, founder of the Giniw Collective, and a steering committee member of Stop the Money Pipeline, said, "It's incredibly important that we stand up in all the ways we can, and that includes divesting from the banks that fund these projects, because they all need money to run."
More actions took place in Vancouver, Chicago, Charlotte, Providence, El Paso, Chico, and elsewhere across the country.
Activists, Indigenous leaders, and community members also joined the Digital Rally from frontline tar sands fights across North America.
They included Nigel Robinson,a member of the Luechogh Tue First Nation and activist with the Beaver Hills Warriors, called in from near what is now called Cold Lake in Alberta, saying, "These insurance companies like Liberty Mutual, they're working hand in hand with Alberta Premier Jason Kenney to oppress people up here. A lot of our community members are suffering in big ways. A lot of our problems have to do with fossil fuels."
Kanahus Manuel, of the Secwepemc Ktunaxa First Nation and Tiny House Warriors, joined from an ongoing blockade of the Trans Mountain Pipeline, saying, "We want to raise the risk for insurance companies who are underwriting these projects. We've been blockading this site for two years and we're going to continue to ramp up our direct action."
Youth leaders with the Cheyenne River Grassroots Collective, who are fighting the Keystone XL pipeline in what is now known as South Dakota, echoed her call, demanding that Liberty Mutual stop insuring the pipeline and banks pull out their support for the project.
Lucy Molina, a frontline community organizer resisting the Suncor tar sands refinery in Commerce City, CO, issued a direct challenge to banks like JP Morgan Chase, "Stop banking on human misery. Our families are dying. Our children are losing their education because they're always sick. Your money is killing our children, our neighbors, and the people that we love."
The organizers' goal was to shine a spotlight on three major financial institutions, JPMorgan Chase, Liberty Mutual, and BlackRock, that are financing, insuring, and investing in three of the most dangerous fossil fuel projects in North America: the Line 3, Trans Mountain, and Keystone XL pipelines.
Line 3 would run across Anishinaabe territory and Ojibwe treaty lands in Minnesota to refineries on Lake Superior; Trans Mountain across lands in British Columbia belonging to First Nations including Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, Coldwater and a collective of bands within the Sto:lo Nation; and Keystone XL across the Fort Belknap Indian Community of Montana, the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota, and lands in Nebraska.
Each pipeline would transport Canadian tar sands, some of the dirtiest fossil fuels on the planet, and would be constructed on Indigenous lands without consent, endangering the safety of Indigenous women, and violating Indigenous People's right to Free Prior and Informed Consent.
Along with fighting the pipelines on the ground, Indigneous leaders and their allies have been going after the financial institutions that are funding the projects.
JPMorgan Chase is the number one U.S. banker of tar sands oil, financing more tar sands between 2016 and 2019 than the other five big U.S. banks combined. During that period, Chase provided TC Energy, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline, with $17.5 billion in financing, making TC Energy the bank's single largest fossil fuel client. Despite the bank's green rhetoric, its tar sands financing jumped 65% from 2018 to 2019.
Liberty Mutual is also a key player in the tar sands. The insurance company is insuring the Trans Mountain pipeline in Canada as well as providing key financial backing for the Keystone XL pipeline: Liberty Mutual provided a $15.6 million bond to TC Energy, the company behind the project, to cover any damages to public infrastructure in South Dakota that could result from constructing the pipeline. The Great Plains Tribal Chairman's Association issued a letter this September calling on Liberty Mutual to drop the project. While information on eight insurers of the Line 3 pipeline isn't publicly available, it's highly likely that Liberty Mutual is one of them. Liberty Mutual currently has no policies in place to steer clear of projects that have not secured the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent of Indigenous communities.
On September 15th, the Chairmen of sixteen sovereign Tribal Nationswrote to Liberty Mutual CEO, David Long, to demand that Liberty Mutual immediately cut ties with the Keystone XL pipeline and meet with them to discuss Liberty Mutual's involvement in the whole tar sands sector. This was followed the next day bysixty major businesses calling on insurers to cease doing business with the fossil fuel industry.
Despite BlackRock's promises to put sustainability at the center of its business model, it remains the world's top backer of fossil fuels and deforestation. While BlackRock made headlines for excluding tar sands from a single ESG fund, it has no policies in place to stop its other funds from investing in them. BlackRock is also a major investor in TC Energy and Enbridge, the companies behind Keystone XL, Line 3, and Trans Mountain. Furthermore, BlackRock is a top shareholder of many of the largest banks financing tar sands and pipeline expansion. BlackRock has also failed to incorporate Indigenous rights into any of its investment screens.
"So far BlackRock is failing to meet the big climate promises it made in January. It's saying many of the right things but when you consider the actions of the world's largest asset manager, they simply don't rise to the urgency of the crises or its own promise to center sustainability in its business model," said Moira Birss, Climate and Finance Director for Amazon Watch. "Excluding tar sands from its investment funds is one of the big next steps BlackRock must take to be the climate leader it claims to be."
As the day's protests and digital rally came to a close, organizers with Stop the Money Pipeline pledged to keep up the pressure on major financial institutions to stop funding the tar sands and other dangerous fossil fuel projects that threaten the climate, Indigenous sovereignty, and human rights.
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Groups Warn Biden Ukraine War Shows Attacks on Nuclear Plants 'Could Happen Here'
"The recent catastrophic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and the crash of two Boeing 737 Max jets demonstrate the real-world consequences of inadequate or capriciously enforced safety regulation and oversight. We can't add radiological releases from U.S. nuclear plants to this list."
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In the wake of another nerve-wracking outage at a Russian-held Ukrainian nuclear energy facility this week, 90 groups and dozens of individuals wrote to U.S. President Joe Biden expressing "grave concerns regarding security at U.S. nuclear power plants."
"We commend and wholeheartedly support your administration's much-needed efforts to make nuclear plants in the Ukraine war zone more secure in the face of daunting political and military challenges," states the letter, spearheaded by Nuclear Energy Information Service (NEIS) and sent to the White House Wednesday. "This work protects not only Ukraine but the entire planet."
"Our concern is that the security of U.S. nuclear power plants does not seem to be receiving a commensurate amount of attention, neither from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), nor the administration," the coalition explained. "Worse, your administration is also seeking to expand the nuclear industry in dangerous ways that compound nuclear plant security threats."
"Attacks on nuclear facilities and other external dangers they face are credible threats and could happen here."
While the letter argues that given the associated security threats, "federal funding should prioritize scaling up renewables, storage, efficiency, and transmission upgrades, so as to phase out nuclear power as quickly as possible," it also calls for immediate action.
"Nuclear plant security MUST begin at home," the groups declared, urging the U.S. government to "learn the lesson" from Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) since Russian forces invaded Ukraine early last year—that "attacks on nuclear facilities and other external dangers they face are credible threats and could happen here."
"The recent catastrophic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and the crash of two Boeing 737 Max jets demonstrate the real-world consequences of inadequate or capriciously enforced safety regulation and oversight," the organizations asserted. "We can't add radiological releases from U.S. nuclear plants to this list."
The coalition also sent the president a separate document detailing security concerns and recommendations for U.S. facilities, but the letter highlights the top takeaways:
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The groups' recommendations include changes to storage policies. The letter says that "instead of transporting it to proposed CISFs, most spent nuclear fuel should be stored at reactor sites using hardened onsite storage (HOSS)."
\u201cHoltec International, a private company that builds casks to store nuclear waste, was given a license to store the nation's entire high-level nuclear waste in NM. We spoke with Director of the Rio Grande Chapter of Sierra Club, Camilla Feibelman about it.\nhttps://t.co/vB4TEm4tAe\u201d— KRWG Public Media (@KRWG Public Media) 1684767759
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\u201cThe United Nations\u2019 nuclear watchdog is pushing for a last-minute agreement to secure Ukraine\u2019s huge atomic power plant in Zaporizhzhia ahead of a counteroffensive that could see\u00a0Kyiv\u2019s forces drive directly through the potentially hazardous facility.\nhttps://t.co/hcErCVkWZ8\u201d— Nukes of Hazard (@Nukes of Hazard) 1684872110
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In her first piece of House legislation, Democratic Pennyslvania Congresswoman Summer Lee on Thursday introduced a bill that would provide hazard pay, protective gear, and transportation for essential U.S. healthcare workers.
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"We need bold action starting with the Hazard Pay for Healthcare Heroes Act to protect our healthcare workers, patients, and communities they care for."
Lee's bill is endorsed by groups including SEIU Health Care Pennsylvania, American Federation of Teachers, American College of Nurse Midwives, and the National Hispanic Medical Association.
"I've been fighting for fair wages and safe conditions for our hospital workers from my time as an organizer and state legislator all the way to Congress," Lee said in a statement. "Every time disaster strikes, our healthcare workers show up for us—even when it means putting their own lives at risk. It's time we show up for them with pay and protection, not just bells and whistles."
\u201c\ud83d\udea8Today, I'm introducing my first bill!\ud83d\udea8\n\nEvery day, #HealthCareHeroes show up for us, even when it means putting their own lives at risk. \n\nI'm introducing the Hazard Pay for Health Care Heroes Act alongside @SenMarkey to ensure critical funding for hazard pay & safety!\u201d— Congresswoman Summer Lee (@Congresswoman Summer Lee) 1685028224
During the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, masks and other protective equipment for healthcare workers was often in short supply.
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post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, and other physical and mental health challenges.
"With public health and environmental crises from pandemics and train derailments to climate-driven disasters becoming more frequent and more dangerous, we need bold action starting with the Hazard Pay for Healthcare Heroes Act to protect our healthcare workers, patients, and communities they care for by providing the hazard pay and safety tools they need to continue to keep our loved ones safe during emergencies," Lee said.
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Markey said that "healthcare workers are on the frontlines of our nation's dual public health and climate crises, treating and tending to communities hit hardest by extreme weather and environmental disasters."
"These heroes deserve more than our gratitude—they deserve better pay and stronger protections," he added. "I am proud to join Rep. Lee in introducing the Hazard Pay for Healthcare Heroes Act to ensure healthcare workers who are responding to these emergencies are provided hazard pay and given the safety tools necessary to protect patients and themselves."
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As the U.S. edges closer to a self-inflicted economic disaster whose most immediate cause is House Republicans' refusal to raise the debt ceiling unless President Joe Biden agrees to slash social programs and give the fossil fuel industry more handouts, the earliest potential victims of the GOP's hostage situation—which could provoke the nation's first-ever default as early as June 1—are coming into view.
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Progressives have long accused House Republicans, who know full well that failing to increase the federal government's arbitrary and arguably unconstitutional borrowing limit prior to the quickly approaching default "X-date" would unleash devastating impacts domestically and globally, of weaponizing the nation's credit rating to advance their reactionary agenda. With a five-seat House majority and the ability of any party member to introduce a motion to remove the speaker—a rule the far-right Freedom Caucus secured in exchange for electing Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to the role—the GOP has significant leverage over the fate of the U.S. and world economy.
Earlier this week, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) admitted that his party, led by the House Freedom Caucus to which he belongs, is exploiting the ongoing standoff in a bid to gut the nation's already meager welfare state and weaken its embryonic climate policies.
Referring to the austerity-or-default bill House Republicans approved last month, Gaetz told reporters, "My conservative colleagues for the most part support Limit, Save, Grow, and they don't feel like we should negotiate with our hostage."
\u201cMatt Gaetz says that Republicans "don\u2019t feel like we should negotiate with our hostage."\n\nWho is that hostage?\n\nSocial Security \u2014 and everyone who relies on it.\u201d— Social Security Works (@Social Security Works) 1685026405
Soon after the passage of the Limit, Save, Grow Act, the White House abandoned Biden's earlier refusal to hold debt ceiling negotiations and began signaling its openness to certain GOP proposals, only for McCarthy to make even more extreme ransom demands and constantly move the goal posts.
As the Post reported: "Republicans in Congress have maintained that they don't want to cut Social Security benefits, though at least one recent budget blueprint calls for raising the eligibility age for full retirement from 67 to 70 to account for longer life expectancies. The GOP has also proposed a host of cuts and additional work requirements for other federal benefits, such as Medicaid and food stamps, that experts say would have an outsize impact on the country's seniors."
In a Thursday statement, Accountable.US spokesperson Liz Zelnick said that "every option on the table from the MAGA House majority leaves millions of vulnerable seniors worse off—either extreme cuts against seniors' health and food security, or a manufactured default crisis that delays Social Security checks many can't live without."
Biden and House Republicans have yet to reach an agreement. According to Thursday reporting from The Associated Press on the contours of a possible deal, the GOP may abandon its demand to further boost military spending in favor of maintaining the already historically high levels proposed by Biden, while Biden may agree to roll back Internal Revenue Service (IRS) funding if the GOP lets his administration funnel that money into the social safety net.
The fact that Capitol Hill's deficit hawks are eager to attack the poor but don't support reducing the ever-expanding Pentagon budget or hiking taxes on corporations and the rich to increase revenue exposes the "fraudulent" nature of their current crusade, journalist David Sirota tweeted.
Rescinding the recently enacted IRS funding boost would help wealthy households evade taxes, adding an estimated $114 billion to the federal deficit. Meanwhile, House Republicans are reportedly working on legislation that would make permanent certain provisions in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a Trump-era law whose benefits have flowed overwhelmingly to the top 1% while adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit.
On Thursday, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) sounded the alarm about House Republicans leaving the Capitol with no debt limit agreement reached just days before the X-date.
\u201cWe are days away from Republicans hurtling our economy towards a devastating default on our debt for the first time in American history and @SpeakerMcCarthy just sent everyone home.\u201d— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib) 1685036582
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Notably, the latest episode of fiscal brinkmanship could have been avoided had Democrats listened to Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and other progressives who called on the party to raise the debt ceiling—or abolish it altogether—when it still controlled both chambers of Congress last year.
Corporate Democrats refused to act during the lame-duck session despite Warren's warning that GOP lawmakers desperate to win the White House in 2024 will "blow up the economy" and run ads blaming Biden for it.
A growing number of congressional lawmakers—including prominent progressives such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—have implored Biden to invoke his 14th Amendment authority to unilaterally avert a default, an option the president has thus far resisted.
On Thursday, Social Security Works and Indivisible led more than 30 progressive advocacy groups in urging Biden to take executive action to disarm the debt ceiling.
\u201cIf the GOP insists on catastrophic cuts or a disastrous default, President Biden should prepare to act using the 14th Amendment to protect working families. Read our letter w/ @SSworks \ud83d\udc47\ud83d\udc47\u201d— Indivisible Guide (@Indivisible Guide) 1685032177
"The choice facing the executive branch is clear: Act or default; act or increase the suffering of millions; act or go into economic tailspin," says the letter. "If Republicans in Congress prove unwilling or unable to produce the votes for a bill that avoids default without catastrophic cuts to critical programs, it will fall to you to protect working families from their economic sabotage."
"You have promised to prevent a default, without granting legitimacy to the legislative hostage-taking being undertaken by congressional Republicans," the letter concludes. "Fortunately, the 14th Amendment provides a clear route for you to deliver on that promise. We will stand with you should that route prove necessary."
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