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Green Groups Organizing 'All Out on Earth Day' Protests Against Trump Authoritarianism
"Trump is dismantling critical environmental safeguards, putting lives at risk, and leaving working people to suffer the devastating consequences," said one campaigner.
Apr 14, 2025
A coalition of green groups on Monday promoted plans for nationwide "All Out on Earth Day" rallies "to confront rising authoritarianism and defend our environment, democracy, and future" against the Trump administration's gutting of government agencies and programs tasked with environmental protection and combating the climate emergency.
Organizers of the protests—which are set to take place from April 18-30—are coalescing opposition to President Donald Trump's attacks on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other agencies, which include efforts to rescind or severely curtail regulations aimed at protecting the public from pollution, oil spills, and other environmental and climate harms.
"This Earth Day, we fight for everything: for our communities, our democracy, and the future our children deserve."
The Green New Deal Network, one of the event's organizers, decried Trump's "massive rollbacks" to the EPA and noted that funds "for critical programs have been frozen and federal workers have been unjustly fired" as Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, takes a wrecking ball to government agencies.
"This Earth Day, we fight for everything: for our communities, our democracy, and the future our children deserve," Green New Deal Network national director Kaniela Ing said in a statement.
"Trump, Musk, and their billionaire allies are waging an all-out assault on the agencies that keep our air clean, our water safe, and our families healthy," Ing continued. "They're gutting the programs and projects we fought hard to win—programs that bring down energy costs and create good-paying jobs in towns across America, especially in red states."
"So, we need to make sure the pressure continues and our protests aren't just a flash in the pan," Ing added. "When we stand together—workers, environmentalists, everyday folks—we can not only stop them, but we can build the world we deserve."
All Out on Earth Day participants include Sunrise Movement, Climate Power, Third Act, Popular Democracy, Climate Defenders, the Democratic National Committee Council on Environment and Climate, Unitarian Universalists, NAACP, Dayenu, Evergreen, United to End Polluter Handouts Coalition, Climate Hawks Vote, and the Center of Biological Diversity (CBD).
Last month, CBD sued five Cabinet-level agencies in a bid to ensure that DOGE teams tasked with finding ways to cut costs—including via workforce reductions—fully comply with federal transparency law. This, after DOGE advised the termination of thousands of probationary staffers at the EPA, Department of the Interior, and other agencies.
Although a federal judge last month ordered the Trump administration to reinstate thousands of government workers fired from half a dozen agencies based on the "lie" that their performance warranted termination, the right-wing U.S. Supreme Court subsequently sided with the White House, finding that plaintiffs in the case lacked the legal standing to sue.
Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org and founder of the elder-led Third Act, harkened back to the historic first Earth Day in 1970.
"Fifty-five years ago, a massive turnout on the first Earth Day forced a corrupt Republican administration to pass the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, and create the EPA," he said on Monday, referring to the presidency of Richard Nixon. "Let's do it again!"
Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, highlighted the need for action now, noting that Trump "is giving oil and gas billionaires the green light to wreck our planet and put millions of lives at risk, all so they can pad their bottom line."
"Just three months into the Trump presidency, the damage has already been catastrophic," she added. "Trump is dismantling critical environmental safeguards, putting lives at risk, and leaving working people to suffer the devastating consequences. "This Earth Day, we stand united in defiance of their greed and fight for a future that prioritizes people and the planet over profits."
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Justice for All: Road-Tested Strategies for Building a Bigger Movement
Three members of the Just Economy Institute share their insights on how to weave multiple worlds together to accelerate change.
Oct 27, 2024
Most activists sense the dense web of connections linking social, economic and climate justice issues, yet stick largely to their own anchor points. It’s time to come unstuck. To make progress at a pace that matches the urgency of our problems, we must widen the circles of activism and invite everyone in.
“We need to take big leaps of faith,” says Akaya Windwood, lead advisor for Third Act and founder of the New Universal Wisdom and Leadership Institute. “There are enough of us now doing this work. We have everything we need in order to make transformation happen.”
To find out what it means to pull all the pieces together, we interviewed three members of the Just Economy Institute who are doing it: Windwood; Tzeporah Berman, international program director at Stand.earth; and Stephone Coward, economic justice director at the Hip Hop Caucus. Here are their insights on how to weave multiple worlds together to accelerate change.
Make Money’s Role Visible
Many fellows who came to our program with a social justice focus have dissociated from money. What they find, though, is that tracing its flow reveals hidden leverage points.
“There’s an opportunity to lean more into the power that people have through their money—even if they don’t have a great portfolio—to send a message that we can’t prioritize profit over people,” says Coward.
To that end, Coward recently launched Bank Black and Green, a multiyear campaign to rally impact investors to shift capital to Black-owned banks that pledge not to finance the fossil fuel industry or mass incarceration.
“These minority depository institutions are frontline actors in a just transition from the current extractive economy to a regenerative one,” Coward says. Meanwhile, “fossil fuel companies come into underdeveloped communities with the promise of good jobs and actually end up poisoning these communities, lowering the value of homes and local businesses, and driving away other forms of economic investment.”
Meet People Where They Are—Literally and Figuratively
“We need to bring the organizing away from the centers of power and into the centers of impact, where climate change is already hitting hard,” says Coward. “New York, D.C., L.A.—places like that are important, but the people who live in the Gulf states also want and need to be a part of this work. We have to build power and mobilize people in the South.”
That requires a long-term commitment, he adds—not just “parachuting into communities to do some type of vanity project and then leaving. And in order for us to do this financial activism and climate activism work together, we’ve got to understand where people are currently.”
“If we’re actually going to change things, we need to start finding honest common ground.”
This is true in every dimension of difference. “It’s been eye opening to me to understand that we are having two very different conversations generationally,” Windwood says, “and I'm coming to the understanding that cross-generational work is as essential as working across race, gender, and class—and perhaps more salient now than anything else.”
Doing that work, she adds, requires moving away from negative communication habits.
“One of the most toxic patterns in our social movements is the critiquing that we do, the contest to see who’s the smartest person in the room—and the way I can tell you that I’m the smartest person in the room is by tearing down your ideas,” Windwood says. “If we’re actually going to change things, we need to start finding honest common ground. Imagine going to a social justice gathering where we are welcoming and kind, and can disagree with some grace.”
Do the Work to Work Across Difference
“We have got to learn how to listen—listen to understand, not to respond,” says Berman, whose organization builds power side-by-side with the frontline communities most impacted by environmental crises.
“There is an inherent tension in the work we do, because when you work on environmental and climate issues, you always feel like you’re racing against the clock,” she says. “Yet true justice-based relationships that are not extractive take trust, and trust takes time.”
Building trust—especially with frontline communities—starts with the approach to developing the campaign, she adds: The most effective actions involve co-creating the strategy, not just giving people the opportunity to have a voice in it. Berman offers Stand.earth’s Amazon campaign, which persuaded banks to shift billions of dollars away from financing oil extraction.
“We built a resistance strategy jointly with Indigenous associations and leadership. And when we decided to try to convince banks to stop funding oil drilling in the heart of the Amazon, we weren’t just facilitating Indigenous leaders to do a speech to a bank,” Berman said. “Instead, our researchers briefed them on all the financial information and answered their questions so that when the Indigenous leaders showed up in a meeting with vice presidents of some of the largest banks in the world, they were negotiating with real information, and they were equal partners.”
“Those bank executives were hearing not just the story of impacts on the land and in the forest, but an assessment of their recent financial transactions in the oil trade and a direct request to stop this contract and no longer pursue this particular company. They didn’t expect that.”
Bring the Storytelling, the Hope and the Joy
Activism by its nature is focused on problems, and that can make the work feel grim to people who don’t do it for a living—and even to some who do.
“We need people to stay for the long-term. Our hope must be louder than the other side’s grievances,” Coward says. “We can use the power of storytelling to put out something aspirational, to talk about what a society that doesn’t prioritize profit over people looks like.”
Windwood echoes the need for “stories that tell us of possible futures,” along with an experience of community. “I think that’s why Third Act is so effective, and how we went from an idea two years ago to having over 70,000 members today,” she says. “When we say, ‘Let’s go sit in front of the banks in our rocking chairs,’ people want to do that. Why? Because it’s fun.”
Berman’s parting advice: “Find ways to experience joy together. It will do more to strengthen your work than anything else because joy is the justice we give ourselves in troubled times.”
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'What Real Eldership Looks Like': 69 Senior Climate Protesters Arrested at CitiBank HQ
Wall Street giant responsible for massive funding of fossil fuels accused of "robbing our grandchildren's future."
Aug 27, 2024
The " Summer of Heat on Wall Street" protests continued Tuesday with at least 69 elders arrested while blocking Citibank's New York City headquarters to demand an end to the bank's financing of climate-wrecking fossil fuel projects.
"I'm here for my children and grandchildren," one woman explained as she was led away by a New York Police Department officer, wrists zip-tied behind her back. "I have kids and they need to live a better future!"
She was among several protesters who wore signs hanging from their necks that said "I'm here for:" followed by photos of loved ones.
BREAKING: NYPD arrests 29 grandparents at @Citibank HQ for demanding an end to Citi’s financing of oil, gas and coal projects.
“I have kids and they need to live a better future!” #SummerofHeat #CitiDropFossilFuels pic.twitter.com/j93mMl1YhS
— New York Communities for Change (@nychange) August 27, 2024
Bill McKibben, a 350.org co-founder arrested at a related action earlier this summer, welcomed Tuesday's protest on social media. Borrowing a phrase from Hip Hop Caucus' Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., he
declared, "Can't stop won't stop!"
"Old and bold!!" he added in response to footage of some arrests, also highlighting Third Act, his group for "Americans over the age of 60 determined to change the world for the better," which organized Tuesday's protest.
The Summer of Heat campaign was
initiated by a coalition that includes Climate Defenders, New York Communities for Change, Planet Over Profit, and Stop the Money Pipeline with support from more than 100 environmental and racial justice groups.
"Since the campaign launch on June 10, over 4,000 people have joined protests as part of the Summer of Heat," according to organizers. "And over 500 people have been arrested for engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience protests, urging banks like Citigroup to stop bankrolling new coal, oil, and gas."
Sharing a photo of one protester on social media Tuesday, Stop the Money Pipeline director Alec Connon said that "when I'm older I hope I will be like Pat, who was just arrested for blocking the doors to the headquarters of the world's largest funder of fossil fuel expansion since the Paris agreement. In a time of climate crisis, this is what real eldership looks like."
Tuesday's action in New York—which came as over 60 million people in the U.S. Midwest and Northeast faced heat advisories—followed a July demonstration in which Third Act members led a "funeral procession" near Citigroup's headquarters to honor elders who have died during recent dangerous heatwaves. That protest also led to arrests.
Other Summer of Heat actions targeting Citibank that resulted in arrests have been held by cello-playing grandfather, faith leaders, and mothers who gathered with their children outside bank CEO Jane Fraser's luxury apartment building.
This past weekend, over 30 self-described "climate feminists" were arrested in another demonstration outside Fraser's home, where they chanted: "Methane Jane, you can't hide. We charge you with ecocide."
More than 30 feminists sit down in the street in front of Methane Jane Fraser’s TriBeCa apartment. There’s nothing feminist about funding ecocide. pic.twitter.com/CtuQGWVaqh
— New York Communities for Change (@nychange) August 25, 2024
An annual report released in May showed that in 2023—the hottest year on record—the world's 60 biggest banks committed $705 billion to companies conducting business in fossil fuels, bringing the total since the Paris agreement to $6.9 trillion. Citi's totals were more than $30 billion last year and $396 billion overall.
This post has been updated to clarify when Bill McKibben was arrested and to include additional arrests after publication.
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