‘Divest The Globe’ protests urge banks to cut ties with fossil fuels
On Monday, activists in Washington, D.C. demonstrated outside the John A. Wilson Building — home to both the mayor and city council. (350 DC)
While banking executives from over 90 of the world’s largest financial institutions gathered in Sao Paulo, Brazil on Monday for the start of a three-day meeting on the environmental and social impacts of their infrastructure investments, activists in at least 15 U.S. states and several other countries staged protests under the banner of “Divest The Globe.” Their message to the banks was simple: cut ties with fossil fuel companies, or face major divestment campaigns.
The demonstrations unfolded in over 50 cities — including Seattle, where at least six people were arrested during a protest at a Chase bank — and are being called the largest ever protest against banks’ investments in fossil fuels. As the meeting continues in Sao Paolo over the next two days, solidarity protests are expected in more cities across Europe, Asia and Africa.
The group largely responsible for organizing these Divest The Globe actions is the Seattle-based, indigenous-led divestment campaign Mazaska Talks, which means “money talks” in Lakota. They chose this gathering of bankers as their target because it’s the annual meeting of the Equator Principles Association, which provides guidelines, or so-called Equator Principles, “for determining, assessing and managing environmental and social risk in projects.”
According to organizer Jackie Fielder, activists want to ensure the association gets its “Equator Principles in line with the Paris Agreement, as well as internationally-recognized standards on indigenous rights upheld in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People.” Fielder went on to cite “the spirit of the Standing Rock resistance camps” as inspiration for the Divest The Globe protests, saying it “really raised the consciousness of people to think about where their money has been going when it’s sitting in a bank.”
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