Hundreds of activists, largely mothers and their kids, protested outside Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser's luxury apartment building in New York City on Saturday, calling for the multinational bank she leads to stop funding fossil fuel expansion.
The protest, at which 59 people were arrested, was part of the Summer of Heat, a program of nonviolent direct action led by five climate advocacy groups that has targeted Citigroup because it's a leading funder of the fossil fuel industry.
The activists set up a memorial on the sidewalk outside Fraser's building dedicated to the tens of millions of children who've been displaced because of climate change in recent years.
Marlena Fontes, a director at Climate Defenders who organized the action, explained the impact of climate change on her family in a speech to gathered protesters. She said that when haze from Canadian wildfires covered New York City last year, her son was afraid, and her one-year-old daughter had an asthma attack.
"She was just one of many, many children on this planet who are being affected by the climate crisis," Fontes said.
The protestors marched from Citigroup's headquarters to the apartment building, located a few blocks away. About 200 or 300 people took part in the protest, and 59 were arrested; the police were on site before they even arrived, Alicé Nascimento, policy director at New York Communities for Change, one of the Summer of Heat organizing groups, told Common Dreams. The other organizing groups are Climate Defenders, Climate Organizing Hub, Stop the Money Pipeline, and the youth-led Planet Over Profit.
Summer of Heat, which began actions in early June, has turned out to be aptly named, as the summer has been full of deadly heatwaves in the U.S. and across the northern hemisphere. Saturday's action came following a week of extreme global temperatures: Monday was the hottest day in recorded history, breaking a record set just the day before. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday called for coordinated global action to deal with extreme heat, including by transitioning away from fossil fuels.
Corporations like Citigroup make that transition far more difficult, campaigners say. Citigroup was responsible for providing more financing to companies developing new fossil fuel projects than any other bank in the world for the period from 2015 to 2023, according to a Banking on Climate Chaosreport published in May. In terms of overall financing to fossil fuel companies, Citigroup ranked second in the world, behind only JPMorgan Chase, at nearly $400 billion during that period.
Saturday's action was the first of the summer targeted at Fraser's home, though a smaller group of campaigners did protest there in February. Fraser has in the past expressed a willingness to take a climate into account in Citigroup's dealings.
Rachel Rivera, a member of New York Communities for Change, spoke to the gathered protesters about the struggles that her family has faced in the past and in the recent extreme heat. She was displaced during Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and lost loved ones in Puerto Rico to Hurricane Maria in 2017. A mother of six, she said that last week her 10-year-old daughter had to be hospitalized and intubated due to respiratory seizures brought on by the extreme heat.
"Jane Fraser should walk a mile in my shoes," she said.
