Protesters gathered Tuesday in Washington, D.C. outside major U.S. banks, where they cut up their credit cards and called for the institutions to stop spending money to promote the fossil fuel industry.
Videos taken at the scene show climate activists of the Old Bold Third Act'' movement using scissors to chop credit cards outside Chase, Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. They also chanted about climate justice and shut down the big bad climate banks. Natalie Pein, a retired public school teacher and environmental scientist from Virginia, said she was challenged to consider how banks were spending money consumers like her and how that money is impacting the environment.
She said that instead of just being a kitchen table budget, think a little bigger: how is your bank money being used for the planet and people, or is it being used for corporate profit.
The protesters marched and chanted from one bank to the next, within a block of each other and a block of the White House.
The protesters chanted. Cheryl Barnds, a coordinator of Honor the Earth Coalition from Maryland, told Reuters that banks were responsible for damaging the environment.
She said that the big banks that we trust with our money have been using our money to burn the planet.
The Reverend Neal Christie of the Baltimore-Washington Conference said banks were making billions and billions off the planet and urged more people to think about how they invest their money. Make sure the banks know that we're watching them. The US banks have decided not to follow European banks in terms of divestment from dirty energy, fossil fuels, and fossil fuels. They know better and they're making billions and billions of dollars off of harming our planet, when there are other ways to do good business, to do it ethically for the common good for generations to come, Christie explained. In 2022, Rainforest Action Network and other environmental groups released a report on banking and the climate, which found large banks have trillions in fossil fuel businesses.