Armed with megaphones, small children and Jane Fonda, climate protestors are taking on a new foe in the battle to end fossil fuels: Wall Street. The big banks and insurers that lend money to oil and gas companies “are just as bad as the companies that they’re financing,” says Marlena Fontes, co-founder of Climate Families NYC. “Wall Street has gotten off up until now.” Her organization has joined with others via the Climate Organizing Hub to stage a series of non-violent protests all summer long in New York City. Watch as we follow Fontes to a typical protest, this one outside Citibank headquarters, where she is arrested while chanting “Shame On Citi.” Luminaries in the climate fight, including Fonda and community leaders Sharon Lavigne and Roishetta Sibley Ozane, join in the action. “It’s hard to understand what the path is to win, but I believe that there’s a path, and we’re going to figure it out,” Fontes says.
TEXT: Citibank Headquarters, NYC
TEXT: Climate Families NYC protest.
Organizer 1: All kids are welcome to stand up here even if they’re not speaking.
Abby Newman: We are here outside Citibank with a very important group of stakeholders that is not inside that building. And that group is kids.
Young Boy: I think about climate change a lot and it is not a good feeling. Climate change is killing off coral reefs. I wish I could see a coral reef one day but I am not sure I will because they might all be dead when I grow up.
Marlena: Climate Families is a family-centered climate group. We will do actions that will actually make a difference in the climate crisis. When we do protests with our kids, it changes the response of the people that we're engaging with. They are more interested. I think it's disarming to our targets.
Older Boy: The earth can’t take much more. That’s why I’m asking you, Citibank, to stop giving money to the destroyers of the earth.
Marlena: We're fighting for our families. I'm fighting for my family. We're fighting for the future of the planet.
Group Chanting: Hey, hey, ho ho, fossil fuels have got to go!
TITLE: Turning up the Heat
Marlena: I'd always known climate was serious, but it felt so big and overwhelming that I put it in a box and ignored it.
Marlena: I really couldn't face it. My beginning climate activism was during my maternity leave. My son was born in 2019, a few days before the hottest day of the summer. And I was thinking, I have a child, and I was not able to ignore it anymore. I needed to protect him and I needed to do something.
TEXT: Marlena and a few young mothers started a volunteer organization, Climate Families NYC.
Marlena: We started with just five people and it's not hard to recruit. Parents are ready for it. It's really easy.
TEXT: The group now has 1500 members.
Marlena: I went to college at Cornell University. I found this internship with the National Domestic Workers Alliance. I did that internship and completely caught the organizing bug. I was like, "This is what I want to do."
TEXT: Marlena began her career as a labor organizer.
Marlena: Being an organizer, it's really listening to people and understanding their story, and then being able to identify people who are ready to do something about it.
TEXT: New York Nurses strike during covid.
Marlena: I've worked on so many campaigns that have seemed impossible, truly impossible. What I always come back to is just doing the good work: bringing people in, taking action, building leaders, continuing to push.
TEXT: As climate disasters escalated, Marlena decided she needed to work full-time on climate activism.
TEXT: She joined the Climate Organizing Hub, which works to expose how financial companies are profiting from climate change
Marlena: A fossil fuel company is always going to be a fossil fuel company. ExxonMobil is always going to be ExxonMobil. They're not going to unmake themselves, but there are the people who are financing them, and they are just as bad as the companies that they're financing. Wall Street has gotten off up until now. They are not seen as a major contributor to the climate crisis.
TEXT: In Spring 2024 Marlena helped organize protesters from around the country into “The Summer of Heat.”
Marlena: And then all the panelists will be sitting here if they're not at the table. So let me--we can do a little meeting, but also let me introduce you to everyone. There's going to be two people who are speaking other languages. Ashraful is going to be speaking Bangla. And Olivia is going to be speaking Spanish.
PIX: Meeting begins.
Marlena: Now, I will hand it off to a woman who really needs no introduction, a legendary activist, an actress, the founder of Fire Drill Fridays, and a person who inspires me personally, Jane Fonda.
Jane Fonda: How many of you live near fossil fuel development, oil, gas, or coal? Raise your hands. Yeah. I don't live near oil wells. I'm white, I'm privileged. They don't have oil wells near where we live. They have them in communities where they don't think people are able to fight back. It is shocking to see what the pollution from these plants does to communities. Entire communities disappeared because of the pollution and the things that that pollution does to people's health.
Sharon Lavigne: We want to drink clean water. Look how many years we were drinking water with benzene in it. We didn't know we had benzene in our water until we started doing this work.
Roishetta Sibley Ozane: If they are going to continue to approve permits for these facilities, if they're going to continue to make money off of our backs, off of human beings, then we're going to go after their money. We're going to go see their source. Today, that source is Citibank. Because Citibank is located right here in New York City that are funding projects that are killing us in our communities along the Gulf Coast.
TEXT: Citibank is the target of one of the first protests of the “Summer of Heat.”
Marlena’s arrest partner: We're going to need to take your phone and anything else you need to give me. I need you to write your name on this blue tape to put on the back of your phone.
TEXT: The protesters know they may be arrested.
Marlena: My decision to be arrested, I mean, it's a decision that's been a long time in the making. We've all grown up on stories of the civil rights movement and other movements where activists have taken that step of being arrested. It's a necessary tool that we need to wield.
Group chanting: Hey Citi, get off it, put planet over profit!
Native man: Citibank must stop funding the destruction of this planet.
Police: . . . the entrance to this building and obstructing pedestrian traffic. You are ordered to disperse now to permit the safe flow of pedestrian traffic. If you do so voluntarily, no charges will be placed against you. If you refuse to disperse, you will be placed under arrest and charged with disorderly conduct.
Marlena: We chose not to resist arrest. When they say, “It's time, we're arresting you,” then we turn around and we give them our hands.
Marlena: It’s too tight. It’s too tight. Can you loosen it?
Marlena: There's a whole ecosystem of support that goes into supporting the people who are arrested, and also creating a moment. That moment of protest.
Marlena: Shame on Citi! Shame on Citi!
Marlena: It involves people chanting. It involves people singing, taking pictures.
TEXT: Marlena and dozens of others were arrested and ordered to return to court in three weeks.
Marlena: It's hard to understand what the path is to win, but I believe that there's a path, and we're going to figure it out over the next couple of years.
PIX: NY street. Marlena exits 1 Center Street.
TEXT: Kings and New York Criminal Court - New York City
Marlena: So I went up, met the legal team upstairs, along with a bunch of other people arrested on the same day as me. I went to a counter, had to submit my ticket, and then was told that my case was dismissed along with everyone else who was arrested with me on that day.
PIX: Back to Marlena marching in the Citi protest.
Marlena: Makes me feel powerful. Makes me feel like we need to keep going. And, yeah. And excited for the next steps.
TEXT:The protests continue.