By For months, Indigenous activists, climate refugees, young folks, and community leaders have been calling on the bankrollers of climate change to step away from funding climate chaos, especially Enbridge’s Line 3 in so-called Minnesota. The executives of the nation’s biggest banks, like JPMorgan Chase, have had their mailboxes flooded with letters, postcards, collages, and art.
These banks are the pillars that uphold the world’s largest tar sands pipeline to be built, but the people inside are the ones who choose to invest in a deadly and dying industry. They are personally responsible, so we are calling them out for their complicity because they hold the power to defund Line 3. When we stop the flow of money, then we stop the flow of oil.
People from the frontlines, and grassroots activists, are holding these executives accountable for the impacts their investments make. These are just a few stories of people power against the world’s worst banker of climate chaos, JPMorgan Chase.
Inspiring actions from frontline community members
Bobbi Jean Three Legs, a young mother from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation…
…wrote a letter to Ashley Bacon, the Chief Risk Officer at Chase Bank, demanding the bank defund Line 3. After countless attempts to be heard by Bacon and set up a meeting, Bobbi Jean demands that “It’s time to stand for our future generations! More importantly, we all deserve to grow old with clean drinking water! We are in a pivotal moment of history with our climate crisis. Now is the time to take action!”
Bobbi Jean, along with Oceti Sakowin Youth Runners and organizers from the communities impacted by the Dakota Access and Line 3 pipelines, are headed to D.C. on April 1st to demand Joe Biden respect their communities and #ShutdownDAPL & #StopLine3. Five years ago on April 1st, the Sacred Stone Camp was founded and history was made as thousands of people descended to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Helen Stoltzfus, a climate refugee evacuated from her home for several months due to the California wildfires…
…mailed Mellody Hobson a children’s book about Water Protectors for her and her daughter to read aloud together. Mellody Hobson is both a mother and a member of the Public Responsibility Committee at Chase Bank. Her letter to Mellody reads, “You are in a unique position to say: it is time to change our way of doing business. We can no longer morally afford to do business with TC Energy, Kinder Morgan, and Enbridge because they are destroying lives, land, health, and indigenous sovereign rights.”
Mary Kay Benson, a grassroots organizer with 350 Butte County…
…wrote a letter to Mellody Hobson seeing her potential allyship as she worked to ban straws at Starbucks and has been outspoken in the past about many social justice causes. Mary Kay writes, “ We would love to see you champion our movement and lead the way in all your capacities to a restoration of healthy communities where all children can breathe fresh air, drink clean water, and eat healthy food from healthy soil.”
We Won’t Stop Sending Messages Until Chase Executives Defund Line 3 and Climate Chaos
In the past year our network has:
- made 1,500 phone calls
- sent 600,000 emails
- sent 20,000 calendar invites flooding Exec’s inboxes
- delivered 365 letters
- Created a barrage of resistance art
- disrupted countless virtual meetings
- taken COVID-safe solidarity actions at Chase branches
These pipelines can be stopped when they have no money with which to build them.Chase Bank is the world’s largest funder of fossil fuels but was recently pushed by the incredible work of grassroots organizers to adhere to the limits set in the Paris Climate Agreement. We know the power we possess to agitate these corporations – and we have seen them move. Unfortunately, it’s not enough. We must continue our steady drumbeat into the homes and offices of the execs who can Defund Line 3 and all fossil-fueled projects that are throwing our climate into chaos.
These executives may sit high up in their financial fortresses, but we will continue to catapult our demands into their chambers until we are heard and they take action.
The veil has been lifted to reveal who truly holds the power: the people.
Are you ready to tap into your power? Join us and sign up to send your own #Defundline3 postcards directly to the homes of the executives behind this toxic project.
