Emma in MN, “I’m calling on you to stand in solidarity with the Line 3 resistance movement by planning an action for the #DefundLine3 global day of action on May 7th!
Last October, I planned my first protest at a Chase Bank with other students from my college in Minnesota who are involved with the movement to stop Line 3. JP Morgan Chase is the world’s biggest funder of fossil fuels and invests millions of dollars into tar sands projects like Line 3.
We spent a few weeks scheming, building art, and scouting the Chase branch closest to campus. On the day of the action, I woke up early feeling a bit nervous to pull everything off, but we did it! We blockaded both bank entrances with art and our bodies, and stopped employees from opening the branch for almost 2 hours! We played music, danced, chanted, and deepened our commitment to the movement to stop Line 3.
Since October, the people I planned that action with have become some of my closest friends in the movement. I’ve lived with them on the frontlines of the Line 3 resistance, collaborated with them on planning much bigger protests, and built the sort of relationships on which movements for liberation are founded.
Over the past several months, the movement to #DefundLine3 has been growing. Since you joined us for the Student Divestment Virtual Rally to #DefundLine3 back in March (here’s a recording if you missed it!), there have been dozens of solidarity actions around the US calling on banks, asset managers, insurance companies, pension funds, and colleges and universities to divest from destructive tar sands projects that are desecrating the land and disproportionately harming Indigenous communities.
Join us on May 7th by taking action at a nearby bank or on your campus. These actions can be as simple or elaborate as you and your friends or student organization feel up to planning. You could…
- Paint a banner and drop it across the street from your university’s Chase Bank branch
- Print dozens of copies of the Indigenous Women’s tar sands letter and have all your friends deliver them to a nearby Wells Fargo throughout the day to help uplift those voices and make sure banks are listening
- Organize students to occupy your College President’s office to escalate your divestment campaign and call out how deplorable it is that your school continues to invest in fossil fuel industries like the tar sands
- Get the word out on campus that Chase is the largest financier of fossil fuels, and ask your friends to sign the #NotMyDirtyMoney youth pledge to never fund fossil fuels
- Design your own beautiful action after reading through the #DefundLine3 Global day of Action Toolkit for inspiration
By planning an action in solidarity with the movement to stop Line 3 in your own community, you can help us show fossil fuel financiers how widely the call to defund tar sands is spreading. And, who knows, maybe the relationships you form planning this action will become so central to your organizing that you can’t imagine fighting pipelines or confronting extractive capitalism without them.
Once you’ve started to plan something for the #DefundLine3 global day of action, make sure to fill out this form to add your action to the map! If you need any help planning, hop onto the #StopLine3 channel on the College Climate Coalition Slack where we’ll be supporting students in planning actions for May 7th.
