MOSCOW, September 22 (RIA Novosti) – After yesterday’s historic climate march, thousands of protestors plan to blockade Wall Street on Monday, risking arrests to demand bolder action on climate change, reports the Guardian.
The demonstration, called Flood Wall Street, will be a mass public sit-in near the New York Stock Exchange. This will take place in the aftermath of the People’s Climate March, where an estimated 310,000 people from all over the world marched down the streets of Manhattan, MSNBC reported. Yesterday’s march was by far the single largest environmental rally to ever occur in history. A number of celebrities attended the rally, including a former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, former US vice-president Al Gore and Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio, the Irish Times said.
According to the event organizers, as many as 2,000 environmental activists are planning a noon march to Wall Street on Monday. It is expected to turn into a sit-in blockade near the steps of the financial district’s Stock Exchange without a police permit, Reuters reports.
“This civil resistance, civil disobedience, shows a commitment to the cause”, said Leah Hunt-Hendrix, a spokesperson of Flood Wall Street. “We are trying to escalate this as an urgent issue and show how Wall Street is profiting from the [environmental] crisis”, Hunt-Hendrix further added, as quoted by Reuters.
Organizers of the event hope that their action will help to bring public attention and draw a link between economic policies and the environment. “Runaway climate change and extreme weather events, such as the extreme flooding that we saw here in New York City with Hurricane Sandy, are fueled by the fossil fuel industry. We are flooding Wall Street because we know that there’s no greater cause of runaway climate change than an economic system that puts profit before people – and before the planet”, said Michael Premo, one of Flood Wall Street’s organizers.
Flood Wall Street is part of Climate Week that aims to draw public attention to carbon emissions and link them to global warming. This comes ahead of a UN Climate Summit on September 23, reports the Guardian.
