According to the initiative's website, protesters will “block key infrastructure to stop business-as-usual, bringing the whole city to a gridlocked standstill.” Several other groups, including Black Lives Matter DC, Code Pink and Sunrise DC, also joined the initiative to close off traffic.
"We hope with by our actions on Monday, we can raise public awareness of this issue and understand it's just not going to be taken as business as usual, that we need some drastic action on climate change issues in the relatively near future," Mike Golash, a spokesperson for Shut Down DC, told CBS News affiliate WUSA.
Protests took place in Farragut Square, Columbus Circle, Folger Park and Hancock Park in Washington, DC, as protesters blocked major streets in the nation’s capital, and some even chained themselves to a sailboat parked at a major intersection near the White House.
"We put up a boat to roadblock, to disrupt business as usual," protestor Pete Zappardi is quoted as saying by CBS News.
However, at least 26 protesters blocking traffic on Monday have been arrested, the DC Metropolitan Police Department confirmed to CBS News.
The Monday protest is taking place at the same time as the Global Climate Strike, a worldwide movement demanding that politicians take action to combat the growing climate crisis. On Friday, thousands of people took to the streets as part of the strike inspired by 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg last year.
During the UN Climate Action Summit in New York on Monday, Thunberg criticized the politicians in the room for not taking the necessary actions to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as optimistically targeted in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change mitigation.
“People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!” Thunberg said in a speech Monday in front of the world’s leaders.
In 2017, US President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris Agreement, saying that the deal would undermine America’s economy and job growth, as well as bring about declines in coal mining and other industries related to natural resources, Sputnik reported.