Over 100 people were arrested while blocking the doors to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — part of a week of climate protest currently underway timed to the UN General Assembly, which includes a climate ambition summit on September 20. President Joe Biden is “not currently scheduled” to attend tomorrow’s climate ambition summit. Despite his absence from the summit, not from New York City (more on that later), the protests this week sought to influence him and his administration on climate action.
After walking over from Zuccotti Park — the original site of the Occupy Wall Street movement more than a decade ago — protesters blocked doors to the Federal Reserve Bank, obstructing workers from entering, to call for an end to Wall Street’s financing of fossil fuels. The civil disobedience came a day after the March to End Fossil Fuels on Sunday, which had an estimated 50,000 to 75,000 participants; organizers say it was the biggest climate protest since the beginning of the pandemic. Not long after the action began outside the Fed, New York City police zip-tied protesters and loaded them into police vans, young and elderly alike (as well as a protester dressed in an orca costume).
Teen Vogue spoke to two members of the New Mexico delegation, both of whom are members of Youth United for Climate Crisis Action (YUCCA), an organization in the state, as well as a party to a climate lawsuit against the state filed just a few months ago. In line with a legal strategy underway in states like Hawaii, and recently successful in Montana, youth and impacted communities are suing states for the right to a healthy environment.
“We came out to show solidarity with people all around the globe who are marching,” says Sofía Jenkins Nieto, 23.
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The New Mexico contingent to NYC included more than 40 “Indigenous frontline youth and impacted members from all across the state,” according to Ennedith López, 24, YUCCA’s policy campaign manager. “We're here to demand the entire phase-out of fossil fuels by the Biden administration and also by our administration that is currently being steered by [New Mexico governor] Michelle Lujan Grisham,” says López.
The week prior, Nieto says, YUCCA led its own climate march in Albuquerque highlighting many of the same issues; shortly after, the delegation left for Sunday's March Against Fossil Fuels.
“Just in this past year, we have seen a celebration of the surplus that oil and gas have brought to our state,” López tells Teen Vogue. “We are really here to make those demands — the need to transition away from fossil fuels and also to resist false solutions like hydrogen, carbon capture, and nuclear.”
A similar sentiment was echoed in Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-NY) comments in her speech at the march: “What we’re not gonna do is go from oil barons to solar barons.”
Later Monday night, members of the youth climate organization Climate Defiance protested on Broadway outside a fundraiser for Biden’s reelection campaign, attempting to block his cars and ending in two arrests. Biden’s efforts on climate change since taking office have largely been criticized as inadequate by many young voters and organizers. While Biden has touted the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, youth organizers have condemned his administration’s approval of oil drilling rigs like Alaska’s Willow Project.
In the pouring rain, members of YUCCA ( some in New York City for the first time) underscored that Biden, though out of sight was not out of mind. “It's been fun in the sense that we've never been here before, but it's very clear to us that everyone's here and doing this because they're pissed off,” Nieto says. “Because we're out of time. And Biden needs to get off his ass and actually do something instead of just saying [things].”
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