On Thursday, 350 Seattle publicly announced its Shut Down Chase direct action.
Standing Rock Sioux member and DeFund DAPL/MazaskaTalks.org organizer Matt Remle, Muckleshoot tribal member and DeFund DAPL/MazaskaTalks.org organizer Rachel Heaton, City Councilmember Mike O’Brien, Saanich member Paul Cheokten Wagner, and 350 Seattle activist Kara Sweidel all spoke at the conference, which represented a major escalation in their campaign to keep banks from funding projects catastrophic to the climate and to indigenous rights. We will be targeting JP Morgan Chase, one of the biggest funders of tar sands development–in order to demand that the bank not fund Keystone XL, or any other new tar sands infrastructure.
This is the same powerful partnership that helped to lead the successful fight to persuade the City of Seattle to take its money out of Wells Fargo due to DAPL funding in February.
KXL still has no project-level loans–it’s not too late to stop the project. After years of work by climate activists, President Obama finally acknowledged that further development of tar sands didn’t meet the ‘climate test’, and he cancelled Keystone XL. With a climate denier in office who quickly approved it again, we have to take the fight straight to the funders, and make this project as toxic politically as it is toxic for the planet.
“The fight against Dakota Access Pipeline was only the beginning; the fight for our Mother Earth will only get bigger. Indigenous people have always fought this fight and will continue this fight,” says Muckleshoot Tribal member Rachel Heaton. “Our future truly depends on these decisions.”
“Let’s be clear, the Keystone XL pipeline, like the Dakota Access pipeline, the Kinder Morgan pipeline, and the others coming out of the Tar Sands and Bakken oil fields are nothing more than modern day examples of colonialism.” adds Matt Remle, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux. “United, together, we stand in firm opposition these pipelines and the financial institutions that fund them.”
