The “Summer time of Warmth” continues—each by way of record-breaking temperatures pushed by fossil fuels and a sequence of nonviolent direct actions focusing on Wall Avenue for its contributions to the local weather emergency.
After protests final month calling out Citibank for “financing the arsonists,” local weather campaigners on Friday set their sights on finance and insurance coverage big AIG for “stubbornly” refusing to affix over two dozen different insurers that will not cowl the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP).
EACOP is ready to run almost 900 miles from Uganda’s Lake Albert oilfields to the port of Tanga in Tanzania. Rights teams have sounded the alarm about how the venture has devastated the lives and livelihoods of individuals in its path in addition to violence endured by African activists, who have been “kidnapped, arbitrarily arrested, detained, or subjected to completely different types of harassment.”
Ugandan local weather activist Hillary Taylor Seguya declared Friday that “EACOP is a carbon bomb being inbuilt my yard.”
“1000’s of communities in Uganda are being displaced due to company greed,” added the campaigner, who’s affiliated with StopEACOP. “In the present day, as Ugandans, as Tanzanians, as Africans, we need to be loud and clear that we will not permit any pipeline to place oil in our backyards.”
Friday’s demonstration focusing on AIG’s workplace in New York Metropolis was organized by activists from the Ugandan diaspora and teams together with 350.org, the Black Hive, and Desis Rising Up and Transferring (DRUM).
“I’m right here to ask AIG to refuse to insure EACOP, and to insure our future as a substitute,” mentioned Joseph Senyonjo, a Ugandan diaspora activist. “AIG is likely one of the largest insurance coverage firms on the planet, and so they nonetheless have not dominated out insuring EACOP. So we’re right here to say: We do not need carbon bombs, we do not need fossil fuels. We would like renewable vitality. Insure our futures as a substitute.”
Protesters held indicators and banners with messaging that included: “AIG = Local weather Crimes,” “Shield Our Land,” “Individuals Not Earnings,” “Cease Funding Our Destruction,” “Cease Insuring Local weather Chaos,” and “The Individuals Say: Cease EACOP!”
Demonstrators maintain banner that claims, “World South Diaspora for Reparations + Restore,” whereas protesting AIG and EACOP in New York Metropolis on July 26, 2024. (Picture: 350.org)
“From the pipeline’s path in East Africa, to the company places of work right here, to our authorities establishments, we have to make our message clear: Cease EACOP!” mentioned Evan Bell of 350 Mass. “I’m prepared to do what it takes to ensure AIG doesn’t insure EACOP.”
Bell famous that he’s afraid of the New York Police Division, “particularly after their brutal response to campus protesters peacefully demonstrating for an finish to genocide in Gaza.”
“However I’m extra afraid of runaway local weather change,” he added. “I am extra involved in regards to the present human rights abuses in Uganda and Tanzania. However we’re extra decided than we’re scared.”
Molly Ornati of 350 Brooklyn emphasised that “the EACOP pipeline is a doubly harmful catastrophe—for the folks of Uganda and Tanzania, and the planet. The development of the 900-mile pipeline will disrupt and destroy the houses, land, and livelihood of 100,000 folks alongside the route, in addition to the encircling water and ecosystems.”
“As soon as constructed, will probably be a carbon bomb for humanity,” Ornati warned. “Within the local weather disaster there are not any borders, and we’re a worldwide motion, united in help of frontline communities, combating to cease the greed of fossil gasoline finance.”
DRUM’s Mohiba Ahmed delivered an analogous message of unity, saying that “we add our communities’ voices to the rising worldwide demand ‘Cease EACOP!’ as a result of we all know that our struggles are one and interconnected.”
“Our peoples in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal, Guyana, and Trinidad are equally harmed by international domination, imperialism, and capitalist initiatives that cut back our lives to investments, revenue margins, and cash,” she pressured.
“Our folks and homelands contribute the least to the human-caused local weather disaster however disproportionately endure essentially the most,” she added, “and that’s the reason we’ll proceed to face in solidarity and struggle along with our African comrades to cease EACOP, to cease the plunder of our homelands, to cease the displacement of our peoples, and to cease imperialist local weather destruction.”
Opponents of EACOP block AIG’s workplace with a banner in New York Metropolis on July 26, 2024. (Picture: 350.org)
Beth Yirga of the Black Hive—a part of the Motion for Black Lives—highlighted the frontline resistance to the pipeline, declaring that “we stand with Ugandans and Tanzanians, whose bravery and tales of resistance to cease EACOP are inspiring.”
“The local weather disaster we face exacerbates the oppressive techniques designed to extract essentially the most from our planet and world majority group, and unites us which might be most impacted,” she mentioned. “From Most cancers Alley on the riverbanks of the Mississippi River to the lead in Flint, Michigan’s water, to the makes an attempt of crude oil extraction in Western Uganda, to the continuing cobalt mining disaster in Congo, the harmful practices of environmental racism on Black communities is collectively held and felt internationally.”
“As we struggle to cease local weather injustices globally,” Yirga added, “we additionally collaborate to think about and construct a world freed from the capitalistic pillaging of Mom Earth.”
