BELLOWS FALLS-Elderly Vermonters have been going down to New York City this summer and getting arrested in the name of climate change.
Protestors in the 1960s lay down in the streets and got arrested while trying to stop the Vietnam War. These days they're grayer and a little more frail, but they're still at it.
While getting arrested probably won't be enough to stop forest fires in the West, houses washing away in the East, or islands disappearing in the oceans, if someone feels passionately about something as important as our changing planet, they might easily revert to the tactics of their youth.
A few years ago the Vermont academic, writer, and climate change activist Bill McKibben came up with a light-bulb idea.
His generation of people over 60 had worked for positive change early in their lives. They had protested for civil rights, for the end of the war, and for women's rights, among other causes.
They had come to represent a huge cohort of mainly retired people with time and means and social values. Why not organize to stop climate change and make the world safer for their kids and grandkids?
McKibben founded a nonprofit, Third Act, which has grown into something of a national movement, with approximately 30 chapters across the country, including one in Vermont.
This summer its members have been getting themselves arrested for protesting outside the New York City headquarters of Citibank - one of the main investors in new fossil fuel projects - in a summer-long action they call "The Summer of Heat."
Why Citibank? According to a letter to the corporation organized by the Union of Concerned Scientists and signed by more than 750 scientists, "Citibank is the second-largest financier of fossil fuels since the adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement, having poured $396 billion into the industry since 2016.
"The financial industry must recognize the physical harms and economic risks it is exacerbating by enabling fossil fuel expansion, and rapidly adopt new policies that align with a safer climate future."
Bank is 'toe, hook, line, and sinker' in economic system
One of the Vermont protestors getting arrested is Laurel Green, 69, of Bellows Falls; she has already been arrested twice this summer.
"As an organization and as individuals we have asked bankers to stop funding gas, oil, and coal projects," Green wrote in an article. "We have asked nicely. We have written letters and made personal visits to bank managers. Many of us took part in the 100 coordinated events across the U.S. on March 21 last year […]. We are now taking action in the street - Wall Street, that is."
How does getting arrested stop Citibank from investing in the fossil fuel industry? How does it do anything at all to solve the problem? Does the protesting and the arresting make a difference?
McKibben says that everything people do to protest climate change makes a difference. And Green agrees.
"Citibank is toe, hook, line, and sinker in the current economic system," Green told The Commons. "The CEO and the top executives are doing exactly what our economic system wants them to do: making the most money possible for their shareholders."
But that fails to account for "things like us having a survivable planet," she said.
"So how do we change society? That's sort of what it comes down to. How are we going to make things change?" Green said.
The government is not acting with alacrity, Green said.
"Commercial institutions don't see it in their best interest to do anything about climate," she said. "The best that Citibank has done is say, 'Oh, we'll be carbon-neutral by 2050.' Well, it's too late."
Moreover, she said, "They're not actually doing anything that's reducing the carbon load. The largest bank is the largest funder of fossil fuel. They're the criminals. They are funneling money into what is destroying our planet."
She doesn't believe our institutions are going to address climate change.
"So, I don't think our government is going to handle it. I don't think the corporations are going to handle it. I don't think our institutions are going to handle it. I think it really is coming down to people, who are going to have to take a stand and be prepared to go to jail, if that's what it costs," she said.
'We just got right in line'
Green, who walks with two canes, went down to New York City for the first "Elders Day" on June 13.
"It was during the first week of the summer, and that action was very honest and jubilant," Green said. "There was a team of us that went down. We stayed overnight in New York City and went to an organizing meeting the night before the action. We kind of figured out who was going to do what, and how are we going to pull it off."
The morning of the event they met early at a rendezvous point.
"The folks from Vermont decided we wanted to be early in the march from the organizing point to the Citibank headquarters," Green said. "So we just got right in line."
As the procession started, "we just marched right out," she said.
"Photographs show our fierce determination and pleasure in taking action on something that's so important," Green said.
They marched to Citibank Plaza, the bank's headquarters in Tribeca, where 30 rocking chairs had been set up in a public plaza outside the building. The chairs have been used in various nonviolent direct actions as a sarcastic symbol of elders being thought to be weak and defenseless.
"So we've been sitting in rocking chairs, actually using them, almost defiantly, to be part of a nonviolent blockade of this particular business that we're protesting," Green said.
"Part of the action was to line up the rocking chairs to block the entrances before the thousands of workers come to work there in the morning," she said.
"A number of people were seated in the rocking chairs," Green continued. "And the folks from Vermont were standing between the rocking chairs and the police guards."
Citibank had security guards there, and the New York City police also had a presence, since the protest had been publicized.
"The security guards for Citibank shoved us to make a pathway for their executives to slip behind us and get in the front doors," Green said. "The police gave us a warning that if we continued to block access to the building, we would be arrested."
Well-organized, nonviolent, direct action events have a roster of participants willing to be arrested. Others take support positions, maybe handing out explanatory leaflets to passersby or making sure protestors have water on a hot day.
"All of those are important roles in a nonviolent direct action event," Green said. "But I had gone knowing that I was willing to put myself at risk for arrest and put myself in a position where it was pretty clear that the police would likely arrest me."
Despite her mobility needs, she said, "I have a commitment to ending the climate destruction that's happening because Citibank continues to fund fossil fuel investments."
'I've got a way to do this'
The people in the rocking chairs were arrested first.
"Then the police came to arrest the line of us from Vermont," Green said.
"I use canes to walk with," Green said. "We had worked this out ahead of time. I had someone on either side of me holding me by the arm.
"And when the officer came to arrest me, we said, 'Listen, I've got a way to do this. It'll be safe if you put my hands in the zip tie handcuffs in front of me. Then I can lean on my cane. If you put the zip ties behind me, my canes will be of no use to me, and I won't be able to walk."
Green asked the policeman to tie her to the two other people with whom she had practiced.
"'I said, 'Tie my left hand to the person on the left and my right hand to the person on the right, we've actually practiced that the three of us could walk seamlessly together, with me using a cane,'" Green told the officer, who excused himself to consult to his supervisors.
When he came back, he said he was concerned about her safety. So he put her in a rocking chair and arrested her that way.
"It's just so ironic, since they've just arrested people out of the rocking chairs," Green said.
"So the people beside me were arrested and taken to the police wagon transport vehicles vans," she recounted. "Then they came back and said, 'OK, now it's your turn to be arrested.'
"So my arresting officer basically escorted me - with his fingers barely touching my back - as I walked to the transport vehicles with my two canes. The van was pretty full already. I was the last one in. All the others had their hands tied behind their backs."
Organizers from the nonviolent direct action team made sure they had the names of all the arrested protestors before the vans moved out.
"And you can imagine it's difficult to sit on a bench seat on each side with your hands handcuffed behind you," Green said. "But my hands were free because I had the canes."
They had the air conditioning on in the van, "and we sat there for a long time," she continued.
"I assume it's because they waited until all of the vans were loaded and that everyone who was arrested had been loaded into a vehicle," Green said. "They arrested probably 150 protestors, most of them seniors. But there were some people who had been at the scientists' rebellion the day before who joined us."
Inside the vans, the protestors formed support groups and shared their life experiences.
"The particular topic that we were talking about was what we did before we retired," Green said. "It was an interesting conversation. And then we had about a 10-minute drive to the police station. Then we were waiting for a long time under a canopy, but outdoors in the heat."
And they had to stand with their arresting officer.
"Usually, each arresting officer has a couple of people that they're escorting to the booking and processing," Green said. "So we had other interesting conversations."
The protestors talked with their arresting officers.
"We were listening to their thoughts and feelings about what's going on in the world and climate change and how it affects their families," Green said.
"Some of the officers said things like, 'You know, we totally agree with you.' Some [were] just like, 'Here I am, doing my job.' A number of them wanted to talk about how hard it was for them. When the student protests happened at Columbia, for instance, around Israel and Gaza, that that was a much tougher situation for them."
The Third Act-ers had decided on having a very-civil civil disobedience. They were going to be cooperative. They would do nothing that would encourage the police to be extreme in their actions.
"So after my arresting officer escorted me to the police station, I thanked him for his kindness," Green said.
The officer had been "gentle and thoughtful of me and had put my safety as a paramount concern," she observed. "That was great, so I appreciated it. Just being human and thoughtful with the police officers felt like an important part of it to me."
Once the protestors were booked, they received a summons to appear in court. Their photo was taken with the arresting officer so they could match up in court.
"Then my officers escorted me through the maze-like buildings to where the women's cell block was, and transferred my custody to the two or three women in charge of the cellblock," Green said.
"They brought me in and made sure I didn't have anything in my pockets that could [use to] self-harm, such as long shoelaces. They basically relieve you of everything in your pockets."
She was put into a cell with a young woman ecologist "who, because of her work, can't not do civil disobedience," Green said.
This scientist had been arrested in a similar action the day before but had decided to return and be arrested again.
After a few hours, all the protestors were released and their possessions returned.
They were each handed a copy of their summons and escorted out of the station to the street. All in all, 60 elders were arrested for blocking the entrance to Citibank that day, including six Vermonters.
One of them was Green's husband, Steve Crofter.
"People are on the street to welcome you and applaud you," Green said. "Or at least, they applauded me. Then they hand you water if you need it, and walked us about a block to a pizza shop."
As the jail support people took a photo of the summons, they checked off the list "to make sure everybody who went into jail came out of jail," she said.
And then, "we got pizza and stuff to drink and then went on our way," Green said.
Because the Vermonters lived far away, lawyers for the nonviolent direct action team represented them in court.
The charges were all eventually dismissed.
"Being jailed seemed insignificant in the context of resolving the climate crisis," Green later wrote in an article. "My only regret was that a hundred more willing souls from Third Act Vermont had not joined me."
A somber turn
Green was back in New York for a July 8 event, where eight Vermonters protested, and seven, including her, were arrested.
This time, things were more somber.
"The protesters' speeches were like eulogies for all the people and life on Earth that has already been lost due to climate disasters," Green wrote.
"There was a procession led by a bagpiper, and a graveyard was set up where each gravestone showed a person's name and the story of how they died from a climate disaster. Then, one woman sang a lamentation for the Earth," she continued.
"Eight lamenters dressed in sackcloth with ash on their faces stood in solemn reminder of the perils of burning fossil fuels," she wrote. "We held a 'die-in' at the main doors of Citibank, and many people lay down on the pavement in the noonday sun."
"Oddly enough, this was the action for which we were arrested," Green said.
"As we lay there, a gong rang and facts about recent deaths were read in testament to the destruction that Citibank's business plan has brought about."
Green was one of the people who lay down in front of the lamenters.
"I felt humble and at the same time determined," she wrote. "I felt vulnerable lying on the ground looking up at the noonday sun. The people on my right and left agreed to hold hands together. When the first gong sounded, I listened as one person read about the 1,300 heat deaths this year at the Hajj, an annual outdoor Muslim religious gathering."
When the second gong sounded, "someone read about the 30,000 acres of forest burned last year in Canada," Green continued. "With the third gong and another reading, the words piled up on me like waves pounding the shore."
Tears welled.
"I sobbed overt the destruction of the precious life on our planet," she said. "Both people next to me squeezed my hands. We were in this together. I felt baked by the sun and tested in my determination. Yet I persisted until I was arrested."
Approximately 60 people were arrested; the process was the same.
"The police were very thoughtful and gentle as we went through the steps of the process," Green said. "Again, the court case just happened, and all of the charges were dismissed."
It was hot that first day. Green could have gotten heatstroke. She could have died.
"I'm willing to face that because people are dying of heatstroke, and these heat waves all over the world," she said. "I have the luxury, I have the choice to get transportation down to New York City and put myself at risk for arrest for a few hours to protest it."
Green believes that "it's going to come down to us making those individual decisions, but acting in unity with people from all walks of life and from all backgrounds."
To corporations like Citibank, "We have to say, 'This is not OK,'" Green said. "'We want our planet, and we don't care about your profits. Your profits aren't helping. Growth is not helping. We need to stop polluting and reclaim the climate.'"
Third Act Vermont will be present for another political action planned for Tuesday, Aug. 27. The theme will be "Climate Action for Our Grandchildren." To register to take part, visit bit.ly/778-climate.
This News item by Joyce Marcel was written for The Commons.