People’s Action members in Michigan, West Virginia, and Ohio organized protests to Make Billionaires Pay! as part of a coordinated effort to draw attention to our climate crisis by an international coalition called Draw The Line.
“We can fight and make sure that our democracy is not for sale,” said U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, speaking at a rally in downtown Detroit. “So continue to fight, and speak truth to power. Continue to hold those who are responsible accountable.”
There were more than 600 protests around the world, which coincided with the opening of the UN General Assembly and Climate Week in New York City. In the United States, more than 200 rallies were coordinated by 350.org, DRUM, Climate Defenders and the Women’s March.
The Detroit rally was organized by Michigan United, with Michiganders for Money Out of Politics and Invest in MI Kids. The event at Detroit’s Grand Circus Park, which featured speakers and gathered signatures from those attending the Tigers baseball game nearby, drew attention to the influence of local utility DTE Energy Inc. in driving up energy prices for consumers, and the influence corporations have in extending our dependence on fossil fuels.
“We often find ourselves looking at our neighbor as a problem, more than people who are maybe in similar situations to us,” said Franklin. “And it really is more so that we need to unite, and we need to come together than be separated.”
“DTE has their claws in my colleagues,” Tlaib said. “I watch my colleagues literally own stock in these corporations, vote on these budgets, and benefit personally… And so it is shameful, so you all have got to continue to educate the public.”
In Charleston, West Virginia, members of West Virginia Citizen Action Group gathered on the steps of the state capitol with allies to demand an end to the influence of the coal industry over energy policy in the state and billionaires over our federal policy.
In Cincinnati, Ohio, Woodlawn City Council member Michelle Starr hosted a teach-in about Duke Energy’s billing practices in Southwest Ohio, and discussed strategies to take action. Nearly three quarters of Americans, like those in Ohio, rely on monopoly energy companies, while a third struggle with rising energy bills.
In Buffalo, PUSH Buffalo members gathered at the corner of Delavan and Grider to protest rate hikes and harms to the environment by National Fuel Gas, which has leveraged its monopoly on natural gas distribution to raise prices by more than 18 percent.
In New York City, Citizen Action of New York and VOCAL-NY members joined the thousands of marchers who marched up Fifth Avenue and along “Billionaires Row” on 57th Street. They carried a fifty-meter long “Climate Polluters BIll” past the headquarters of the Blackstone Group, which is well known to climate justice advocates for its huge investments in fossil fuels and role in the destruction of the Amazon rainforest.
“We the people – we are the ones who get transformational change,” said Tlaib. “You think they woke up and said, ‘Oh, organizing unions was a great idea? They didn’t. It was when we withheld our labor, when we boycotted, we marched for civil rights, voting rights for women… Everything wasn’t because Congress decided it was the right thing. It was when we made them decide it was the right thing.”