Green Party View: Does this make sense?

By Todd Saddler

Editor’s note: The opinions expressed in this column are those of author Todd Saddler and are not representative of the thoughts or opinions of Tompkins Weekly.  

I’m ‘that guy’ standing in front of Chase Bank on the East end of the Commons most Saturdays, 11 till noon, with one or one hundred of my closest friends.  We ask ourselves, and are asked by others, whether it makes sense to do this.

Extinction Rebellion chose this location because Chase is the Worst Bank On Earth.  According to Rainforest Actions’ Banking on Climate Change Report 2024, Chase is the world’s biggest investor in fossil fuels in the world.

One heckler informed me “All the banks are doing it – Chase is the biggest investor in fossil fuels because it is the biggest bank in the world”. True, but Chase got to be the biggest by ‘externalizing’ its costs of doing business onto ‘others’. The ‘others’ who pay the price are you and me and all creatures great and small. Chase also finances Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, nuclear weapons, nuclear power, and services provided to the late Jeffrey Epstein.

Therefore, we ask everyone who banks at Chase, including those holding a credit card with the Chase logo, to close their account and move to any bank, a credit union is a great choice, but any bank other than one of the big four investors in our climate-related demise: Chase, Citi, Bank of America, or Wells Fargo.

We follow the strategy of Dr. Martin Luther King and his companions, who selected Birmingham Alabama, a place with the most severe racist practices, to wage a campaign of nonviolent conflict. If they could change things in Birmingham, the rest of the country would fall like dominoes.

Most Chase employees we talk to agree with us about climate change. None has argued to me in defense of fossil fuels. The manager who worked there when we occupied the bank for a day in 2020 was a former employee of Greenpeace.    

Some employees say we shouldn’t be protesting climate crimes at their branch because ‘We have nothing to do with that’. We (the climate movement broadly) do in fact communicate our message to Chase at every level and in every place. Millions have protested at branches, headquarters, and shareholder meetings of the four worst banks.  I myself was on a Zoom call with Chase’s ‘vice president in charge of sustainability’, who promised me – PROMISED! – that we would soon see a response by Chase to climate catastrophe that would make us happy.  That was five years ago.  

A bank branch is the place where any person can do business with the bank. I am personally invited – by name – in documents sent through the US postal service, to “please visit a branch”. I have business with Chase Bank because, with its fossil fuel investments, Chase is harming me, our community, and our planet.  That is my business.  

One bank employee told us ‘Chase stood up to Trump, refusing to end its DEI program.  All of the people who work here are immigrants.’ Great! We aren’t protesting against that.

And of course we are not just talking to Chase.  We are talking to passersby, to ourselves, to you dear reader, to humanity.   

Most humans know by now that we have to deal with climate change, and that individual choices haven’t been enough. Things will change with mass nonviolent direct action taking many forms; standing around with signs, signing petitions, voting, calling leaders, truth telling, risking arrest, and supporting others who are arrested.  

The change that the Earth is asking us to make is systemic.  Every institution that has power, in order to maintain its legitimacy, must do what it can to turn this around.  Ithaca’s Chase branch is a stand-in for everything that must change, including wealth supremacy capitalism, consumerism, higher education, and our declining version of democracy.

Another non-violent tactic that we can use is to join, support, and/or vote with the Green Party, which is built on four pillars: Ecological wisdom, Social Justice, Grassroots Democracy, and Nonviolence. When we do end up changing in the ways that we must change, one change will surely be that capital does not destroy our planet to maximize profits. Chase Bank will either conform to this new system, or end its tenure here on our planet.  

I hope to see you next Saturday, around 11, at the intersection of Aurora and Martin Luther King on the East end of the Commons.

Todd Saddler is a Green Party member and activist with Extinction Rebellion, Cornell on Fire, and the Ithaca Catholic Worker.