Next Friday, June 16, climate activists will hold brief vigils at the Ashland branches of three Wall Street banks that are financing Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands pipeline. Participants will gather at 9 a.m. in the Ashland Plaza, then proceed to Chase, Wells Fargo and Bank of America.
This local action will be one of many actions across the nation between July 12th and 18th, as a strategy in pressuring the mega banks to not renew financing that is expiring at the end of July. The movement is led by Indigenous leaders whose ancestral and sacred lands in northern Minnesota face desecration and destruction with the new pipeline construction.
Line 3 will be an enlarged replacement for a dangerously deteriorated existing pipeline that brings Canadian tar sand bitumen—the dirtiest form of oil—to Gulf Coast refineries. The targeted banks are major lenders to Enbridge. Some of their loans are about to come due, and the goal is to persuade the banks not to renew them.
These local actions are being planned by Peace House and South Mountain Friends Meeting (Quakers). Other organizations, including SOCAN, are welcome to join as sponsors.
