Twelve students decked themselves out in top hats, pearls, gowns and tuxedoes Friday and handed out coal to passersby in Kennedy Plaza to publicly "applaud" Merrill Lynch's continued investment in coal projects.
The students - members of the Brown chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and emPOWER, plus a local high school student - held a theatrical protest posing as "billionaires for coal" outside of the bank's location in downtown Providence.
While heartily shouting "Coal is the future!" "Thank you Merrill Lynch!" and "Who needs so many species anyway?" the students handed out flyers and pieces of coal to people on the street. "We want to share the wealth - well, the coal - with everyone," protestor Alex Ortiz '09 told The Herald.
The demonstration was part of Step It Up 2007, an event that claims to be the largest national protest to stop global climate change in the nation's history, according to the event's Web site. Rainforest Action Network was a primary organizer of the weekend's national protest, which included protests in every state.
Rainforest Action Network runs public awareness campaigns and engages in non-violent direct action and grassroots organizing with the goals of breaking America's oil addiction, protecting endangered forests and indigenous rights and stopping destructive investments around the world, according to its Web site.
"We're here to thank Merrill Lynch for their contributions to our stock portfolios. Merrill Lynch is one of the seven banks to invest in the 150 new coal power plants to be built in the next few years in the U.S., which will make us very, very rich," Ortiz said while bracing his four-foot-tall top hat against the gusting wind.
Some banks profit from "dirty money" investments, Rainforest Action Network claims. Despite the availability of alternative energy sources, banks such as JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse, Citibank and Morgan Stanley have continued to invest in technologies that are harmful to the environment, such as coal power plants, according to the Rainforest Action Network Web site.
The Step It Up campaign calls for banks and other private organizations to stop investing in power that causes greenhouse gas emissions and to consider environmentally friendly options. These alternatives include "wind, solar energy and biomass," Ortiz said. The campaign was also an attempt to bring national attention to global warming and energy efficiency and to put pressure on Congress, according to the Step It Up Web site.
"The whole campaign is geared towards galvanizing the whole nation about energy," Ortiz said. "It's an incredibly important issue, our futures are all at stake. ... Science is behind it, and people are behind it."
This is not the first time this semester SDS members have taken part in theatrical protesting downtown. Students held a "die-in" on March 19 in front of the downtown offices of Textron Inc. - a contractor for the U.S military - where they placed "bloody" handprints of raspberry jam on the building. One SDS member was arrested at that event.
