On Friday, November 14th Baltimore Rising Tide took to the streets for the Rainforest Action Network’s Coal Finance Day of Action in the financial district of the city. At 11am twenty-five BmoRT members and allies stormed the Bank of America and Citibank on E. Baltimore and Light St. wearing red shirts and holding giant banners mocking Bank of America and Citibank logos, saying things like “Bank of America, Funding Coal, Killing Communities” and “Citibank: Big Coal’s ATM.”
The group began to distribute flyers to people on the streets, BoA customers and employees, informing them about the big banks investments in the coal industry and mountain top removal, a process of tearing the top off of mountains in Appalachia to directly extract the coal. A short time into the protest, Baltimore Rising Tide members approached the two ATM’s outside of BoA and modified them with stickers, modified pamphlets, and global warming crime scene caution tape. Eventually after a few people opted to use the ATMs inside because the outside ones were out of service, Bank of America sent four security guards out to remove the materials and guard the ATMs for the rest of the protest.
Screaming out chants through a bullhorn up to the BoA and Citibank employees in the building, Baltimore Rising Tide also proceeded to have individual members of the group close their accounts, tying up the bank tellers for the rest of the action. In even bigger triumph, Baltimore Rising Tide convinced a few other people on the street to both go in and close their accounts or to give letter to the bank stating their opposition to investing in dirty energy.
Baltimore Rising Tide ended their action with a collective march around the intersection, chanting “we’ll be back” and “not with our money” and just as the police showed up the successful march ended.
Baltimore Rising Tide meets on Monday nights at 9pm, email BaltimoreRisingTide-AT-gmail.com for more information.