The Society of Fearless Grandmothers-Santa Barbara, in collaboration with Sunrise Movement-Santa Barbara, 350-Santa Barbara, Women’s March-Santa Barbara, Standing Rock Coalition-Santa Barbara, Democratic Socialists of America-Santa Barbara and Extinction Rebellion-Santa Barbara will rally on Friday, July 16, telling Goleta banks to stop funding dangerous fossil fuel pipelines and sending an urgent plea to President Biden to use his executive powers to stop the Enbridge Line 3 Project.

Demonstrators will gather in the CVS parking lot, 5875 Calle Real in Goleta, at 11:45 a.m. and begin marching at noon to Wells Fargo Bank, 195 N. Fairview Ave., and Union Bank, 299 N. Fairview Ave., continuing to Bank of America, 5892 Calle Real, and Chase Bank, 5787 Calle Real.

Since the Paris Agreement, each of these banks has poured billions of dollars into financing fossil fuel projects globally, Society of Fearless Grandmothers said. From 2016-20, Chase Bank alone provided $317 billion in financing to the fossil fuel industry, the group reports.

The Society of Fearless Grandmothers-Santa Barbara marches in solidarity with Indigenous Water Protectors, fighting to stop the Enbridge Line 3 Project, a pipeline that violates treaty rights and threatens Indigenous lands in northern Minnesota.

The Enbridge Line 3 pipeline is being built through indigenous territory without consent, violating treaty rights. Prominent native activists have described the pipeline as “cultural genocide.” It would carry 760,000 barrels a day of sludgy tar sands oil 300 miles across northern Minnesota, crossing 200 water bodies including the Mississippi River.

Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, has called Line 3 “a fuse to a carbon bomb,” adding as much greenhouse gas to the atmosphere as 50 new coal-fired power plants. Line 3, he said, would accelerate the climate crisis and the extreme fires, deadly heatwaves, catastrophic drought, food insecurity, migration, severe economic impacts and suffering now being experienced around the world.

Between 1999 and 2013 there were 1,068 spills from Enbridge oil pipelines in the U.S. that dumped 7.4 million gallons of oil into the environment.

President Biden has cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline and can do the same for the Line 3 project. Grandmothers are writing letters and calling Biden with pleas to use his executive powers to stop Line 3.