Why Climate Defiance is doubling down on disruption

This article Why Climate Defiance is doubling down on disruption was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

On a brutally cold morning last December, shortly before I was arrested for the first time, a hundred of us gathered beside the National Mall in Washington, D.C. I came from campus in the dark with a couple of friends. As others congregated on the grass, we made awkward introductions. It was an eclectic bunch: teachers, tech workers, lawyers, tradespeople, students and full-time activists, some of whom I recognized from past demonstrations.

When we reached a critical mass, Maxwell Downing, an organizer with Climate Defiance, split us up by risk level. Green for support, yellow for frontline and red — the “arrestable” roles. That’s where I was. Shivering from cold and nerves, we wrote the jail-support phone number on our arms, practiced chants and held a crash course in nonviolent de-escalation. After a short speech from Michael Greenberg, Climate Defiance’s founder, we headed around the corner to blockade the U.S. Department of Energy.

A year earlier, Climate Defiance organizers had met with White House officials, successfully advocating for a year-long pause on new liquified natural gas, or LNG, exports. Now, we were hoping to follow up on that landmark win by pushing the Department of Energy to cancel six pending LNG permits, with cumulative emissions of a thousand new coal plants, before Biden left office.

Beside the garage entrance, police were already out in force, expecting us. Linking arms, we blocked the gate, chanting and singing as journalists shot videos and police officers filed in behind us. I was one of 13 protesters arrested, several of whom were held overnight before the charges were dropped. It was scary, exhilarating, exhausting and left me filled with hope and determination. A few days after the protest, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm released a statement calling LNG development “neither sustainable nor advisable,” though she stopped short of actually canceling the permits.

This disruptive style of demonstration is Climate Defiance’s bread and butter. Launched in 2023, the group quickly gained prominence for leading a high-profile blockade of the White House Correspondents Dinner. “It was really a powerful debut for us as an organization,” said Bala Sivaraman, an organizer with Climate Defiance. “Being the new face of the left flank when it comes to climate.”

Since then, it has seized the spotlight again and again. Climate Defiance’s brand is flashy, funny and unapologetically furious with politicians and CEOs profiting from the climate crisis. It stormed the Congressional Baseball Game, global banking events, countless speeches and galas, including events with high-profile conservatives like JD Vance and Ted Cruz. After Tommy Beaudreau, then Deputy Secretary of the Interior, approved the destructive Willow oil drilling project, activists confronted him five times in two hours. He resigned two weeks later.

With striking success, Climate Defiance has filled a niche in the climate advocacy ecosystem. It takes over stages, co-opt fossil fuel events and isn’t afraid to make folks uncomfortable. Although other environmental groups run actions with similarly aggressive tactics, by committing so fully and harnessing social media, Climate Defiance has pushed the frontier. But as I was waiting in jail with the others from the Energy Department demonstration, including Downing and Sivaraman, we kept returning to the same question: What comes next?

For climate activists, Biden’s White House made for a lagging but generally sympathetic target. His environmental legacy was far from pristine, but it included historic wins, like the Inflation Reduction Act. Biden officials could be shamed. They could be negotiated with. We knew all of that was about to change.

Donald Trump has never concealed his disdain for peaceful protests. Former Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, has said President Trump repeatedly asked the military to shoot Black Lives Matter activists. More recently, Trump’s violent rhetoric, including attacks against “the enemy from within,” has left organizers grappling with unknown risks, planning contingencies for potential crackdowns.

Nick Newberry, a former environmental science teacher and Climate Defiance “super volunteer,” also arrested with us at the Energy Department, finds the phrase particularly alarming. “For me, that means that at some point he’s going to find people and groups to label ‘the enemy from within,’ who are going against whatever he perceives to be America’s interests.” It’s impossible to predict what form that might take. “Maybe even designating groups as terrorist organizations,” Newberry said. “I just don’t really know. It’s kind of wild.”

At the same time, the work of climate advocacy is more urgent than ever. Last year was the hottest ever recorded, again, as global warming predictions continue to be shattered. Much of the South is still decimated from Hurricane Helene, at the same time that unprecedented wildfires have destroyed thousands of homes in Los Angeles. Climate Defiance recently posted videos of its organizers in the apocalyptic rubble of the Palisades. “My whole life, people in power told me to be patient,” founder Michael Greenberg says in one clip, amid the scorched ruins of a suburb. “To work within the system… to be practical. To be reasonable. And you know what? Being practical and reasonable and patient got us this.”

As dire as the situation already is, the Trump administration has wasted no time in making it worse. During his first 24 hours in office, he withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement, revoked electric vehicle goals, halted wind energy developments and moved to lift regulations on fossil fuel extraction. While some of these executive orders may not survive court challenges, they clearly illustrate the new difficulties and dangers posed by the Trump administration.

Despite the uncertainty of the future, Climate Defiance organizers are emphatic about the need for continued nonviolent direct action. When I asked Greenberg about the way forward, at a fundraising event shortly after the Energy Department blockade, he described a renewed focus on wealth inequality and corporate greed.

Newberry laid out a similarly intersectional vision. If environmental groups want to keep growing and winning, they need to be able to reach across partisan lines. That means connecting with independents and conservatives who care about the environment, communities affected by natural disasters and people angered by the growing influence of the billionaire class. Climate Defiance’s high-visibility actions are especially suited to this, by creating viral moments and widespread online engagement.

Rather than alienating rank-and-file MAGA voters, Newberry sees an opportunity to win them over, especially as Trump betrays them for his elite backers. Climate Defiance doesn’t need to compromise on its progressive values. In fact, they believe their authenticity and conviction will appeal to many who stand outside the mainstream left. To reach that wider audience, organizers must become more visible and ambitious than ever.

While the focus of actions may shift toward non-federal arenas, like private equity divestment or state-level legislation, the core tactics of disruption will remain central. Their messaging, meanwhile, needs to make absolutely clear the divide between the hyper-wealthy and everyone else. “Just keep disrupting hypocrites and people taking money from the fossil fuel industry,” Newberry said. “Just keep hammering that.”

Sivaraman agreed. National Democrats have fallen into a trap, he said, by trying so hard to appease a dwindling center that they fail to stand for anything concrete. “What we saw, especially after November’s election outcome, was that you cannot win an election on ‘conservative-lite.’” By trying to do so, progressives let the far-right set the terms of accepted debate — or what’s known as the “Overton Window,” a term often invoked by Climate Defiance. “To really galvanize people away from that populist rhetoric,” Sivaraman said, “is to give them a viable alternative that showcases a full embrace of leftist progressive values. You can’t be fearful about that.”

When I asked about the danger to activists under Trump, Sivaraman was wary of overstating the risk. While there is some potential for crackdowns, he pointed out that the purpose of intimidation and violent rhetoric is to instill fear. They seek to prevent would-be protesters from even trying. On the other hand, groups like Climate Defiance hope that the vitriol and intransigence of the new administration will motivate bystanders to reject traditional advocacy, like petitions and marches, in favor of direct disruption.

By responding to this moment in the right way, Sivaraman believes they can mobilize a much larger demographic. But to do that, “we can’t fall into the trap where we’re so scared of engaging that we let [Trump officials] do whatever they want.” That means doubling down on civil disobedience and attention-grabbing demonstrations in the face of hypocrisy. It means running an all-of-the-above strategy, pressuring both parties, such as disrupting the DNC chair election in late January, to demand national Democratic leaders embrace an authentically progressive platform. It means building a politically-diverse coalition and meeting the risks head-on. It means staying in the fight, staying tenaciously hopeful, however difficult that might be.

As Sivaraman put it, “Our movement has so much more to lose when we don’t even try.”

This article Why Climate Defiance is doubling down on disruption was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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Source: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2025/02/climate-defiance-doubling-down-on-disruption/