A ‘Rocking Chair Rebellion’: Seniors Call On Banks to Dump Big Oil

“I mean, our climate is getting worse and worse,” Ms. Barfield continued. “We are far from doing what we need to do about it. And these banks are a big part of why, because they keep pouring money into this horrendous industry. And that has got to change, right?”

Most of the rocking chairs (there were about 50 in all) had been gathered by Lisa Finn, 57, and her husband, who live outside of Alexandria, Va., and hosted a rocking chair painting party before driving the chairs up in a U-Haul.

Along with the rally at Franklin Park (speakers included Ebony Twilley Martin, the co-executive director of Greenpeace USA; and Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club) there were marches featuring banners, outsize puppets and at least one shofar, and the blockading, with even more rocking chairs, of Wells Fargo and Chase. One protester was arrested after using paint on the street, organizers said.

Before addressing the rally, Mr. Jealous said pressure from older activists ought to make the banks take notice.

“For the banks, this is a very worrisome signal,” he said. “They can write off young people, they don’t see them as having a whole lot of money right now. They know these folks do.”

For his part, Mr. McKibben conceded that closing personal accounts in oil-funding banks was not likely to impose enough financial harm to force change, but said that merely underscored the urgent need to do more.

“We can put serious pressure on their reputations, their images, their brands, and their sense of themselves,” he said. “Right now, the most powerful people in the world are deeply complicit in the gravest crisis that the world has ever experienced. So part of today is an attempt to rouse these guys to some kind of sense of their place in history.”