Free and open to the public!

Join environmental lawyer Steven Donziger in conversation with non-violent direct-action organizers and participants on the urgent need for sustained disruption against the biggest backers of the fossil fuel industry.

Panelists include organizers and participants in Summer of Heat, the extraordinary, months-long campaign targeting Citibank for their continuing support of fossil fuel financing. Drawing upon his own experiences with Chevron, Steven will elicit personal stories of courage and non-violent civil disobedience on a grand scale, street theater, playful storytelling, intergenerational climate activism and the strategic vision intended to pressure specific targets to end the era of fossil fuels.

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Participants

Pat Almonrode – Co-Leader, Third Act NYC, Third Act Lawyers
Keanu Arpels-Josiah – Fridays for Future NYC
Michael Greenberg – Founder, Climate Defiance
Alice Hu – Senior Climate Campaign Manager, New York Communities for Change
John Mark Rozendaal – Extinction Rebellion
Liv Senghor – Summer of Heat
Dr. Sandra Steingraber – Biologist, Author, Environmental Activist
Steven Donziger, Host – Attorney and activist

Featuring a performance by Rev. Billy & the Stop Shopping Choir

Pat Almonrode is an attorney and a longtime climate activist. He has worked with 350NYC and other local and national groups, and is currently co-facilitator of Third Act NYC, as well as Third Act Lawyers. Pat has been particularly interested in the intersection of law and climate advocacy, and in the role of the faith community in the climate movement. He was instrumental in organizing faith participation in the 2014 Climate March that brought more than 350,000 people to the streets of NYC, and more recently has been involved in the elders’ actions that have been part of “The Summer of Heat,” a months-long series of protests targeting Citigroup, the world’s largest financer of new fossil-fuel infrastructure projects. He lives on the Upper West Side with his wife, Susan Gargiulo, and is active in local Democratic politics.

Keanu Arpels-Josiah (he/him), 19, is a youth climate justice organizer and activist based on Munsee Lenape land in what is called New York City. He’s been a core organizer and the policy co-lead with Fridays For Future NYC where he’s advocated for action on climate justice and legislation on the local, state, federal, and international governmental levels. His work helped lead to the passage of the Climate Superfund Act in 2024 in the NY state legislature, he’s also organized on congestion pricing among other policy issues, garnering appearances on news media from Democracy Now! to statewide radio. In 2023, he was one of the lead organizers of the March To End Fossil Fuels organizing with a multigenerational intersectional coalition to plan and mobilize for a 75,000-person march in N.Y.C. calling on President Biden to stop expanding and phase out fossil fuels. Building from the March, he attended conferences including COP28 in Dubai, U.A.E. as well as the U.N. Climate Ambition Summit where he pushed the Biden Administration on the same. This work has been covered by outlets from NPR, POLITICO, Sierra Magazine, NBC News, and the front page of the New York Times. He’s currently a first-year college student at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania where he’s still involved in organizing from supporting Fridays For Future NYC and Sunrise Movement NYC to preparing for the November general election.

Michael Greenberg is the founder and executive director of Climate Defiance. His work has been profiled in the Guardian, New Republic, Rolling Stone and New York Times. Michael graduated from Columbia University with a BA in economics.

Alice Hu is Senior Climate Campaigner at New York Communities for Change. She was a lead organizer of the Summer of Heat on Wall Street campaign and the March to End Fossil Fuels in 2023. Her campaign and direct action work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and other local, national, and international outlets, and – on one fun occasion – satirized on Saturday Night Live.

John Mark Rozendaal has enjoyed a musical career specializing in teaching and performing stringed instrument music from the baroque and renaissance eras. As founding Artistic Director of Chicago Baroque Ensemble, he performed and led seven seasons of subscription concerts, educational programs, radio broadcasts, and recordings for the Cedille and Centaur labels. Mr. Rozendaal served as principal violoncellist of The City Musick and Basically Bach, and has performed both solo and continuo roles with many period and the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra: and taught at Princeton University. Since 2022 John Mark has devoted his efforts to activism for climate justice, taking a leading role in Extinction Rebellion, and participating in actions with Summer of Heat and Climate Defiance.

Liv Senghor is an organizer and artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She has experience organizing against fossil fuel funding, police brutality, and American militarism at home and abroad. She was a lead organizer with the Summer of Heat campaign and is the incoming campaign manager at Stop the Money Pipeline.

Biologist, author, and cancer survivor, Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D. writes about climate change, ecology, and the links between human health and the environment. Recognized for her ability to serve as a two-way translator between scientists and activists, Dr. Steingraber has keynoted conferences on human health and the environment throughout the United States and Canada and has been invited to lecture at many medical schools, hospitals, and universities–including Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Columbia, and the Woods Hole Research Center. She has testified in the European Parliament, at the European Commission, before the President’s Cancer Panel, and has participated in briefings to Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency, and before United Nations delegates in Geneva, Switzerland

After environmental and human rights attorney Steven Donziger helped Amazon communities win a historic $9.5 billion pollution judgment against Chevron, the company retaliated and prosecuted him for contempt of court in New York after he refused to turn his computer and confidential case file over to his adversary counsel. The federal prosecutor rejected the charges, which were filed by a pro-corporate judge with financial ties to the company. The judge appointed a Chevron law firm to prosecute Steven in the name of the US government. The private Chevron prosecutor immediately ordered Steven locked up at home with a 24/7 monitoring device on his ankle, while his trial was delayed for over two years. He ended up spending 993 days in detention and in prison for a misdemeanor offense with a maximum sentence of 180 days; the judge denied him a jury. He is still the only person ever in the US locked up in retaliation for his human rights work. Chevron used 60 law firms and 2,000 lawyers to attack Steven. He now enjoys the support of 68 Nobel Laureates and more than 150 bar associations and civil society groups around the world and is considered a leading global spokesperson on the issues of human rights, climate justice, Indigenous rights, and the law. Learn more about Steven at FreeDonziger.com. Follow him on Twitter at @SDonziger and on Instagram at @stevendonziger.