Environmental protesters disrupt DNC meeting after Dems embrace fossil fuel donations

By Tim Pearce

A group of environmentalists disrupted a Democratic National Committee (DNC) gathering to protest party leaders’ decision to overturn a ban on accepting funds from fossil fuel companies and related groups.

Democrats and environmentalists have grown increasingly antagonistic toward the fossil fuel industry as a part of the battle against climate change. Activists have convinced many, from politicians to religious institutions, to sever financial ties to oil and gas groups.

The DNC followed suit in June, voting unanimously to ban donations from corporate political action committees that were involved in the fossil fuel industry. Two months later on Aug. 10, the DNC reversed the ban in 30-2 vote.

Environmentalists shared their feelings about the decision with Democrat leaders Thursday, disrupting a DNC meeting with a chant to “reject fossil fuel money, [and] dare to lead.”

After the DNC reversed course on the fossil fuel donations ban, DNC chairman Tom Perez said the original decision conflicted with party values and alienated some sections of the “working class.”

“We have to draw the line that we are indeed a party of a big tent where all working people are welcome,” Perez said in a statement.

Environmentalists immediately hit back at the DNC’s reversal and warned party leaders that the Democrat Party as a whole was drifting farther left and leaving them behind.

“Tom Perez is chair of the Democratic National Committee because wealthy centrist liberals … needed a convenient stooge to keep the party machinery out of the left’s hands,” The Week’s national correspondent Ryan Cooper wrote after the reversal. “He’s serving his big donor masters loyally, and in the process failing his party, the United States of America, and humanity as a whole.”

“[Climate change] is by far the biggest problem facing the United States and human civilization,” Cooper continued. “The coal, oil, and natural gas industries must disappear in short order, and their property in the form of extraction rights to buried carbon reserves must be deleted forever.”

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Pax Ahimsa Gethen

4 thoughts on “Environmental protesters disrupt DNC meeting after Dems embrace fossil fuel donations

  1. What do you expect from these socialist/liberals. They say one thing and do another. Whatever puts money in their coffers to help with their agenda and they always knock trump for lying. A real bunch of hypocrites..

  2. So concerned about climate change, but reject carbon free nuclear and Canadian hydroelectric. Go figure.

  3. This just goes to show, the DNC will tell you what you want to hear maybe these
    Liberal World Saviors will see the light …………Nah, there Idiots.

    DNC 30-2 vote to accept funds……… It’s all about the Money they don’t care what
    your agenda is ……………..they have there own

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