Join us on Sunday August 17th at 6pm for a panel on frontline resistance to fossil fuel finance featuring Juan Mancias, James Hiatt,Mary Mijeres and Connie Lu.

We’re living in challenging times with an escalating climate disaster devestating communities from Texas and Louisiana to Richmond, CA. Few institutions are as responsible for these crisis as Wall Street and Big Insurance companies. We’re also living in a time where large numbers of people have taken to the streets to confront those responsible for these crises.

This panel will discuss the role of major financial institutions in providing loans,investments and insurance to fossil fuel companies destroying communities from the Gulf South to Richmond, CA, talk about the resistance to these companies.

Speakers to include:

Christa Mancias is the Executive Director for The Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas. Currently based out of Floresville, Texas married to her spouse for 18 years, a mother of 4 wonderful children 1 girl and 3 boys, and a Grandmother of one beautiful Granddaughter. She has been working to help maintain and preserve the identity of the traditional teachings and language of her people the Esto’k Gna (Carrizo Comecrudo) for future generations through oral and recorded history. Fighting a struggling education system in Texas that refuses to acknowledge her tribe's identity for the past 1,000years in the so-called Americas. Spent many years growing up in the movement along with her family and relatives Fighting for Native Indigenous rights and Environmental justice.She continues to help with the   Frontline Fights against Border Wall issues, LNG Terminals, Pipelines, Fracking, SpaceX and the continuous destruction and erasure of the Carrizo Comecurdo’s Sacred Sites throughout Texas. In May 2020 she and others helped put on a successful Human Rights Tribunal on Garcia Pasture in South Texas to bring attention to some of the major issues happening in the Rio Grande Valley. She’s been quoted “As her people continue to rise, she will continue to fight for the people.”

Currently, he is building resistance to the fossil fuel industry and border wall construction, organizing efforts to assist asylum refugees, and reclaiming and protecting his tribe’s ancestral lands.

James Hiatt has more than a decade of firsthand experience in the petrochemical industry, he understands the tough choices many workers face—trying to make a living while dealing with the impacts these industries have on health and the environment. Born and raised in Lake Charles, Louisiana, his deep connection to the community inspired him to seek a better way forward. In 2023, he founded For a Better Bayou, a nonprofit focused on helping Southwest Louisiana shift away from extraction-based industries toward a more sustainable, community-focused economy.

Mary Mijares is a first-generation immigrant born in the Philippines and raised in Richmond, CA. As a campaigner for Amazon Watch, Mary seeks to uplift the demands and support the resistance of Indigenous organizations across the Amazon basin in international campaigns that challenge the fossil fuel industry and its financiers.

Connie Lu began her organizing journey as a student at Dartmouth College, where she was part of the successful campaign to divest the endowment from fossil fuels. Through a fellowship with the unfortunately now-defunct Divest Ed, she learned about climate finance as a crucial strategic piece of climate justice movements, and why we build people power instead of appealing to elites. The resources and relationships she was offered as a student organizer propelled into my lifelong commitment to struggles for liberation, which is why she is a deep believer in the mission of training and supporting youth leadership and skill development, as a long-term investment in movements.

Event hosted by Stop Billionaire Summer, the Green and Red Podcast and Gulf South Fossil Finance Hub