Jamie Dimon is probably used to hatred and opprobrium by now. As the CEO of one of the nation’s largest banks, he’s been picketed by Occupy, yelled at by senators, and subjected to an involuntary pay cut by his board.
But he and his bank branches are about to get attacked by a new enemy, one they’ve never dealt with before: trees and bark.
Reverend Billy, a kooky anti-consumerism activist who starred in the 2007 documentary What Would Jesus Buy? (and once ran for New York City mayor on the Green party ticket), is running a new campaign called “Jamie Meets Sandy,” in which he encourages supporters to protest JPMorgan Chase’s global-warming-causing carbon emissions (or something?) by carrying “dead branches, dead roots, dead bark and dead stripped-white trees” inside Chase banks all over the country.
Sayeth Reverend Billy on his Facebook page:
We’re calling our new Earth campaign “Jamie Meets Sandy.” JPMorgan Chase’s CEO Jamie Dimon will speed-date with the devastating beauty Hurricane Sandy. [sic, all the way through]
Chase is the top financier of industrial projects that create greenhouse gasses. Jamie’s bank moves billions into dirty coal, tar sands and fracking. There is no single institution that de-stabilizes Earth like Chase Bank. And so, when Sandy blew us silly, we thought: Why isn’t anyone talking about Jamie Dimon’s investments?
Jamie flashes around town, a rock star socialite, New York’s own Al Capone. His Climate Change kills thousands every day. But he must be holding his breath. Will anyone follow the surging oceans, burning forests, dying eco-systems - back to him?
For the 80 or 90 activists in The Church of Stop Shopping - and we hope people around the world - we have a faith now to carry us through the coming months and years. We can sing and preach in bank lobbies, surround bank meetings, conduct services in front of Jamie’s Park Avenue home.
For our first action, since the world’s forests are dying, we will carry dead trees into Chase. Dead branches, dead roots, dead bark and dead stripped-white trees like ghosts… carry them inside to make a deposit. Oh! Sandy wants to meet you, Jamie! She isn’t done with her flooding! Jamie! Meet Sandy!
Reverend Billy has a long history of going after bankers. He spoke out at Occupy Wall Street rallies and ran a weird “Exorcise Bank of America” stunt in 2011.
So far, his efforts have failed to stop Wall Street greed and/or the long march of capitalist dominance. But with an arboretum at their disposal, it’s only a matter of time before Reverend Billy and his army do what the London Whale could not, and bring Dimon down to his knees.
