That’s one way to stop a tennis match.
In the middle of a match during the Mubadal Citi Open in Washington, D.C. on Friday, climate activists from numerous organizations unfurled banners, chanted and tossed oversized balls on the tennis court to stop play between Taylor Fritz and Andy Murray and draw attention to their cause.
“Stop funding fossil fuels, Citi stop now!” the protestors chanted, making it impossible to continue the match as fans booed.
“Business as usual is a climate disaster,” one of the signs from a protestor near the court read.
Eventually, security confiscated the protestors’ signs and forced them to leave the bleachers, allowing play to resume.
Jay, a protestor representing an organization called Climate Defiance, which defines itself as a “brand-new, youth-led group using direct action to resist fossil fuels, was interviewed after the match by News2Share following questioning by the police.
“Lifting up our voice, our First Amendment rights in a space where they may have been trying to play a tennis game, but we don’t have time to go conventional routes anymore when we’re seeing the hottest summer on record, by far, breaking 100,000 year records, we’re scared as hell.
“If we continue to see the floods, fires, and smoke that’s going to get in our lungs as we just saw in D.C. a couple months ago, we can’t trust our political leaders anymore and sure as hell can’t trust people like Citi — groups like Citi that continue to give $300 billion to fund fossil fuel projects.”
The protestor claimed that Citi and Mubadala have donated to the fossil fuel industry and participated in “greenwashing,” a practice of promoting a sense of environmental protection that isn’t actually real.
Mubadala Investment Company is a Saudi-based fund, while Citi is headquartered in New York.
The D.C.-based Citi Open merged with the San Jose-based Mubadala Silicon Valley Classic this June to create the Mubadala Citi Open, becoming the fifth-largest professional tennis event in the U.S. and the only combined ATP-WTA 500-level tennis tournament in the world.
Fritz is seeded No. 1 at the tournament and is battling No. 15 seed Andy Murray for a spot in the quarterfinal.
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