The rain pattered on the pop-up tents lined along Centre Road as dozens of people crowded beneath them preparing for the half-mile trek to President Joe Biden’s Wilmington home.
Saturday marked the final day of the week-long Occupy Biden event, where dozens of people from various organizations and multiple states had camped out at 909 Centre Road since Christmas Day calling for Biden to act now on climate change.
Neither wind nor rain prevented nearly 50 people marching along Barley Mill Road on New Year’s Day to call on Biden to declare a climate emergency and require all federal agencies to oppose any new fossil fuel-related projects.
“Today is the eighth day that we’ve been out here for Occupy Biden, and we are calling on President Biden to take executive action on climate by declaring a climate emergency and directing federal agencies to oppose new fossil fuel projects,” University of Delaware senior Anthony Chan said to cheers and applause. “Because with a stroke of a pen, he could do just that.”
The event was born out of the Walk for Our Grandchildren event that arrived in Wilmington over the summer, said Ted Glick, one of the organizers. They also held a sit-in at Chase Bank, protesting the financial institution’s investments in the fossil fuel industry, he said.
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Wilmington area resident Andy Flack came for his 8-year-old daughter, Phoebe, who marched quietly beside him.
“I’ve always been involved with environmental issues, but mainly because I have a child and she’s the one who is going to suffer,” he said. “I’ll be gone.”
When asked why it was important for him to attend, Flack responded incredulously: “Climate change? Seriously? Look what happened yesterday in Colorado.”
Wildfires recently destroyed communities abutting the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, prompting the president on Friday to declare it a disaster. The blaze, which has been deemed the most destructive wildfire in Colorado history, prompted further warnings from scientists of the real-world impacts of climate change.
Karen Igou, an organizer of the event, said there is more that the president can be doing to address climate change, pointing to the Biden administration auctioning off 80 million acres of land for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico shortly after returning from a climate event.
“If they say he is doing all he can, that is not simply true,” she said. “Why is our president acting as though we are not in an emergency?”
Beyond the key demands the group gave to Biden, attendees also championed celebrating indigenous people and giving land back to them, ending car-culture and creating walkable cities, and getting to know and support your neighbors.
“Even if you don’t like them, get to know them because you are going to need them,” Igou said. “We need to take care of each other. Our government is not going to do it.”
As the rain abated, Occupy Biden attendees reached their destination – the checkpoint to Biden’s Delaware home at Barley Mill Road and Fairthorne Avenue. Met with Secret Service, New Castle County police, barricades and vehicles, the organizers asked to deliver their demands to Biden, but were told officers couldn’t contact the president.
Bullhorn in hand, Glick gathered the group and told them the news. They weren’t leaving yet. Not until Occupy Biden attendees spoke with someone who could relay their demands and their urgency.
“If we are not met with these two demands, we will be back,” Igou said. “We can’t go down this way with this absurdity, this literal madness – we are the only species that has ever destroyed their own environment.”
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