The following is a guest contribution and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit a piece to the Opinion section, click here.
It was a beautiful, rainy morning in August. I began to play a soulful slow dance by J.S. Bach on a $200 cello in front of Citibank’s international headquarters. Shielded by rainbow colored umbrellas, I was encircled by 12 brave cellist protectors with linked arms, dozens of fellow climate activists, and scores of New York’s “finest” deployed in riot gear.
Within seconds, the circle around me started to get smaller and smaller. I could not see, but I understood what was happening. The police were pulling my friends out of that circle, zip-tying their hands, and detaining them.
Soon, the circle was so tight that I could not move. When my cello fell silent, I heard protestors chanting, “Let him play! Let him play!” As they chanted, however, there was an officer at my elbow ready to arrest me. I handed off my cello, allowed myself to be handcuffed, and marched to a squad car.
As we were arrested, we sang, “We are not afraid! We will sing for liberation, ’cause we know why we were made!” By the time we were released 22 hours later, news of the interrupted recital had spread around the globe. “Cello-Playing Climate Activist Arrested”! How did this come to pass?
My name is John Mark Rozendaal. I am a professional musician and a climate justice activist organizing with Extinction Rebellion. I’ve responded to climate scientists urgently calling for non-violent direct action as our last and best hope to move world leaders to act to mitigate the worst effects of the coming climate crisis.
For decades, sacrifice zones — places where the earth’s capacity to sustain life is devastated by extractive, polluting industries — have been multiplying and spreading all over the earth in the places where poor and indigenous people live. Now, global heating caused by greenhouse gas emissions is creating the largest sacrifice zone of all: the future, the place where all people — including young people now — will live their lives.
Over the last two years, I’ve steadily escalated my own role in the rebellion, graduating from jail support, to precinct bookings for minor violations, to planning disruptions that landed us on the front pages and in criminal court.
This summer, I found myself called upon to defend a public space for political expression in a way that parallels Princeton students’ campaign to maintain the right to protest on campus. In a time when freedom to protest is under attack in many western Democracies, the protections that we enjoy in the United States are far too precious for us to accept any erosion.
Just before midnight on Thursday, July 18, I stood before a judge in criminal court in Manhattan. Along with Alec Connon, the executive director of Stop the Money Pipeline, I had been arrested on a false charge of assault during a Summer of Heat protest outside of Citibank’s international headquarters demanding that the company stop financing fossil fuel expansion.
Now we were being hit with 12-month restraining orders forbidding us to approach our accuser. If we were to go to their workplace, we could be charged with criminal contempt of court, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.
Alec and I both instantly understood the intent behind the restraining order, and how we needed to respond. The Order of Protection was intended to stop us from protesting at Citibank. We needed to challenge this. That is why we returned to Citibank, bringing the offering of a cello performance as a token of our non-violence.
Every lawyer who looked at the restraining order saw it as a violation of our first amendment rights to speak and to assemble. The threat to human rights was seen as so significant that Mary Lawlor, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Defenders tweeted in our support.
By defying the restraining order, Alec and I were asserting our constitutional rights and holding an important space for expressive non-violent direct action. On Sept. 10, we won our case in New York Criminal Court when the District Attorney dismissed the criminal charges against us and knocked the yearlong restraining order down to a limited 3-month “order of protection.” There are wins in this uphill struggle — we showed Citibank that it cannot abuse our judicial system for its interests by targeting activists with false criminal prosecution.
On Sept. 23, I returned to activism at Citibank with community leaders from the Gulf South region to protest Citi’s funding of methane (LNG) gas projects, in Texas and Louisiana, like the one that exploded last month.
I knew that holding that space was of vital importance. Just the day before I had heard testimony from indigenous leaders from all over the world pleading with New Yorkers to pressure and denounce the climate criminals here who are devastating their homes in every nation of the global South.
Just as Alec and I tried to do our bit to hold the space for free speech in Manhattan, Princeton students protesting in support of a free Palestine successfully held the space for free speech on campus in May.
What can Princeton students, faculty and staff do now for climate justice and for freedom of speech? Please keep doing what you are doing. Just like city streets, university campuses are contested grounds for delivery of controversial messages.
I applaud Princeton students’ return to protest in September in the face of tightened restrictions by the University administration; and I urge you to support your comrades still being prosecuted in Princeton Municipal Court for their non-violent action.
Whatever one might feel about the causes that protesters espouse, I contend that we are helping Manhattan’s District Attorney and Princeton’s faculty to hold important spaces for free speech in a world where we see powerful institutions working to silence any voices that might challenge their hegemony. But the threat remains; so our struggle will be sustained.
The green in front of Nassau Hall looks like a great place for a cello recital.
John Mark Rozendaal has taught as an Instructor in Princeton University’s Department of Music. Since 2022, John Mark has devoted his efforts to activism for climate justice, taking a leading role in Extinction Rebellion, and participating in actions with Summer of Heat and Climate Defiance. He can be reached at jmrozendaal[at]earthlink.net.
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