Spurred on by the recent wildfires in Los Angeles that experts say were climate-change related, the activist group Climate Defiance held a protest on January 31 at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Washington, D.C., against the Democratic National Committee (DNC), calling on it to get dirty fossil fuel money out of Democratic politics forever.

The protest started inside the resort’s main atrium with a three-story banner drop from a hotel room that said, “Oil $$$ Out of the DNC.” Dozens of protesters then marched around the hotel’s ground floor, chanting, “Which side are you on?” and “We need clean air, not another billionaire.” 

The DNC is holding a meeting at the ritzy $400-a-night resort over the weekend to choose a new party chair, a move that took on urgency after the Democrats took a beating at the ballot box in November. State party chairs Ben Wikler of Wisconsin, Ken Martin of Minnesota, and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley have the most votes so far, according to Hill Heat. All three leaders are advocating support for advancing moves on climate change. 

While U.S. Capitol Police observed protesters while not interacting, the hotel security aggressively tried to corral the activists – at one point one officer took a swing at a protester filming on his cell phone. 

Climate Defiance is a youth-led environmental activist organization that uses direct action to disrupt events that lawmakers and newsmakers attend to draw attention to insufficient action on the climate crisis. They regularly “blockade” events by disrupting the entrances of buildings and getting arrested. They previously blockaded the White House Correspondents Dinner in 2023. 

Founder of Climate Defiance, Michael Greenberg said on a call to activists a few days before the protest, “The DNC has been, in many ways, an obstacle to progress. And yeah, we are trying to tell them to fight for us.” 

The activists marched through the hotel’s cafe, receiving some support but many angry glares, with one conference attendee telling them that they were “protesting the wrong [party’s] event.” 

Climate Defiance argued that they are protesting the right event – Greenberg told reporters after the action that the group has protested Republicans, too, describing the GOP as “ecocidal planet-killing fascists,” he said. “And we need Democrats to actually step up and fight for us and not bend over backward to the fascists.”  This week, the Senate confirmed Doug Burgum, a billionaire with ties to the fossil fuel industry, to be secretary of the interior, with more than half of Senate Democrats joining all Republicans in the vote. 

Climate Defiance member Evan Drukker-Schardl reiterated the frustration in a speech outside the hotel,  that the group has with Democrats allowing wealthy, right-wing politicians to serve on Trump’s cabinet. “The president’s billionaire friends are throwing Nazi salutes on national stages and rolling back every single environmental regulation. And tell me, what have the Democrats done? They voted to confirm Lee Zeldin” to be head of the Environmental Protection Agency

Democratic  Sens. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly of Arizona voted for Zeldin, who is part of Trump’s right-wing America First Policy Institute. 

Activists left the hotel without any arrests, and joined another group of protesters who had been rallying outside in the rain. Drukker-Schardl  asked the drenched activists a rhetorical question, “If Democrats can’t demonstrate that they’re fighting for actual people and not a couple of weirdo-like billionaire friends, they’ll keep losing to the fascists, right?”