Climate Defiance takes aim at Congressional Baseball Game
An upstart climate activist group seeks to disrupt the 91st edition of the Republican vs Democrat ballgame.
Ahead of the 2024 Congressional Baseball Game, climate activists in Washington, DC are organizing a disruption. Upstart organizing group Climate Defiance, known for disrupting prominent events and confronting politicians, bureaucrats, and businesspeople, has settled on its next target: the National Pastime.
91 times since 1909, legislators in Congress have assembled themselves into teams and played a ballgame, Republicans vs Democrats. Over the years, the annual tradition became an important symbol of bipartisanship and civility within American politics. According to the Congressional Baseball Game’s website, “The game has grown into one of Washington’s most anticipated annual social events,” where staffers, lobbyists and consultants (in addition to baseball fans) are invited to watch the proceedings on the field.
Those staffers, lobbyists, consultants, and the legislators on the field are exactly who Climate Defiance hopes to reach with its message: “Stop Playing Games”.
An organizer for Climate Defiance, Shivani Nelson, spoke about the group’s goals for the blockade.
“We want to send the message that their priorities are completely backwards, that they're playing silly games with their friends that don't really matter,” said Nelson. “Congress is more worried about maintaining friendships with fossil fuel lobbyists than saving millions of lives that are on the line with the current climate crisis that we're in.”
Of particular note, the 2024 Congressional Baseball Game has taken over $57,000 in sponsorships from oil and gas companies including Chevron, and $105,000 from weapons manufacturers including Raytheon. The US military accounts for an enormous amount of global carbon emissions, with some estimates pegging the Pentagon as the single largest emitting entity globally. These sponsorships demonstrate the friendly relationships between fossil fuel (and military) lobbyists that Climate Defiance is aiming to disrupt.
This year will not be the first time the Congressional Baseball Game has been the target of climate activists. In 2022, a coalition of DC climate groups organized under the campaign “Now or Never” blockaded the game, demanding an executive order declaring a climate emergency and the immediate passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. Just over two weeks after the game, the Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law by President Biden to the delight of climate and environmental groups across the US.
Climate Defiance is hoping to build on the 2022 blockade two years later. In 2022, approximately 150 protesters gathered outside the gates of Nationals Park. Climate Defiance is hoping to more than double that number by recruiting interested Nationals fans with posters outside of the ballpark and tapping into the network of DC climate organizations and past Climate Defiance disruptors.
The upcoming protest is not without its detractors. In slightly more than one year of organizing, Climate Defiance has attracted the intense ire of right wing media, as well as ruffled feathers among more liberal circles. The group targets politicians on both sides of the aisle, including former Deputy Secretary of the Interior Tommy Beaudreau, a Democrat, who was a central figure in the approval of the controversial Alaskan oil development named the Willow Project.
The group’s allies, however, point to how effective Climate Defiance’s controversial actions have been. Just 15 days after Climate Defiance disrupted five different items of Beaudreau’s calendar in the same day, he resigned from his position. Perhaps more significantly, the group was influential in President Biden’s decision to pause exports of liquified natural gas (LNG). The White House quoted Climate Defiance in a briefing on the day Biden stopped LNG exports, and the organization received praise from US Representative Ro Khanna for the group’s pressure on the White House.
The direct, in-your-face disruptive action that Climate Defiance is known for is something that Nelson thinks is needed in this time of climate emergency.
“We’re at a point where the climate crisis is here, it’s now, so it’s urgent enough that we need to be showing up at the climate criminals’ workplaces, at their events, anytime they go in public,” said Nelson. “We want to make sure that the [climate criminals] can’t go out in public and live their normal lives and continue the way they are without acknowledging what’s happening and doing something about it.”
Climate Defiance is looking at the upcoming blockade of the Congressional Baseball Game as a big concentration of individuals the organization can reach with its message at the same time. The fact that they are playing a “silly game” in the words of Nelson makes the opportunity all the sweeter for the group. But there’s an even deeper meaning to going after the Congressional Baseball Game that Climate Defiance hasn’t leaned into in its communications: baseball, along with burning fossil fuels, is America’s National Pastime.
Baseball has become a classic symbol of Americana over its long history. The fossil fuel industry noticed, and developed ad campaigns aimed at positioning the industry as a parallel piece of Americana next to baseball. In the 1970s, Chevrolet coined the now-iconic campaign phrase, “Baseball, hotdogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet,” positioning the gas-guzzling automotive industry on par with baseball when people think of quintessentially American things. More recently, companies like CITGO, Marathon Petroleum, and Occidental Petroleum have inked significant sponsorship deals with MLB teams, cementing the relationship between the fossil fuel industry and baseball in the minds of the American public.
Disrupting the hallowed National Pastime in the nation’s capital to advocate for climate change is a natural and necessary extension of Climate Defiance’s organizing strategy. In fact, Nationals Park in Washington, DC is has a history of anti-fossil fuel activism beyond past Congressional Baseball game blockades. The Chesapeake Climate Action Network started the “Strike Out Exxon” campaign in 2008 when ExxonMobil launched an enormous advertising campaign within the ballpark. That campaign succeeded in greatly reduced Exxon advertising within the stadium, a signal that disrupting business as usual at baseball games can have meaningful impacts on how the fossil fuel industry operates.
In 2022, Democratic representative from Texas Colin Allred addressed that year’s climate blockade, saying, “Every American has the right to express themselves within certain confines, but I think interrupting a charity baseball game isn’t really the best way to do that.” The fossil fuel industry’s tight-knit relationship with baseball and the past precedent for protesting fossil fuels at Nationals Park, however, shows that there could not be a more appropriate place for Climate Defiance to blockade and disrupt the action. On June 12th, the message from Climate Defiance will ring loud and clear: while the world burns, those with the power make impactful change instead opt to play a game.