Extinction Rebellion NYC Climber Rings in the New Year with an Important Message

On New Year's Eve, Extinction Rebellion NYC photobombed the Times Square broadcast all night long with a banner demanding “END FOSSIL FUELS BY 2025.” See our video on the action, and read this first-person account by the XR Rebel behind it.

The idea to drop a climate-action banner on New Year’s Eve in Times Square—to show up behind all the performers on the broadcast live streams of the celebration—came to me while I was scouting locations on behalf of a Native American activist group visiting NYC. They wanted to do a banner drop in Midtown somewhere, and among the possible locations, I noticed a surprisingly large empty space in Times Square’s otherwise jam-packed visual wallpaper—a big, blank silver-colored wall right next to the red steps. So I did some preliminary recon and realized that with rope-and-harness climbing (which I learned with others from XR NYC in 2019), I could get up onto the roof, reaching it via a series of alleyways behind the buildings. The best part was that once I hopped a high metal gate off 46th Street, I would basically be invisible to passersby.

The visiting activists didn’t use the location, and having space in Times Square on New Year’s Eve seemed too good to pass up. I decided to go with the message ‘End Fossil Fuels By 2025’ because even those who support climate action often do not adopt a sufficiently aggressive timetable, given the dire situation. I was motivated specifically by listening to a recent interview of Chris Hedges by Ayana Young where he stresses that Zero 2025 is the only serious timeline out there. The message is painted on the back of a recycled piece of billboard vinyl bought on the internet.

I first climbed up pre-dawn on New Year’s Eve. Police were everywhere, and barricades made the area a maze. I had to circle around for a few hours to find a moment when there wasn’t a police car or officer right by the gate, but finally I had an opportunity and took it. I climbed up and dropped the banner as it was starting to rain, and scrambled down before anyone thought to track me down. I had to wait about 20 minutes inside the gate for a moment when I could hop back over undetected.

I had tied two long thin ropes to the bottom of the banner so that I could tie them off to something at street-level once I was down—this was to prevent the banner from flipping up and over in the wind. But when I casually walked under where the banner was, I saw that it was stuck. It had only unfurled halfway. I couldn’t see this from above—I had to just toss it off and hope for the best. But the paint must have still been tacky, allowing it to defy gravity and stay folded. It read “End Fossil”, as if someone just really hated that watch company.

I told myself (and others from XR NYC who were watching on the Times Square live stream) that gravity and rainwater would win out, and it would unfurl at some point. I was filthy and soaking wet and cold. I took the subway home, took a warm shower, put on pajamas, and pulled up the live stream to see that the banner had not budged an inch.

So I realized that, despite being nice and warm and dry, I needed to go back. After feeling sorry for myself for a moment and kicking myself for not getting it right the first time, I took the subway back in, again evaded detection and climbed walls like Assassin’s Creed had taught me, fixed the banner, and snuck back out. This time, I wandered underneath and tied off the bottom ropes to security gates on the store below. I prowled the barricades to get a decent picture, posted it to my Instagram (@climbitjustice) and Facebook, and went home for a second warm shower and set of clean clothes.

I expected the banner to get taken down during the day, but was excited to see that it not only stayed up all day and night, but got considerable screen time. Rebels made a video and shared screenshots of our urgent message to stop the planet from burning alive, next to images of the performers and hosts—and a live message from President-elect Joe Biden. We hope he got ours, too. 

As a Rebel commented the next day, “The Times Square banner was on TV so much last night that now it’s not returning my calls. Special thanks to all the celebrities who unintentionally helped bring attention to the need for urgent climate action.”