The trial of the so-called Flood Wall Street 11 has opened here in New York. On September 22, the day after the historic People’s Climate March, thousands of people staged a mass sit-in in Manhattan’s Financial District to protest the role of big banks and the capitalist system in climate change. More than 100 people were arrested, and 11 of them have taken the charges to court. They plan to use the necessity defense to argue their actions were justified by the urgency of corporate-fueled climate change. John Tarleton is one of the defendants.

John Tarleton: “We’ve known about this climate crisis for over a quarter of a century. Our political and economic system have completely failed to address it. And so, we believe it’s legitimate for other forms of resistance to emerge to try to create the pressure to find real solutions.”