A series of recent protests in Washington DC against the fossil fuel industry were orchestrated by a group part of a global network funded by Hollywood director Adam McKay and billionaire philanthropist Aileen Getty, DailyMail.com can reveal.
Campaign group Declare Emergency organized a ‘week of action’ at the end of August, which included setting up roadblocks during rush hour that caused misery for the working population. Months earlier, two members of the organization were arrested and charged after damaging an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art.
Declare Emergency is part of the A22 network, a collection of climate protest groups committed to ‘mass civil disobedience’ on a global scale.
A22’s “primary funder” is the Climate Emergency Fund, which was established in 2019 with help from a $500,000 grant from Aileen Getty, heir to the $5.2 billion Getty oil fortune. Adam McKay, director of films such as Anchorman and The Big Short, donated $4 million to the CEF last year and joined its board of directors.
McKay has been accused of hypocrisy for pushing the climate cause after admitting he owns a lavish holiday home in Ireland – 5,000 miles from his LA base – and flies to the 30-acre hideaway “when the going gets tough” at home.
Adam McKay, the directors of The Big Short and Anchorman, have donated $4 million to the Climate Emergency Fund and sit on its board
Declare Emergency, the group behind recent climate protests in the US, is part of a global network funded by the Climate Emergency Fund. The CEF was founded with help from a $500,000 grant from Aileen Getty (pictured), heir to the Getty oil fortune
Getty also has an extensive real estate portfolio and recently acquired Brad Pitt’s former $39 million property in LA.
Other high-profile donors to the CEF include Disney heir Abigail Disney and Succession actor Jeremy Strong.
Declare Emergency wants to position itself as the American answer to the European Extinction Rebellion (XR), which has brought cities such as London and Paris to a standstill in recent years due to protests on a much larger scale. XR is closely associated with another A22 Network group called Just Stop Oil.
At the protests in Washington DC, members of Declare Emergency blocked traffic while flying banners with apocalyptic slogans. Furious commuters begged the group to move so they could get to work, before police eventually stopped the protest.
Footage of the clashes showed one man shouting at protesters as he ripped away their banners. One woman shouted, “We have children to feed!”
This came just months after two Declare Emergency activists smeared paint on an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art.
Tim Martin and Joanna Smith, both aged 53 at the time, damaged a glass case containing Edgar Degas’ 19th-century sculpture Little Danger Aged Fourteen. The stunt caused $2,400 in damage.
Martin later said, “The idea is that we wake people up with a jolt, and we do it in a way that engages and invites their emotional centers.”
Declare Emergency is one of the latest groups to appear under the banner of the A22 network. A22 describes itself as ‘a group of connected projects engaged in a mad attempt to save humanity’.
The website states: ‘Climate Emergency Fund is the main funder of the A22 network and the recruitment, training and capacity building of our eleven member project.’
Headquartered in Beverly Hills, the CEF was founded in 2019. As of June 2023, it had awarded grants worth $9 million to 112 organizations.
Margaret Klein, the CEF’s executive director, said she is “proud to support some of the bravest and most courageous climate activists in the world.”
A protest by supporters of Extinction Rebellion, the group that inspired Declare Emergency, at the Burning Man festival in August was quickly put down by Nevada rangers
She said the fund “supports activist organizations engaged in nonviolent protest and civil disobedience.”
The beginnings of Declare Emergency can be traced back to around November 2021, when it launched its social media channels and began organizing protests.
The group remains relatively small compared to similar groups like XR, whose protests in Europe have attracted tens of thousands of supporters. XR employs similar ‘civil disobedience’ tactics and has also targeted major works of art.
Declare Emergency has received guidance and funding from XR’s British co-founder Roger Hallam, a veteran climate change activist who claims to have injected $1 million into the US climate activist movement.
XR supporters were involved in a protest at the Burning Man festival last month. Activists blocked a road to the festival, causing a miles-long standoff before no-nonsense rangers from Nevada’s Pyramid Lake Paiute tribal police plowed through the blockade and began arresting protesters at gunpoint.
The controversial tactics of groups like Declare Emergency, which are accused of alienating average citizens, recently led to a co-founder of the Climate Emergency Fund to resign, complaining that global disruption was “unproductive.”
Businessman Trevor Neilson quit the group in 2021, complaining in June that many protests were simply “disruption for the sake of disruption.”
‘Working people trying to get their jobs, put their child through school, survive a brutal cost of living crisis in Britain, you know, there’s a certain hierarchy of needs that they have…
“If at the same time they have a pink-haired, tattooed and pierced protester standing in front of their car, causing their child to be late for the test that day, that does not encourage them to join the movement,” he told The Guardian. Time.
‘It’s just performative. It doesn’t accomplish anything. I absolutely believe it has now become counterproductive, and I feel like that needs to be said by someone who was involved in the beginning of what it has become.”
The A22 Network said: ‘The A22 Network’s projects are funded partly by the Climate Emergency Fund in the US and partly by their own fundraising. The network itself is not set up as a subsidy/financing body.’
A spokesperson did not respond to an interview request.