Pete Buttigieg Chased Off Stage by Climate Protesters: ‘Stop Petro Pete!’
U.S. Transportation Secretary and former Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg was chased off stage by a group of climate protesters on Tuesday.
Protesters with the group Climate Defiance crashed an event featuring Buttigieg at Baltimore’s Meyerhoff Symphony Hall and chanted, “End fossil fuels, Pete!” and “Stop Petro Pete!”
After crashing the stage, one of the protesters told Buttigieg, “Your DOT just approved the Seaport Oil Terminal, a project that will have 80 coal plants worth of greenhouse gas emissions and will worsen air quality in areas that already live in cancer clusters. This is about environmental racism and it’s about the climate impacts this project will have.”
Breaking: we just chased Secretary Pete Buttigieg off the stage at the Meyerhoff Symphony.
Petro Pete is a coward. As we write he is ramming down our throats the Sea Port and GulfLink oil terminals – each worse than Keystone.
We must resist him with all we’ve got. And we will. pic.twitter.com/aVKeCre5eH
— Climate Defiance (@ClimateDefiance) October 10, 2023
While Buttigieg initially tried to engage with the protesters, he eventually decided to leave the stage as protesters chanted, “Stop S.P.O.T. and GulfLink, stop Petro Pete!”
Buttigieg’s security personnel could be seen in footage holding protesters back as they attempted to chase after the transport secretary.
“Think about why he said he can’t ‘speak off the cuff’ on climate. Please! We’re ready to! We’re happy to have a conversation with Secretary Pete,” shouted one protester after Buttigieg fled the hall.
Footage also showed security forcibly removing protesters as they chanted, “End fossil fuels, Pete!” and “Which side are you on, Pete? Which side are you on?”
Following the incident, Climate Defiance tweeted, “Today we took over a keynote address by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Humiliated, he fled. Craven and corrupted, Petro Pete is destroying entire communities to enrich his fossil fuel cronies. So we did something he will never forget. And we did not apologize.”
Climate Defiance also claimed that one of the protesters had previously been “a volunteer on the Buttigieg presidential campaign” and that she was “now repulsed by her former role model.”
“People across the county are waking up, realizing that Petro Pete is as slick & slimy as the fossil fuel projects he rubber-stamps,” the group declared. “Compromised, cowardly, and utterly, utterly complicit, Pete has not met the moment. He craves power but lacks conviction. He feigns concern for the climate but can’t admit it is unacceptable to build new fossil fuel infrastructure in 2023. He is not the leader we need.”
Watch above via Climate Defiance.
