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Protest at White House Correspondents' Dinner at the Washington Hilton on April 29, 2023 in Washington, D.C.   ​​​

Washington, April 30 (RHC)-- Members of the corporate media were greeted by hundreds of climate action organizers Saturday night as they arrived at the Washington Hilton Hotel in Washington, D.C. for the annual White House Correspondents Dinner.

Youth-led direct action group Climate Defiance staged a blockade of the event to demand that President Joe Biden fulfill his campaign promise to end fossil fuel extraction on public lands.  The protest came weeks after the Biden administration approved Willow, the massive oil drilling project on federal lands in Alaska, and a month after a oil and gas lease sale of 1.6 million acres of offshore waters in the Gulf of Mexico went forward.

“The president promised us an end to new leasing on federal lands but failed to deliver. Now, he needs to hear from the voting bloc that delivered him the 2022 midterm elections,” said Climate Defiance ahead of the protest, referring to research showing that voters between the ages of 18 and 29 were crucial to Biden’s victory in 2020.  According to Pew Research, 62% of young voters support a complete phaseout of fossil fuels.

“We disrupted the rich and powerful because Joe Biden’s approval of deadly new oil and gas projects is killing the planet,” said a representative of Climate Defiance after the blockade.   “We will continue to disrupt until we end fossil fuels.”