30th July 2026: HXR hold Grief Ceremony outside JPMorgan offices
On 30th July, HXR members, Scientists on Survival and friends held a moving grief ceremony outside JPMorgan Embankment Offices in London.
This was very different to our many previous visits, over the last seven years, to JPM’s offices to highlight the terrible effects they are having, as the world’s largest investor in fossil fuels, on the climate, nature and health crisis. These effects are clearly stated in JPMorgan’s own report would respond to its own report “Risky Business” “… it is clear that the earth is on an unsustainable trajectory. Something will have to change at some point if the human race is going to survive”.
Our previous visits have included a climate inquest a ‘die-in’ and a climate photographic exhibition outside their doors, distributing leaflets, sticking posters to their windows, delivering carefully researched letters and displaying placards and a huge banner. We have never received any response from JPM. Four years ago, six HXR members, in the 2022 heatwave, broke JPM’s Canary Wharf windows to sound the alarm about the health harms and lives lost as a result of their fossil fuel investments. Earlier this year they were found not guilty by a jury.
On this occasion, however, our intention was to create a space for connection and to share our grief that JPMorgan, along with other fossil fuel companies and their enablers, appear unable to halt humanity’s course towards self-destruction.
Participants formed a circle outside JPM doors sitting around a centrepiece of a bowl, jug of water, candle and branches. Members shared grief testimonials including prose and poetry, attesting to our individual and collective grief in response to the climate and ecological crisis, untethered colonialism and capitalism and the failure of human societies to respond.
A letter to JPM staff was delivered to the offices and to make it available to all, a QR code was shared on posters and on leaflets offered to JPM staff and other passers by during the ceremony. , Staff were invited to join the ceremony at any stage, although none chose to do so.
Watch our instagram photo story HERE
Read our letter to JPMorgan staff HERE