"Climate Activists Disrupt Gulf Oil and Gas Auction in New Orleans"

"Protest of 300 people was the latest in a string of actions targeting federal onshore and offshore oil and gas leases."

"More than 300 climate activists swarmed the Louisiana Superdome Wednesday morning to protest a federal auction of oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico. The action was part of the larger "Keep It in the Ground" movement aimed at stopping new fossil fuel production on publicly owned lands and waterways.

The protesters—environmental justice and climate leaders, college students, community organizers, tribal members and pastors—massed in the morning outside the Superdome in New Orleans, waving signs and banners and erecting climate-related art displays. About 100 demonstrators then marched in the stadium and into the auction room, chanting: "Don't auction our climate. The people won't be quiet!"

"We want to stop these lease sales," said Cherri Foytlin, a local environmental activist who helped organize Wednesday's event. "As long as these leases go through, [industry] is tying us to an archaic economy and an archaic way of doing things that is destroying our earth.""

Zahra Hirji reports for InsideClimate News March 23, 2016.