As protesters blocked an entrance to the New York headquarters of financial giant Citigroup this week, a woman said to be a Citigroup employee was caught on video losing her cool, yelling, “Beat them over the head!” and “Get a machine gun and kill them all!”
The video footage, obtained exclusively by The Washington Post, shows a bespectacled woman wearing a gray shirt and orange leggings, holding a Citigroup badge, and appearing visibly upset by the activists who have been blocking the entrance to the bank’s lower Manhattan offices for the past three months.
“Hit them in the head! Hit them in the head!” a woman yelled as a protester, with the help of police, tried to block city employees from entering the building.
The woman then shouted at the agitators who have targeted the City for its ties to the oil industry and, more recently, to the Israeli military, “Get your machine guns and kill them all!”
When the woman turned away from the building’s entrance, the protester, who was filming the video, began chasing her.
“What? You want to get a machine gun and kill us all?” the activist asked the woman, but she shook her head and kept walking.
“These comments are unacceptable,” a Citi spokesman told The Post. “The matter is under investigation and will be addressed appropriately.”
The incident is the latest example of tensions rising outside Citi’s headquarters in lower Manhattan this summer as protesters continue to block employees from entering or exiting the building.
A week ago, another video obtained by The Washington Post showed a man whom protesters identified as Citigroup general counsel Arthur Cohn violently shoving a young woman who was protesting outside Citi’s headquarters. A Citi spokesman said the protesters’ claims were false and that the company had pushed a barricade aside after an employee struck it.
Protesters at Monday’s demonstration claimed they identified the woman as Annmarie Paniccia from a Citi employee badge she was carrying. According to her LinkedIn profile, Paniccia is an executive assistant to the head of the financial strategy group and has worked at Citi for nearly 25 years.
It was not immediately possible to confirm whether the woman in the video is Paniccia, but her employee badge appears to read “Ann.”
Paniccia did not respond to requests for comment, and his LinkedIn profile disappeared after being viewed by a Washington Post reporter.
A protester who filmed the video on Monday told The Washington Post that about 50 demonstrators arrived at Citi’s headquarters by 7:30 a.m. and linked arms to block employees from entering the building’s entrance, as they have done every morning for the past three months.
Protesters said they would continue to gather outside the city every day until their demands are met: “Stop funding fossil fuel expansion. It’s that simple and they can do it.”
The NYPD told The Post that they’ve arrested about 200 people at protests in the city since April on charges including disturbing the peace and resisting arrest. Officers made 10 more arrests on Monday.
Some critics of the protesters say they have the right to demonstrate peacefully but not to lock employees out of their workplaces.
But protesters said environmentalists have tried peacefully for years to protest but “have been unsuccessful due to the City’s stubborn resistance.”
“[We have the] “We literally have a right to protect the future of this planet,” the protester said. “Citibank is profiting from the end of the world.”
As tensions rose, Citi urged employees to “remain calm” in an internal memo in June.
The protests have now included everyone from climate activists dressed in killer whale costumes and chanting “Sink the yacht” outside the headquarters to pro-Palestinian protesters chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
“I know many of you, like me, were uncomfortable with some of the words and actions, but we must remain calm,” Ed Schuyler, Citigroup’s head of enterprise services and public affairs, said in a copy of the June memo obtained by The Washington Post.
“We respect the right to protest, but we will not do so at the expense of our colleagues’ safety or when others continue to perpetrate abuse and hatred,” Schuyler said. “Simply put, we do not tolerate intimidation or acts of violence, and we condemn anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, hate acts, discrimination and bigotry of any kind.”
Protesters are targeting a financial deal by Citigroup to raise funds for Israel to buy fighter jets from the US government.
In the memo, Schuyler called Citi “proud” of its 30-year history of doing business in Israel, but said protesters were spreading disinformation and that loans for military equipment to the U.S. and its allies require senior-level approval.
Citigroup “does not directly finance” biological, chemical or nuclear weapons, and the bank is rarely asked to loan money for military equipment, according to a copy of the memo obtained by Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, environmental activists are calling on major US banks to cut ties with the oil industry.
A spokesman for the climate activist group Summer of Heat said Citigroup has “pumped $396.3 billion into coal, oil and gas projects since the Paris Agreement went into effect in 2016.” Bank Dive Report.
“While it is extremely frustrating when access to our building is temporarily blocked, we have no choice but to let the professionals do their job,” Schuyler said in the memo, which also expressed gratitude to local police.
