How Swifties United to Hold RBC Accountable

This year, we launched Unite the Swifties, a first-of-its-kind contest to organize Taylor Swift fans to hold the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) accountable.

RBC — Canada’s largest funder of fossil fuels — is sponsoring Taylor Swift’s Canadian Eras Tour, and while bank executives claim they’re Taylor fans, this is part of RBC’s efforts to greenwash its brand and hide from its dirty financing.

We’re thrilled to announce the winners of our contest. Congratulations to Pilar (Toronto), Michelle (Vancouver), and Avery (Ottawa) on winning tickets to see Taylor Swift concerts in Toronto and Vancouver!

Together, we united Swifties from coast-to-coast to urge Taylor to drop this toxic bank once and for all! Thousands of us took action to hold RBC accountable for its role in fossil fuel financing, weapons investments, and Indigenous rights violations.

And the response? Absolutely incredible!! Over the course of the contest:

• We reached 700,000+ people with our storytelling for Taylor to drop RBC;
• Over 190,000 people engaged with our social media content;
• And a whopping 9,000 participants entered!

That’s not all. We even organized a training series where hundreds of young people built skills to organize in their communities, including personal storytelling, leadership development, art and activism, and more!

For more than HALF of the participants, this was their first-ever climate action taken! Through this creative contest, we are organizing thousands of new people, and fostering new leaders, growing the movement for climate justice and Indigenous sovereignty.

Our actions send a clear message to RBC: we won’t stay silent about your role in funding the climate crisis. And none of it would be possible without you.

Innovative digital actions and power-building like this are what the Stand.earth community was built for. From taking on Canada’s largest bank, to fighting to protect ancient old growth forests, to taking on some of the world’s largest corporations, the Stand.earth community is unstoppable.