Divestment

Protest Of State Board Of Investment Demands Divestment From Israel

December 7, 2024 Meredith Aby, Fight Back! News. Resist! BDS Movement, Divestment, Israel, Minnesota, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity, St. Paul

St. Paul, MN – On December 5, 45 people protested outside of the Minnesota Senate Building in 15-degree weather to demand that members of the board vote to divest the state of Minnesota from investments in Israel. The protest, held ahead of the board’s December 10 meeting, was organized by the Free Palestine Coalition. Andrew Josefchak, a member of the MN Anti-War Committee, spoke to the crowd, “Minnesota’s State Board of Investment invests $5.4 billion of our money in genocide and apartheid. That’s $5.4 billion of a pension fund that union workers across Minnesota bargained for, fought hard for, waged strikes for.

Wales Just Hit A Massive Green Energy Milestone

December 7, 2024 The Canary. Organize! Border Militarization, Divestment, Fossil Fuels, Higher Education, Wales

Earlier this week, it was revealed that over 75% of UK universities have now divested from the fossil fuel industry, illustrating how cutting financial ties with the industry is being increasingly recognised as a step that aligns with university goals and values. Laura Clayson, campaign manager at Climate Justice, said: This news is incredibly significant given how fossil fuels have shaped the nation’s recent history and landscape. It is an act of solidarity with frontline communities globally, as well as those within Wales itself. This includes the community surrounding the controversial Ffos-y-Fran, the UK’s last and largest open cast coal mine, which closed in 2023. The community continues to have to fight for justice, for everything from health impacts to restoration of the area, as the mining company continues to break their promises on each and every front. We hope this news provides some additional strength to their struggle.

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology Targeting Pro-Palestine Activists

November 25, 2024 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. Resist! BDS Movement, Campus Movement, Divestment, Gaza, Genocide, Israel, Massachusetts, MIT, Palestine, State Repression, Student Activism

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has taken severe measures to suppress the voices of two prominent pro-Palestine activists on campus: PhD student Prahlad Iyengar and Dr. Michel DeGraff, a professor who has taught linguistics at the university for over 28 years. Iyengar has been banned from campus, which is also his place of work, without due process. He has also been denied union representation by MIT’s administration, despite himself being a union steward. He faces imminent threat of suspension as well as expulsion. MIT prohibited Dr. Degraff from teaching a course on Palestine, suspended his annual pay raise, and had his official status at the university changed from “Professor of Linguistics” to “Faculty-at-Large,” also without due process.

Barclays Divest From Elbit Systems After Direct Action Campaign

November 1, 2024 Palestine Action. Resist! Barclays, BDS Movement, Divestment, Elbit Systems, Israel, Palestine, Palestine Action, Victory

After a year-long campaign against its premises by Palestine Action and local community groups, Barclays PLC has sold all of its shareholdings in Elbit Systems Ltd (ELST). Until recently, Barclays owned over 16,000 shares in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons company. Starting just over one year ago, Palestine Action’s campaign saw activists undertake 54 actions against Barclays premises nation-wide. Smashing branch windows, spraying them in blood-red paint, many of these actions put Barclays sites out of operation for weeks, actions which sought to raise the costs associated with dealing with Elbit.

Connecting The Dots Between Climate Destruction And Its Financial Backers

September 21, 2024 Eve Gutman, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! Big Finance, climate crisis, Divestment, International Solidarity

Standing on a mobile stage in a suburban Philadelphia park on July 3, Ugandan human rights activist Hillary Taylor poured a cup of dirt into a clay vase. “This soil represents all my communities in Uganda and Tanzania,” he said to a crowd of 300 people gathered near the global headquarters of Vanguard, the world’s largest fossil fuel investor. This was the start of a major day of action for Vanguard S.O.S. — the international campaign that’s calling for the powerful asset manager to deal with its climate change problem and invest in a livable future. Participants came from near and far to dramatize the connection between asset managers like Vanguard and the harm their investments cause frontline communities.

MIT Divests From Israeli Arms Firm Funded Program

September 15, 2024 Al Mayadeen. Resist! BDS Movement, Boston, Campus Movement, Divestment, Higher Education, Israel, Massachusetts, MIT, Palestine

The MISTI-"Israel" Lockheed Martin fund has been shut down after continuous pressure from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) staff and faculty, the MIT Coalition for Palestine announced on Friday, marking a major divestment win for the university's Scientists Against Genocide (SAGE) movement. "Under pressure from students and scientists of conscience at this Institute, the MIT administration has discontinued MISTI-Israel's Lockheed Martin Seed Fund and will not renew its contract," the organization said in a statement. "This was a major target of our divestment action. The program ends after months of protest against it last fall, including letter deliveries, sit-ins, and public information campaigns," it highlighted.

Summer Of Heat Is Using Disruption To End Fossil Fuel Financing

August 30, 2024 Alice Hu, Waging Nonviolence. Resist! Big Banks, climate crisis, Divestment, Fossil Fuel, Wall Street

With millions being displaced by wildfires and floods, famine spreading and entire countries getting submerged, the fossil fuel industry is driving us off the cliff and must be stopped. One strategy the climate movement can take to turn the tide is pressuring economic elites to remove their backing for Big Oil. This is the main focus of the Summer of Heat on Wall Street, a sustained campaign of nonviolent civil disobedience against financiers like Citigroup, which has poured more money into fossil fuel expansion than any other bank in the world since 2016. Since June 10, the campaign has organized multiple disruptive civil disobedience actions every single week.

The Quiet, Local Success Of The Israel Divestment Movement

August 18, 2024 Marianne Dhenin, Next City. Organize! BDS Movement, Divestment, Local Government, Palestine, Victory

The United States has historically provided hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign aid to Israel. The flow of taxpayer funds to Israel’s military has only increased since Israeli forces launched an attack on Gaza in October 2023, in which as many as 186,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to an estimate published in The Lancet in July 2024. Beyond the federal dollars funding the ongoing attack on Gaza, there are also investments made on the state and municipal levels to support Israel’s violence against Palestinians. “The ethnic cleansing and horrors that we’re witnessing being carried out by the Israeli government are deeply entangled in material support from the United States, and that happens on multiple levels,” says Jay Saper, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) in New York City.

NYC Protesters Target AIG Over East African Crude Oil Pipeline

July 27, 2024 Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams. Resist! Africa, AIG, Divestment, New York City (NYC), Oil and Gas, Pipelines, Tanzania, Uganda

The "Summer of Heat" continues—both in terms of record-breaking temperatures driven by fossil fuels and a series of nonviolent direct actions targeting Wall Street for its contributions to the climate emergency. After protests last month calling out Citibank for "financing the arsonists," climate campaigners on Friday set their sights on finance and insurance giant AIG for "stubbornly" refusing to join over two dozen other insurers that won't cover the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP). EACOP is set to run nearly 900 miles from Uganda's Lake Albert oilfields to the port of Tanga in Tanzania. Rights groups have sounded the alarm about how the project has devastated the lives and livelihoods of people in its path as well as violence endured by African activists, who have been "kidnapped, arbitrarily arrested, detained, or subjected to different forms of harassment."

Presbyterian Church (USA) Votes To Divest From Israel Bonds

July 3, 2024 Yonat Shimron, Religion News Service. Resist! Anti-Zionism, BDS, Divestment, Israel, Palestine, Presbyterian Church, Zionism

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) voted Monday (July 1) to divest from Israel bonds and begin the process of encouraging two companies it believes are contributing to human rights abuses against Palestinians in the occupied territories to quit their practices. Both votes were wrapped up in other legislation that passed unanimously as part of the biennial gathering of the denomination meeting online and in person in Salt Lake City, Utah (June 30 to July 4). The Presbyterian Church (USA), with about 8,800 churches and 1 million members, is the largest Presbyterian denomination in the U.S. It has been sharply critical of Israel and its policies over Palestinians for decades.

Climate Activists Blockade Citigroup’s Doors With Model Pipeline

June 23, 2024 Keerti Gopal, Scheer Post. Resist! Citigroup, climate crisis, Divestment, Fossil Fuels, Israel, Palestine, Summer of Dissent

New York—Tensions were high outside of Citigroup’s global headquarters on Friday morning as climate activists blockaded the doors for an hour and hundreds of employees waited in the plaza to get to work. The demonstration marked the end of the second week of the “Summer of Heat on Wall Street,” a sustained, direct-action campaign targeting financial institutions, with a particular emphasis on Citi for its robust financing of fossil fuel projects, despite stated commitments to a clean energy transition. According to the Banking on Climate Chaos report from the Rainforest Action Network, an advocacy group, Citigroup is the largest financier of companies that expanded fossil fuel projects last year.

National Trust Under Pressure To Drop Barclays Over Israel, Fossil Fuels

June 23, 2024 The Canary. Resist! Barclays, BDS, Divestment, Fossil Fuel, Israel, Palestine

Fossil Free London activists unfurled a large banner reading ‘National Trust: Protect Nature, Drop Barclays’ across a tower at the iconic Bodiam Castle, East Sussex, on Friday 21 June. the protest was over the organisation’s links to the fossil fuels and arms manufacturer-supporting bank. Bodiam Castle, which was built in 1385 and is famous for its beautiful, moated setting, is one of hundreds of sites owned by the National Trust; the guardian of nature reserves, national parks, coastline, historic buildings and estates across the country. Activists claimed the National Trust were ‘hypocrites’ for banking with Barclays, Europe’s worst funder of fossil fuels since the Paris Agreement, drawing attention to one of the trust’s core aims; to protect nature and climate.

Democratizing Universities Would Supercharge Pro-Palestine Divestment

June 12, 2024 Akin Olla, Waging Nonviolence. Strategize! Communities, Democracy, Divestment, Higher Education, Israel, Palestine, Universities

The pro-Palestinian divestment movement has erupted across the country, after over a decade of bubbling and stirring under the guidance of organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine. Students have built encampments, led walkouts and passed student government resolutions demanding that their universities cease investing their endowments in companies that uphold Israel’s genocidal apartheid system. Some student governments have even passed resolutions preventing their own budgets from being used to benefit Israel’s regime in any way. University of California Davis was the first to do so, blocking off its $20 million budget from genocide-supporting companies.

Is Your City Or State Investing In Israeli Bonds Or Fossil Fuels?

June 11, 2024 Oscar Perry Abello, Next City. Strategize! City Budgets, Divestment, Fossil Fuels, Investment, Israel, Palestine

Divestment doesn’t necessarily have a big, direct economic impact on the target of a divestment campaign, but history has shown divestment can be a powerful tool for galvanizing broader support around causes that might seem distant or foreign. Nobody likes to get caught with their hands in the cookie jar. But until someone digs into the numbers, all of our hands are in more cookie jars than we realize. In Palm Beach County, Florida, the local government outright told county residents about one of the jars they were reaching into together: government bonds issued by the state of Israel. Back in March, Palm Beach County Clerk of the Circuit Court and Comptroller Joseph Abruzzo held a press conference announcing that the county government was the world’s largest investor in “Israel Bonds,” which made up $700 million of the Florida county’s $4.67 billion investment portfolio.

Climate Change Activists Gear Up For A Summer Of Dissent

June 10, 2024 Matthew Rozsa, Salon. Resist! Citibank, climate crisis, Direct Action, Divestment, Summer of Dissent

"We have a series of many events," said Pumarol. "We are planning direct actions throughout the summer." For three months starting on June 10th, they plan on shutting down the headquarter of Citibank, a financial institution that helps fund fossil fuel exploration. They also plan on staging a protest where humans dress as orcas, the iconic cetaceans that have been targeting yachts at least since November. "I think it's been a source of inspiration for many activists. We're also going to have a day where scientists are going to get arrested in front of city headquarters, and we're going to have a day where elders are going to bring their rocking chairs into city headquarters and also plan to get arrested.

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