BDS Victory: TIAA-CREF Removes CAT from their SRI Fund!

This is a major victory! From our partners at WE DIVEST:

Caterpillar Removed from TIAA-CREF’s Social Choice Funds

Victory for Pro-divestment Advocates

June 21, 2012- Pension fund giant TIAA-CREF has removed Caterpillar, Inc. from its Social Choice Funds portfolio. As of May 1, 2012, financial data posted on TIAA-CREF’s website valued Social Choice Funds shares in Caterpillar at $72,943,861. Today it is zero.

“We applaud this decision,” said Rabbi Alissa Wise, Director of Campaigns at Jewish Voice for Peace and National Coordinator of the We Divest Campaign (www.wedivest.org). “It’s long past time that TIAA-CREF began living up to its motto of ‘Financial Services for the Greater Good’ when it comes to the people of Israel and Palestine.”

Since 2010, We Divest has been urging TIAA-CREF to drop Caterpillar and other companies profiting from and facilitating Israel’s 45-year-old military occupation and colonization of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip.

“By selling weaponized bulldozers to Israel, Caterpillar is complicit in Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinian human rights,” said Rabbi Wise. “We’re glad to see that the socially responsible investment community appears to be recognizing this and is starting to take appropriate action.”

Caterpillar has come under increasing criticism from human rights organizations in recent years for continuing to supply bulldozers to Israel, which uses them to demolish Palestinian civilian homes and destroy crops and agricultural land in the occupied territories, and to build illegal, Jewish-only settlements on Palestinian land.

In the coming weeks, many will be watching the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly taking place in Pittsburgh, where church commissioners will vote on a motion to divest from Caterpillar and two other companies, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett-Packard, that remain in TIAA-CREF’s Social Choice Funds.

Last month, Friends Fiduciary, a Quaker institution, divested $900,000 worth of shares in Caterpillar stating: “We are uncomfortable defending our position on this stock.”

What Others are  Saying

Omar Barghouti, Palestinian human rights activist and founding member of the BDS movement said, “CAT is out of the bag of TIAA-CREF’s socially responsible companies thanks to the inspiring campaign waged by JVP and its partners, with vision, persistence and tactical skillfulness. Palestinian civil society, represented by the BDS National Committee (BNC), deeply appreciates these efforts and believes that more pressure will ultimately convince TIAA-CREF to fulfill its basic moral obligation to finally divest from CAT and all other corporations that are complicit in Israel’s grave and escalating violations of international law and human rights.”

Cindy and Craig Corrie, Rachel Corrie’s parents said, “For nearly a decade, we have witnessed human rights abuses committed with Caterpillar equipment in the West Bank and Gaza and have joined thousands who have asked the company to stop supporting these actions.  We are hugely gratified that TIAA-CREF has taken this step.  When governments and corporations avoid responsibility, we must refuse to profit from their abuses. Our family salutes and thanks TIAA-CREF for this decision that moves all of us closer to accountability.”

Student groups at Evergreen have endorsed a CAT-boycott on campus

This is a significant victory for Evergreen State College where there has been a campaign to boycott and divest from Caterpillar for several years. Evergreen student Rachel Corrie was crushed to death by a Caterpillar D9 weaponized bulldozer in Rafah, Gaza Strip, as she attempted to prevent the illegal demolition of a Palestinian family's home in 2003. Up until today, Evergreen State College faculty whose retirement funds are administered by TIAA-CREF, including many of Rachel's teachers and friends, had no investment options that excluded the corporation that was complicit in her death.

In 2010, the Evergreen student body voted in a landslide victory (71.8%) to declare Evergreen a CAT-Free zone and to endorsed a boycott of Caterpillar Inc. products on campus.

Evergreen Bike Shop for CATerpillar Boycott!

The Evergreen State College Bike Shop was spotted with the increasingly ubiquitous CAT-FREE ZONE poster!

TESC WRC for a CAT Boycott!

Evergreen State College's Women's Resource Center supports the 2010 student body vote to Boycott CATerpillar!

OccupyOakland GA Endorses BDS, Remembers Evergreen Student Rachel Corrie

This is big news.

Via Mondoweiss:

Last Wednesday at the amphitheatre in front of Oakland’s city hall, occupiers endorsed Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against the state of Israel in a 135-to-one vote. Oakland’s occupiers have recently experienced chemical dispersants, and a mass arrest, which took place over the weekend. Among those arrested was Noura Khouri, the Palestinian organizer who initiated the BDS proposal. . .

Khouri, along with co-presenters Basima Sisemore and Deppen Webber, also touched on the use of chemical dispersants by the Oakland Police Department (OPD) and the Israeli military. "The same tear gas that is being used on the streets here against you all is being used in Palestine," said Sisemore. And, in fact, a portion of the occupiers at GA had experienced tear gas during the weekend’s "move-in day" actions, a failed attempt to occupy a vacant building. Throughout the march the OPD fired tear gas, rubber-coated bullets, flash-booms, and smoke grenades, on protesters, including children and elderly. One producer of these “non-lethal” weapons is Defense Technology, which is also used by the Israeli military. . .

Evergreen student Rachel Corrie, murdered in 2003 by the Israeli Defense Forces while protecting a house from demolition was counted as an inspiration for the resolution.

However, occupiers did not need much convincing on why BDS should be endorsed. During comments, an occupier named Alessandro said, "I am fully in support of this proposal," continuing, "U.S. imperialism is the biggest oppression in the entire world and Israel is their number one client." This was echoed by another who received an ovation for stating "I am indebted to Rachel Corrie for giving me the courage to stand in solidarity with oppressed people." 

TESC Commencement Speaker Angela Davis Endorses Divestment

This past spring at the 2011 Evergreen State College graduation ceremony, commencement speaker Dr. Angela Davis endorsed efforts by students and alumni at Evergreen to work in resistance to "a 21st century resistance to Israeli apartheid" by pushing for campus divestment. She also made a prominent commendation of Rachel Corrie's legacy on the Evergreen campus.

A full transcript of Dr. Davis' remarks can be found at Works in Progress.

Dr. Angela Davis:

When I accepted the invitation to speak at your commencement, I responded in the affirmative because I wanted to associate myself with a college that has a deeply progressive tradition. I wanted to associate myself with students, faculty and workers who defend the integrity of the environment, its resources, its plants, its human and its non-human animals, and who encourage others to engage in sustainable living practices.

I wanted to associate myself with an institution that continues to defend the spirit and legacy of one of the most prominent members of its community, Rachel Corrie. And I think that each graduating class should take a moment and reflect on her courage her generosity.

And I'm happy to hear that students and faculty on this campus, in the context of a 21st century resistance to Israeli apartheid, are following those who stood up against South African apartheid and are raising the demand for divestment.

This is a burgeoning movement, and you here at the Evergreen State College have the opportunity to provide progressive leadership to the rest of the country. As the anti-South African apartheid campaign was spurred on by those universities that divested early on, Michigan State University, in 1978 I believe, Columbia University, the University of Wisconsin. And of course, eventually virtually every school in the country followed their leadership.

Your education has provided you with tools to recognize that solidarity with progressive Palestinian people is also solidarity with progressive Jewish people in Israel.

And I should point out that I attended a university as an undergraduate which was founded in the same year as the state of Israel, Brandeis University, the majority of whose students were Jewish. And it was there as an undergraduate with my Jewish classmates that I learned how to express solidarity for Palestinian people. I will never forget that.

Remember also that, while everyone now praises Nelson Mandela and expresses joy that the people of South Africa were finally able to defeat apartheid, Mandela was not always recognized as this legendary defender of democracy. In fact, he was represented initially as a pariah, as a terrorist. Amnesty International did not initially support him because of his association with Umkhonto we Sizwe. So I want us to recall that history, to think about it in a complicated way, and to be aware of the important role South Africa is playing in calling for the support of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement.

And I just want to share with you a very moving statement by Archbishop Tutu, who recently sent a message to the mayor of a town in Australia. The city council of that town decided to divest, and received a great deal of criticism as a result.

"Dear Mayor Fiona Byrne of Marrickville, New South Wales, Australia

"We in South Africa, who both suffered under apartheid and defeated it, have the moral right and responsibility to name and shame institutionalized separation, exclusion, and domination by one ethnic group over others. In my own eyes, I have seen how the Palestinians are oppressed, disposed, and exiled. We call on all our Jewish and Israeli sisters and brothers to oppose the Occupation and work for equality, justice, and peace between the river and the sea in the same way that so many South African whites took risk to oppose the crime of Apartheid."

And he concludes by saying, "Sometimes taking a public stand for what is ethical and right brings cost, but social justice on a local or global scale requires faith and courage."

If there is a skill we all need to acquire as we attempt to move forward in the 21st century, it is the ability to identity and act on an awareness of the links and connections across the range of issues we identify as crucial for democratic agendas today.

And so, those of us who call for freedom for Palestine acknowledge the connections between the attacks on the Palestinians in their own country and the racist discourse that relies on unquestioned acceptance of Islamophobia, which in turn is interpreted as necessary for the success of what has been represented as a global war on terror.

Evergreen Student Groups Support CAT Boycott

Several on-campus groups at The Evergreen State College have recently endorsed a democratically student-mandated boycott of all Caterpillar Inc. products on campus, in protest of that corporations complicity in the military occupation of Palestine and the March 2003 murder of Evergreen student Rachel Corrie, by hanging CAT-FREE ZONE posters in their meeting spaces and offices.

Mideast Solidarity Project

Hip Hop Congress

Latin American Solidarity Organization & Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador

Student Art Gallery

Fiber Arts Club

Student-Run Cafe The Flaming Eggplant