The TIAA-CREF Divestment Campaign
In the early 1790s, English abolitionists began to boycott “slave sugar,” sugar that had been produced by African slaves. Sales of slave sugar were cut in half, and sales of sugar that had been produced by “freemen” increased 10 times. This and many other tactics eventually ended the English slave trade. Recall, too, the Montgomery bus boycott in the United States to promote civil rights in the 1960s and the global movement to end apartheid in South Africa primarily in the 1980s. Boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) have a long history as a tool for individuals and communities working for social justice. BDS are particularly useful when members of civil society come to the conclusion that their governments cannot be relied on to do the right thing without a push from a broad, organized movement.
We have come to just such a moment in the case of Israel’s policies toward Palestine, enabled by the support of the United States.
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is a grassroots membership organization, inspired by Jewish tradition, employing the principles of equality, human rights, and international law as the basis of our work for freedom and security for all the people of Palestine and Israel. As Americans, our primary goal has been to change U.S. foreign policy, as for decades the U.S. government has unconditionally backed Israeli policies, regardless of human rights and international law violations. Our government does not have the will or interest to change these policies. In recent months, two events in particular have reinforced this analysis.
Al Jazeera’s release of the Palestine Papers—hundreds of leaked files documenting the U.S./Israeli/Palestinian Authority (PA) negotiations—revealed that the 19-year “peace process” is bankrupt. The U.S. government is not an honest broker, Israel is not willing to compromise, and the PA is too weak to fight for Palestinian rights. The PA was willing to give up part of the West Bank, an enormous concession Israel still did not accept. Throughout two decades of negotiating, Israeli settlements in the West Bank have grown enormously, creating de facto bantustans, or “homelands,” that make a two-state solution hard to imagine.
In February, the U.S. government vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine. The United States is unwilling to put conditions on the enormous amount of military aid Israel receives or to use other tools at its disposal to stop Israel from violating international law, human rights, and U.S. policies. Obama stood in Cairo in June 2009 and said that settlements must end—yet he has proven that he believes in words, not action.
The only way to right this inequity is a movement to force our congressional representatives and the U.S. government to realize that the U.S. public no longer accepts blind support of Israel’s policies. Since Israel’s 2008–2009 assault on Gaza, the movement for BDS initiated by Palestinian civil society in 2005 has been gaining strength in the United States, and the 2010 attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla gave it further momentum. The BDS movement is a nonviolent response to the ongoing structural violence of Israel’s relationship to Palestinians. It allows people all over the world to peacefully act on their values.
In support of that movement, JVP has initiated a divestment campaign to get one of the largest U.S. pension funds, TIAA-CREF, to divest from companies profiting from the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
TIAA-CREF serves education and healthcare professionals, academics, social workers, artists, and clergy. The company’s tag line is “finance for the greater good” because it claims to pay special attention to the ethics of retirement investing. About two years ago, it divested from several companies doing business in Sudan so as not to profit from genocide. There is both a precedent and stated value system within TIAA-CREF that should make divestment from the Israeli occupation an easy sell.
As one of the largest U.S. companies of its kind, TIAA-CREF is everywhere, with more than 60 offices throughout the country. This means that there are opportunities in almost every local community to organize, while building the national campaign. For example, actions were held in December at 23 TIAA-CREF offices around the country—in large cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago and in smaller cities like Durham, NC; Iowa City, IA; and Princeton, NJ. It would be an enormous victory for the movement if TIAA-CREF did divest. But equally important is the opportunity for education, discussion, and movement building that this campaign provides.
Although TIAA-CREF is invested in more than 30 companies that profit from the occupation, JVP is focusing on those five involved in the most egregious violations of human rights, which also help tell the story of the occupation:
*Caterpillar, Inc.: a U.S. company that provides mechanized bulldozers, which are used to destroy homes and orchards, and which killed activist Rachel Corrie in 2003;
*Motorola Solutions, Inc.: a U.S. company that provides surveillance equipment used around settlements in the West Bank and along the separation wall;
*Veolia Environnement S.A.: a French company that operates a landfill in the West Bank, bus services on a road built on Palestinian land for Israeli use only, and a light rail system under construction that would connect West Jerusalem to the ring of settlements around it;
*Elbit Systems Ltd.: an Israeli company that provides drones to the Israeli army and surveillance and electronics equipment along the separation wall (and provides similar services along the wall between Arizona and Mexico); and
*Northrup Grumman Corporation, a U.S. company whose missiles and parts are used extensively in attacks on Gaza by the Israeli army.
TIAA-CREF’s social choice fund was designed so that people who don’t want their retirement funds to be invested in companies with bad labor, environmental, or human rights records can invest in a fund that may get slightly lower returns on investment, but that they can feel better about investing in. However, because the social choice fund includes Caterpillar and Motorola, people invested in these funds have no way to pursue an “occupation-free” retirement.
JVP launched the campaign in June 2010 with more than 280 public figures supporting it, and now more than 22,000 people have signed the petition to TIAA-CREF. JVP is not asking that anyone divest from TIAA-CREF. In fact, the power of shareholders themselves will put the most pressure on TIAA-CREF to changes its investments.
There are many inventive actions going on across the country in support of the campaign. For example, the Arizona JVP chapter teamed up with immigrant rights group No Mas Muertes/No More Deaths to talk about the similarities between the wall in Palestine and the one between Arizona and Mexico, both of which use Elbit-supplied components. In the Twin Cities, the campaign will focus on Veolia, one of the companies that collect garbage. When TIAA-CREF CEO Roger Ferguson visited the campus of UMass-Boston, campaigners quickly organized to get 80 faculty members to sign a letter asking why TIAA-CREF is investing in the targeted companies and then presented it to him during convocation.
This spring, the national campaign is focusing on increasing the number of signatures on the petition, especially those who use TIAA-CREF. A group of shareholders has proposed a shareholder’s resolution in support of the campaign, which TIAA-CREF is challenging at the Securities and Exchange Commission. It is disturbing to see TIAA-CREF, which says it values shareholder democracy and corporate transparency, trying to squash the resolution. Whether or not the resolution ends up on the ballot, the next big day of action will be during TIAA-CREF’s annual meeting in July.
The TIAA-CREF boycott and divestment campaign is one of many such campaigns around the country that are raising awareness and taking action in support of the Palestinian struggle for human rights and equality. This question is becoming one of the civil rights issues of our time.
