RESPONSIBLE ENDOWMENTS COALITION www.endowmentethics.org

REC Goes to North Carolina Divestment Convening & Launching of New Responsible Endowment Fund

On October 1st, Natalie Casal and I went to Greensboro, North Carolina for a North Carolina Convening for Divestment and Reinvestment. The event was a gathering of students, alumni, parents, and community members from Guilford College and around North Carolina to discuss the importance of “divesting resources away from systems of oppression and investing in solutions that will bring about true liberation.” This convening was also the first official event to announce the launch of the Fund for a Responsible Guilford, an exciting Responsible Endowments Fund between organizers at Guilford College and REC. 

DEADLINE: Sunday, October 16, 11:59 PM EST.

Fill out this form if you would like to be considered for a student scholarship to attend the 2016 REC Kamayan Dinner, celebrating international solidarity and student power, on Wednesday, October 19, 2016 at May Day Space in Brooklyn.

Applicants will be notified of their decision on Monday, October 17.

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For Immediate Release

September 27th, 2016

Contact: Samir Rohlin Hazboun

Guilfordians for Justice Coalition

301-379-5529

divestguilford@gmail.com

Guilford Coalition Pushes for Divestment

Greensboro, NC – The Guilfordians for Justice Coalition, which is a coalition of community members that includes students, alumni, faculty, and staff, concerned with the college’s financial investments through its endowment, are excited to announce the release of The Fund for a Responsible Guilford.  

Rooting in our love for Guilford we intend to leverage the Responsible Endowment Fund to help the Board of Trustees and college to work towards divesting funds currently invested in the fossil fuel industry, prison-industrial complex, and the occupation of Palestine, and then reinvesting in a more responsible source. We want to see a Guilford that is aligned with our core values that will set an example as an innovative leader. By embracing the global call for divestment and reinvestment Guilford can model for the world what a mission-driven and justice-oriented institution of higher education looks like. We are rooted in our love for Guilford, the critical thinking skills it has reinforced within us and a strong belief that our liberation must leave no one behind.

We are calling for Guilford College donors to invest in a transformative Guilford, and to do so by donating to this fund instead. By doing so donors are sending a message to Guilford College that we see the importance of where our money goes. If Guilford is responsive and agrees to the divestment and reinvestment plan by May 1st, 2017 the college will receive all the funds collected in the fund, to go towards the endowment. Donors to this fund want Guilford to answer the call to justice, as was instilled in us as students, staff and faculty of this institution. However, if the school does not respond to the terms of the fund we are prepared to move the donations in this fund to support the work of student and community organizers working for racial and economic justice and helping to continue the campaign for divestment.

The Guilfordians for Justice Coalition is hosting a convening this coming Saturday, in tandem with Guilford College’s Homecoming, as a way to further the collective education as to why we need to divest from the fossil fuel industry, prisons, and the occupation of Palestine.  Experts from all over the country will be joining us to share their knowledge. The convening will be Saturday October 1st, 9-5pm, at New Garden Friends Meeting located at 801 New Garden Rd, Greensboro, NC.

Tax-deductible donations will be made to the Fund for a Responsible Guilford College, a donor advised fund held at the Triskeles Foundation. You can donate to the fund and learn more at: https://giveresponsibly.nationbuilder.com/guilford  

Triskelesis a public charity in Pennsylvania. For more information about the Triskeles Foundation please visit: triskeles.org.

For more information about the Responsible Endowments Coalition please visit: http://www.endowmentethics.org/

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We are thrilled to share updates on a number of exciting events, projects, and campaigns at REC!

This past summer, REC was able to launch its International Solidarity Program (ISP) to the Philippines with fossil fuel divestment organizers from across the country. Join us on October 19 to hear about the trip in New York City over a traditional Filipino kamayan dinner. We’ll celebrate U.S. student movements, solidarity with international grassroots struggles, and REC’s role supporting the development of U.S. student activists since 2004. RSVP here and get your Kamayan tickets today!  

This September, we are hosting the University Wealth Hoarding & the U.S. Student Debt Crisis: A Report & Roundtable in New York City this October. Tuition at U.S. colleges and universities has climbed to astronomical heights​, forcing millions of young working class people to assume huge amounts of debt for the mere right to compete in living wage job markets​.  What is the ​significance of wealthy endowments in the context of the student debt crisis and inflationary tuition? How should endowments be used to aid this crisis​? What is the impact of university wealth hoarding on the future of higher education? If you’d like to participate, please email us at info@endowmentethics.org .

We are incredibly excited to announce Unconference 2016, which will be taking place in NYC on Oct. 21-23!  This event is the only student-led space focused on fossil fuel and prison divestment, solidarity, and endowment justice.  This convergence will bring together the Fossil Fuel Divestment and Prison Divestment movements to build a foundation for shared tactics and analysis.  Apply today!

To cap off the summer, our signature program, the Summer Organizing Retreat, was the biggest cohort we ever hosted! Student organizers from across North America came together to discuss endowment campaigning and how to build a strong foundation in endowment organizing. Led by trainers from our own Training for Trainers program, participants honed their ability to set demands, facilitate, plan direct actions, create political education modules, and deepen coalition building.

After winning a landmark case, we congratulate the Columbia University graduate students, who may now unionize after the National Labor Relations Board ruled in their favor after a two-year battle.

Also, Nikita Perumal, REC's Summer Organizing intern, wrote about the ways other climate justice organizers can change the current conversation on carbon reserves to shift our demands amidst our recent movement wins. 

Notes on the Recent Department of Justice Decision To Move Not Renew Private Prison Contracts

Photo:  (Reuters/Lucy Nicholson)

The Department of Justice announced on August 18 that it will begin transitioning away from federally contracted private prisons, essentially transitioning around 22,000 individuals currently caged in 13 for-profit facilities to publicly funded cages. This perplexing decision is not entirely unprecedented, as seen in New York and Illinois, which both passed legislation prohibiting the outsourcing of prison maintenance work to private corporations a few years ago. Within the first few hours of the announcement, reactions across the spectrum, and new demands surfaced. In my role as REC’s prison divestment organizer, it’s been hard not to feel a wave of emotion over the news, and still be skeptical about its implications.

So who won?

Winning isn’t one dimensional - we don’t engage in struggle, push for - what some believe are - reformist policies with radical principles and feel like we’ve achieved our end goal. Criminalization and incarceration have been tools for white, capitalist America for years, and although privatization flourished in the early 80s with the creation of GEO and CCA, incarceration and criminalization can be traced back all the way to this country's colonization.

This doesn’t mean that the DOJ’s announcement doesn’t create a real (material) shift, even in the way we think tactically about our work. Nor does it mean that organizations and grassroots groups haven’t been pushing for years to get to the point where profiting off of criminalization is publicly unacceptable or that this decision is completely removed from that pressure. Understanding the spectrum of reactions is important in how we, people fighting against the prison industrial complex in this country, formulate our next steps and work within a number of new possibilities. 

Are you searching for a profession that aligns your personal values with your desire for a career in finance?

Do you feel you need help identifying what roles exist in the impact investing industry and how to get your foot in the door?

We are happy to share that our partners from The SRI Conference on Sustainable, Responsible, Impact Investing are offering scholarships to the 27th Annual SRI Conference. This year, #AllInForImpact takes place at the Hyatt Regency Downtown Denver November 9–11, 2016. Apply at this link by Sept. 18, 2016 for consideration.

Read more about the scholarship.

Looking Beyond Carbon Reserves: the Violence of International Fossil Fuel Extraction

During my summer at REC (in between an organizing retreat, joint projects, and conversations with my incredible coworkers), I spent a large chunk of my time exploring how fossil fuel companies don’t just create climate change—they also perpetuate global violence through the very process of carbon extraction. Along with my findings inevitably comes another realization: we cannot fight for climate justice, or against the human rights abuses of the fossil fuel industry, without also fighting relentlessly against systems of imperialism and neoliberal free trade.

The typical “international” perspective of climate justice goes like this: The countries that are most responsible for climate change are rarely those who feel the brunt of climate impacts—and, vice versa, historically low carbon-emitting communities are the ones that overwhelmingly and disproportionately face the devastation of climate change. These include countries from the Global South and formerly colonized countries–which are disproportionately poorer and often house communities of color. The 52 small island developing states (SIDS), for instance, collectively emit less than 1% of global greenhouse gases, yet are considered canaries in the coal mine for climate injustices like threatened food and water security, potential displacement, the devastation that accompanies intensifying storms, and fundamental threats to land-based identities and cultures.

Reference

info@endowmentethics.org

With heavy hearts, REC sends our condolences and solidarity to the Orlando community, especially the family and friends of the Pulse nightclub victims who were fatally shot on Sunday, June 13. We condemn this horrible massacre of primarily queer/trans people of color in the largest mass shooting the modern United States has ever seen. We grieve with you, we see you, and our hearts are with you.