→ Volunteer for the divestment campaign
The CalPERS Campaign has launched!
The CalPERS campaign is gathering steam. The California Public Employees Retirement System is the largest public pension fund in the country, managing $250 billion in assets and investing $12 billion in carbon companies targeted by Go Fossil Free.
JOIN US!
We need you and your great ideas as we launch outreach, communications, letter writing, petitioning, and other actions.
We need:
- People passionate about divestment
- Active or retired CalPERS members
- People with research, organizing, writing, web based campaigning, and web site development skills
- People knowledgeable about finance or investing
Help us build our network of contacts for the campaign.
If you know or can contact CalPERS members (one or many!), unions that represent CalPERS members, or elected official at the local or state level, we need to hear from you. All contacts help.
Contact: Marti Roach, martiroach@sbcglobal.net, 925-376-3853 to volunteer or share contacts helpful to us.
Spread the word!
Divestment at the Peralta Sustainability Fair
The divestment team had a great time at the Peralta Community Colleges sustainability fair at Laney College on April 25. There was a good crowd of students and faculty strolling past the many booths, listening to the live music and sampling delicious foods by local caterers. The sun even came out to shine on our efforts.
We got a lot of traffic at our divestment booth, mainly students but also faculty and other staff. Some professors encouraged students to attend by offering extra credit to those who collected stickers from people at the various booths. This gentle bribery resulted in many nice conversations and we collected over 200 signatures on our Peralta divestment petition.
A big round of applause to Nancy Yates and Deborah Silvey of the Peralta divestment group, who with Robert Silvey put all this together. We also had the invaluable help of Ophir and Victoria, two students from the UC Berkeley divestment campaign, who joined us, grabbed clipboards and went through the fair holding conversations and looking for future leaders of the divestment campaign at Peralta.
San Francisco Board of Supervisors Unanimously Pass Resolution Urging Fossil Fuel Divestment
Resolution urges the city’s retirement system to divest over $583 million from the fossil fuel industry
In San Francisco, the divestment campaign was led by 350 Bay Area and the national 350.org campaign and supported by groups including SEIU 1021, SF Bay Chapter of the Sierra Club, Rainforest Action Network, Center for Biological Diverstiy, and more.
Our divestment goal is the sale of stock and bonds from the
200 top oil, gas, and coal companies.
We are working with colleges, universities, public pension funds, cities, and faith based organizations. We want them to immediately freeze any new investment in fossil fuel companies and divest within 5 years.
We can help investors understand that, as we make the inevitable transition to a low-carbon world, their fossil fuel investments will plunge. Analysts such as businessman/environmentalist Paul Gilding point out that what was primarily an ecological issue is now an economic one.
We will keep building the pressure through grassroots activism until these companies:
- Stop exploring for new fossil energy
- Stop lobbying against the clean energy transition
- Pledge to keep 80% of their reserves underground
We’re joining students fighting for their future at over 300 campuses around the country.
Our campaigns
We work with specific organizations for divestment. Our primary campaigns currently are CalPERS (the largest public pension fund in the country, with $11 billion invested in the 200 worst fossil fuel companies), Peralta Community Colleges, and the San Francisco Pension Fund. We're also working with the student divestment campaigns at UC Berkeley and San Francisco State.We're meeting with trustees, researching investment portfolios, writing resolutions and reaching out to student activists.
Other campaigns are in the works—stay tuned.
We need all kinds of help, including but not limited to researching investment portfolios and planning creative street theater. Please join us!
For more information, contact Judy Pope.
Next meeting on July 16! RSVP Here
