This authorizes the eboard to call a stand up strike similar to UAW's autoworkers strike last year. Our initial demands include amnesty for all students and workers who are facing any disciplinary action for protest, divestment from "weapons manufacturers, military contractors, and companies profiting from Israel's war on Gaza," disclosure of all investments, and the ability for researchers to opt out from funding from sources tied to the military or oppression of Palestinians (including a transitional fund for those people).
This strike is in response to our employer first allowing a vigilante mob to brutalize our students and workers, and then calling the police to further brutalize them the following night. Our union is responding to a pattern of employer violence that's as old as unions themselves, allying with police-aligned vigilantes to chill and crush organizing.
About 20%.
"UC investments in entities with ties to weapons makers, #Israel, #Blackrock, #Blackstone and 24 other companies targeted by divestment proponents amount to about $32 billion of #UC's $175 billion...
More than 200 authors, including Naomi Klein and Sally Rooney, have signed a letter calling for increased pressure on investment management firm Baillie Gifford – sponsors of the Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction – to divest “from companies that profit from Israeli apartheid, occupation and genocide”.
My institution - the University of Toronto - just released a remarkably bland statement on the student encampment. It basically says: we know emotions are running high, but please give us time - admin and students are talking. I have no inside information, but on the face of it at least, this is encouraging.
The university [Trinity College Dublin] said it “will complete a divestment from investments in Israeli companies that have activities in the occupied Palestinian Territory and appear on the UN blacklist in this regard”.
“There are decades where nothing happens and weeks where decades happen. 5 days is all it took for @tcddublin to commit to fully divesting from Israel.”
Laszlo Molnarfi, president of the university’s student union and organiser of the protests @palestine #TCDublin #divestment
BREAKING: super proud and excited to share that our formidable students were not only amongst the first to start a #Palestine#Gaza occupation back in February - the occupation has now been resolved in the following agreement! There will be Palestine scholarships, a review of investments, and more!
"Evergreen State College to explore Israel divestment after deal with students"
"Protesters at The Evergreen State College in #Olympia agreed to remove their week-old encampment Tuesday night after striking a deal with administrators that includes the school publicly calling for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war and exploring divestment from companies that profit from 'the occupation of Palestinian territories.'"
Students at my institution - the University of Toronto - have joined others across the continent in establishing an encampment on campus. Having been rebuffed by the administration in early April, the students continue to call "on the post-secondary institution to divest from assets that 'sustain Israeli apartheid, occupation and illegal settlement of Palestine.'"
Curious about #university#divestment movements, I poked around student newspaper archives today. While some discussion of South Africa took place at the U. of #Toronto earlier, 1983 looks like the moment when it took off. However, this relatively well-known case wasn't the first to garner attention at UofT and other Canadian universities (notably U. of Winnipeg). That honour seems to go to Noranda, a mining company heavily involved in Pinochet's Chile. #BDS#histodons 1/ https://archive.org/details/varsity
Students at #McGill University, where the largest camp currently is, seem to have focused initially on South Africa. While the beginnings of the movement there look to have taken place around the same time as at UofT, the main student newspaper (the McGill Daily) includes far more material on divestment from an earlier date (1980). 2/
All of this makes me want to do more university history, especially to get a better handle on how institutions (especially these two - McGill and UofT) shifted from a more-or-less hand-to-mouth existence (where they were in the mid-19th century, the period in which I know their history best), to the endowment-toting behemoths they've become. I've got reading to do! 3/
The case for prosecuting fossil fuel companies for homicide
"In today’s thinking, tort law—the law of civil wrongs—seeks economically efficient outcomes: The question is about whether one party should give another some money. Criminal law, by contrast, is concerned with society’s fundamental values—with morality. It answers whether conduct is permissible or forbidden. Where tort law prices misconduct, criminal law prohibits it.
"Of the files released Tuesday, many show the extraordinary lengths energy giants have gone to in order to maintain public support for the oil industry — a major employer that’s also one of the nation’s top corporate #climate polluters.
Companies have acknowledged, then flat-out ignored, stark warnings about the fate of the planet in relation to their activities."
Also: Funding research, fighting #divestment at top universities.