Divest!

This is an introduction to a five-part series in Sojourners' June 2015 issue about divestment; to read the rest, click here.

IT WASN'T A HUGE surprise last year when Union Seminary announced that it would become the first seminary in the world to divest from fossil fuels. Union, after all, has long been a leader in progressive causes, and President Serene Jones said that “divestment of our endowment from fossil-fuel companies is one small step” toward stopping the catastrophic threat—the “sin”—of climate change.

But a few months later, the divestment movement reached an altogether different level when the Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced that it was moving its money from fossil fuels, starting with the worst carbon polluters, coal and tar sands. The Rockefeller money, of course, came from oil—patriarch John D. Rockefeller was the co-founder of Standard Oil—and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund controls $860 million in assets. All in all, 180 institutions have pledged to divest more than $50 billion to defund climate change—and, as they say, with billions in assets moved, pretty soon you’re talking real money.

Divestment from fossil fuels has become the largest and most visible divestment movement since the efforts to isolate South Africa’s apartheid regime in the 1980s, but it’s far from the only social justice campaign to use the tactic. As the articles in this issue show, activists working on a range of matters are engaging in “move your money” campaigns to supplement—and sometimes magnify the power of—other organizing strategies.

Many of these activists share an assumption about investments and about money in general: How we use our money isn’t a morally neutral question. While the goal isn’t some mythical “purity,” there’s a recognition that investments have moral implications. Investing in something good helps that good thing to happen, and the converse is true as well. That kind of thinking has long affected how people of good will, including many Christians, have chosen to invest—or not invest—their money in everything from alcohol and tobacco to animal testing and military weapons.

Some groups, such as the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, have sought to influence corporate policies by using vehicles such as proxy voting, long-term dialogue, and shareholder resolutions instead of divestment. But even ICCR has acknowledged that “divestment may be appropriate when a company with egregious practices has failed to respond to a long-term engagement.” Tim Brennan, CFO of the Unitarian Universalist Association and a longtime advocate of shareholder activism, encouraged respect for various strategies, including divestment, but with a caveat: “For some, divestment could be an option. But please, not quiet divestment. ... Investors who choose to divest must speak loudly about why they are taking this action.”

Shelley Alpern of Clean Yield Asset Management said that divestment actually strengthens other tactics. “Engagement without divestment is like having laws on the books with no police to [enforce] them,” she said. “Let’s get some teeth.”

One of the goals of divestment activists is to “stigmatize” the targets of their work, to make it clear that the policies or practices are unacceptable and intolerable—in other words, to shame them. In her new book Is Shame Necessary? Jennifer Jacquet quotes Martin Luther King Jr.’s rationale for nonviolent resistance: “Noncooperation and boycotts are not ends themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent.” Divestment has already contributed to that awakening—not only in pointing out immorality in the actions of “opponents,” but in encouraging all of us to invest in a better future.

—The Editors