May, 07 2021, 12:00am EDT
Global Protests Target Banks Funding Line 3 Tar Sands Pipeline
Today across 8 countries, 4 continents, and 50 U.S. cities, hundreds of climate and Indigenous rights activists are protesting 20 banks that have backed loans for Enbridge, the company constructing the Line 3 tar sands pipeline through Anishinaabe territory in Minnesota. The protests feature elaborate and artful displays such as a body mural in Seattle spelling "Defund Line 3," a fake oil spill in New York, a large floating banner display in Chicago, a fake oil spill and giant dance party in D.C., and a street mural in San Francisco.
WASHINGTON
Today across 8 countries, 4 continents, and 50 U.S. cities, hundreds of climate and Indigenous rights activists are protesting 20 banks that have backed loans for Enbridge, the company constructing the Line 3 tar sands pipeline through Anishinaabe territory in Minnesota. The protests feature elaborate and artful displays such as a body mural in Seattle spelling "Defund Line 3," a fake oil spill in New York, a large floating banner display in Chicago, a fake oil spill and giant dance party in D.C., and a street mural in San Francisco. Activists also effectively shut down branches of the 20 target banks in San Francisco, Seattle, London and others protested outside of branches in Japan, Switzerland, Sierra Leone, Costa Rica, the Holland, France and Canada.
"It [Line 3] violates Indigenous rights of the Anishinaabe people and their right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent," said Stop the Money Pipeline Communications Coordinator Jackie Fielder in a Friday segement on Democracy Now! Actor Mark Ruffalo and Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib both tweeted in support of the #DefundLine3 actions.
The protests are a part of Stop the Money Pipeline's #DefundLine3 Global Day of Action and come after Enbridge secured a three-year $1.0 billion Sustainability Linked Credit Facility with CIBC, Scotiabank (Bank of Nova Scotia), Bank of Montreal (BMO Capital Markets), RBC Capital Markets and TD Securities. As of November 2020, these banks are also the biggest funders of Enbridge, having dedicated $48.45 billion to the company from 2016 to 2020 - including $9.11 billion in 2020 alone. The details of what makes the new credit facility "sustainability-linked" have not been disclosed. On May 6, a day ahead of the actions, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on international lending agencies to stop financing major fossil fuel projects, which he said are no longer economic investments. Three tribal nations--the Red Lake Nation, White Earth Nation, and Mille Lacs Bands of Ojibwe--are suing to stop the pipeline in court, arguing that it violates their treaty rights.
According to Enbridge's Environmental Impact Statement, Line 3 would result in an additional 193 million tons of greenhouse gas being released into the atmosphere each year. According to one study, Line 3 would result in as much additional greenhouse gas being released into the atmosphere as the building of fifty new coal-fired power plants. Already, Enbridge is investigating claims of human trafficking after state documents obtained by the Minnesota Reformer show that the Violence Intervention Project in Thief River Falls requested roughly $250 for hotel rooms for at least two women who say they were assaulted by pipeline workers.
Key permits for the pipeline were granted to Enbridge by the Trump Administration weeks before Trump left office. Critically, the tide is turning on these destructive projects: President Biden canceled the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office, and Governor Whitmer of Michigan recently ordered a shutdown of Enbridge's Line 5.
The protests are part of an ongoing campaign demanding that financial institutions stop financing climate chaos and violations of Indigenous rights. More than 250 people have now been arrested for taking action to stop the construction of Line 3. Since the #DefundLine3 campaign launched in February 2021, activists have sent more than 700,000 emails and 7,000 calendar invites to bank executives, protested at bank branches in 16 states, and made more than 3,000 phone calls, demanding that financial institutions stop funding Line 3.
The world's biggest 60 banks have provided $3.8 trillion of financing for fossil fuel companies since the Paris climate deal in 2015, according to a report by a coalition of NGOs, even though a significant proportion of existing reserves must remain in the ground if global heating is to remain below 2C, the main Paris target.
Participating organizations are a part of the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition, a coalition of over 150 organizations focused on holding the financial backers of climate chaos accountable. www.stopthemoneypipeline.com
Simone Senogles, Red Lake Anishinaabe Citizen, Organizer for Indigenous Environmental Network: "No amount of greenwashing and PR can absolve these banks from violating indigenous rights and the desolation of Mother Earth. By giving credit lines to Enbridge these institutions are giving the oil company a blank check to attack Anishinaabe people, steal our lands, and further guide this planet into climate chaos. Those who financially back Enbridge are directly implicated in its crimes. To put it bluntly, blood is on their hands."
Bill McKibben, founder 350.org:"Let's just say it straight. These banks are trying to profit off the end of the world, and the ongoing desecration of Indigenous land. History will judge them for it, but we're trying to speed up the process."
Matt Remle, Lakota, Co-Founder of Mazaska Talks: "The Indian wars never ended. Instead of mining for gold, they're drilling for oil and gas. Instead of laying railroad tracks through tribal hunting, fishing and gathering grounds, they're laying pipelines. Wall Street financed Westward expansion and manifest destiny. Wall Street is financing violations against treaty rights and the climate crisis. Tribal opposition and calls for upholding Tribal treaty rights continues to be met with indifference and State sanctioned repression. Settler colonization never ended. Despite this our peoples continue to resist. It would serve the broader population well to understand that our fight is their fight."
Moira Birss, Climate and Finance Director at Amazon Watch: "Wall Street may think it can keep profiting off disrespect for Indigenous rights and desecration of the natural world, but it needs to think again. From the Kichwa in the Amazon to the Anishinaabe in Minnesota, Indigenous peoples and their allies are ramping up resistance, and we will hold accountable the financial enablers of this destruction."
Carroll Muffett, President, Center for International Environmental Law (Washington, DC/Geneva, Switzerland) "Against the backdrop of rising climate chaos, the continued bankrolling of Line 3 and similar oil and gas infrastructure worldwide is fueling gross and systemic violations of human rights and Indigenous Peoples' rights at a global scale. It's time for the big banks to recognize that they can and will be held accountable for their complicity in those violations."
Osprey Orielle Lake, Executive Director, Women's Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN): "Financial institutions must be held accountable for their role in financing the destruction of the climate, the violation of Indigenous rights, escalating harms to public health during a pandemic, and increased rates of violence toward Indigenous women living near 'man camps' associated with pipeline construction. In solidarity with Indigenous leaders we are calling for fossil fuel divestment to protect the water and climate, and the health and survival of Indigenous communities. As multiple crises in 2021 proliferate, business as usual must not and cannot continue. Now is the time for financial institutions to align with the Paris Agreement, respect human rights, divest from Line 3 and planet-wrecking companies and instead invest in our communities, renewable energy and a regenerative economy. There is no time to lose!"
Alec Connon, Stop the Money Pipeline, Coalition Co-coordinator: "Nearly every major US bank has now promised that they will align their business with the Paris Agreement. But the fact that those exact same banks are continuing to bankroll a tar sands oil pipeline that is completely incompatible with the Paris Agreement and curtailing climate chaos shows just how hollow their promises are."
Amara Jones- Youth Emergency Auxiliary Service-Sierra Leone: "With current carbon emission rates, we are emitting more carbon than the Earth can properly sequester. Thus, we need solutions that will help the Earth speed up its sequestration process. To restore healthy levels of CO2, we need to sequester one trillion tons of carbon dioxide."
Leila Mimmack, Fossil Free London: "Today, Londoners are standing with the water protectors and activists who have been relentlessly campaigning against Line 3. We want to bring the voices that have been protesting this destructive pipeline to the doorsteps of these banks in London's financial hub. Billions of dollars have been invested into Line 3 and these institutions are complicit in crushing indigenous treaty rights and the further locking in of the climate crisis. We stand in solidarity calling out these banks to Defund Line 3."
The Stop the Money Pipeline coalition is over 160 organizations strong holding the financial backers of climate chaos accountable.
LATEST NEWS
Disgust Greets White House Correspondents' Dinner as Israel Kills Journalists in Gaza
"To sit and schmooze with the president while he sends billions of dollars in weapons to Israel to kill their colleagues in Gaza is unethical and immoral."
Apr 27, 2024
On Saturday night, U.S. reporters and government officials—including President Joe Biden—will gather at the Washington Hilton Hotel for the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner, a glitzy, humor-filled affair that has faced mounting boycott calls in recent weeks as Palestinian journalists in Gaza are targeted and killed by the Israeli military in appalling numbers.
Earlier this month, dozens of Palestinian journalists urged their American colleagues to spurn the invite-only event "as an act of solidarity with us—your fellow journalists—as well as with the millions of Palestinians currently being starved in Gaza due to the Biden administration's continued political, financial, and military backing of Israel."
One journalist, Mehdi Hasan of Zeteo, has heeded the call.
"I have attended the White House Correspondents' Dinner for the past two years," Hasan, a former MSNBC host, wrote on social media Saturday, hours before the event. "I decided not to attend today's dinner (which, to be clear, is hosted by D.C. journalists not the White House) in solidarity with under-fire Palestinian journalists in Gaza who have called for a boycott."
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 97 media workers—92 of them Palestinian—have been killed in Gaza, Israel, and Lebanon since October 7. The Palestinian Journalist Syndicate puts the number higher at 125.
"Israel has killed over 10% of our colleagues," said Shuruq As'ad, director of the Palestine Journalism Hub and supporter of calls to boycott the White House Correspondents' Dinner, which is hosted by the White House Correspondents' Association.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), an organization representing more than 600,000 media workers across 146 countries, endorsed the boycott push on Saturday, as did the National Writers Union (NWU).
"More than 100 journalists and media workers have been killed in the past six months of Israel's war on Gaza, backed by the United States government," NWU said in a statement. "As a union of journalists and media workers who strive for truth, we refuse to normalize genocide. Stand with journalists in Gaza and amplify the call for a boycott."
Israel's assault on Gaza, which has been fueled by U.S. weapons and diplomatic support, is the deadliest conflict for journalists in decades. Last year, roughly 75% of the journalists killed globally were killed by Israeli forces.
Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, has lost five family members to Israeli airstrikes, including his 27-year-old son Hamza, who was also a journalist.
"To dine with him as he allows Palestinians to die of starvation by cutting off funding to critical humanitarian aid is despicable."
Press freedom groups have accused the Biden White House of failing to do enough to stop the Israeli military from targeting members of the media, who continue to risk their lives to show the world the devastation Israel is inflicting in Gaza.
"The Biden administration has been all talk when it comes to journalists killed by the Israel Defense Forces," Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said earlier this year. "The Biden administration says it cares deeply about journalists' freedom to cover the war but has failed to demand Israel ensure journalists' safety or hold it accountable when it doesn't."
The New York Timesreported that in addition to the jokes, Biden is "expected to issue a more serious warning at a time when journalists around the world are being jailed or detained more frequently for doing their job."
But it remains to be seen whether the president will mention Gaza journalists specifically.
President Biden will address the White House Correspondents Dinner tonight. It’s expected that’ll he’ll mention threats to journalists around the world. Will he mention Israel’s murder of Shireen Abu Aqlah & the scores of Palestinian journalists murdered in Gaza? Probably not. pic.twitter.com/nA6M2t9nK9
— James J. Zogby (@jjz1600) April 27, 2024
Protests are expected outside the dinner's venue, but as NBC Newsreported, "protests inside the event itself are much less common and perhaps unprecedented, given the tight security."
"People involved in organizing the protests said they knew of no plans to try to infiltrate the exclusive invite-only dinner," the outlet added. (Kelly O'Donnell, NBC's senior White House correspondent, is presiding over this year's dinner.)
Sandra Tamari, executive director of the Adalah Justice Project, which helped organize the letter calling for a boycott of Saturday's dinner, said it's grotesque for reporters who claim to be committed to a free press to pal around with members of an administration that is aiding deadly attacks on journalists in Gaza.
"To sit and schmooze with the president while he sends billions of dollars in weapons to Israel to kill their colleagues in Gaza is unethical and immoral," said Sandra Tamari, executive director of Adalah Justice Project, which helped organize the letter calling for a boycott of Saturday's dinner. "To dine with him as he allows Palestinians to die of starvation by cutting off funding to critical humanitarian aid is despicable."
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Columbia Climate School Alumni Slam 'Violent Repression' of Gaza Solidarity Protests
"As Columbia moves in lockstep with authoritarian assaults on democracy by unilaterally crushing dissent, it pours fuel on the flames of a burning planet."
Apr 27, 2024
Alumni of Columbia's Climate School published an open letter on Friday condemning the university's leadership for sanctioning a violent crackdown on campus Gaza protests, arguing that attempts to repress dissent against Israel's assault resemble and fuel "the irredeemable rising repression and surveillance against climate activists worldwide."
"We are beyond alarmed that Columbia is fomenting the same rising fascism that obstructs multilateral climate negotiations," reads the letter, which was directed at Columbia president Minouche Shafik and Barnard College president Laura Rosenbury.
"As Columbia moves in lockstep with authoritarian assaults on democracy by unilaterally crushing dissent, it pours fuel on the flames of a burning planet," continues the letter, which can be read in full below.
The letter was released as a campus oversight panel criticized Shafik's administration over its decision to send in New York City Police Department officers last week to arrest more than 100 peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
"After a two-hour meeting on Friday," Reutersreported, "the Columbia University Senate approved a resolution that Shafik's administration had undermined academic freedom and disregarded the privacy and due process rights of students and faculty members by calling in the police and shutting down the protest."
Alumni of Columbia's graduate Climate School join in protest over calling the police on demonstrators, arguing that "Columbia is fomenting the same rising fascism that obstructs multilateral climate negotiations." https://t.co/5XU0ywJb2O
— Bill McKibben (@billmckibben) April 27, 2024
The Columbia Climate School alumni joined university faculty members, civil liberties groups, prominent human rights organizations, and the United Nations in condemning police attacks on student demonstrators who are taking action across the U.S. to demand that their schools divest from companies profiting off Israel's devastating war on the Gaza Strip—including weapons manufacturers and tech companies like Google, which has a major cloud contract with Israel.
"Columbia claims divestment, protest, and student discipline fall outside the Climate School's mandate," the alumni wrote in their letter. "Science proves otherwise, that environmental justice requires divestment from war and apartheid, and that civil disobedience is integral to overcoming the climate emergency. The Climate School's mission thus mandates it defend students' right to dissent and support the cause of apartheid divestment."
Read the letter in full:
To President Shafik, President Rosenbury, Dean Shaman, and the Trustees of Columbia University,
We, alumni of Columbia University's Climate School, SUMA, and The Earth Institute, stand in full solidarity with the brave students of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, as well as with the faculty, staff, and community supporters protesting for Columbia's total divestment and full dissociation from institutions profiting off or engaging in Israel's acts of occupation, apartheid, and genocide in Palestine. Doing so is fundamentally essential to environmental justice and overcoming the climate emergency.
We affirm the protests' core belief that Palestinian liberation and safety for Jewish people are the same goal: to end genocide and ethnic cleansing everywhere and in all forms. We completely condemn antisemitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, and violence—verbal and physical—and maintain that all students must be guaranteed safety. We reject the weaponization of Jewish identity and steadfastly support anti-zionism. We observe that the encampment has nurtured student safety through interfaith solidarity and community building. In alignment with Columbia Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw's teachings on feminist intersectionality, we recognize there can be no climate justice without peace and no peace without the liberation of Palestinian people.
We reaffirm the letters by our fellow alumni, especially those of the Muslim, Jewish, Indigenous, Christian, Latinx, South Asian, and Black communities, of Barnard and Columbia Colleges, and of Columbia's Journalism, SIPA, MSPH, Teachers College, Social Work, General Studies, and Law Schools. We applaud the encampments springing up on campuses globally, demonstrating that while the University may repress individuals, this movement will not be silenced. The over 100 students arrested at Columbia's orders remind us of the land defenders who risk their bodies daily for climate justice and intersectional liberation. They remind us: "You can kill 100 roses, but you cannot stop the coming of spring." This dedication to freeing Palestine in our lifetime is embodied by students' chants: "Disclose! Divest! No more suspensions, no more arrests! We will not stop! We will not rest!"
Columbia's Crackdown Endangers Climate Justice Activists
Columbia's crackdown mirrors and contributes to the irredeemable rising repression and surveillance against climate activists worldwide. As charges of racketeering and domestic terrorism are leveled at nonviolent environmental activists, the fundamental human right to protest is being criminalized. This is especially grave for Black, People of Color, and Indigenous people. The 2023 murder of Indigenous gender-queer land defender Manuel "Tortuguita" Teran—whose death marks the first recorded instance in U.S. history of police killing a climate activist—as well as the National Guard's 1970 massacre of anti-war students at Kent State, demonstrate the logical conclusion of Columbia's actions.
We are appalled by reported threats from Columbia and Congress to unleash the National Guard on students and given the history of rampant police brutality against BIPOC people, we wholly reject President Shafik's claim that NYPD in any way serves the safety of the community. As reports of brutal police repression on campuses proliferate, of students of color tear-gassed, tasered, shot at with rubber bullets and a professor assaulted by police at Emory University, of a police sniper possibly deployed to Indiana University, and of blood staining Emerson College's cobblestones, we remind you that Columbia started this crackdown. We are disgusted that Columbia, which preaches free speech, is instead normalizing the violent repression of activists and the criminalization of dissent.
Columbia and President Shafik have undermined democratic governance by acting without University Senate approval to authorize violent police force against students, in violation of Statutes Section 444, and by breaching student’s Title VI civil rights. We are beyond alarmed that Columbia is fomenting the same rising fascism that obstructs multilateral climate negotiations. As Columbia moves in lockstep with authoritarian assaults on democracy by unilaterally crushing dissent, it pours fuel on the flames of a burning planet.
The Climate School's Mandate
As home to the world's first Climate School, the University understands the facts of this letter yet has proven too morally abject to stand behind the very science it teaches. The call to action by Climate School students and alumni in November 2023 on demanding a ceasefire over environmental injustices was inhumanely ignored by the School’s administrators. By suppressing activists and investing in war, Columbia contravenes its Climate School’s mission and cannot pretend to be a climate leader.
The University argues against apartheid divestment by citing a need for “broad consensus” and “aversion to using divestment for political purposes.” All investments are inherently political. Moreover, amidst the 99.9% peer-reviewed scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change found with “high confidence” that colonialism, like Israel’s, drives the climate emergency. In addition, the UN Stockholm Declaration on Human Environment observes that protecting ecosystems necessitates decolonization, and the end to all apartheid. International and Israeli human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and B'Tselem, have all declared Israel an apartheid state. Broad scientific and political consensus thus supports the need for apartheid divestment to overcome the climate emergency.
The Climate School community's responsibility inarguably includes these matters of divestment and protest, especially as our School’s 2024 Graduation Student Speaker has been unjustly arrested and suspended, and as the Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing's (ACSRI) entire voting faculty membership and its Chair are Climate School affiliates.
Columbia claims divestment, protest, and student discipline fall outside the Climate School’s mandate. Science proves otherwise, that environmental justice requires divestment from war and apartheid, and that civil disobedience is integral to overcoming the climate emergency. The Climate School’s mission thus mandates it defend students' right to dissent and support the cause of apartheid divestment.
Militarism and Climate Justice are Inextricably Linked and Fundamentally Incompatible
The climate crisis and the global military-industrial complex are deeply intertwined. War's devastation does not stop at human injury and death but also wreaks havoc on ecosystems and the climate via massive emissions, pollution of water and air, and environmental devastation felt for generations. Columbia's own Center for Global Energy Policy Director Jason Bordoff recently acknowledged this deep link at a recent panel discussing Israel. Alumni activists with Climate Defiance disrupted the discussion to protest the University’s platforming of BlackRock, a top investor in war profiteers and fossil fuels firms, highlighting Columbia’s unethical research funding from such firms. These financial relationships corrupt its research, undermine academic freedom, and make the University complicit in unconscionable harms, as do repression of activists and ties to war profiteers. Divestment and full dissociation are therefore plainly necessary.
The environmental injustice of Israel’s decades-long siege on Palestine, compounded by climate change, includes water shortages, ecocide, agricultural damage, and infrastructural collapse, caused by embargo, bombing, and humanitarian aid obstruction. Along with disease and death among Palestinians, this drives waste-water system failures, rendering 97% of Palestine’s water undrinkable since at least 2018 and causing sewage to poison coastal ecosystems and harm marine wildlife. We uphold the Palestinian people's inalienable rights to self-determination and governance which include environmentally just access to clean air, clean water, landback, and the right of return—all upheld by international human rights law.
War and a stable climate are irreconcilable. The U.S. military is the single largest institutional emitter of greenhouse gasses, outstripping 140 nations, and the first two months of Israel's 2023 siege on Gaza alone outburned the annual emissions of "over 20 of the most climate-vulnerable" countries. The climate emergency clearly demands the abolition of the military-industrial complex. Thus, we find the University's investments morally reprehensible and scientifically objectionable and demand full divestment from such firms, including fossil fuel companies that profit off genocide, apartheid, and war—in recognition that these investments are incompatible with the biodiversity, public health, human life, human rights, and a stable climate.
Columbia's History Demands Divestment
Israel's ecocide and war crimes in Palestine echo the U.S.' in Vietnam—which, alongside Columbia's segregationist gentrification of Harlem, sparked the University's1968 protests. Columbia's use of eminent domain to gentrify Harlem mimics the settler-colonial violence ongoing in both Israel and the U.S., where its campus stands, built off profits from stolen bodies and on the stolen lands of Lenni-Lenape and Wappinger peoples. With its massive endowment and as the largest private landowner in New York City, Columbia can plainly afford divestment. However, this is not ultimately an issue of affordability but rather one of clear moral obligation to reject genocide.
Divesting from genocide and defending the fundamental right of civil disobedience are moral obligations crucial to climate justice. We therefore insist the Climate School and University enact the student and alumni demands, including yet not limited to:
- Divest financially, including the endowment and research funding, and fully dissociate from entities profiting off of or complicit in Israel’s apartheid, occupation, and genocide against Palestine
- EnactColumbia University Apartheid Divest's proposal to the Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing, and the Gaza Solidarity Encampment students’ demands to the University
- Ensure complete transparency for all Columbia's investments, research funding, and financial ties
- Grant amnesty from legal action and discipline for all students, faculty, and staff facing repression
- Reinstate the suspended students and the Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace groups, including with class participation, housing, healthcare, and on-campus food access
- End Columbia’s repression against activists, including NYPD's immediate and sustained withdrawal from campus and surrounding areas, as well as ceasing of surveillance against activists
- Boycott academically, by canceling the opening of the Tel Aviv Global Center and the Tel Aviv University Dual Degree Program, because they are currently exclusionary and function as a military laboratory while affirming that discourse and education are ultimately a bridge to peace
- Uphold academic freedom, free expression, shared governance, and the right to protest
- The Climate School must secure amnesty for the current C+S Student Speaker who was arrested and suspended, and ensure they are allowed to speak at Graduation/Class Day
- The Climate School must publically callfor an end to the genocide and declare support for student anti-war activists
Until these demands are met, we as Climate School Alumni will not accept any new staff or faculty positions, speaking engagements at, or advisory roles with the School, nor will we donate to, organizationally support, culturally contribute to, or promote the University.
We must also agree with the American Association of University Professors' Barnard and Columbia Chapter statement on the loss of confidence in Columbia's administration for violating shared governance and academic freedom. While we reject Congress' attempts to scapegoat President Shafik, we simultaneously condemn the University administration for capitulating to state repression at the expense of academic independence. Similarly, we find Columbia's authorization of militarized police with a history of brutality towards people of color and which carry the explicit threat of deadly force, against nonviolent anti-war activists led by BIPOC women, to be a morally reprehensible, implicitly racist, and dangerously irresponsible dereliction of duty. Therefore, we have lost all confidence in President Shafik and Columbia's administration.
Finally, we affirm that this activism does not ultimately center Columbia. Its focus is realizing a free Palestine and an end to both genocide and ethnic cleansing, everywhere and in all forms. As Columbia hypocritically invokes “student safety” to repress this nonviolent interfaith anti-war movement, we find clarity in the words, "There isn't a single safe campus left in Gaza," and in reporting that, in fact, there are no universities left in Gaza at all.
Without universities, there can be no climate science—and without a free Palestine, there can be no climate justice.
In Solidarity,
Alumni of Columbia University's Climate School
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Portland State University Pauses Ties With Boeing as Campus Protests Spread
Amnesty International has documented several cases in which Israeli forces used Boeing-made weaponry to commit atrocities in Gaza.
Apr 27, 2024
The president of Portland State University announced Friday that the school would suspend its connections to the military contractor Boeing as campus protests against U.S. colleges' complicity in Israel's war on Gaza intensified.
In an email to students and faculty, PSU president Ann Cudd wrote that while the university has no investments in Boeing, it "accepts philanthropic gifts from the company."
"In consideration of the strong feelings that have been expressed, PSU will pause seeking or accepting any further gifts or grants from the Boeing Company until we have had a chance to engage in this debate and come to conclusions about a reasonable course of action," Cudd wrote.
The announcement came amid an upsurge of campus protests nationwide, with students and faculty walking out of classrooms and setting up encampments in solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The demonstrations have continued spreading in the face of violent police crackdowns and right-wing attempts to discredit them as antisemitic; one tally shows that protests have taken place on at least 75 U.S. campuses over the past week.
Oregon Public Broadcastingnoted Friday that PSU students and faculty have been pushing the university to cut ties with Boeing for months, citing its connections to Israel. Cudd said at a press conference last month that Boeing donated $150,000 to PSU to name a classroom and that a Boeing executive sits on the advisory board of PSU's business school.
On Thursday night, OPB reported, "a small group of pro-Palestinian protesters, some of whom were holding anti-Boeing signs, set up tents and barricades on Portland State University's South Park Blocks."
"Demonstrators had planned to hold a protest on the PSU campus Monday, but it was not immediately clear if the university's pause on relations to Boeing would change those plans," the outlet observed. One student told OPB that "the funding from Boeing has already been received by PSU for the year, so putting a pause on it doesn't actually do anything."
"It doesn't change anything about the way things are being conducted," the student added.
Boeing is one of the largest military contractors in the world, and Amnesty International has documented at least three cases in which Israeli forces used weaponry made by the company to commit atrocities in Gaza.
In one instance earlier this year, the Israeli military used a GBU-39 Small Diameter Bomb manufactured by Boeing to attack a family building in Rafah, killing 18 civilians and wounding eight others. In October, Israel used Boeing-made Joint Direct Attack Munitions to conduct a pair of airstrikes in Deir al-Balah, killing more than 43 people from two families—including 19 children.
Students across the country have called on their universities to divest from arms manufacturers like Boeing that are profiting from Israel's U.S.-backed war on Gaza, where the entire population is facing the possibility of famine as Israeli forces impede aid deliveries and prepare for a ground invasion of Rafah.
The Associated Pressreported Friday that Columbia University students who inspired campus demonstrations across the country said they have "reached an impasse with administrators and intend to continue their encampment until their demands are met."
"We will not rest until Columbia divests," said doctoral student Jonathan Ben-Menachem.
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