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This photo from a March 27, 2014 divestment rally illustrates the years-long battle climate activists have waged--and shows that their efforts have paid off. (Photo: M. Stan Reaves/flickr/cc)
How New York City Won Divestment From Fossil Fuels
The divestment campaign provides an excellent example of how dedicated organizing, clear demands and strategies, creative tactics, strong coalitions, and good luck can come together for a win
Mar 04, 2018
After five years of tireless organizing, the movement to divest NYC public worker pension funds from fossil fuels scored a win. On Jan. 10, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York City will divest the $5 billion of its pension funds presently invested in fossil fuel stocks. It will also sue the top five fossil fuel corporations--ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips--charging that because they hid the evidence that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, they are responsible for the billions of dollars the city has spent on climate remediation.
The divestment campaign provides an excellent example of how dedicated organizing, clear demands and strategies, creative tactics, strong coalitions, and good luck can come together for a win.
Divestment Launch
The U.S. divestment movement was popularized in 2012 through the national "Do The Math" tour, led by 350.org's Bill McKibben and author Naomi Klein. Borrowing a page from the successful anti-apartheid divestment campaign directed at South Africa in the 1980's, 350's focus was fossil fuel divestment in colleges, universities, foundations, and non-profits. While pension funds were on the list, little attention was initially paid to them.
In New York City and New York State, Divest NY became the campaign's lead coalition, headed by local 350NYC from the beginning and supported by national 350.org throughout. It was joined by DivestInvest Network, NY Communities for Change, Peoples Climate Movement-NY, NYC-Democratic Socialists of American Climate Justice Working Group, Professional Staff Congress-CUNY (AFT), NY State Nurses Association, NY State Green Party, and many individuals.
In 2012, Divest NY started lobbying, building alliances, and creating the groundwork for a broader movement. Public pension member unions began to support: United Federation of Teachers (UFT) passed a resolution calling for a feasibility study on divestment from fossil fuels and for total divestment from coal; PSC-CUNY passed resolutions supporting immediate fossil fuel divestment on city and state levels, as did the NY State Nurses Association; and AFSCME D.C. 37 rallied members and leaders to consider divestment.
Gaining Support for Divestment
After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, New York's mainstream media was largely reluctant to expose climate change's threat to coastal NYC, due in part, as author Ashley Dawson explains, to the powerful interests of NYC's real estate industry.
In 2015, defying this silence, New York's Public Advocate Letitia "Tish" James came out in support of full fossil fuel divestment--coal, oil, and gas--and publicly spoke about climate change and became the primary climate advocate in the political class. In 2016, the intense anti-pipeline confrontation lead by indigenous people at Standing Rock activated and inspired people around indigenous rights and the dangers of fossil fuels. After the Standing Rock encampment was raided, many of the younger leaders pushed supporters to take their money out of banks that supported the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Divestment became a form of direct action.
President Donald Trump's election helped to clarify the politics of the fossil fuel industry. As exemplified by the Koch brothers, the fossil fuel industry was exposed for buying political influence through campaign contributions and distributing misleading information denying climate change. Trump accommodated by stacking his administration with industry leaders and lobbyists, including former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson and industry apologist Scott Pruitt, while removing decades-worth of environmental protections and regulations, and scrubbing the Environmental Protection Agency's website of any reference to climate change.
By early 2017, the tide was turning (and rising) about climate change. Trump's election spurred new resistance, giving the climate movement a remarkable burst of human energy. NYC-based "Climate Works 4 All" and NY State-based "NY Renews," two broad-based policy coalitions that came out of the massive 2014 NYC People's Climate March, both with deep union, environmental justice, and community participation welcomed dozens of grassroots groups and union locals into the world of climate politics.
When Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord in June 2017, the climate movement determined that it would be most productive to work at the city and state levels to counteract federal policies. Next came the climate catastrophes of late summer and autumn 2017--Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria; wildfires raging in northern and southern California; earthquakes in Mexico--put everyone on alert. Maria's devastation of Puerto Rico struck a particularly hard blow for New Yorkers. That our "6th borough" was wiped out and tens of thousands of our relatives were streaming to the mainland for shelter, became an acute source of pain.
It was in this fertile soil that Divest NY sank its roots deeper and grew a broader, more effective movement through forums and rallies, extensive lobbying with City elected officials and their pension fund advisors, demonstrations at pension board meetings, birddogging NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer, who was initially the main city opponent. Divestment's popular support made it one of the central demands in the mass march commemorating the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Sandy in October 2017. All this activity gave the divestment movement a voice, dynamism, and trajectory that couldn't be ignored when the political climate shifted.
In November, 2017, Divest NY worked closely with Tish James to organize a large public hearing that was attended by over 300 people. This hearing fortified the climate movement as a broad-based, multi-faceted effort that advanced a "just transition" to a renewable energy economy that included jobs for those most negatively affected by climate change--poor and working-class people and people of color. The climate crisis was cast as an opportunity to address the inequalities in our society, with divestment as the most repeated mantra of the day: drop support for the deadly fossil fuel economy and use those funds to create a sustainable and just world.
Mayor de Blasio handily won re-election for his last term in November 2017. Despite his minimal campaign on climate policies, the big win gave him lots of political space.
Divestment Strategy Contested
For several years, Stringer and New York State Comptroller Thomas di Napoli shared a "shareholder activism" perspective that contended that retaining fossil fuel stocks allows the big pension funds to influence the industry through shareholder power. Despite what the Washington Post called a "shareholders rebellion," this approach has failed to prod the giant fossil fuel corporations into a different business model. While Stringer ultimately abandoned this "shareholder activism" position once New York Gov. Cuomo and de Blasio came out for divestment, di Napoli continues to cling to this approach.
While pension funds are the largest and potentially most powerful investors in the stock market, larger than banks and investment houses, rules governing pension funds make shifts in investments complicated. The financial health of a pension fund is the primary concern; "moral" decisions are peripheral. Tom Sanzillo, first deputy comptroller of New York State, was one of the earliest public investment experts to suggest that fossil fuel stocks are in jeopardy of a quick nosedive that could harm pension fund members significantly. He argues that fossil fuel stocks are over-valued due to oversupply and that capital spending in the sector has dropped indicating that oil companies themselves see a limited future. Indeed, fossil fuel stock values have declined over the past five years compared with the general stock indices, making them a bad investment.
If the remaining oil and gas continues to be burned at the current rate, the planet will warm beyond the point in which human life will be possible so we must leave them in the ground. This turns fossil fuel assets into "stranded assets," which bodes poorly for the health of their stocks and puts fiduciary responsibility to divest from fossil fuels into play. Once the financial argument could be made, the moral and political claim had a clearer path forward.
Labor Weighs In
One of Divest NY's limitations was a lack of active participation of public sector unions invested in the pension funds. NYC has five separate pension funds--for teachers (United Federation of Teachers and Professional Staff Congress - CUNY), public workers (mostly AFSCME District Council 37, Transport Workers Union, Teamsters 271), Firefighters, Police, and Educational Management. Each pension board has a mix of trustees appointed by the unions, the mayor, comptroller, public advocate, and/or borough presidents. Divest NY continued to push those trustees over the course of the campaign. There were union resolutions and rank and file support from three of the city unions--PSC-CUNY, UFT and AFSCME DC 37--but without much traction with the trustees.
The political dam broke on Dec. 19, 2017, when Cuomo announced his support for fossil fuel divestment of the state Common Pension Fund, which controls more capital than the five funds of NYC put together. Within hours, Stringer announced his support. Three weeks later, de Blasio joined in. Divest NY was brought into the planning and announcement of the news release and was given full credit for its organizing work. De Blasio's progressive credentials were further burnished.
Where Does Divestment Go From Here?
The divestment movement is delighted with the dramatic results of our efforts. While there are declared allies inside government, our movement needs to be vigilant that these elected officials follow through on their commitment to divest in a timely manner. Already there is push backfrom the NYC Teachers, Police, Firefighters fund trustees, either rejecting outright the calls for divestment from the mayor or asking for further studies, delaying the process.
The turnaround time to fully divest NYC pension funds from fossil fuel stocks is expected to be four to five years during which time as a movement, we need to start conversations with unions and environmental justice frontline community leaders about how to reinvest those billions of dollars of pension funds.
The organizing operation must expand to the state level to ensure that the larger-yet NY State public pension fund divests as well, potentially another $6 billion divested from fossil fuel holdings. And beyond New York State, the divestment movement has additional targets, particularly in big cities and states with progressive populations and leadership. Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS), a national labor and climate advocacy organization, is working with 350.org and the Climate Justice Alliance to target public pension funds in other cities and states to advance divestment and re-investment efforts toward a "just transition." LNS just launched a "Guide to Divestment" that helps union members decide and act on divestment campaigns across the nation.
Both the value of divestment as a climate demand and the ways in which it might link to frontline communities will be addressed by this author in other articles. Right now, divestment campaigns advance awareness of the role of fossil fuels in creating climate change; they create a platform to view the fossil fuel industry as a pariah. Loosening up those billions of dollars presently invested in fossil fuel stocks--$5 billion in NYC public pension funds and $6 billion in NY State funds alone--creates an opening for conversations with the climate justice and labor movements as to where we do want to invest to create a just transition to renewable energy. Support for publicly owned renewable energy, pubic transit, and public housing could be invested in through publicly-traded bonds with guaranteed returns. Public banks could be backed as they choose more locally defined, perhaps smaller-scale, sustainable community projects.
The divestment movement must learn a great deal about pension fund investments and how to safely and legally make these shifts. Community engagement, especially of frontline communities most affected by climate change, will be needed as well. Unions, climate organizations and the environmental justice community working together could be a game changer in all of these movements. The potential of using those billions of dollars presently being used to destroy our planet to provide the capital to contribute to a just transition is powerful indeed.
Thank you to Linda Farthing, Jeremy Brecher, Jim Shultz, Nancy Holmstrom, Christine Pries, Charlie Heller, and Fred Murphy for ideas and edits. For a petition to advance divestment of pension and other funds from fossil fuel holdings, please see https://www.thepetitionsite.com/403/755/000/join-the-1000-cities-campaign-reject-fossil-fuels-amp-commit-to-100-renewable-energy/
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Nancy Romer
Nancy Romer is a labor and environmental activist. She served on the Executive Council of Professional Staff Congress of CUNY (AFT #2334) for nine years. She is an active member of the PSC's Environmental Justice Working Group and has served on the steering committees of Peoples Climate Movement-NY, Divest NY. She is on the National Working Group on Climate Justice for Democratic Socialists of America, and works with Labor Network for Sustainability. She is Professor Emerita Brooklyn College, CUNY.
After five years of tireless organizing, the movement to divest NYC public worker pension funds from fossil fuels scored a win. On Jan. 10, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York City will divest the $5 billion of its pension funds presently invested in fossil fuel stocks. It will also sue the top five fossil fuel corporations--ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips--charging that because they hid the evidence that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, they are responsible for the billions of dollars the city has spent on climate remediation.
The divestment campaign provides an excellent example of how dedicated organizing, clear demands and strategies, creative tactics, strong coalitions, and good luck can come together for a win.
Divestment Launch
The U.S. divestment movement was popularized in 2012 through the national "Do The Math" tour, led by 350.org's Bill McKibben and author Naomi Klein. Borrowing a page from the successful anti-apartheid divestment campaign directed at South Africa in the 1980's, 350's focus was fossil fuel divestment in colleges, universities, foundations, and non-profits. While pension funds were on the list, little attention was initially paid to them.
In New York City and New York State, Divest NY became the campaign's lead coalition, headed by local 350NYC from the beginning and supported by national 350.org throughout. It was joined by DivestInvest Network, NY Communities for Change, Peoples Climate Movement-NY, NYC-Democratic Socialists of American Climate Justice Working Group, Professional Staff Congress-CUNY (AFT), NY State Nurses Association, NY State Green Party, and many individuals.
In 2012, Divest NY started lobbying, building alliances, and creating the groundwork for a broader movement. Public pension member unions began to support: United Federation of Teachers (UFT) passed a resolution calling for a feasibility study on divestment from fossil fuels and for total divestment from coal; PSC-CUNY passed resolutions supporting immediate fossil fuel divestment on city and state levels, as did the NY State Nurses Association; and AFSCME D.C. 37 rallied members and leaders to consider divestment.
Gaining Support for Divestment
After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, New York's mainstream media was largely reluctant to expose climate change's threat to coastal NYC, due in part, as author Ashley Dawson explains, to the powerful interests of NYC's real estate industry.
In 2015, defying this silence, New York's Public Advocate Letitia "Tish" James came out in support of full fossil fuel divestment--coal, oil, and gas--and publicly spoke about climate change and became the primary climate advocate in the political class. In 2016, the intense anti-pipeline confrontation lead by indigenous people at Standing Rock activated and inspired people around indigenous rights and the dangers of fossil fuels. After the Standing Rock encampment was raided, many of the younger leaders pushed supporters to take their money out of banks that supported the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Divestment became a form of direct action.
President Donald Trump's election helped to clarify the politics of the fossil fuel industry. As exemplified by the Koch brothers, the fossil fuel industry was exposed for buying political influence through campaign contributions and distributing misleading information denying climate change. Trump accommodated by stacking his administration with industry leaders and lobbyists, including former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson and industry apologist Scott Pruitt, while removing decades-worth of environmental protections and regulations, and scrubbing the Environmental Protection Agency's website of any reference to climate change.
By early 2017, the tide was turning (and rising) about climate change. Trump's election spurred new resistance, giving the climate movement a remarkable burst of human energy. NYC-based "Climate Works 4 All" and NY State-based "NY Renews," two broad-based policy coalitions that came out of the massive 2014 NYC People's Climate March, both with deep union, environmental justice, and community participation welcomed dozens of grassroots groups and union locals into the world of climate politics.
When Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord in June 2017, the climate movement determined that it would be most productive to work at the city and state levels to counteract federal policies. Next came the climate catastrophes of late summer and autumn 2017--Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria; wildfires raging in northern and southern California; earthquakes in Mexico--put everyone on alert. Maria's devastation of Puerto Rico struck a particularly hard blow for New Yorkers. That our "6th borough" was wiped out and tens of thousands of our relatives were streaming to the mainland for shelter, became an acute source of pain.
It was in this fertile soil that Divest NY sank its roots deeper and grew a broader, more effective movement through forums and rallies, extensive lobbying with City elected officials and their pension fund advisors, demonstrations at pension board meetings, birddogging NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer, who was initially the main city opponent. Divestment's popular support made it one of the central demands in the mass march commemorating the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Sandy in October 2017. All this activity gave the divestment movement a voice, dynamism, and trajectory that couldn't be ignored when the political climate shifted.
In November, 2017, Divest NY worked closely with Tish James to organize a large public hearing that was attended by over 300 people. This hearing fortified the climate movement as a broad-based, multi-faceted effort that advanced a "just transition" to a renewable energy economy that included jobs for those most negatively affected by climate change--poor and working-class people and people of color. The climate crisis was cast as an opportunity to address the inequalities in our society, with divestment as the most repeated mantra of the day: drop support for the deadly fossil fuel economy and use those funds to create a sustainable and just world.
Mayor de Blasio handily won re-election for his last term in November 2017. Despite his minimal campaign on climate policies, the big win gave him lots of political space.
Divestment Strategy Contested
For several years, Stringer and New York State Comptroller Thomas di Napoli shared a "shareholder activism" perspective that contended that retaining fossil fuel stocks allows the big pension funds to influence the industry through shareholder power. Despite what the Washington Post called a "shareholders rebellion," this approach has failed to prod the giant fossil fuel corporations into a different business model. While Stringer ultimately abandoned this "shareholder activism" position once New York Gov. Cuomo and de Blasio came out for divestment, di Napoli continues to cling to this approach.
While pension funds are the largest and potentially most powerful investors in the stock market, larger than banks and investment houses, rules governing pension funds make shifts in investments complicated. The financial health of a pension fund is the primary concern; "moral" decisions are peripheral. Tom Sanzillo, first deputy comptroller of New York State, was one of the earliest public investment experts to suggest that fossil fuel stocks are in jeopardy of a quick nosedive that could harm pension fund members significantly. He argues that fossil fuel stocks are over-valued due to oversupply and that capital spending in the sector has dropped indicating that oil companies themselves see a limited future. Indeed, fossil fuel stock values have declined over the past five years compared with the general stock indices, making them a bad investment.
If the remaining oil and gas continues to be burned at the current rate, the planet will warm beyond the point in which human life will be possible so we must leave them in the ground. This turns fossil fuel assets into "stranded assets," which bodes poorly for the health of their stocks and puts fiduciary responsibility to divest from fossil fuels into play. Once the financial argument could be made, the moral and political claim had a clearer path forward.
Labor Weighs In
One of Divest NY's limitations was a lack of active participation of public sector unions invested in the pension funds. NYC has five separate pension funds--for teachers (United Federation of Teachers and Professional Staff Congress - CUNY), public workers (mostly AFSCME District Council 37, Transport Workers Union, Teamsters 271), Firefighters, Police, and Educational Management. Each pension board has a mix of trustees appointed by the unions, the mayor, comptroller, public advocate, and/or borough presidents. Divest NY continued to push those trustees over the course of the campaign. There were union resolutions and rank and file support from three of the city unions--PSC-CUNY, UFT and AFSCME DC 37--but without much traction with the trustees.
The political dam broke on Dec. 19, 2017, when Cuomo announced his support for fossil fuel divestment of the state Common Pension Fund, which controls more capital than the five funds of NYC put together. Within hours, Stringer announced his support. Three weeks later, de Blasio joined in. Divest NY was brought into the planning and announcement of the news release and was given full credit for its organizing work. De Blasio's progressive credentials were further burnished.
Where Does Divestment Go From Here?
The divestment movement is delighted with the dramatic results of our efforts. While there are declared allies inside government, our movement needs to be vigilant that these elected officials follow through on their commitment to divest in a timely manner. Already there is push backfrom the NYC Teachers, Police, Firefighters fund trustees, either rejecting outright the calls for divestment from the mayor or asking for further studies, delaying the process.
The turnaround time to fully divest NYC pension funds from fossil fuel stocks is expected to be four to five years during which time as a movement, we need to start conversations with unions and environmental justice frontline community leaders about how to reinvest those billions of dollars of pension funds.
The organizing operation must expand to the state level to ensure that the larger-yet NY State public pension fund divests as well, potentially another $6 billion divested from fossil fuel holdings. And beyond New York State, the divestment movement has additional targets, particularly in big cities and states with progressive populations and leadership. Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS), a national labor and climate advocacy organization, is working with 350.org and the Climate Justice Alliance to target public pension funds in other cities and states to advance divestment and re-investment efforts toward a "just transition." LNS just launched a "Guide to Divestment" that helps union members decide and act on divestment campaigns across the nation.
Both the value of divestment as a climate demand and the ways in which it might link to frontline communities will be addressed by this author in other articles. Right now, divestment campaigns advance awareness of the role of fossil fuels in creating climate change; they create a platform to view the fossil fuel industry as a pariah. Loosening up those billions of dollars presently invested in fossil fuel stocks--$5 billion in NYC public pension funds and $6 billion in NY State funds alone--creates an opening for conversations with the climate justice and labor movements as to where we do want to invest to create a just transition to renewable energy. Support for publicly owned renewable energy, pubic transit, and public housing could be invested in through publicly-traded bonds with guaranteed returns. Public banks could be backed as they choose more locally defined, perhaps smaller-scale, sustainable community projects.
The divestment movement must learn a great deal about pension fund investments and how to safely and legally make these shifts. Community engagement, especially of frontline communities most affected by climate change, will be needed as well. Unions, climate organizations and the environmental justice community working together could be a game changer in all of these movements. The potential of using those billions of dollars presently being used to destroy our planet to provide the capital to contribute to a just transition is powerful indeed.
Thank you to Linda Farthing, Jeremy Brecher, Jim Shultz, Nancy Holmstrom, Christine Pries, Charlie Heller, and Fred Murphy for ideas and edits. For a petition to advance divestment of pension and other funds from fossil fuel holdings, please see https://www.thepetitionsite.com/403/755/000/join-the-1000-cities-campaign-reject-fossil-fuels-amp-commit-to-100-renewable-energy/
Nancy Romer
Nancy Romer is a labor and environmental activist. She served on the Executive Council of Professional Staff Congress of CUNY (AFT #2334) for nine years. She is an active member of the PSC's Environmental Justice Working Group and has served on the steering committees of Peoples Climate Movement-NY, Divest NY. She is on the National Working Group on Climate Justice for Democratic Socialists of America, and works with Labor Network for Sustainability. She is Professor Emerita Brooklyn College, CUNY.
After five years of tireless organizing, the movement to divest NYC public worker pension funds from fossil fuels scored a win. On Jan. 10, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that New York City will divest the $5 billion of its pension funds presently invested in fossil fuel stocks. It will also sue the top five fossil fuel corporations--ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips--charging that because they hid the evidence that burning fossil fuels causes climate change, they are responsible for the billions of dollars the city has spent on climate remediation.
The divestment campaign provides an excellent example of how dedicated organizing, clear demands and strategies, creative tactics, strong coalitions, and good luck can come together for a win.
Divestment Launch
The U.S. divestment movement was popularized in 2012 through the national "Do The Math" tour, led by 350.org's Bill McKibben and author Naomi Klein. Borrowing a page from the successful anti-apartheid divestment campaign directed at South Africa in the 1980's, 350's focus was fossil fuel divestment in colleges, universities, foundations, and non-profits. While pension funds were on the list, little attention was initially paid to them.
In New York City and New York State, Divest NY became the campaign's lead coalition, headed by local 350NYC from the beginning and supported by national 350.org throughout. It was joined by DivestInvest Network, NY Communities for Change, Peoples Climate Movement-NY, NYC-Democratic Socialists of American Climate Justice Working Group, Professional Staff Congress-CUNY (AFT), NY State Nurses Association, NY State Green Party, and many individuals.
In 2012, Divest NY started lobbying, building alliances, and creating the groundwork for a broader movement. Public pension member unions began to support: United Federation of Teachers (UFT) passed a resolution calling for a feasibility study on divestment from fossil fuels and for total divestment from coal; PSC-CUNY passed resolutions supporting immediate fossil fuel divestment on city and state levels, as did the NY State Nurses Association; and AFSCME D.C. 37 rallied members and leaders to consider divestment.
Gaining Support for Divestment
After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, New York's mainstream media was largely reluctant to expose climate change's threat to coastal NYC, due in part, as author Ashley Dawson explains, to the powerful interests of NYC's real estate industry.
In 2015, defying this silence, New York's Public Advocate Letitia "Tish" James came out in support of full fossil fuel divestment--coal, oil, and gas--and publicly spoke about climate change and became the primary climate advocate in the political class. In 2016, the intense anti-pipeline confrontation lead by indigenous people at Standing Rock activated and inspired people around indigenous rights and the dangers of fossil fuels. After the Standing Rock encampment was raided, many of the younger leaders pushed supporters to take their money out of banks that supported the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Divestment became a form of direct action.
President Donald Trump's election helped to clarify the politics of the fossil fuel industry. As exemplified by the Koch brothers, the fossil fuel industry was exposed for buying political influence through campaign contributions and distributing misleading information denying climate change. Trump accommodated by stacking his administration with industry leaders and lobbyists, including former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson and industry apologist Scott Pruitt, while removing decades-worth of environmental protections and regulations, and scrubbing the Environmental Protection Agency's website of any reference to climate change.
By early 2017, the tide was turning (and rising) about climate change. Trump's election spurred new resistance, giving the climate movement a remarkable burst of human energy. NYC-based "Climate Works 4 All" and NY State-based "NY Renews," two broad-based policy coalitions that came out of the massive 2014 NYC People's Climate March, both with deep union, environmental justice, and community participation welcomed dozens of grassroots groups and union locals into the world of climate politics.
When Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord in June 2017, the climate movement determined that it would be most productive to work at the city and state levels to counteract federal policies. Next came the climate catastrophes of late summer and autumn 2017--Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria; wildfires raging in northern and southern California; earthquakes in Mexico--put everyone on alert. Maria's devastation of Puerto Rico struck a particularly hard blow for New Yorkers. That our "6th borough" was wiped out and tens of thousands of our relatives were streaming to the mainland for shelter, became an acute source of pain.
It was in this fertile soil that Divest NY sank its roots deeper and grew a broader, more effective movement through forums and rallies, extensive lobbying with City elected officials and their pension fund advisors, demonstrations at pension board meetings, birddogging NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer, who was initially the main city opponent. Divestment's popular support made it one of the central demands in the mass march commemorating the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Sandy in October 2017. All this activity gave the divestment movement a voice, dynamism, and trajectory that couldn't be ignored when the political climate shifted.
In November, 2017, Divest NY worked closely with Tish James to organize a large public hearing that was attended by over 300 people. This hearing fortified the climate movement as a broad-based, multi-faceted effort that advanced a "just transition" to a renewable energy economy that included jobs for those most negatively affected by climate change--poor and working-class people and people of color. The climate crisis was cast as an opportunity to address the inequalities in our society, with divestment as the most repeated mantra of the day: drop support for the deadly fossil fuel economy and use those funds to create a sustainable and just world.
Mayor de Blasio handily won re-election for his last term in November 2017. Despite his minimal campaign on climate policies, the big win gave him lots of political space.
Divestment Strategy Contested
For several years, Stringer and New York State Comptroller Thomas di Napoli shared a "shareholder activism" perspective that contended that retaining fossil fuel stocks allows the big pension funds to influence the industry through shareholder power. Despite what the Washington Post called a "shareholders rebellion," this approach has failed to prod the giant fossil fuel corporations into a different business model. While Stringer ultimately abandoned this "shareholder activism" position once New York Gov. Cuomo and de Blasio came out for divestment, di Napoli continues to cling to this approach.
While pension funds are the largest and potentially most powerful investors in the stock market, larger than banks and investment houses, rules governing pension funds make shifts in investments complicated. The financial health of a pension fund is the primary concern; "moral" decisions are peripheral. Tom Sanzillo, first deputy comptroller of New York State, was one of the earliest public investment experts to suggest that fossil fuel stocks are in jeopardy of a quick nosedive that could harm pension fund members significantly. He argues that fossil fuel stocks are over-valued due to oversupply and that capital spending in the sector has dropped indicating that oil companies themselves see a limited future. Indeed, fossil fuel stock values have declined over the past five years compared with the general stock indices, making them a bad investment.
If the remaining oil and gas continues to be burned at the current rate, the planet will warm beyond the point in which human life will be possible so we must leave them in the ground. This turns fossil fuel assets into "stranded assets," which bodes poorly for the health of their stocks and puts fiduciary responsibility to divest from fossil fuels into play. Once the financial argument could be made, the moral and political claim had a clearer path forward.
Labor Weighs In
One of Divest NY's limitations was a lack of active participation of public sector unions invested in the pension funds. NYC has five separate pension funds--for teachers (United Federation of Teachers and Professional Staff Congress - CUNY), public workers (mostly AFSCME District Council 37, Transport Workers Union, Teamsters 271), Firefighters, Police, and Educational Management. Each pension board has a mix of trustees appointed by the unions, the mayor, comptroller, public advocate, and/or borough presidents. Divest NY continued to push those trustees over the course of the campaign. There were union resolutions and rank and file support from three of the city unions--PSC-CUNY, UFT and AFSCME DC 37--but without much traction with the trustees.
The political dam broke on Dec. 19, 2017, when Cuomo announced his support for fossil fuel divestment of the state Common Pension Fund, which controls more capital than the five funds of NYC put together. Within hours, Stringer announced his support. Three weeks later, de Blasio joined in. Divest NY was brought into the planning and announcement of the news release and was given full credit for its organizing work. De Blasio's progressive credentials were further burnished.
Where Does Divestment Go From Here?
The divestment movement is delighted with the dramatic results of our efforts. While there are declared allies inside government, our movement needs to be vigilant that these elected officials follow through on their commitment to divest in a timely manner. Already there is push backfrom the NYC Teachers, Police, Firefighters fund trustees, either rejecting outright the calls for divestment from the mayor or asking for further studies, delaying the process.
The turnaround time to fully divest NYC pension funds from fossil fuel stocks is expected to be four to five years during which time as a movement, we need to start conversations with unions and environmental justice frontline community leaders about how to reinvest those billions of dollars of pension funds.
The organizing operation must expand to the state level to ensure that the larger-yet NY State public pension fund divests as well, potentially another $6 billion divested from fossil fuel holdings. And beyond New York State, the divestment movement has additional targets, particularly in big cities and states with progressive populations and leadership. Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS), a national labor and climate advocacy organization, is working with 350.org and the Climate Justice Alliance to target public pension funds in other cities and states to advance divestment and re-investment efforts toward a "just transition." LNS just launched a "Guide to Divestment" that helps union members decide and act on divestment campaigns across the nation.
Both the value of divestment as a climate demand and the ways in which it might link to frontline communities will be addressed by this author in other articles. Right now, divestment campaigns advance awareness of the role of fossil fuels in creating climate change; they create a platform to view the fossil fuel industry as a pariah. Loosening up those billions of dollars presently invested in fossil fuel stocks--$5 billion in NYC public pension funds and $6 billion in NY State funds alone--creates an opening for conversations with the climate justice and labor movements as to where we do want to invest to create a just transition to renewable energy. Support for publicly owned renewable energy, pubic transit, and public housing could be invested in through publicly-traded bonds with guaranteed returns. Public banks could be backed as they choose more locally defined, perhaps smaller-scale, sustainable community projects.
The divestment movement must learn a great deal about pension fund investments and how to safely and legally make these shifts. Community engagement, especially of frontline communities most affected by climate change, will be needed as well. Unions, climate organizations and the environmental justice community working together could be a game changer in all of these movements. The potential of using those billions of dollars presently being used to destroy our planet to provide the capital to contribute to a just transition is powerful indeed.
Thank you to Linda Farthing, Jeremy Brecher, Jim Shultz, Nancy Holmstrom, Christine Pries, Charlie Heller, and Fred Murphy for ideas and edits. For a petition to advance divestment of pension and other funds from fossil fuel holdings, please see https://www.thepetitionsite.com/403/755/000/join-the-1000-cities-campaign-reject-fossil-fuels-amp-commit-to-100-renewable-energy/
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LATEST NEWS
'The Tide Is Turning,' Says Sanders as Majority of Senate Dems Vote to Block Arms Sales to Israel
"The American people do not want to spend billions to starve children in Gaza," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. "The Democrats are moving forward on this issue, and I look forward to Republican support in the near future."
Jul 31, 2025
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders' latest effort to block additional American arms sales to Israel failed again late Wednesday at the hands of every Republican senator and some Democrats.
But a majority of the Senate Democratic caucus voted in favor of Sanders-led resolutions that aimed to halt the Trump administration's sale of 1,000-pound bombs, Joint Direct Attack Munition guidance kits, and tens of thousands of assault rifles to the Israeli government.
The first resolution, S.J.Res.41, failed by a vote of 27-70, and the second, S.J.Res.34, failed by a vote of 24-73, with the effort to block the sale of assault rifles to the Israeli government garnering slightly more support than the bid to prevent the sale of bombs.
The following senators voted to block the assault rifle sale: Sanders, Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Angus King (I-Maine), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Patty Murray (Wash.), Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
And the following senators voted to block the sale of additional bombs: Sanders, Alsobrooks, Baldwin, Blunt Rochester, Duckworth, Durbin, Heinrich, Hirono, Kaine, Kim, King, Klobuchar, Luján, Markey, Merkley, Murphy, Murray, Schatz, Shaheen, Smith, Van Hollen, Warnock, Warren, and Welch.
Three Democratic senators—Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly of Arizona and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan—did not vote on either resolution.
"Every senator who voted to continue sending weapons today voted against the will of their constituents."
In a statement responding to the vote, Sanders said growing Democratic support for halting arms sales to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an indication that "the tide is turning" in the face of Israel's "horrific, immoral, and illegal war against the Palestinian people."
"The American people do not want to spend billions to starve children in Gaza," the senator said. "The Democrats are moving forward on this issue, and I look forward to Republican support in the near future."
Wednesday's votes revealed a significant increase in support for halting U.S. military support for the Israeli government compared to earlier this year, when only 14 Democratic senators backed similar Sanders-led resolutions.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who did not vote on the Sanders resolutions in April, said Wednesday that "this legislative tool is not perfect, but frankly it is time to say enough to the suffering of innocent young children and families."
"As a longtime friend and supporter of Israel, I am voting yes to send a message: The Netanyahu government cannot continue with this strategy," said Murray. "Netanyahu has prolonged this war at every turn to stay in power. We are witnessing a man-made famine in Gaza—children and families should not be dying from starvation or disease when literal tons of aid and supplies are just sitting across the border."
The Senate votes came days after the official death toll in Gaza surpassed 60,000 and a new poll showed that U.S. public support for Israel's assault on the Palestinian enclave reached a new low, with just 32% of respondents expressing approval. The Gallup survey found that support among Democratic voters has cratered, with just 8% voicing approval of the Israeli assault.
"The vast majority of Democratic voters say Israel is committing genocide, and have repeatedly demanded that their party's elected officials in Congress stop helping President Trump deliver more and more weapons to Israel with our tax dollars," Margaret DeReus, executive director of the Institute for Middle East Understanding Policy Project, said Wednesday. "Tonight proved that an increasing number of Democrats in the Senate–more than half of the Democratic caucus–are hearing that demand."
Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, called the vote "unprecedented" and said it "shows that the dam is breaking in U.S. politics."
"Our job is to increase the pressure on every member of Congress to stop all weapons and military funding," said Miller. "For 22 months, the U.S. has enabled, funded, and armed the Israeli government's slaughter and starvation in Gaza, and still the majority of senators just voted to continue sending weapons to a military live-streaming its crimes against humanity."
"The overwhelming majority of Americans want to stop the flow of deadly weapons to the Israeli military and end U.S. complicity in its horrific genocide against Palestinians," Miller added. "Every senator who voted to continue sending weapons today voted against the will of their constituents."
GOP AGs Urge Congress to Crack Down on Shield Laws and Telehealth Abortions
The Republican coalition targeted California and New York, both home to doctors who have been targeted by legal cases for allegedly providing abortion pills to patients in states with strict bans.
Jul 30, 2025
While a recently filed lawsuit in Texas jeopardizes the future of telehealth abortions, some Republican state attorneys general don't want the GOP-controlled Congress to wait for the results of that case, and this week urged leaders on Capitol Hill to consider passing federal legislation that would restrict doctors from shipping pills to patients to end their pregnancies.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing majority ended nationwide abortion rights with Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization three years ago, anti-choice state lawmakers have ramped up efforts to restrict reproductive freedom. At the same time, some Democratic officials have enacted "shield laws" to protect in-state providers and traveling patients.
Led by Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, 16 state AGs on Tuesday wrote to top congressional leaders from both parties, calling on them to "assess the constitutional authority it may have to preempt shield laws."
Griffin also sent cease-and-desist letters to two entities shipping abortion medication within the United States and two website companies that provide services to LifeOnEasyPills.org. Reporting on the AG's press conference, South Carolina Daily Gazette noted that "if the entities don't cease advertising abortion pills in Arkansas, Griffin said his office may bring a lawsuit against them for violating the state's deceptive trade practices law."
While Griffin also "said he believes what he is asking lawmakers to do is different from a federal abortion ban that the closely divided Congress has seemed hesitant to tackle," according to the Daily Gazette, advocates for reproductive rights disagreed.
Responding to the letter to Congress on social media, the advocacy group Reproductive Freedom for All shared a petition opposing a national abortion ban. It says that Republican President Donald Trump "has proven time and time again that he is out of touch with the 8 in 10 Americans who support protecting abortion rights."
"On the campaign trail he spewed whatever lies he could to get him reelected. Now he'll use the Project 2025 playbook to further restrict our right to access abortion, contraception, fertility treatments, and more," the petition warns. "We must stop him."
Yesterday, 16 Republican attorneys general sent a letter to congressional leadership urging them to override state telemedicine abortion shield laws.Sign the petition below to stand up to Republican lawmakers!act.reproductivefreedomforall.org/a/no-nationa...
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— Reproductive Freedom for All (@reproductivefreedomforall.org) July 30, 2025 at 3:48 PM
In addition to Griffin, the Tuesday letter is signed by the attorneys general of Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
The GOP coalition targeted two states, arguing that "when New York or California refuses to respect a criminal prosecution or a civil judgment against an individual who is accused of violating the abortion laws of another state, they are refusing to give full faith and credit to that state's judicial proceedings."
Last December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against a provider in New York. He sued Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter, co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT), for providing two drugs used in medication abortions—mifepristone and misoprostol—to a 20-year-old resident of Collin County.
In February, on the same day that Texas State District Judge Bryan Gantt ordered Carpenter to pay over $100,000 in fines and fees, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill sought to extradite the ACT doctor. Her state classifies mifepristone and misoprostol as dangerous controlled substances.
While Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed the extradition warrant sought by Murrill and the district attorney, New York is one of nearly two dozen states with shield laws for reproductive healthcare, and its Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, said that "I will not be signing an extradition order that came from the governor of Louisiana—not now, not ever."
On Monday, Paxton took legal action against Taylor Brucka, the clerk in Ulster County, New York, for refusing to make Carpenter pay the $100,000 penalty. Bruck told The Guardian that "it's really unprecedented for a clerk to be in this position" and "I'm just proud to live in a state that has something like the shield law here to protect our healthcare providers from out-of-state proceedings like this."
Meanwhile, another case involving a California doctor emerged in Texas earlier this month: A man filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Dr. Rémy Coeytaux for allegedly mailing to Galveston County medication that his girlfriend used to end her pregnancy. His lawyer is Jonathan Mitchell, an "anti-abortion legal terrorist" who previously served as the state's solicitor general and was the chief architect of its law that entices anti-choice vigilantes with $10,000 bounties to enforce a six-week ban.
Mary Ziegler, an abortion historian and law professor at the University of California, Davis, recently told Mother Jones that "the whole game for Jonathan Mitchell is to get into federal court... both because he wants to shut down doctors in shield law states, like everyone in the anti-abortion movement, and because he wants a federal court to weigh in on the Comstock Act," a dormant 1873 law that criminalized the shipping of "obscene" materials, including abortifacients.
Bessent Admits Trump Tax Scam Offers 'Backdoor for Privatizing Social Security'
"Despite their repeated claims they wanted to protect Social Security, the Trump administration said the quiet part out loud," said one critic in response to the billionaire treasury secretary's candid comments.
Jul 30, 2025
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday admitted that a provision in Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a mechanism for privatizing Social Security—something President Donald Trump has repeatedly said he won't do.
Speaking at a policy event hosted by the far-right news site Breitbart, Bessent touted the so-called "Trump accounts" available to all U.S. citizen children starting next July under the OBBBA signed by the president earlier this month.
"In a way, it is a backdoor way for privatizing Social Security," the billionaire former hedge fund manager said of the accounts. "Social Security is a defined benefit plan paid out—that to the extent that if all of a sudden these accounts grow, and you have in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for your retirement, that's a game-changer."
Responding to Bessent's admission, Tim Hogan—the Democratic National Committee senior adviser for messaging, mobilization, and strategy—said that the treasury secretary "just said the quiet part out loud: The administration is scheming to privatize Social Security."
"It wasn't enough to kick millions of people off their healthcare and take food away from hungry kids," Hogan added. "Trump is now coming after American seniors with a 'backdoor' scam to take away the benefits they earned. Democrats won't stand by as Trump screws over working families in order to give more handouts to billionaires."
House Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Richard Neal (D-Mass.) said in a statement: "Today, the treasury secretary said the quiet part out loud: Republicans' ultimate goal is to privatize Social Security, and there isn't a backdoor they won't try to make Wall Street's dream a reality. For everyone else though, it's yet another warning sign that they cannot be trusted to safeguard the program millions rely on and have paid into over a lifetime of work."
Nancy Altman, president of the advocacy group Social Security Works, mocked Trump's promises to preserve the key program upon which more than 70 million Americans rely—and called him out for eviscerating the Social Security Administration (SSA).
"So much for Donald Trump's campaign promise to protect Social Security," Altman said in a statement. "First, he gave Elon Musk the power to gut SSA. Now, Trump's treasury secretary has said the quiet part out loud. He is bragging about the administration's goal to privatize Social Security."
"First, they are undermining public confidence in Social Security by making false claims about fraud (which is virtually nonexistent) and wrecking the system's service to the public," Altman continued. "Then, once they have broken Social Security, they will say that Wall Street needs to come in and save it."
"That is a terrible idea," she added. "Unlike private savings, Social Security is a guaranteed earned benefit that you can't outlive. It has stood strong through wars, recessions, and pandemics. The American people have a message for Trump and Bessent: Keep Wall Street's hands off our Social Security!"
Alliance for Retired Americans executive director Richard Fiesta said that "Bessent let the cat out of the bag: This administration is coming for Social Security."
"We're not surprised—but we are alarmed because this administration has already taken multiple steps to weaken and dismantle Social Security," Fiesta added, highlighting the weakening of the SSA, false fraud claims, and "the massive tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations" under the OBBBA that experts say will hasten the Social Security Trust Fund's insolvency.
The progressive watchdog Accountable.US called Bessent's remarks "a shocking confession."
"Despite their repeated claims they wanted to protect Social Security, the Trump administration said the quiet part out loud: The Big Ugly Betrayal is a backdoor way to privatize Social Security," Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk said in a statement.
"Once again the administration is risking the financial security of millions of Americans in order to protect a system rigged in the favor of big corporations and billionaires," Carrk added.
In another blow to Social Security recipients, the Trump administration is set to implement a new policy next month that is expected to further increase wait times for basic services. As Common Dreams reported Wednesday, starting in mid-August, SSA will no longer allow seniors to use their phones for routine tasks they've been able to perform for decades.
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