The Darfur group on campus sent out an e-mail this morning with the (amazing) news that the UC Regents have voted to divest from companies with interests in Darfur or which may be indirectly supporting the Sudanese government. From the LA Times article (possibly subscription required):

The University of California’s Board of Regents voted unanimously Thursday to pull out of investments in nine companies with ties to the Sudanese government, responding to a student activist campaign that had urged divestment for more than a year…

The nine companies, many involved in energy and oil, have provided financial or military support to the Sudanese government and showed “little or no interest in the situation in Darfur,” according to the Sudan Divestment Study Group, a panel created by the regents to examine the issue…

The violence in Darfur, a western region of the country, erupted in 2003 between government-supported, mostly Arab militia and non-Arab rebels who say the political leadership oppresses black Africans. Although no official count exists, some tolls suggest tens of thousands have died.

With Thursday’s vote, the UC system joined a handful of private institutions — including Stanford, Yale and Harvard universities — that have divested from companies linked to the Sudanese government. The Illinois and New Jersey state governments have made similar moves…

I have been on the Students Taking Action Now: Darfur (STAND) e-mail list since the summer so I have been recieving periodic updates about the divestment efforts. It always seemed to me that the students throughout the UC system who were working on this campaign weren’t going to have any success with their efforts, and I’m pleasantly surprised to see how this vote turned out. [Not that they didn’t have truth and justice on their side… I just am so used to small activist groups standing up for what is right and losing that I assumed that is what would happen.]

Below the fold I am including the e-mail that I received this morning with information about the efforts that led to this vote, as well as what these students are planning for the future. There is also an extensive list of the media coverage of this issue and ways for people to help.

UC Divestment Passes! (Press coverage, Details, and Thoughts)

Yesterday we made the largest and most significant divestment from Sudan of any institution to date and took a moral stand stating that our dollars won’t be linked to the dying in Darfur.

Between $20 million and $2 billion was the initial estimate and now the 9 companies the UC divested from have been finalized—the most egregious companies include subsidiaries of mega-oil companies in China, India, as well as a Russian company who’s supplied Sudan with arms in exchange for oil. By divesting from such offenders in the oil and energy sector, whose profits predominantly fund the Khartoum regime’s military which is sponsoring the calculated genocide of people from the Darfur region of Sudan, we are helping to economically squeeze Sudan. Moreover, we have done the due diligence to push divestment from the more complicated index and commingled funds which make a true monetary estimate inaccurate at this point. The UC is a bellweather and catalyst for the national divestment movement which magnifies yesterday’s victory. Follow us at www.ucdivestsudan.com

50 Berkeley students got on a bus arriving at UCLA at 6am to help organize the press conference, marches, and die-ins (hundred students lying on the ground with signs stating “I am a victim of genocide” in solidarity with the people of Darfur and the 400,000 who have already died).

John Prendergast, president of the International Crisis Group says it all in this editorial excerpt:

“Student activist groups have worked tirelessly to generate support for targeted divestment from thousands of students, staff and faculty across the 10-campus UC system as well as endorsements from a large portion of California’s state and national politicians. Eight thousand miles away from California, in the smoldering sands of Darfur, the government of Sudan continues its reign of terror, millions of people are
suffering, and hundreds of thousands of men, women and children are at imminent risk of senseless death. Today, the Board of Regents has the opportunity to send an unambiguous message: the actions of the Sudanese government and the companies that support it are intolerable. They should take it.” from the San Diego Union Tribune March 16^th

They did! Read more below about our success in the SF Chronicle, LA Times, AP or even MTV.

History should not be something we learn, it should be something we make

When people have their eyes closed, we must bring them the pictures

Our friend Mark Brecke who is a SF-based war photographer lived behind rebel lines in Darfur to photograph the atrocities. We held up his photos during the debate on divestment. Brian Steidle our friend who is an ex-Marine and African Union peacekeeper shared photos he took while watching villages get bombed and people getting burned before his very eyes with no mandate to help them or stop the slaughtering. We held up his photos at events.

When people’s ears are elsewhere, we must make them listen to testimony

During the public commentary period we had a powerful lineup of speakers beginning with an elderly Aushwitz survivor, a UCLA student whose heart-wrenching family story of the Cambodian genocide had everyone in tears, a Rwandan student who lost over 100 of her family members and flew in from Swarthmore to ask the UC Regents to take action now and not regret inaction a decade later under the façade of ignorance as in the case of Rwanda, UC professors who recounted the first UC divestment from Apartheid South Africa in the 80’s and the real-world impact that university divestment had, and finally Mark Brecke who said “I am pleading with you as fellow human beings and not regents. If you have any ties to this government, sever
them,” he said. “You are it, you and the international community are their last hope.” As we danced and cheered outside after the successful vote, Mark told us he was about to call refugee camps in Chad and the SLA rebels in Darfur via satellite phone to tell them that “students in America haven’t forgotten about you, they’re fighting for you, and they’ve just won a major victory.”

What next?

1. Divestment from the multi-billion dollar California state pension funds, the California Public Employee Retirment System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS). California Assemblyman Paul Koretz is co-author of recently introduced legislation calling for Sudan divestment from these funds and he spoke to students yesterday saying he would model the divestment on the UC strategy.
2. Congressional advocacy for UN and NATO peacekeeping troops with a mandate to protect! We already have a direct line with Senators and Reps (Pelosi, Lantos, Lee etc..) so join us in trying to bring meaning to the words “Never Again.”
3. April 30^th, we’re taking over the Golden Gate Bridge! The Million Voices for Darfur Campaign will deliver 1 million postcards to Bush asking him to act decisively now. While thousands assemble in DC, thousands will be assembling in SF on the bridge.

Help bring meaning to the phrase “Never Again.”

Come to a Berkeley STAND meeting (Students Taking Action Now Darfur) in Dwinelle 259 on Thursdays from 6-7pm. Contact us at savedarfurnow@gmail.com

Let’s not forget that California is the 8^th largest economy in the world. CalPERS is the largest pension fund in the world. The UC endowment is the 25^th largest in the US. The UC system (10 universities in 1) is the largest public university in the world. We are sitting every day at our desks, offices, lab benches, unaware that we are intimately connected to one of the most powerful institutions in the world.

Don’t be a consumer of news, be a producer of news.

Just as we are consumers of a global society, eating, feeding on, getting addicted to what the media offers, we are starved of true news (NBC and ABC covered the genocide in Darfur for a total of 8 minutes in 2004, while Michael Jackson and then Terry Schiavo filled our mediawaves). Hear it from the people first, then advocate for them. We must use our education and connections to power structures (universities, corporations, Congress). We may think we are impotent and get depressed with the state of the world, but we are stakeholders in many power structures and they do not exist without our buy-in (student fees, stocks, taxes). We must know where our money goes and not stay silent when we object to it.

Being involved in this divestment campaign has clarified for me what I see as the 4 deadly I’s

1. Be aware-ignorance is our first and greatest enemy. We cannot care if we’re not aware.

2. Care, really care, really really CARE!-indifference is our second greatest enemy.

3. Take action-idleness or inaction is our third greatest enemy

4. Work together-I or the individual can accomplish little, but banded together we create synergy, multiplicative effects, catalyzing movement.

Paul Farmer may say “Infections and Inequalities” are our two deadliest enemies but even they are predicated on the aforementioned 4 I’s.

Best wishes and congratulations to all,

Rohan Radhakrishna

UC-Berkeley/UCSF Joint Medical Program

Read More About UC Divestment in the News:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/17/SUDAN.TMP

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ucsudan17mar17,1,7929915.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

http://www.sudantribune.com/article.php3?id_article=14587

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/local/states/california/14121497.htm

http://za.today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-03-17T062128Z_01_ALL722840_RTRIDST_0_OZATP-ECONOMY-SUDAN-20060317.XML

http://www.mtvu.com/on_mtvu/activism/divestment.jhtml

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0316/p02s02-legn.html

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060316/news_lz1e16prender.html

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cctimes/news/opinion/14111975.htm

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/03/15/EDGU9GJFCI1.DTL