 Let's get started. Thank you again for joining World Beyond War and Code Pink for our Divestment Webinar Series. My name is Greta Zaro and I'm the organizing director for World Beyond War. Divestment is all about organizing to remove public and private assets from weapons manufacturers, military contractors and war profiteers. And today's webinar is all about creating a Divestment research team and starting your campaign. We'll address common questions about strategic campaign planning, power mapping, base building and how to do the research to back up your campaign and to get the facts to make your Divestment case. We'll hear from three speakers. The first is Cody Urban. Cody is currently working with Code Pink's Divest from the War Machine campaign at the state and municipal levels. He organizes in a number of spaces focusing on ending the root causes of US-led war and uniting the US anti-war movement with other social and national liberation movements in the US and around the world. Welcome Cody. Hey Greta, thank you. Our next speaker is Kelsey Zazanis. Since graduating from Cal Poly with a degree in anthropology and geography, Kelsey has been working as an organizer on the Divest from the War Machine campaign. Kelsey first got involved with Code Pink when Cal Poly launched a university investigation into her and other students who were advocating for divestment. Now she pulls from her experience to support other activists in divesting their universities and cities from the war economy. She is currently based in San Luis Obispo, California. Welcome Kelsey. Thanks Greta. Our next panelist is Susie Snyder, a familiar face for our divestment webinars. Susie is the project lead for the Pax No Nukes project. She also coordinates the Don't Bank on the Bomb research and campaign. She is an expert on nuclear weapons with over two decades of experience working at the intersect of nuclear weapons and human rights. In addition to the annual Don't Bank on the Bomb reports, Susie has published numerous reports and articles as contributed to a number of books as well. Susie currently lives in the Netherlands. Welcome Susie. Hi, great to see everybody. Thanks so much for having me here. All right, so we are recording this webinar. If any of you have to drop off, don't worry because we will send the recording link afterwards. All participants are muted right now and you will have a chance to unmute at the end of the webinar for our Q&A period. You can also use the chat box if you're on Zoom to put in comments and questions throughout the whole webinar. And again, we'll get to those towards the end of the webinar. And now I'll turn it over to Cody to get us started. All right, thank you so much Greta. And I really wanna echo what everyone said, welcome. This is so awesome seeing so many folks from so many different parts of the country and the world, to be honest, being on this webinar series. This is the second part and I'm super excited to kick it off and then hand it off to Kelsey and Susie. And we really hope that we can sort of lay the groundwork for folks to walk away knowing how to really start a solid campaign and develop the research techniques that are needed to keep a campaign lasting. I'm gonna share my screen real quick. Can everyone see my screen? Yep. Apps, absolutely great. Okay, so I'm gonna start off our program today by talking a bit about what it means to start up a divestment research team. So this is a team that you can work with on the ground to lead a divestment campaign, whether it's at your city, targeting a municipal government, part of a state team or a university team. And then after I work, I present some of these skills in team building and the initial steps in creating a campaign. Susie and Kelsey are gonna walk through specifically how to do research with that team. Let's make sure it's going, there we go. So the goal of this presentation right now is really looking at three aspects of it. The first one is basically how do you put together a team? How do you find folks to come together to commit to taking on a divestment campaign? After that, how do you unite with everyone on that team on what your short-term goals are and how they relate to your long-term goals? And finally, I'm gonna start touching on the power mapping aspect. So this is specifically seeing who are all the stakeholders involved in a campaign? Who are the ones who are your friends? And who are the ones that you may need to turn the heat up a bit to get the job done. And what this comes down to is putting together a team to really identify a big picture objective with everyone, uniting on goals, which leads to a question of strategy and tactics, which are two separate elements but very firmly linked. And then finally, the power mapping actually brings in the question of phasing and escalation of tactics. And then finally, how do you set up a campaign? So I know here at this slide, it says by the end of this, you'll know how to do all this. I know that's a very strong promise to make. I'm sure that each one of these aspects could be its own hour long, maybe even more webinar. So hopefully this crash course will get you started. Okay. So the first part you wanna do when you're putting together a campaign is you wanna know how to build your team. Setting that strategic objectives, objective and uniting folks around that. So first of all, what is your vision? What is it that you're actually wanting to do? And then how does it fit into the bigger picture of divestment from the war machine? So for example, let's say that my vision is, I wanna stop all of this money that Boeing is getting. I wanna stop all of the fact that Boeing is involved in so many wars overseas. And I want to make sure that my university ends its investment through its endowments. That's a big picture goal, right? But it's a good vision to start out with. How does this impact you and others? I think when you're developing a narrative around getting folks together for a campaign, you really wanna focus on how it impacts other people and unite them around that to show that they can actually play a role in ending the influence in a war manufacturer. Identifying a local target. So that specifically, how does this have a local aspect? Is it your city government that holds an asset there? Again, going back to the university example, does their endowment held there? Because the local targets is how your local team is gonna start working on this. And you really wanna make sure you're reaching out to see if any other group is already doing work on this so that you can unite with them and combine your leadership. And so the first thing to do is really reach out to anyone you know. So friends, classmates, if there's a community group that's already doing this, even see if your family members wanna do that investment work with you. Student groups or other kind of community organizations, church communities are also very strong allies and coalition partners to begin with, to find folks to jump on a campaign. And once you can identify enough people who want to do divestment work, hold an info session. This is where you can put together some of that initial vision that you had and you start to define why you came to that vision, get other people to explain how they got there and make the case for other people to join you in this work. And this is something that the divest from the war machine campaign, everyone, all of us who are organizing this campaign nationally can help you out with. So we're more than happy to actually call in and help you present this information session. And once you have your team, set up your first meeting and really start getting down to the basics. So from there, you wanna work on your short-term and long-term goals. And this is where that question of strategy and tactics come in. So that original big vision strategic objective you had, now let's start talking about what tactics we're gonna use to reach that strategy. And this is not just one person's job. This is the whole group's job. So once you have your team, you really wanna make sure you understand how the group dynamics of that team works. So you can really practice collective decision-making. And that might mean that some people communicate different than others. And as anyone who's facilitating meetings or facilitating a general campaign process, you need to work with everyone to find and make sure that everyone is actually having a full accessible democratic participation in this. Because that's the only way to really carry a campaign forward is making sure that everyone has a role and knows that they can assert that role. Knowing your target and what the demand is, this is where it's important to remember that the demand might not necessarily be directed at that target. And I'll talk a bit more about what that means in the next slides about power mapping. But when you are looking at different stages of a strategy, you have to know what is the demand of the specific target. So is the demand to end investments? What if the city doesn't hold investments? Then maybe the demand needs to change due to just passing a resolution to say, don't have investments, don't start these. You wanna be very clear in what your language is so that the demand is something that the people you're directing it to can respond to and fully understand it. And I like to always say that the target sets the strategy and the demand sets the tactics. So knowing, again, that big vision target that you're looking at, that's gonna set your whole strategic plan. And there's gonna be different demands along the way. And that's when you're gonna start talking about what tactics are we gonna use to reach those different demands. And with that, I'm gonna move on to the next section, the last one of this intro, which is on power mapping. And this is really when it comes down to understanding the who you're dealing with and starting to phase your tactics to escalate towards that strategic objective, escalate around the different demands that you're gonna be making. So know your stakeholders for better or for worse. Who are the people who have a stake in this who want to see that change? And then who are the people who have a stake in, say, a university endowment in Lockheed Martin that actually want to keep it there and because they're profiting off of that? This is when that question of friends and targets comes in. Who's a supporter and who's an influencer? On the next slide after this, I can talk a bit more about how to understand that. But the important part to know is that not all supporters will be influencers and not all influencers will be supporters. And as you understand what level of support and what level of influence each stakeholder has in this, that's when you can start to see if the tactic meets the current level of demand. So can we just walk into an office and ask city government to die this? Okay, let's see if it works. If that didn't work, okay, we need to escalate our tactics now. We need to actually see if there's a way to make the demand less easy to ignore. But you don't want to do that until you've set the basis for doing that, until you've really shown everyone that we tried doing a less, we tried doing a less in-your-face tactic and now we have to do this other, more in-your-face tactic. And then finally, you want to look ahead. So if this is the demand now, what's going to be the next demand? If the demand was to get the Human Rights Commission of a city to endorse a call to end all divestments, the next demand is might be the city council. So be able to look ahead and that's how you start to phase that out. And when you're looking at power mapping, this is a simple but very effective tool that I like to use. So for folks on the phone who can't see this, unfortunately, it's two arrows. On the vertical arrow, it's looking at who's the most and least powerful person in terms of influence in your campaign. On the horizontal, there is the most supportive and the least supportive. And when you start to map people based on these two topics, you'll start to see that there's someone, there's a stakeholder involved in this who simply does not support this in any way and is going to do whatever they can do to stop you. But you might find out that they actually don't have any influence to do that. So maybe it's okay if they don't support. They'll show up to your meetings, they'll show up to your actions, but maybe you just don't pay them any heed. It also might show that there are people who do support very much but might not have the most influence. So now you have to find out how to reach people with more influence. So this is definitely a tool we can share as a follow-up tool. There's a very useful one to figure out those stakeholders. So in conclusion, as you're starting a campaign, really know your strategic objective. What's the bigger picture? From there, develop your tactical plan to reach towards that strategic objective and then know your phasing and know your escalation that's gonna get you along there. And of course, know your team because this is not a simple one-person job. This is something to keep building and inviting more and more people into. So you wanna make sure that everyone has a role and everyone's voice is heard because we're in this for the long term when it comes to divesting from the war machine. So that's the end of the introduction of building a team. I'm gonna pass it off to the next speakers to talk more about how to do some of this research into your campaign. I'm gonna end my screen share real quick for that. And then before I do that, I just wanted to share some brief tools because we don't wanna reinvent the wheel. There's a lot of great resources out there. So I'm gonna drop really quick in the chat some links and for folks in the phone, know that we're gonna send these out for your email. But one is a link to CodePing's war profiteers report that gives a lot of background information on the largest weapons companies. And the other one is additional resources on CodePing's reference page. So please check those out. But for now, I'm gonna pass it on to really one of the world's top divestment rock stars, Susie Snyder from Don't Bank on the Bomb. Hey, thanks so much, Cody. Rockstar is a bit big. Zoomstar is what it feels like these days. I'm a little paranoid. I might be sharing the wrong screen completely, but I think I've got the right one out there. Great. It is, it's awesome to be here. And I love doing these events with you guys with World Beyond War with CodePing because the vibrancy and the enthusiasm is just, it's palpable. I feel it and it's so exciting. And when I'm stuck in kind of my little research bubble, I need these moments to connect with other people and to talk about research. And so I'm gonna really just kind of go into some general, some basic stuff about the research process and then share some tips and tricks, things that I've learned by making stupid mistakes. So I figure my stupid mistakes or everybody else's avoiding mistakes, everybody else's lessons. So I'm gonna do my best here and always, I'll put my contact information on the screen. And of course, folks are welcome to get in touch because I love chatting with people about this, maybe a little bit too much. So getting your research started. And with this, as Cody said, really the best thing to do is figure out what is out there already. Like nobody wants to repeat somebody else's work because that's just a waste of time. Also, you really don't want to accidentally steal somebody's work. People work hard doing research and it's really important that we do work together, we find ways to work together. Like, research takes time, it takes energy, it takes money sometimes. To cover your bases. If you've got a professional job doing research, people gotta eat. And so it's very important to find ways to see what's out there. If you're looking for who's involved in producing nuclear weapons, we've done that. We do it all the time. If you're looking for who are the top 100 weapons producers in the world, SIPRI keeps the amazing database on this. If you're looking for companies that are involved in producing illegal cluster bombs, there is great information on the Stoppix Most of Investments website. Most companies have stopped doing that, by the way, including many of the big US weapons producers. They stopped making cluster bombs because of divestment. So, well done everyone, because that took a lot of us. And so we did great. But figure out what's out there. And then, when you're figuring out what's out there, if you see something, you're like, that is so cool. That's what I wanna do. Get in touch with the person who did it. Because people wanna share their information. They wanna share their research. It is so boring if the only thing you're doing is kinda like sitting behind a desk and going blah, blah, blah, type, type, type, website, website, post, post, post, but you never actually get to share it? No, you wanna tell people about it. You wanna get people enthusiastic about it. Because that's why we do it. We do it towards an end. And so find out what's out there. If it's already, it's what you're looking for or something similar is out there, get in touch with the researcher too. People are willing to talk. And a lot of times really eager for you to find a way to adapt the research they've already done for what you need. And that's what we do all the time. So when you, once you've figured out, you checked out what's out there, now you gotta make a plan. I mean, this is building off of what Cody talked about. You're making your campaign plan, but you also need to make a specific research plan. Again, it feeds, what does it help within your campaign? Where, what's the question you're trying to answer? Where is it gonna lead you? What's it gonna change? These two things, the campaign plan and the research plan go hand in hand. And it's really important. And when you're thinking about, like research to me is a journey and I wanna get somewhere with it. I don't do research just because, well, oh, it's fun. Although sometimes it really is. But you have to think about where you wanna go with it. So really make a plan. Figure out why you're doing what you're doing. And ask yourself, what is the question that I want to have the answer to at the end of this research? And then check in. Cody talks about you got it, you need a team. Don't do this alone, especially now. Don't be alone. Talk to people, talk to campaigners who have done similar stuff, but maybe not exactly the same. What worked, what didn't work? What do they wish they knew when they started? Like, I wish I knew all of the resources SIPRI had available when I started, aside from just like the one or two things that I saw in April around military expenditures. I wish I knew the length of it. I wish I knew how easy it was to just pick up the phone and call somebody and say, hey, can I chat with you about this? And I wish I knew how eager people are to share their work and to share and really to work with you and to help to build up to something good. So check in, talk to people. Talk to other people, talk to your team. Don't go alone. And then adjust, because you know what? After those conversations, things are gonna change. Your plan is gonna change. And that is totally cool. And don't be afraid of changing your plan. It's really important. It's really important you have a good relationship. If you're fundraising, talk to your donor and say, hey, oh, we've gotta do this little change because we learned all this stuff. Now we've gotta make an adjustment. And this is what's happening. And just refine, reframe, reexamine. It is amazing and important and it makes it more fun. It keeps you interested. If you don't adjust, you're not gonna stay interested. You're gonna get bored and don't get bored. Research isn't boring. Research is cool. And then of course, what are you doing with the research? You're following the money, right? And every, all public money. If it's, you know, public money connected to cities, connected to states, public money has to be reported on publicly. Publicly traded companies have to publicly report their stuff, whether it's in a municipal way through comptroller reports, whether you're, or if you're looking at CalPERS, the California Public Employees Retirement System, that they have published their information. So find it. There is tons of info out there and you have to dig. And it's gonna be, this is what's bonkers. California's Public Employees Retirement System uses different names for their type of documentation than the Ohio Teacher's Retirement System. But that's okay. You get to kind of know the lingo a little bit. Look for it. Securities and Exchange Commission filings are open. You can get, you can look at that. The internet can be your friend. Tax filings, you can find this. And then, always annual reports, annual budgets. Listen in on investor calls for weapons producers. They are shockingly informative, shockingly. Like when the United States said they were gonna pull out the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and on an investor call from Raytheon, somebody said, hey, are we gonna be making some money now? Where are we getting those contracts? I kid you not, this happens. Listen in or read the transfers. It's super, super interesting and well worth the time. Then gather your information. Keep your info organized. This is also one of those things I have had some not great experiences with this. I like to think of myself as an organized person, but sometimes I'm really not. And sometimes I'm feeling like, oh, I have to super organize and I clean up a whole bunch of stuff and I throw things away. Don't throw things away. It's okay to be a hoarder when it comes to gathering your research. You don't know what you might actually need to answer the question. So until you're done with your research, hoard that stuff and find a way to file it that works for you. That works for your team and agree on that amongst your team so you can all back-tech each other and help each other out. Because it is like my filing system and my colleague Mike's filing system, we think differently. So we have to constantly refine and check in with each other about this to make sure we save our information. And it's good that way. And then we get to back each other up and find weird questions. And then this is where I had a bizarre experience. I published this research on nuclear weapon contract and I found a contract that detailed US nuclear weapons sites in Europe. And I published the information. Then I had a member of a political party get in touch with me because my footnote no longer pointed to that correct information. The footnote hadn't changed. The US Department of Defense had changed the information on the US Department of Defense Archives. But I keep screenshots. So I was able to show this person from this political party know here it is. And look, you know, this is the screenshot. So you know, you can, you might be taking my thought but this is the screenshot. This is what I have. Let's contact the company together directly to get more information. Keep screenshots, keep dated downloads because the internet changes. And I hate to be an Orwellian like, oh, you know, history is what we write tomorrow. But really keep screenshots. It's worth it. Just to have that one moment and that crazy story. And then every once in a while, hang out with your team, drink some coffee or, you know, whatever is your preferred beverage and remind yourself, what exactly is this goal? What are we trying to do here? And the reason I say this is because I have a terrible habit of falling down research rabbit holes. And I will go starting and I'll be looking at like, oh, I'll look at this contract and oh, I don't know this company. And I'll find out, oh, what do they do? Oh, what do they do? Oh, what do they do? And the next thing I know is I'm looking at a contract for surveillance data for, you know, gathered by B-12 planes. And I'm just like, this is not at all what I needed. I have to remind myself and adjust back. Research rabbit holes are awesome, but they're a massive time suck. I don't think any one of us has a whole huge lot of time to waste. So, you know, remember, check in, remind yourself what the goals are before you go too far. And before you get lost. And then my favorite, and I don't know where I am, my favorite thing to always say is really four eyes good, two eyes bad. Because when you're writing something, when you're putting something out, no one can edit themselves ever. You just don't think you can. I mean, you know, you might want to think you can, but really somebody else can help you. And will help you. I used to write press releases and I would send them to my mom and say, mom, can you read this? What does it sound like to you? My mom is a computer scientist. She has, she does not work in this field at all. She doesn't think about this. And she'd ask me questions like, what the hell is a status quo? What do you mean by this? This doesn't make any sense. Talk normal. I'm like, oh, okay. Change the language. Check it out. Somebody else to help who's not directly involved. Ask your friends, ask your family, ask your neighbor. Ask somebody on your next door app. You know, say, hey, we're thinking about this. You know, ask a random friend on Facebook or something like that. You need your research to be accessible if it's going to be useful in a campaign. And that means that, you know, anybody has to be able to read it and you don't want to get, it's very easy to go a super academic. It's very easy to have lots to use, lots of different lingo that you have now picked up and become an expert in after doing the research. But step back, get a buddy. Remember, four eyes good, two eyes bad. And you know, and have fun because researching is a lot of fun. I don't leave it there. Thanks. Rock on Susie. Thank you so much for all of these great research tools. And if y'all want to start putting some of what Susie just talked about to the test, I'm putting a couple other links in the chat. So there's one to CodePings Weapons Free Fund. So this is where you can start to input some and investigate some investment funds to see what they were in their investment in and if they're in the war machine. And also there is a CodePings page on printable resources and guides, the wealth of tools you can start to use now for your campaign. So please check those out as well. But now I'm going to turn it over to someone who you're going to want to have on speed dial if you're really going to want to start tuning up the heat at your university or college campus. Here is Kelsey. And can y'all see my screen? Great. Then Kelsey, take it away. Awesome. Thank you so much, Cody. Actually, do you see a button? Oh, perfect. Perfect. Awesome. Well, thank you, Cody. Thank you, Susie. And thank you, Greta. And thank you to everyone joining us on this call today. So I'm Kelsey and I work with CodePink on the Divest from the War Machine campaign. But my work focuses on supporting student activists in cutting their university's ties to the War Machine. And I got involved with this because just last year I was a student activist myself leading a divestment campaign on my campus. So I'm really excited to share some of what I've learned with all of you. Slide. So universities are powerful places to get divestment campaigns going because it's possible that university endowments are invested in weapons companies often without the knowledge or approval of their students, staff or beneficiaries. And investing in weapons manufacturers also contradicts the purpose of most colleges and universities, which is to create knowledge and build the kind of society we want to live in. So university campuses are the perfect place to start shifting the narrative around weapons manufacturers and what it means for student dollars to be invested in them. Slide. So universities hold a lot of financial power, hundreds of billions of dollars are held in university endowments across the world and universities invest their funds in a variety of companies with the aim of increasing the total amount of money in their endowments. And because weapons companies and fossil fuels have been so profitable in the past, it's probable that your university is invested in these companies. Slide. So these investments can be direct like holding shares in an individual weapons company such as Lockheed Martin or Raytheon but often they're indirect which means investing in an investment firm which itself is invested in weapons companies. And without clear concrete investment screenings that prohibit investment in weapons manufacturers, universities are profiting from investment in companies making a killing on killing. And in the process, they are providing financial support for the war machine often without even knowing it. So in response, student activists across the world have started organizing on their campuses to divest their universities from the war machine and like what the other speakers have clearly laid out, the first step to any divestment campaign is thorough research. Slide. So research always begins with power mapping and this means learning about the people who have influence at your institution and using that information to make a strategic plan. So first you wanna find out as much as you can about your school's president, your administration and the board of trustees because they're the ones who are going to be making the final call on divestment. And you can also map out the people who influence your university president and what sort of pressure you think the president would most respond to. Slide. So you should also be looking for basic information about how your university invests its endowment fund and you might be able to find some of this information on your university's website but you should be considering the following questions. So first of all, does your university publicly list where it's investing its money? And if so, how much is invested in weapons companies? Does your school have an ethical investment policy and which fund managers or investment firms is your university using? However, most of the time information on a university's investments is not readily available because universities often go to great lengths to keep theirs as private as possible but don't let this be a deterrent to starting your campaign and don't spend too much time concerned over exactly how much money your university has invested because it's important to note that unless a university has a strict policy prohibiting investment in weapons companies you can operate under the assumption that the university is probably invested in those companies or will invest in those companies sometime in the future. But if you're having trouble finding information on how your university invests then the next step is to simply ask your university's board of trustees slide. So you can write a letter to the people that manage your university's endowment requesting information on your school's investments. And this is a helpful action to take because by communicating directly with the people in power you're then able to gauge the temperature of their position on divestment and best case scenario they respond readily providing the information you're looking for. However, universities will often refuse to share specific information about the endowment as a way to derail budding divestment campaigns. And in this case, it's safe to assume that they probably hold investments. And even if they refuse to disclose information or ignore your letter completely that still gives you useful information to share with students. You can use their negligence to escalate your campaign by making a big deal out of the lack of transparency regarding their investments. And if you're interested in sending an email I can provide you with some sample emails you can send out requesting this information. So just send me an email at healthy at copink.org. So although endowments are notoriously opaque we can still start divestment campaigns operating under the assumption that the school is invested in weapons because most schools are but if you can't find the endowment information it's also helpful to research other connections your school might have with these companies. For example, many schools have scholarships offered by the top five weapons companies and a lot of universities have entire colleges science and engineering departments and labs funded by weapons manufacturers. Slide. So in my own experience as a student organizer I attended Cal Poly a prominent engineering university and we did extensive research into the endowment but we weren't able to find any meaningful information about where we were invested. So despite not having investment information we were able to research other key connections that helped us launch our campaign. So our school is well known for their engineering program so we searched the engineering college website for information about scholarships they have and we found that the school has a huge variety of scholarships offered by top weapons manufacturers as you can see here on the slide. And next slide. We also discovered sponsored laboratories all over campus with science thinking these various weapons manufacturers for funding them. And so highlighting these public connections can be just as effective as publicizing your school's investment. Especially because often these connections are physically plastered all over campus so they're right in student spaces. Slide. So then we began looking into other connections by looking at the donations from the top weapons companies to highlight how Cal Poly was influenced by these companies and we found that we received major donations from all of the largest weapons manufacturers and one of our largest donors was actually the CEO of Raytheon. Slide. So then that knowledge took us to researching this man William Swanson and we found out that he actually retired from his position as CEO of Raytheon. To serve as the CEO of Cal Poly Corporation and the chairman of Cal Poly's foundation board. Meaning he is the head of the board of trustees. He is the person in charge of managing Cal Poly's $200 million endowment and he would be the person making the decision on the investment. So as soon as we had this information we didn't even need specific investment information anymore because it was clear that Cal Poly was run by Raytheon and other weapons manufacturers. Slide. And we were then able to blast this information all over social media, start a massive awareness campaign and begin doing direct action on campus as you can see in these photos. So the key to any successful campaign is good research as everyone has mentioned but it's important to be creative with your research. And so power mapping and researching who controls your endowment plays a huge role because if we had not looked into these key players we wouldn't have learned that the former CEO of Raytheon was controlling our endowment. So just remember to always operate under the assumption that your university does have investments in weapons because most universities do. So don't let any roadblocks in finding out specific information discourage you. Your university is tied to weapons manufacturers and the war machine in one way or another and the research process is simply about creatively connecting the dots. Slide. So if you're interested in beginning the research process or if you already have a campaign underway and you want support, our team at CodeFank is here to help you. You can email our team or email me personally and we can walk through the research process together. We also have a comprehensive university divestment guide that we just released that's available for student activists or anyone to provide all the tools that you need for a successful divestment campaign. So we will be putting the link in the Zoom chat and it's also available on our website or you can email me personally and I'll send it to you. So yeah, thank you all for listening and please reach out because I'm excited to get research started with you all. Awesome, thank you so much Kelsey and a big belated congratulations for taking on Raytheonic Cal Poly. There's definitely a lot involved in that. We could do a whole webinar just on university divestment and we are going to in two weeks. So definitely tune in on part four of the divesturities on university and campus divestment. I wanna do one more little drop of links here and these are all links to World Beyond War resources. One is the divest page on World Beyond War with an extensive list of facts, figures, and other reports that you can see on some of the research that's already been done. And if you really wanna take this to the next level, tune into the second link and sign up for one of World Beyond War's organizing 101 trainings to learn more as well. And so now I'm gonna hand it back, hand it over to Nancy from the Divestment War Machine campaign who's gonna allow you to have a say in the rest of this webinar. Hey everyone, wasn't that an amazing panel? So inspiring to hear what folks are doing on the local level at universities and then what's happening in research globally. So we have a very active chat box. For those of you who are joining us on the phone, I'm gonna go ahead and address some of your questions. I'm gonna go ahead and start with Kelsey. So Kelsey, we have Jan, our partner in New Jersey who would like to recruit you, needs some help with his campaign at Princeton University so that someone to connect with. But one of the questions that came in for you, Kelsey, was with your findings, what was the reaction on campus once your discoveries were made public? And can you give us any other examples of what other universities and what other students have faced? Yeah, that's a great question. So we received an incredibly kind of like polarized response from the students. A lot of students were like rightfully enraged and very committed to spreading awareness. And a lot of other students specifically, like engineering students who had closer relationships with all of these companies, became pretty defensive about it. And especially because these companies are so actively trying to recruit students in the engineering department on campus. So it actually created a very very active debate on campus. And a lot of students were writing off-eds for or against this campaign. So yeah, but a lot of students were really empowered and angry and energized to engage in direct action. And the other part of the question, was it examples of others? Yeah, another example of students that you've worked with that may have gone through the same thing that you have gone through. Yeah, so right now actually there's a really awesome divest from the War Machine campaign at UT Austin. And they are going through the process right now. Also, there are a lot of coalitions that are tackling weapons manufacturers and fossil fuel companies together at schools like Rutgers, Harvard, a few others. Yeah, if you send me an email, we could definitely talk more about it. Yeah, and it looks like Gail from Portland, Oregon talks about Reed College and how they have a little experimental reactor since the 60s. So maybe Gail, we can put Kelsey in touch with you if you aren't already talking to see how you can expose that and address it as well. So I wanna move on in some of our questions. This has to do with outreach and around specific demographics. So someone asked about how do you get military veterans on board, especially if you live in a military town like San Antonio, I think someone had brought up. So what advice would you give to someone who wants to get some military veterans to support that could be anyone, any panel? I can jump in on that real quick. So first, I really, really appreciate the question because there's a few voices stronger than veterans who know firsthand the horrors of war and the victims of those horrors and being forced to commit those horrors on other people. So it's a really strong, a very strong narrative when you can get veterans voices in this. I think for the specific question, I'd love to hear if any of the other panelists have another response too about how you really engage in communities that are very strong pro-military and where the war machine, the cultural arm of the war machine really does dominate the discourse in that town. I think there's so many elements of US militarism that affect people that we might not usually think about and one of them is economic. And I think that maybe the question doesn't start at how bad the war machine is but maybe it's as direct like state violence but maybe how is it that the US war machine is taking so much money away from services and infrastructure that should be for people's needs? So maybe in that case, the question would have to start with, what is it that we're not getting in our community that maybe we could use more state or federal funding in? And from there, you can start to show how the federal, the Pentagon budget is just so bloated and so parasitic on all of our national economy. I think that would be an outreach strategy that I would go in first. It's really me kind of knowing the people, knowing what the basic economic struggles of the people are you're engaging with and how you can link the fight against US militarism to those struggles. I can add to that Nancy. And having worked with a lot of veterans on a number of issues over the years, that issue of what is the priority spending? So for, especially talking to those who are either active duty or veterans, is the priority to buy an one airplane that can do everything or is the priority to protect their own health, to provide for veteran services. The veterans administration in the United States is woefully underfunded. And veterans administration deals with people who have a range of issues from being in active duty, whether they're combats or not. And it's deplorable. And so that is a nice entry point to get to that question of human needs, to get to that question of what do we need to feel safe and secure? And it opens up in a very non-confrontational way. And I think that's really important because some of our strongest allies are those who have firsthand experience of the situations that we talk about. And it's always good to never decide anything, nothing about us without us. So as we talk about just transition from military into other areas, we need to do that cooperatively. We need to do that together. And that's the way we'll sustain a change as well. So I really appreciate the question. That's great. And I think we have one hand up for a question. So it looks like it's Karen. So Karen, let me see if I can unmute you here and you can ask your question. Go ahead, Karen. I'm actually the person that asked that question. I live in San Antonio. And what we're seeing in San Antonio is very much what the Poor People's Campaign is talking about is those five interlocking injustices in terms of poverty, racism, systemic, economic inequality and the war economy. And what I fear is now that we are in, stay-at-home orders, even though the governor's, of course, trying to get us back to spending, is that universities in particular are struggling with some very tough questions in terms of how do we keep going when we're not bringing revenue in? And here I come along and I want them to do as well as the city mass divestment, you know? How do I kind of balance that? Because they're already not gonna be happy with the fact that I'm talking about using the money for the human needs that they clearly can see, okay? But yet if they say we're gonna divest from those monies, those monies right now are at least propping up, you know, some of the other because they're all there and linking. Great, thank you, Karen. Do you, Cody or Susie, do you have any comments that you'd like to add on to that? No, no, okay. All right, well, we are at time in terms of our Q&A section. This has been an amazing panel. I wish we had more time, but I'm gonna go ahead and pass it on to Carly. Thank you for your applause. I see you applauding there, Eileen. So Carly, go ahead and take it away. Thank you, Nancy. And thanks to Cody, Susie and Kelsey. That was a great first steps and kind of discussion about how we can actually start these research teams, especially now that we're on these stay-at-home orders, right? This is the perfect time to start researching. So if you've joined the webinar, you've already taken the first step in really thinking about starting a divest campaign in your local community or plugging into some of the divest campaigns that Code Pink and World Beyond War are helping to organize. So the first thing I love for people to do is just invite everyone on this webinar to sign up to learn more about starting a research team and a divest campaign in your local community. I'm gonna drop a Google form in the chat. And if you click on it, you can use it to sign up and an organizer for my Divest from the War Machine campaign at Code Pink and World Beyond War will be in touch with you to talk through the process individually and what starting a divest campaign can look like in your local community. So I'm gonna put that in the chat box here and people can use that form to sign up. People who are listening on the phone or people who aren't looking at the chat box will also send this out to you via email after the webinar. So again, I'd love for people to sign up there. You've already taken the first step. Let's talk more about how you can start a Divest campaign in your local community. And then I'd also like to invite everyone on the call to our next webinar in this series, which is happening Monday, May 4th at 5 p.m., Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern. Sorry about that. And we'll be addressing we'll be addressing divestment myths and organizing in a time of coronavirus. So actually, Karen, what you just talked about is a really good question, right? How can we really address these arguments that a lot of people make that divesting is bad for us financially? We're gonna be addressing that in the next webinar. So really glad you asked that question. And we'll drop the link in the chat for people to sign up for that next webinar, Monday, May 4th, 5 p.m. Pacific, 8 p.m. Eastern. And finally, as part of Code Pink's campaign to take on BlackRock, which is the world's largest investor in weapons manufacturers, we're taking action online on May 21st at the virtual BlackRock shareholders meetings. So we would love for everyone in this call who's interested in reducing the amount of, sorry, I'm so sorry, y'all. Reducing the kind of influence that weapons manufacturers have on our institutions. We would love for you to join us at our upcoming virtual shareholders meeting action. All you have to do is visit the Code Pink calendar at codepink.org slash events to sign up to learn more about how you can take part in that really, really exciting event where we're gonna have some special guests. So I'm gonna drop that link in the chat as well. And that's it for me, I'm so sorry. So thank you all for joining us today on the webinar. And as I said, we will go ahead and follow up with everyone who has joined us with all of the links on the chat. And that's it. So I'm gonna go ahead and let everyone sign off and we'll look forward to talking to you more in the future, please sign up on that Google form and we'll be in touch with you. Thank you everyone for joining us.