 Alright, I think it's about time to get started. It's 3pm here on the west coast, 6pm on the east coast. So welcome everyone so much for coming to World Beyond War and CodePink's final webinar in our five-part series for our Divest from the War Machine campaign. For folks who are coming in now, we really want to know who you are and what brings you here. So please, as I see many folks are doing, please post your name, the location you're based in, and your organization if you're a part of one, and what your main hope to learn today is. We really hope to, we hope to get through everyone's hopes throughout the course of today. So my name is Cody Urban. I'm a member of CodePink on an organizer with the Divest from the War Machine campaign. And I'm really excited to kick off our final webinar in our five-part series today. Today we are finishing our series by focusing on the topic of coalition building, which really is such a crucial element of any kind of campaign work. Today we're going to hear from activists who successfully built multi-issue coalitions to take on divestment across many different issue areas. For example, combining fossil fuel and weapons divestment on creating broad-based successful divestment campaigns. I'm really excited to introduce our three speakers today. First off, we have Greta Zaro, an organizing director at World Beyond War. Her experience includes volunteer recruitment and engagement, event organizing, coalition building, legislative and media outreach, and public speaking. So welcome Greta. Thanks, Cody. After Greta, we're going to hear from Paki Wayland from CodePink. Paki brings her vast experience as an anti-war activist and most recently her experience working to build a broad coalition to divest Washington DC from the War Machine. Welcome, Paki. Well, thank you very much. Yes, and it was a great success, but we'll talk more. Glad to be here with you all. Awesome. And then finally we'll hear from Dalit Bam, director of the American Friends Service Committee's Economic Activism Program and co-founder of Who Profits from the Occupation and the Coalition of Women for Peace in Israel. She's a feminist scholar and teacher who was taught about militarism and the global economy from a feminist perspective in both Israeli and U.S. universities. So welcome, Dalit. Thank you, Cody. Hi everybody. All right, so just before we get started, I wanted to do a little kind of housekeeping things about our webinar today. First off, we're going to have time for Q&A at the end of the speakers. So what we hope that y'all can do is that as you think of questions as you're hearing the speakers speak, please type your questions in the chat box. We're monitoring those and we can ask those at the end. We are going to keep all audience members muted throughout the whole webinar so that our speakers really have the floor. So at the Q&A we'll be taking those questions, but we'll also have an option for hand raising to ask questions and we'll go through those, the logistics of how to do that and we'll get to our Q&A. So we will be recording this webinar as well. And so we'll include the link to the recording of this webinar in the follow-up email. So with that being said, let's really kick off our webinar today and I'm excited to pass it off to Greta, who's going to start us off. Thank you. Carly, can you share a screen? You could back it up to slide number one. There we go. Okay, perfect. Thanks. So yeah, my name is Greta Zaro and I'm the organizing director of World Beyond War. World Beyond War is a global grassroots network with membership in 175 countries worldwide, working to abolish the institution of war and replace it with a just and sustainable piece. We've been partnering with Code Pink to co-create this five week divestment webinar series, and this is the last webinar in the series tonight and we're talking all about coalition building. So for my presentation tonight, I'm just going to start off with some basic definitions and kind of giving an overview of what do we mean by coalition building. And I'll share some kind of tips and tricks from my experience as an organizer putting together coalitions. And we'll also talk a little bit about intersectionality, which is something that I always think about when I'm thinking about coalition building. Next slide. So what is a coalition? As we put it is a group of groups, essentially a network of groups that comes together, and it really means bringing together a diversity of organizations to collaborate on a campaign release that's how I view it. And I think that it demonstrates a breadth and diversity of support, and it can be so vital to grassroots organizing because it's so rare to achieve victory and isolation as one group or one individual. Often every day really I can say from experience as an organizer, I'm working in coalition with other organizations towards a shared goal in a campaign, and we are so much stronger together. And by working in coalition we can pool our resources together. For example, one group might be really well funded and have a very big budget and they can leverage their funds to support an advertising campaign whereas another group might not have very much money, but they can have a really strong volunteer base and they can provide volunteers for a campaign. So by working together in coalition you can kind of do an assessment of what each group can bring to the table and fill in the gaps where your organization might be lacking on its own. And another example of that is that a coalition can leverage the power of all of its combined email lists to get the word out for a campaign, rather than just relying on a singular email list. So here are some tips that we'll go through. Number one is to be as broad as possible and to not get stuck into thinking well this is an issue about war or this is an issue about peace. And so I can only reach out to peace groups when I'm forming my coalition. I encourage you to broaden your mind and think about what other groups that you might not normally associate with that could join your coalition. So anything from parent-teacher associations, youth groups, university clubs, environmental associations, places of worship and faith groups, really the sky is the limit. And especially with war and we'll talk about this on the next slide, but especially with the issue of war we have this opportunity because war is really at the nexus of so many other issues that we have this opportunity to connect with a diversity of groups around this issue. Number two is to define your structure. And I think this is really important. And there isn't really one correct or proper form for a coalition. And I tend to use the word coalition very loosely when I organize and I basically mean anytime I'm working with another group I'm working in coalition with them. But some people don't use the term that way. Some people might use the term thinking of a very formal structure with bylaws and voting procedures, and it can be that way. So this is just to remind you to, you know, upfront when you're forming your coalition to make sure that you're all on the same page to define what that means, what's involved, how formal or informal is it. What are the expectations, the goals and the strategies that the coalition is working on and how will it function together. Number three is to build on existing relationships in your community. So you don't need to reinvent the wheel there might be some really powerful organizations and stakeholders in your community. For example, religious leaders or a strong community organization that you can reach out to and if you can get them on board to join your coalition and get involved in the campaign. They can bring all of their supporters with them that already sort of have they already have the trust of the community and they can bring them into the campaign. The next tip is to facilitate not to dominate. And there can definitely be a tendency when working in some coalitions for one group to sort of take over and to start branding it as their own, you know, organization and it's it's always a delicate balance right because you do have a brand if you're an organization and you do need to keep that that focus and make sure you're promoting your group. At the same time when you're working coalition you really have to tread lightly and make sure that you're involving everyone otherwise they're not going to see the need to be part of the coalition in the first place. So you need to make sure that everyone has a voice. And that's related to the next tip which is to name and raise up allies and this is something that has come up throughout my work for years and so just always being very aware of every move that you make, you know, even if something is not all like sharing a photo on social media. Well, who took that photo. Could you take that opportunity to just put a one sentence blurb, giving credit to who took the photo and that organization or that individual will thank you so much for doing that and they'll be more likely to work with you. So really giving credit where credit is due. Next slide. Next slide is about intersectionality which is also sometimes called fusion organizing. And it's this notion of finding the cross connections between issues to build our grassroots power as a unified mass movement. And I often think of coalition building as a way to do intersectional organizing because as we talked about earlier, you can really bring together a diversity of groups around an issue and not be stuck in just one type of group like peace groups, but you know go forward. So for example, with our campaign to successfully divest the city of Charlottesville, Virginia from both weapons and fossil fuels. That's what was the strategy was to combine weapons and fossil fuel divestment so that we could build those cross connections bring in groups outside of the anti war movement around that campaign and draw attention to the fact that for example the US military is the top consumer institutional consumer of oil in the world. And building is an opportunity to draw those cross connections. And as we said earlier war is the perfect issue to do this because for so many reasons the fact that war perpetuates racism, the fact that war erodes our civil liberties the fact that war is a top polluter. War is sucking up trillions of dollars a year that could go to anything else you know healthcare education, the Green New Deal so you can bring in other groups with that angle as well. If you want to make progress on your issue, help us end war so that you have money to get your issue. So we talked about this, you know, five weeks ago at the very beginning of our webinar series we kicked off with the top seven reasons to divest, and I encourage you to look back on the world beyond war website which is world beyond war.org, and click on the why, and the why section goes through those top seven reasons that we had talked about five weeks ago, which make all these cross connections that I'm talking about. Next slide. So this is just a slide about recruitment and how you can bring people into your campaign into your coalition. And on the left it says meet people where they're at. Listen and tap into people's motivations. And this expression meet people where they're at is something that many of us organizers sort of have in the back of our brain every single day. And it's that you know when you're approaching a potential coalition partner a potential volunteer that instead of just immediately going into kind of your elevator pitch and trying them trying to get them on board. Instead you first listen to what are their interests what are their skill sets, and then kind of connect that back to your campaign or your issue. I can come to you and say I'm really concerned about climate change. I'm really concerned about water pollution and the fact that I can't drink the water from my tap. And then you can pivot that back around and say, did you know the US military is among the top three largest polluters of US waterways. And that's why you should get involved in this divestment campaign. And so then the right side of this slide talks about, you know, what compels people to join groups in the first place why do people get involved why would they want to join your coalition. And then what compels people to stay in groups once they've got involved. So in terms of what compels people to join groups. They have altruism, which essentially means they want to do something good in the world they feel the desire to to make change and to help out. And that's a reason for joining. Number two is transaction. So they want to get something out of the exchange. Maybe the organization that's joining your coalition is a small organization and they feel by joining the coalition they can get their name out there they can get their brand out there. So they're joining for a transactional reason. The next one is self interest. So that kind of connects to my example of the water pollution. You know, I cannot drink the water out of my tap. I need to get involved in this campaign out of my own self interest. And the next one is social needs. So people join groups because they want to meet friends right and they want to find community and we have to remember that is an important part of our work. So people join what compels people to stay in your group. Well, number one fun. And again, we can kind of get stuck in our policy wonky heads, and you know, a lot of education and talking points which are all important, but also trying to balance that out with opportunities for community building networking and simply having fun. The second point is constant learning. So for example, building in opportunities for training along the way so that people feel like they're improving their skills. And they're not just kind of stuck with the same knowledge base throughout their whole experience in your campaign. The next reason is leadership experience. So giving people an opportunity to kind of work their way up. Once they've joined, you know, once you've got to know them and they've kind of expressed their skill sets and their interest areas and their commitment level, allowing them to work their way up the ladder. So giving them certain roles like, okay, you're in charge of bringing the pizza to the meeting, or you're in charge of doing the social media for the campaign, giving them opportunities to have that leadership experience, which for young people also is something that they can put on their resume. Next to the next bullet point in terms of what compels people to stay in groups also responsibility. So if they feel like they have a responsibility to the group, then they have a reason to come back time and time again. And again, that could even be some things sort of trivial like I'm the note taker, and I feel a responsibility to come back to the coalition every month because without me who would take the notes for the meeting. The next one is winning. So that is important to build in short term goals throughout your campaign because a lot of these campaigns are multi year campaigns. And so it's important to build in the short term goals that people feel like they are winning, they feel motivated, and it can be again sort of trivial goals of, you know, setting a certain number of attendees that you want to your next meeting. If you meet that goal, then you kind of feel motivated to keep going the next time. I know I'm almost out of time so I'm going to do one more slide if you could move to the next slide. Okay, so everything that I've talked about today is all in our organizing 101 training and much, much more. So this is a four week training that I've put together to give you tips and tricks about how to organize in your community. I'm going to put it in the chat and we'll put it in the follow up email as well, but we encourage you to take this training. It's totally for free. It's all online and you can do it at your own pace. Yeah, and I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks. Great. Thank you so much Greta. And I really hope that folks on here take advantage of that organizers 101 training. And we'll follow up on that with Greta and World Beyond War. As a reminder, as we move through here, if folks have any questions, please post them in the chat. We want to hear what you're thinking as you're thinking of them, and we'll get to them at the end of the program with the Q&A. But now I'm going to hand it over to our second speaker, Paki, who gave us a little bit of a preview of how it went during her introduction. But we want to hear the whole story so I'm actually going to pass it off to Carly, who's going to be our panel speaker, panel asker for. Thank you, Cody. Really appreciate it. And thank you Greta for a great presentation, really outlining some of the fundamentals of coalition building and I'd really encourage people to take that training with Greta. So my name is Carly. I'm with the Code Pink Divest from the War Machine campaign. And I'm really excited to have a chance to talk with Paki who is an organizer with Code Pink about her experience building a coalition to divest the Washington DCC Council from the war machine. So welcome Paki. Thanks. So Paki, just really quickly, just to start off, can you give people here a little background about yourself and some of the anti-war organizing you've done throughout the years? Oh, too long, too long. But let me just focus here for a moment that I became aware during the Vietnam War that we needed to have peace conversion, that it wasn't enough to finally, finally, finally end that war. But, and so, and that's been an ongoing thread in my life. I would just parenthetically say I was born and raised in the apartheid South. So, so coming to work in coalition with people of color here in DC was a natural. But I think what's really important is to look at the background of work in relation to our divestment work. And so what happened when I came to DC in three and a half years ago, one of the things we looked at was, well, what's happening with our members of Congress with our senators and with our Congress people. And there was a, we did a lot of wonderful work, getting them to pledge not to take money from the war machines. And it was, it was quite astounding and quite wonderful to see that happen. And it did come from Northampton, Massachusetts from Western Mass, which is a place that's so dear in my heart because we're, it's where so many activists finished school or migrated and so we have what I think of as a very progressive community. And subsequently, we have in particularly Northampton and Amherst we have past resolutions innumerable resolutions, including divestment. We don't have teeth because the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has its own structure that doesn't allow cities and towns to invest or divest themselves, it has to go through the Commonwealth. So, so we have been working on this for years. And the good news is, we have elected amazing state senators and state reps, who are representing those areas, and they are working on this. So, you know, a couple of the things that Greta talked about was some of these projects are really long term. And so we need all those things she talked about everything from having fun to being responsible to sharing pizza to do those things together. Exactly. Exactly. And the other thing is that, you know, the whole question of coalition building is that that I have lived in Massachusetts for so many years I feel like that's the air I breathe. I think our more infamous and sometimes famous politicians said, all politics is local. And it's a really important thing to keep in mind, whether you know what I think about the, the amazing work that Kelsey and others did at Cal Poly and others have you have done that it's really being rooted in that community. So when when I came to, to Washington DC, I had the good fortune of working with code pink and code pink had a great established reputation. So I had amazing entree into different groups because code pink had a solid reputation for not only doing good work, but also working in coalition. So when hockey, I'm sorry, could I pause you there just because I think this is a really important segue into the next question so we could give people a little bit more background about the campaign that you started when you actually came to DC. Right. So you had this, this experience of working at the city and state level to around anti war organizing and then now that you came to Washington DC about three and a half years ago. Could you already talked a little bit about how you started the campaign by going to some of the elected representatives there to get them to stop taking campaign contributions from weapons manufacturers. So then could you tell us a little bit more about the trajectory of the campaign to divest Washington DC. How did coalition belt building play a key role in the campaign success. So because, because Washington DC is like so many other cities in our, in our nation. There's gentrification going on, and, and it's, it's very hard on the local people. So, when, when we said, what we want to do is we want to start, and it was, it was a few of us, particularly some some very anti nuclear people and we encode pink in the death best campaign. You know, we, it's that linchpin it's a thing that, that again that that Greta was talking about that it's, it's the corollary to everything. If you, if you can divest from the war machine, look at all the things you can invest in, you know, and so, so that's what we did. So we started talking to people, and the other thing that's really important. And it's, it's implicit in everything we've been talking about and that is to show up. It's just to show up to show up for their things show up for their rally show up for for their event show up for their dinner. Because, because it gives you additional credibility, and, and it's authentic, because we know that divestment divestment in and of itself is wonderful. But if you add investing in other things that are for the common good that are for the common wheel. It's, it's a quantum leap. So that was, and that's the other thing that you know I, I sometimes feel bad about people because I was once a student and, and so you spend four years perhaps in an institution, and then you're gone. And, and here we have not only four years but many more years and a history of organization of a presence of our name. And so people say, oh yeah, these people and it's, and it's so important I think to keep in mind that what we do matters, and that it will be remembered. All the things that we talked about, you know, giving people credit and showing up for each other's events has just has so much mileage so. So what we did was, we invited people to come to visit with the city council, and with the city councilor who is very progressive and very much on our side, and very much listen to us and said wait a minute, we've already done this. We have already passed the divestment from fossil fuels. And we subsequently had meetings with with both the AIDS to this to this particular city councilor and one of the things that I think is was really important. I've spent many months, many hours and hours and hours meeting with representatives AIDS, they're, you know, they're chief of staff they're this person that person the other person. And oftentimes with one of my favorite Congress people, when he'll say, yes, I'll make this commitment. He turns to his aid and he says, do it. So, to remember that when we're meeting with the AIDS with when you're meeting with the city councilor or the Congress person or whoever. And he or she has an aid, make friends with them, learn their names, because they're the ones who actually got the work done. And in the case of the city council, they were the ones who got the work done. So they passed it through they brought all the money people together, they explained what they were doing, they made the agreement to divest from from all that war machine. And, and then they were going to have this great celebration because they were also very proud of themselves for having done this. And then the Coronavirus hit. And so we've never had a big public celebration, but maybe someday we will. But meanwhile, everybody knows it. And when when Reverend barber was here in the spring and the one was it in the winter. We had a great meeting in front of the city hall, where we talked about this, and, and everybody who wants to invest in good things was right there to cheer that we had divested. Right. Fantastic. Yeah, so you gave us a little bit of a sense of obviously the timeline for the campaign has been thrown off by, you know, the global pandemic that we're all facing. So you and your campaign, your coalition partners have stayed in contact and remained support supporting each other, even during stay at home orders right so thank you for explaining a little bit more about how you built a coalition in Washington DC of not only people who were talking about divesting from war, but also investing in social programs. So, thank you that was a wonderful conversation thank you pocky and we have some more information in the chat box, and also please stick around. After we finish up with these presentations, you can ask pocky some more questions yourself. She is a fountain of knowledge. So I'd really recommend it. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you pocky and Carly for that. And I am holding that hope that one day soon y'all will be able to throw down for that big public celebration in DC. Y'all definitely deserve it. Congratulations and thank you. So we're about to move on to our final speaker. And this is just another reminder as we're going on that, if you have questions, please post them in the chat. And then we'll also have a hand raising option as well for Q&A. But for now, I'm going to pass it off to Dalit from American Friends Service Committee, who's going to finish us off strong. So take it away Dalit. No expectations. Thank you Cody. So I'm also going to be speaking about coalition building and intersectionality but I'm going to go into the insights of divestment. You know what makes divestment special is that divestment is about companies and companies give us an opportunity to build coalitions that maybe with other campaigns might be harder. And I'm going to turn the screen. I think it's how it's done. And let's see. Okay. So first of all, the word divestment itself, you know, people different people kind of use it for different things it can be used to just means cutting all ties with those companies. It's the weapons companies or the military industrial complex. But it can also mean in a very narrow meaning just selling stocks or not buying stocks. So the targets of our campaigns are institutions that invest but also ourselves. If we happen to have a pension fund or any kind of investment, don't invest in those companies. Many times when we run a divestment campaign, we use it for education. We can teach people a lot about what's going on in the world. We use it for coalition building and for movement building. This is a great opportune time to build a new left in this country we need it. And intersectionality helps us do that. And the companies help us do that even further because they are bad on more than one issue, as we already heard. So they make they do the work for us. This is a slide about Elbit systems. This is the largest Israeli weapons company. They also sell ammunition and handguns here in the US or anybody who cares about handguns would care about them. They're also the largest contractor on the US Mexico border that implements all of the surveillance on the border. The towers you see on the lower right, that's Elbit systems. That's huge because if you care about the militarization of the US Mexico border, it's not just an excuse that we look at Elbit systems. It's not just because I personally happen to be an Israeli. So I care about Israeli companies. No, anybody who cares about the US Mexico border will care about that. Anybody who cares about drones will care about Elbit systems that makes killer drones that are used in Afghanistan and all around the world. So you see, sometimes the company does the workforce. I'll just give you very quickly two other such examples. So you will know how to use that when you speak to others, but also when you plan for your campaign. You will plan your campaign by picking those targets. These are corporate targets. You need to tell people why they should invest so you need to get them to care about companies. They need to be appalled that our city, our church, our school is invested in those companies. So to make them that appalled, you need to learn your own little lesson about those companies and learn how to speak well about them. And I'll show you a good resource of how to find out more information as well. But first of all, Northrop Grumman, you know they make missiles. This is a picture of children in a school in Gaza who lost their colleague or their school friend who died in one of those attacks. But at the same time, this is a company that also makes a huge databases for mass surveillance for ICE and Homeland Security. Now if that's not a weapon, I don't know what is, you know, it doesn't matter that they make missiles. The fact that they make these databases that hold hundreds of millions of entries for all of us, including all of our social media information and biometrics, that's huge. And with another famous important military company, General Dynamics, they make bombs that kill people. You see the top left picture of civilians and their neighborhoods that were totally destroyed by these bunker busters that they make. But also they manage, they do like management services for the unaccompanied child immigrants on the border, you know, the whole story about separating children from their families. We're not more involved in that by providing management services, not weapons, or sending all sorts of surveillance video machines that surveil the US Mexico border as well. So are we doing immigrant rights? Are we doing privacy rights? Are we doing anti-war? Are we doing pro-Palestine? It doesn't matter, because all of these things are connected. I will skip ahead. I just want to say that it's really not just the companies that help us bring together these different issues. These issues are really connected in real life. We are no longer talking about the military industrial complex like we were using that word for many years. It's now the military security surveillance, you know, industrial complex. It's a lot more than that. The idea that governments now have the power to control us all through electronics and track wherever we're going so they don't have to keep people in prison as much, I hope. But they can still keep millions of people under tabs using your cell phone. There is a picture here also of the person with a mask because that's COVID-19 era. That's what's going on. Mass surveillance is pumping up. This is also part of our campaign. So what I'm trying to say that Building Coalition is not just about going to other people's events or caring about their issues. It's also about understanding on the deepest level that their issues are our issues. That we should build campaigns that from the get-go set goals that include a new vision for the kind of world we want to live in. That is a more inclusive vision. It's not just about, oh, I'll do your thing. You'll do mine. No, I'll do your thing because it's necessary for my survival and for my freedom. Otherwise, it doesn't work. I want to show you my tool, the website. I'm very proud of it. Let's see if I can switch to the website. This is our website. Investigate AFC. AFC is the name of the organization. It can do a lot of things. First of all, you can find the investment lists here. We focus on three issues. You can find them here on the research prisons, occupations and borders. So not per se the weapons part. You find that on the code pink, the vest from the war machine list. But we have the list for the prison industry, the occupation of Palestine and Syrian lands, and borders means immigrant rights. So it's not just the US-Mexico border. It's also mass surveillance issues. For each one of these, you can find profiles of the companies involved. Here is like the profile of Northrop Grumman that includes all of the information I told you about. Not with as nice pictures, but it has all the information here. Here is Elbit Systems. There are lots of texts and we keep it up to date. It's a ton of work. Please do me the favor of maybe trying to read some of it when you need it. But you will need it because if you run a divestment campaign, you will need that information. And you will need to pick a good company to target. And if one of these sections on the website, you can see the different issues that we cover like prisons will include not just private prisons, but all the companies that provide services in prisons or exploit prison labor and so on. Same is true with occupations and so on and borders. And we also have, let me just show you that very quick, we also have a tool here that allows you to actually upload a list of holdings and scan for the companies that might be on it. So if you're running a divestment campaign in a university or a church, find out what they're invested in. You can just upload the list here in any format, and we will produce a report for you of what you are invested in that is problematic. Believe me, it's a lot of work otherwise. So that saves you the trouble. The same is with a fund. We discussed BlackRock. Let's just do that search. If you really want to know more about what BlackRock is invested in, you just put in BlackRock. And what you see here, all the different funds that we have on our database, they are all funds that are managed by BlackRock. And next to them there is a green dot, a red dot or yellow dot. Red means they're invested in some of the companies we recommend the investment from. Green means they're okay. Yellow means they have some problematic companies, but not so much that we recommend the investments. This also allows you to move from one fund to another. If you happen to have your own pension fund, use that to scan your own pension fund. I want to just give you two examples of campaigns now just for ending this. This is BlackRock fossil fuel demonstration in San Francisco. It's a placeholder for me to remember BlackRock. It's a good target. They manage investments. They are not a company that is doing something directly. And they were not the best, I don't think, but maybe we should divest from them because they were not the best. And sometimes you have secondary investment targets. I'm sure you will learn more about the BlackRock campaign somewhere else. I want to give two examples of two campaigns very quickly, both of them very successful. This was a campaign against Wells Fargo, where many cities and even states have stopped working with Wells Fargo. And it was an organic coalition that came out of indigenous people that worried about, you know, the cota access pipeline that was sponsored by Wells Fargo. Lots of middle class people who were outraged at the company's repeated scandals. People who were harmed by the company's mortgage policies, you know, that were depriving people in the inner cities from their ability to have real good mortgages and then losing their homes in the big scandal of 2008. So there were a scandal after scandal after scandal that put a lot of pressure on the bank, a lot of divestment, a lot of boycotts, a lot of public noise, which resulted in a huge victory, but it was a partial victory. The victory was that Wells Fargo, along with other banks following Wells Fargo, have announced they will stop investing and supporting and providing loans to the private prison industry. This was an easy thing for them to do. It's easier than fossil fuel. Fossil fuel is a much, much, much bigger industry. So the banks have chosen something easy that didn't cost them that much. It was a huge success. It's a huge victory and it's a huge blow for the private prison companies. But what about other people in the coalition? So when you start such a campaign, think about what happens if the wind doesn't go your way because your wind is not the easiest. Especially if you're working with Palestine issues, coalition with Palestine is sometimes very costly, as I can show you from this example. This was in New Orleans almost two years ago now. It seems kind of crazy because it seems so recent. A group of activists have tried to pass a resolution in the city that would make the city human rights city, you know, that they said that they would divest from human rights violations, that they will only invest in good stuff. It sounds so straightforward, so easy, and it was. The resolution has passed unanimously in the city council, unanimously. Day afterwards, the day afterwards, the newspapers came out with titles just like the one you see here on the screen. That said, actually that if the city is not invested in human rights violations, that means they are not invested in the Israeli occupation of Palestine, which means this is a victory for Palestinian rights. A very charged word, BDS, the best sanctions has been put on the title, and there was a huge backlash on the city council to rescind that resolution, which they have within one week. It was so fast, so fast that nobody even had time to shame them for this shameful decision. They all rescinded that resolution, because, oh my God, we didn't know it included Palestine. So there are two lessons, I think, to learn from this, two very important lessons. First of all, we all are for coalitions and for working on all issues and we believe in all of them, but sometimes we need to be strategic. Sometimes it's good to have one win and then the next and then the third, and try and be very mindful of the political map you're working within. For example, in some places it will be much harder to ask for divestment from fossil fuel than it would to ask for divestment from weapons. Thank you. And some places it will be much harder to ask for the other thing. So I'll explain. Some places where we want to run a divestment resolution, like a city, once a decision is made, or a church, I've been involved in many church decisions, once the decision is made, it is binding. Some places like a student senate, if you pass a divestment resolution, the point of it is really symbolic. We're trying to educate people, we're trying to make a statement, but the student senate doesn't have the power to decide on the university investment, yes or no. So know where you're working, if the resolution you're passing is mainly symbolic, then how to implement it doesn't matter. Because implementation will be a completely different process done somewhere else that requires completely different decision makers and a different campaign probably. If you're running a divestment resolution, let's say in a church body or a city, you know, but that has power to decide on investment, then implementation is crucial. If the implementation seems very hard, it will probably not pass, because the city officials will say hey we need to consult with our experts with our finance people and they will say no. There's a huge difference between two types of divestment campaigns. If implementation matters, you need to do some more research. You need to find out what the city or church is already invested in. You need to find out what's really more expensive for them, what's costly because they will ask that question internally. You need to also work with the people on the inside to see that they will support your resolution, or else it will not pass. If the resolution is purely symbolic, that doesn't matter. Just on the face of it, Palestine brings in controversy. It also brings in a lot of passion and commitment and a huge movement, so maybe it's worthwhile. Fossil fuel, it's almost inconsensus among progressives, so that's very wide support that you can gain. On the other hand, it's very costly. These are very, very big companies. This is a big ask. So, you know, weigh all of these things when you think about that one lesson. The last lesson, and this is my last sentence, is that maybe the divestment we should look for in today's world is not so much issue by issue anymore. Maybe intersectionality is not just the spice that we add in the end, you know, like, oh, let's make it intersectional and build a coalition. No. Maybe today we live in a world where we really want all of the public monies, in this case New Orleans city funds. We want them from the beginning to be invested in things that support life, that support communities, that support people's livelihoods, health, education, and not be invested in anything that is harmful and we can make a list of what is harmful. It's not hard. It was already done. There are several cities already that are running such campaigns. Not very successfully so far. We had one little success in New Orleans, one little success in Portland. Yes, we're working on it. But the goal is to say, if you're managing public funds, don't just go and invest them in Wall Street in whatever gives you income. That doesn't make sense. That's not acceptable. Not acceptable. So in the divestment ask is not just a divestment ask, it's an investment ask, as was said before me, but it's also not just an issue by issue divestment ask. It's ask for everything together. It's a joint vision of what we should be invested in. We should invest it in our community's needs. And I will end here. Great. Thank you, Dali. I remember that intersectionally isn't just the spice we put on top. Anything should be the stock that brings the whole soup together, right? So thank you so much. Thank you to all of our present presenters Greta, Paki and Dali for really showing us what it means to build coalition, strong coalitions to carry our long term divestment work. We're now going to transition to the Q&A section. There were a few questions that were added. And please continue to type them in the chat as you have them. In addition, there is a raise hand option that you can click on if you're using Zoom on your computer and we can call on you. If you're calling in from your phone, you can click star nine. And this will do a similar thing. But as folks are thinking of more questions, I first wanted to raise a question from Pearson. And Les, have you considered proposing spending alternatives to endless wars? So I'll pass that off to our speakers. Sure. I can talk a little bit from World Beyond Wars perspective. I had mentioned the why section of our website, why and war and one of those why is is we need $2 trillion a year for other things. If you click on that one, and then click on the fact sheet or the web page, you can view it in either format. You'll see a list of different trade offs and we go through that, you know, this amount of money could get clean water for everyone on earth, this amount of money could get food for everyone on earth. So we do go through that list of different trade offs and how those $2 trillion a year that we spend on militarism worldwide could be used for other things. And also connects, I'll just say to our billboards campaign. You might have seen our billboards. The statement that we often use is 3% of US military spending can end starvation on earth, which is just a mind boggling statistic and it's based on statistics from the UN about what, how much money would be needed to end starvation on earth and that's 3% of US military spending. So we've been running that billboards campaign around the world to raise awareness again to this very issue and the trade offs and the positive benefits that could happen if we redirected military spending. Excellent. Thank you, Greta. Pock your delete either if you want to give that one answer as well. This is Pocky I think it was a that was a great answer. What is it you want and and you've got you've got it there. So, thanks Greta. Cool. I'll actually pass it over to Dalit for this question. John had a question. Do you know a site that could be used to cross check fossil fuel companies with your research on investigating. Yeah, so you know I'm a researcher so I'm very detailed oriented. When it comes to fossil fuel divestment there are several lists. So you should pick which list you want to look at I mean there are those who advocate divestment only from the coal and fuel companies and you know very very limited and then there are those who have a wider list of companies there is a famous list of the 200. And then there are wider lists of companies so once you find their very place many places where you can find those lists. Once you pick the list that you care about when it comes to environmental concerns, you can just upload it to our website. It's on the homepage, you can upload it in any format it can be an Excel sheet it can be a word document or even a PDF and scan it. And it will produce a report for you of all of the companies that are highlighted in our database that are on that list. Cool thanks to Lee. I've often heard it said recently that fossil fuel companies and weapons companies are each other's own supply and demand. You really can't target one without the other. There's a question from Kathy. And that's how do we build the war resistance through divesting our own federal tax dollars and reinvesting it ourselves in human needs. Hi, I'll take a word to give a word to that. I think there is a war resistors league. Many people do not pay part of our war taxes and invested in other things. There is a war tax resistance of war conscience war conscience bill so that, for example, if you didn't want to register for the draft or you'd read it registered for the draft as a conscientious objector. You could now if this bill were to become law, you could pay your taxes as a conscientious objector and not pay war taxes. Maybe I'll just add one word to it. In my experience doing economic activism using things like boycott or divestment. Very important that people remember that they are themselves individually also complicates all of your interactions with corporations around you and try and be mindful of that. But it's also important to remember that in order to have impact in the world we have to organize. So whenever you take an individual action like that, try and get more people involved and try and get it publicized. Because we want to influence the world, not just our own conscience. Yeah, I would just add I think that the strength of divestment as a tactic and why it's kind of so trending in the climate movement and now in the war movement and other movements. And that is because it really puts agency into our own hands as we've been talking about so that we can really take action at so many different levels and you know that question was about how can we divest our federal tax dollars and there are ways to do that as Pocky talked about. But sometimes it can feel so overwhelming of, you know how can we get a bill passed through the US Congress and especially in this day and age. So with divestment as the lead was saying you can divest your own personal bank your own retirement funds, or the community level of divesting your city divesting your university, divesting your employer and where they invest your retirement funds so I think that's really the beauty that we should remind ourselves of this tactic of divestment is that we don't have to wait for Congress to take action for us to take action on divestment. Thanks y'all. I want to finish with a final question this is such a great question here from Kelly and I think it's important to ask for newcomers and long timers alike, in terms of anti war organizing. How do we strengthen ourselves against governments in the military industrial complex, who will throw everything at us, their aim is to wear us down, ignore defame and possibly in prison. I would love to hear from each of our speakers if you would have a closing thought on this question. Sure I'll start. Thanks for that question. It's, it's really important, especially in light of the life, the world we're living in right now. The only thing I'd say is, imagine the kind of world you want to see and live it. Find your friends, and with them, live it. That's so beautiful. Thank you, Paki. I love it. I love it. So I want to double down on the friends part you cannot do it alone. You really can't I mean you can but it's not very sustainable. So yeah, work with others. That's always empowering and also see the value of what we do achieve. It's very easy to fall into this defeatist mode. As I said, I'm an Israeli anti-occupation activist. Come on, seriously. We've been losing and losing and losing deeper and deeper. But to see where we do win, even if these are small wins that was mentioned earlier today, it's so important. And economic activism, divestment gives you the chance to win those wins in the forms where you can win them. And you need those wins. You need them. Your friends need them. Your movement needs them. We all need them. So we create those wins and then we celebrate them. I hope you do get to celebrate in DC. It's so important and we publicize them so we can also encourage others. Yeah, I would just add, number one, try to find a local group in your area. That's what keeps me motivated every day. I'm so lucky that I get to work with activists around the world. So join a local chapter of World Beyond War or Code Pink or AFSC or any other group in your area so you can meet like-minded people. That's what I wanted to do too and this kind of connects to what Paki was saying, but you know, find ways to create positive alternatives in your own life. And for me, I always call it the two prong approach where, on one hand, I'm an organizer and I work on these large policy and systemic issues, but I also kind of work from the ground up as well, trying to create positive lifestyle changes, like growing your own food or, you know, joining a community garden or doing things like that so we can kind of build the world that we want to see while we're trying to change this larger policy system around us. Alright, thank you everyone so much from all of our speakers, Greta Paki and Dali, as well as all the questions asked. And thank you for sticking with us for all five of these webinars. We really are building up our strengths so we can hit the streets and the government suites again in full force once our pandemic has passed. I'm going to pass it off to Carly now who's going to finish us up with some next steps and final remarks. Thank you so much, Cody. And again, thank you to lead Paki and Greta for joining us today. And thank you everyone for all of your great questions. This is the last installment in our five part the best from the War Machine webinar series which was really a collaborative effort between World Beyond War and Code Pink. So I do want to remind people that all five webinars including this one will be available to view on the World Beyond War and Code Pink YouTube channels. And then to serve as resources for activists in the anti-war movement to start organizing for divestment in their own communities. So we'll be sending an email to participants today with all of the links that we discussed during the webinar and the five part series recording that you can share in your own communities. So we'll also be posting a link and sharing with you a Google form that you all can use to sign up to tell us how we can help you really kickstart a divestment campaign in your city, in your state, at your university to help divest yourself as well. So that'll be in the chat box and we'll also send it via email. And I'd really also encourage everyone here to visit all of the websites that were mentioned today, including afsc.org, worldbeyondwar.org slash divest and code pink dot org slash divest to learn more about coalition building and divestment. And finally, really importantly, I'd love to invite everyone here to Code Pink's BlackRock virtual shareholder meeting protests that is happening this Thursday, May 21 at 730am Eastern. So we'll be joining our coalition partners including the lead from AFSC and World Beyond War to take on the largest investor in weapons manufacturers in the world, which is BlackRock. And if you can join us at 730 on May 21, we'll be hosting an interactive webinar to talk to you about how you can take action against BlackRock. So I'm really excited about it. You can RSVP at the link in the chat box. And finally, I just want to say again, thank you to everyone who joined us today. Thank you for taking the first step in joining a divestment campaign. I'm really inspired to be part of this movement for you with you so thank you and that concludes our webinar. Thank you, Carly. Thank you everyone. We'll see you soon. Take care y'all.