 and Lockheed Martin. So with that knowledge, right, that these are American companies that profit enormously from Israeli occupation, and also profit from the ongoing war on Yemen. And of course, every year, they receive over $350 billion of our Pentagon budget because it goes directly into the pockets of private political defense contractors, like Raytheon Boeing, Lockheed Martin, really just to pan their bottom line, right? So that's why it's really urgent that we continue to work to divest from the war machine in our own communities. And really, the only way we're going to do that is by revoking the power of the companies and people who profit the most from war making, right? And this is the first step in transforming our nation, our nation's budget priorities, and also, I think, just as importantly, ending the spread of violence, oppression, and death at home and abroad. So today, I'm really honored and excited to talk with you all more about a burgeoning campaign to divest Vermont from the war machine, which is why it's so important that we have people on from around Vermont on the call. So first, I'm going to review the national campaign to divest from the war machine that we have at Code Pink, what our theory of change is, and also importantly, some of the resources that we have to divest local communities from the war machine. Then I'm really excited. I'm going to turn it over to Cody Urban, who is a national organizer with our divest from the war machine campaign, and James Ellers, who are both currently working alongside many excellent local activists in Vermont to divest from the war machine, and they're going to speak more about how you can get involved in local divestment efforts in Vermont. So after the panel discussion, we'll have time for some audience Q&A as well, right? So this is, you know, after my presentation and after James and Cody give us a little more info about what's happening in Vermont, people here are going to be welcome to ask as many questions as they'd like. And, you know, during my presentation and during James and Cody's discussion, please feel free to write down any questions that you have in the chat box, and we'll be collecting those throughout the event and make sure we get to them during that Q&A section. And then finally, just a note for everyone here. This event will be recorded. It's being recorded right now, and it will be up on our Code Pink YouTube channel, and all participants will receive a copy of the recording, as well as all of the resources we referenced during the conversation tonight. So you don't have to worry about writing anything down or saving anything from the chat box. We'll make sure you get it. So with that, without further ado, I'm going to kick us off with a short presentation about our National Divest from the War Machine campaign. So I'm going to start sharing my screen now. And we've had some other folks join us. So if you're just joining us, welcome everyone. Really great to have you here. And hopefully folks can see presentation. Everyone can see that. Awesome. All right. So I'm going to get us started. So as I said, I just wanted to go over what our Divest from the War Machine campaign is at Code Pink and what our theory of change is, right? Why do we talk about divesting from the War Machine? So I'll go through this. First, the Divest from the War Machine campaign started in October of 2017 with a summit in Washington, D.C. And that summit brought together a range of people, foreign policy experts, activists, people who had experience with divestment campaigns to really talk about how we can use divestment as a tactic to take on an industry that's as well established as war profiteers, right? People who make weapons and profit from the war. So that started in 2017. So part of our theory of change for the campaign is that divestment campaigns can do a number of things, right, that you see on the screen, help spark a vital public debate, which really denaturalizes the role of weapons manufacturers in having a profit motive to perpetuate conflict around the world, right? I think that's something that many people grow up with just thinking is normal because they haven't questioned it. So these campaigns can drive those questions. Expose how our financial and educational institutions are supporting companies that profit from war, right? So how even places in our local communities are connected to the global war machine really inspire the public and investors to pressure institutions to divest and to publicly hold the arms industry accountable for their culpability in the death and displacement of millions of innocent people. So those are important aspects of what a divestment campaign can accomplish. So I want to review just quickly a few key resources and ways that we can actually divest in the war machine in our local communities. And one key resource that we use for all of our campaigns to find out if mutual funds and exchange traded funds have investments tied to weapons of war is called the weapons free fund. And you see it on the screen there. So Code Pink has joined with, as you so, to develop a social database of commonly held mutual funds and ETFs to determine if our investments, right, so your personal investments or your institution's investments are tied to weapons of war, right? And the URL is on the screen. You can find that tool at www.codepink.org slash divest. And it's used to track major military contractors and we use the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute arms industry database to do that. So this database contains information on arms producing and military services, including public companies identified as nuclear weapon manufacturers or servicers. So that's what that weapons free fund really focuses on. So this is such an important resource because we need to have this information about whether or not ourselves or institutions are actually invested in the war machine. So I just quickly wanted to show people just a short example of how we actually use this tool, right, because it enables everyone to do the vital research to determine if our investments are tied to the war industry. So as an example, I'll just sort of walk you through what it looks like if we search the tool using investment manager BlackRock, which Code Pink has been targeting, because of its many billions invested in war and violence and climate change, right? So let's say, right, we do a example search, we type in BlackRock to the weapons free fund, I want to show you what it looks like and what some of those markers actually mean. So when you search BlackRock, you'll come to a page that looks like this, right? And what you can see if you look at the middle column where it says weapon risk and everything there is in red, that says that the weapons risk is considered high for that fund. So what does that mean? That means that every single one of these funds that BlackRock manages because BlackRock is an asset manager, every single one of those funds is invested in weapons, right? So if you search for a fund and you see that the weapons risk is high, you know that they're invested in weapons, right? So let's quickly just look at that in more detail. What does that mean and what does that look like? So you can see that, you know, if you clicked on one of those funds, you can see that each fund page has even more information with full breakdowns of investments, right? So this fund alone has millions of dollars invested in major military contractors and nuclear weapons, right? You can see 1.68 million invested in the major military contractors, 1 million invested in nuclear weapons, half a million invested in gun retailers and civilian firearms, right? So this tool is really there so we can show and see very clearly whether or not our institutions or our personal investments are actually tied to the war machine. So in Vermont, I wanted to show something quickly and James and Cody will talk about this in more detail, right? We've looked into the Burlington Retirement Fund account and there is a fund that manages Burlington assets called the Mellon Large Cap S&P 500 that's listed on the investment in prey form and this fund is circulated through the S&P 500. And so while this index doesn't invest in weapons directly, the Burlington assets called the Mellon Large Cap S&P 500, since the fund is circulated through the S&P 500, they do invest in weapons, right? And you can see here that the weapon risk, they're given a D rating, so A through F, right? A D rating, that means that its funds are still being used to invest in weapons, right? And this is how the City of Burlington Public Retirement Fund is invested in weapons indirectly, but still nonetheless propping up the US war machine and James and Cody will go into that a little bit more in more detail. And you know, this is a strong basis for a divestment campaign in the City of Burlington and we can look into funds across Vermont as well using this tool. And again, if people have questions about this, more than happy to talk about it. So, I talked a little bit about this, so I'm going to talk a little bit more about the divestment campaign writ large, right? Now that we see some of the oranges in the campaign, one of the tools that we use, if people wouldn't mind muting while I'm talking, there we go, sorry, there's a little bit of feedback. So, we were talking a little bit about the origin of the campaign and then one of the key resources and tools we use to get our campaign started, right? But also, right, it's important for us to take a step back and remind ourselves how the US war machine operates to influence our politicians, our national budget priorities, and our local communities in this really cyclical cycle that you see on the screen, right? And while this analysis that's represented is not all-encompassing, right? This is not the way that the US war machine operates in its entirety. What you see here is important for local activists like ourselves because at each point offers us key points of intervention and ways to organize in our local communities against the war machine, right? Weapons manufacturers make a large profit. They donate to their profits in part to fund the campaigns of politicians who then steadily increase the Pentagon budget and vote for new weapons systems. And then, of course, what we just talked about, which is large financial institutions like banks and asset managers invest heavily in these weapons manufacturers and profit from them, right? And this is a cycle that continues unless we stop it, right? And that's what we're talking about today. So one of the ways that we intervene on the local level is to create campaigns to divest our cities and states from the war machine. So we have city council resolutions and state level resolutions to divest city and state level investments, including city operating budgets and public employee pension funds from the war machine. And this is important because municipal and state level policies can really work to drive a new conversation not only around divesting from the war machine, but also about what socially responsible investment policies look like, right? And what we need to prioritize in our local communities. I'll just give one example in 2020. During the pandemic, a small city in California, San Luis Obispo, their city council voted five to zero to divest from the war machine, so unanimously. And then the city adopted a new socially responsible investment screening policy, one that excludes both weapons manufacturers, fossil fuel industry, and private prisons all in one policy. And the campaign involved growing a local coalition of community activists, including environmental organizations, to really take action to divest from war, right? So this is something that's possible. It's been done before, and we're now working on it in Vermont. We also have campaigns to urge schools to divest their endowments from the war machine, campus level organizing, right? That demonstrates the many ways that the war machine funds and heavily influences our educational institutions is really an important side of intervention because of the many ways that weapons companies are financed by endowments, right? And really insinuate themselves onto our campuses. And people have seen, right, Raytheon funding engineering programs at local schools, right? So we have to intervene in that conversation. Here's a great photo from our protest that was led by students on the campus at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo. We also work to divest philanthropic foundations from the war machine. I think it's pretty clear that philanthropic foundations working to do good in the world should not be invested in and profiting from companies that literally make a killing on killing, right? And we have resources for that. And then the last thing I won't spend too much time on is we also work to divest our local politicians from our congressional representatives to our state level representatives to even our city councilors from the war machine by urging them to take the Code Pink pledge to stop taking campaign contributions from weapons manufacturers, right? And this is important at the national level because like I already said, half of our Pentagon budget goes directly into the conference of weapons manufacturers and private quote unquote defense contractors who then donate to politicians who then increase the Pentagon budget, right? And it's a cyclical process. So as I said, we have a commitment to refuse money from weapons makers that we ask people to take to their local congressional representatives, state level representatives, city council members to really show, right? We really need you to not no longer be bought off by the same companies who you approve funding for every year, or in the case of local communities, right? Who perhaps want to put local manufacturing plants in our local communities. So that's a really great organizing tool. And this is just to show that people who have taken the Code Pink pledge to divest from war have unanimously voted to move funds from the Pentagon to the people, right? To unanimously voted to defund the Pentagon. So that's important. And I just want to end quickly by showing some of the resources that we do have that I sort of went over that everyone here will receive after our webinar ends here. So first we have the weapons free funds that I went over an investment screen that you can use to make sure that your personal investments are not tied up in the war machine. A list of companies to divest from, right? When we talk about weapons companies, what do we actually need? And sample city council resolution to make sure that everyone can take that to their city council members. And then finally, what I just went over our congressional divestment pledge. So I'm going to stop there. I'm going to stop showing my screen. And some folks have joined us since we started and thank you for joining us. So just for people who have just joined us, we just went over our national campaign to divest from the war machine. And now I'm going to hand it over to two people who are with us today who are going to talk about local efforts in Vermont to divest from the war machine. So that'll be Cody Urban and James Ellers. So let me introduce them formally. Cody Urban is a national organizer with the Code Pink Divest from the War Machine campaign based in Portland, Oregon. And James Ellers is based in Vermont. And his work focuses on the merits of communities, states and the nation investing in an inclusive economy. An economy sound public policy and energy, agriculture, urban and suburban development, health care, and jobs is reflected in the health of our water, air and soil, and ultimately our personal well-being regardless of gender, race, orientation, age, religion, or social standing. So with that, I do want to hand it over to Cody and James to talk more about what the local campaign in Vermont looks like. Awesome. Thank you so much, Carly. Yeah, like Carly said, my name is Cody. I work with Code Pink and I'm based in Portland on the West Coast, but I luckily get to work with activists all over the country working on divest campaigns, including Vermont. So happy to be here. This is my furry friend Morty. He'll be my timekeeper for my part of the presentation, which is probably why I always end up going late. But all jokes aside, I'm really, really happy to be here alongside James as well as many other members, active members of the Divest Vermont Coalition on this call right now. So I'm just going to kind of kick it off and pass it over to you, James. It feels like just a few months ago that you, me, and Carly got together and started talking about what what a divest campaign in Vermont could look like. And now we're at this point. So really kind of James first question, how did this campaign get started? And I know that there's kind of a history of divestment, very successful divestment work in the state of Vermont. So maybe frame the history of this divestment campaign within the broader divestment work that's going on in the state. Cody, well, thank you. And I want to thank Carly too. I mean, we wouldn't be here without Code Pink. So let's get that out there in the open for everyone who is who is listening today. I was just, I think, probably an annoying gadfly on one of your other webinars, posting in the chat box. And graciously, you folks responded several months ago. And here we are today. I'll do my best to explain the divestment history in Vermont by the bio that Carly used for me is just a fancy way to say I'm an activist. Primarily, you know, a peace activist and environmental activist. And that comes from my history as a former naval officer and a lot of other lived experiences. But feeling an obligation, both moral and otherwise, to repay, if you will, what I saw, what I experienced in my time in the service and our foreign policy. And while we've done a lot of good things throughout history, we've done a lot of things that are also pretty shameful. And my experience in our legislature, I was assisting other fellow activists on a fossil fuel divestment campaign. And while that has stalled at the state level, because of, quite frankly, pension fund liabilities that go far beyond the scope of this conversation, there have been successful efforts, for example, at the University of Vermont. And in the cross section or overlap of activist work, and there's a few on this call tonight, I had been involved in coordinating a campaign to have our legislators, our politicians acknowledge the fact that the F-35, which Senator Leahy, the most senior ranking, most influential senator in the United States Senate right now, is one of my senators, literally intervened in the basing process to bring the F-35 here against the wishes of even the Air Force, who wanted to place that airplane in Jacksonville, Florida. We wound up what is a part of the nuclear triad, the F-35. It is a stealth first strike nuclear bomber based at our civilian airport in some of the most densely populated residential communities in all of New England, never mind Vermont. So fast forward, I'm hearing from the senator, as well as from Senator Sanders, the name that a few folks listening to this webinar might recognize. In fact, he was on the Senate floor earlier today. Thank you, Senator Sanders, calling for peace in Palestine and calling for an Israeli ceasefire. Senator Sanders has embraced the F-35 as a jobs program for Vermonters. So here we have the two, arguably two of the most influential people in all of American politics representing Vermonters embracing the F-35, the poster child, if you will, for the war machine, both literally and figuratively, right here in my hometown. They're poisoning our water, they're abusing the local populace, and these aircraft are not for our homeland security as we've been told. They're first strike aircraft for attacking the Russian people or the Chinese people or whoever the adversary of the day is. And the justification is jobs. So, Cody, I know you know this. Carly, I know you know this. Any justification, any economy that depends on killing machines for jobs is an economy we must deconstruct and rebuild. So I, not being an expert in that area whatsoever, I came to you folks and you graciously accepted my invitation to help us here in Vermont divest, not just at the state level. That's something we're going to get to by working with unions, particularly our state employees unions. But town by town, where everyone on this call today can actually literally start working on divesting. It could be their local town pension fund that covers, you know, a half a dozen town employees, whatever it is, we can do it and you're going to help us. Nice. Thanks for that, James. And yeah, I fully agree with something you said about, you know, any economy that is built off of this necessity of war, which Carly was really detailed for us at the beginning of this, you know, is an economy that used to be changed. And I mean, I've often said there's there's no such thing really as the war economy. It's just the economy. Right. It's always been made to buff up war. And that's one of the big points that the divest from the war machine campaign points at. And now you already kind of started to go into this when you were talking about the movement against the F 35s here in Vermont. But what are what are some of the other particular ways that the divesting from the war machine is important in Vermont in particular? I think symbolically, and symbolism is particularly important in politics. I mean, look at how how how wrapped up bad pun people get in just the discussion of the flag symbols matter. And here we have two senators, one chair of the budget committee, the other chair of the appropriations committee, they control where literally they literally control where all of us dollars, our tax dollars go and the Pentagon budget. So there's a chance for us to not just talk the talk, but to walk the walk and in a state like Vermont, where we hold ourselves above, right, there's where the Lake Wobagon of the Northeast, where we like to think we're morally superior because of the our values. Here we are embracing the killing economy for Vermont jobs. And local politicians, because of the power of Senators Leahy and Senator Sanders, have stayed silent. Yeah, they'll tell us when they see us on the street like we're with you. Those F 35s got to go. They're so noisy, the PFAS poisoning that the Guard is responsible for of our drinking water supplies and our fisheries. You're all you, you activists, you just keep going, you're on the right track. But in a state where we supposedly, supposedly embrace progressive values, here we have a chance at every level of our state economy to work on what is not new. Admittedly, Cody, like I'm here because I stand on the shoulders of others and I know that you and Carly feel the same way. Martin Luther King Jr., the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. 60 years ago was talking about the links between militarism, racism, and capitalism. And any economy where people are profiting off of exploitation and extraction and killing is one that we in Vermont, Senator Leahy and Senator Sanders have the ability right now to reject, not just in word, but indeed, and reshape the entire economy. And if they don't know how to do it, we're going to show them how to do it town by town, from the bottom up, because we're tired of waiting for leaders to lead. And again, thank you to Code Pink. I know this isn't going to happen in a year or two years or three years or five years. But I'm here to make sure that the torch gets passed on fully lit to the next generation of activists so that we have an economy that invests in peace, invest in each other, and ends an economy built off killing and destruction. And town by town, bottom up, like you said, is the way we're going to do it. So thanks for that, James. And also not just that, but highlighting not just how town by town we work on these city divestment campaigns, and eventually we get to divesting a whole state from the war machine. And then like you pointed out, and Carly's connection to our Code Pink's Defund the Pentagon campaign, the Congress members who are then part of that state can then be pushed legislation of defunding the war economy at the top two. So it really is this strong connection about why a campaign in cities within a state like Vermont is incredibly important. Now let's talk about the strategy for the campaign moving forward for folks on this call. So where is this campaign going? I know Carly in her presentation began to talk about what we were starting to see in the city of Burlington, how the Burlington Retirement Fund is most likely invested in weapons. And in addition to talking about where the strategy is going here in Vermont, you know, we're asking the different cities in the state to divest from war, but what should they divest into? So can you talk about some of that? Well, I'm not when you want managing your money. That much, I can tell you there's plenty. I count my pennies, I save them. I'm not an investment sort of guy in funds. I like to invest in people. So what I can tell you is I'm investing in my fellow Vermonters by spending time with them to help connect them to the resources that CodePink has already created. There's already very smart people out there who will screen investment funds. Carly and I met with one just the other day who's locally based, who wants to use the resources of his firm to assist this. And I know that there's others from the fossil fuel campaign that I worked on. Interestingly, it rarely gets discussed, but so much of our war economy is nothing but a handout to the oil industry. You know, as someone who served in the US Navy in the early 90s, there was a Gulf War then as well. And these Gulf Wars are all about subsidizing oil. No one really makes any bones about it anymore. It's not really a secret. That we're sacrificing the lives of my brothers and sisters for access to oil. So here in Vermont, we're going to do this as a team because nothing, nothing as structurally lasting as pivotal as this is going to be done by one person or even two or three people. This is going to be done by each one of the people on this call. That's my ass to my fellow Romaners is in your town, pick a town and start working to bring awareness to where the funds of that community are going. It could be the public library. It doesn't matter. We're going to educate our kids that this is not where we put our money. How we spend our money is a reflection of who we are. And so in Burlington, there's already activists, the aforementioned Women's International League of Peace and Freedom, the eminable Robin Lloyd and Marguerite Edelman and Jane Henley. And who else am I forgetting right now? I'm going to forget someone. I'm always in trouble. But the point being is they're already on this. They're already reaching out to all of those progressives, self-identified progressives to ensure that their city isn't profiting from the death of people through military contracts. And so that is the public institution side. There's also, I know, I know that there's some folks on this call from world beyond war, physicians for social responsibility that are reaching out to different universities, medical centers. I mean, to think that the University of Vermont Medical Center would be investing money from health care into the proliferation of death. I think it's absurd enough that it should be a satirical skit on one of those late shows. The point being is there's plenty for all of us to do that want to leave a more humane, sentient, kind world than the one we have in front of us right now. And so that's what I'm going to ask, Cody. I'm going to ask each one of us. We are the change that we need to see. And there's no reason with CodePink's help that we can't do this. Absolutely none. You've already shown it. We're just walking in your shadow, and many hands make light work. So with the likes of World Beyond War and Women's International League, A Peace and Freedom, and probably organizations we're not even aware of yet, we're going to do this. We're definitely going to do this. Indeed. And I actually like to think of it as all of us together are the ones casting the shadow that's starting to creep up towards Montpellier and is eventually going to get towards DC one day. Hey, Cody. Cody, all of my friends, as they're always quick to do, and I always welcome it. I always welcome corrections. Who better to get corrections from than your friends? But one organization I neglect to mention, and I'm going to try and cover it up by saying I'm trying to avoid shameless self-promotion. That is, sorry, that was my son calling in. He just finished this little lead game that I skipped out on. He's probably calling to tell me the score. The, is Veterans for Peace. So as a member of Veterans for Peace, shame on me. Sorry to our chapter president and my fellow brother, Bud Haas, who I believe I saw in this call earlier. Yeah, just another reminder of just how big our coalition is, with the few members we have now and the more it will grow, I know, from the more folks who jump on board. And speaking of jumping on board, coming into the last question, maybe take a minute before James until we move into our Q&A. And the next minute, you know, we've covered all the cities and some of the cities and areas we have been targeting. What are some of the ways that people can get involved now so that we can start to find other targets for this campaign? Well, we have, we have weekly and bi-weekly calls. We have a leadership team that includes John Ruer from World Beyond War, and of course you folks, and our bi-weekly calls. And I think the best way for people to find something to do is to just get involved with people who are already involved. And there are anywhere between eight and 12 people that are already starting to work on this and divide up areas of responsibility. So whether it's the private universities or healthcare institutions or municipalities, the place to start is by joining with kindred spirits. You'll never feel lonely. There'll always be something to do. And when you need to take a breather, there'll be someone there to pick up the slack for you. Well, James, thank you so, so much for giving us all kind of the crash course of all the work that's been done in Vermont so far. Well, I love conversations like this, you know, starting off with where Carly was talking about our national campaign that Code Pink was one of many organizations that helped launch. You know, it's really inspiring thinking of what the national divest from the War Machine campaign can do. But none of it has any life. It is lifeless without campaigns like this on the ground, people looking at their own city, people moving up towards their own state. That's where the actual impacts of a national campaign like this take form. So thanks for walking us through that. We're now at a point for questions and answers. I was looking through the chat here. I saw a lot of comments. We got a lot of folks sharing a lot of thoughts, which is great. I'm wondering if folks have any specific questions that James, myself or Carly, or maybe even some other folks on this call involved in the campaign can answer. So either put them in the chat or if you would like to ask to unmute, we have a small enough room today. I think we can take some verbal questions too. So just let us know. I see Robin is raising her hand, but I just wanted to make a note also. Thanks so much, Cody and James, but also John was saying in the chat, which is so true. We have a need for everyone. We need people, anyone with the affiliation with the University of Vermont, you know, if you're a faculty, student, alumni, staff, member, taxpayer, that would be great. People with the affiliation of the Vermont Medical Center. And of course, anyone who has stake in local or state pensions, right, including Burlington, Vermont. I saw people here on the call from Burlington and it would be excellent to have you involved. And we have the link to sign up to get involved and also to join us at our next meeting right in the chat box. So Robin, I think, was going to speak. Carly, can I jump in before Robin? Just very quickly, the only qualification to get involved is a willingness to make some good trouble. That's it. You need no other special qualification. That's true. Robin. Great. Yeah. So a bit of good news. John and John Royer and I and Spencer Smith met with a city counselor here in Burlington. We presented the divest resolution. She was very open to it. She had read over it very carefully herself. So we're definitely moving ahead there. My question is we don't seem to have offices, any offices of the five big companies, you know, Raytheon, Lockheed, etc., in this area. However, there are a number of businesses right around the airport that are affiliates, I believe, with the F-35, helping them do their thing. And I wonder if that might be the research we need to do next. I drove around there and I got the names and now I don't have them at hand right now, but does anyone know any more information on that? Because we want to either go to banks and protest or to these institutions that are contributing to the war machine. Thanks, Robin. I think James, I see your hand in that. You're going to maybe answer that question. We also have another question, Cody, from Cheryl in the chat box just so you know. But yeah, James. Quickly, Robin, we can address that at our next meeting. The short answer is the chamber of commerce here has an aerospace sub-industry group. And that group in particular is closely allied with the Air Force. That is the reason why the governor, in fact, said that it was important to keep the F-35s here so that there was that line of communication, if you will, between the industry and military. So let's look at that at our next meeting. Okay, good. Sounds good. Thanks for that question, Robin, and for the response, James. To Cheryl's question, do we know what the barriers in mispreventing people from not divesting already are? And have we pulled the community on their thoughts and attitudes toward divestment? To bring to the first one, I think that one of the biggest myths I've seen about around divestment is that it's not profitable. It's not, you know, it's not worthwhile divesting because you end up losing money for whatever the fund or institution is. And that myth has actually been majorly busted. In fact, very recently there was shown that specifically sustainable investments have gotten more returns because that's just the way that the market is going. The war economy that will always kind of underpin the market as long as war is such a business, despite that there is also this other turn towards actual gains from reinvesting in sustainable industries and divesting from ones that are involving human rights abuses. So that's one major myth. And Carly, I think you're unmuted and you know this a lot more than I do as well. Yeah, I was going to say, I think that's a really good question. And I think that was from you, Cheryl, in the chat. You know, I think another, I think common myth is that, you know, divestment and looking into your city's finances and passing a resolution, it can maybe I think feel overwhelming for people. But I think, you know, a couple of things that I would say to that, right, is one, we could think we have the resources that people need in order to get this done, right. Like I mentioned, we have the Weapons Free Fund. We have sample city council resolutions, like I showed, that people can bring to their city councilors, like Robin and John did earlier today, to show them how possible it is to divest our local cities from the war machine, right. So we have the resources. And I think what James said is really important, which is we build teams of people in their local communities who are of, you know, similar mindset who want to work on this together and we troubleshoot any problems and we talk through any questions together, right. So it's really about building a community of people who want to work to divest from the war machine. You don't have to have, you know, financial management as a background. You just have to be willing to do the work with us. And so I think that's really important sort of myth to sort of bust, right. And what Cody said, too, about the profitability of socially responsible investments is important. And I can actually send everyone here a report that we have showing exactly what Cody said, which is that that's actually not a problem. And like also James mentioned, we talked with a local social responsible investment firm from Vermont, who's willing to provide that research for us, and also support the campaign, right. So there are a lot of resources that we have for people to begin working on this in their own communities. And it's already happening in Vermont. So please sign up in the chat box using the link there. We already have people signed up. I just checked. So welcome, everyone. Great. Thank you so, so much for that. I think definitely want to look more into Cheryl's other question about really getting more repulse from our community. I think that's why what's great about events like this that bring the community to us as we get to hear some of those thoughts about what people around Vermont are thinking about divestment investment. So I think that's a continuous one to look into. Another question before, and it looks like this one's already started to be spoken on in the chat. But what about unknown industries that support the war machine? So an example given here of a company that would clandestinely ship weapons each month, the CIA. The way that I think answering this question now is that this is just such a strong sign of how strong the war machine is by hiding all of the various ways that companies support them. And it can be really difficult. I have to make it can be very hard to pinpoint all of the different sort of tentacles that the war machine, the war monster has in all of the different areas of our society. And there's ways to find those out. But I think that's why at the forefront, the divest from the war machine campaign focuses on the most powerful weapons companies, the ones that are beyond a shadow of a doubt connected to giving funds to the war machine. So that's why we start targeting funds that are invested in Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, because they're the biggest ones. Along the way, there's many other companies you can find, sometimes local ones. There is a company, local company here in Portland, Oregon, that makes binoculars and scopes for hunters. And then it got found out that this local company was shipping scopes to the Israeli military in their military assaults on Palestine. So there's different ways you can find that. But at the onset, our campaign focuses on the largest weapons companies because it's the easiest fruit to get it, I would say. Yeah, and Cody, just really quickly, I also posted for people in the chat box, people can talk about it in the presentation, but you can click on that link there, and it takes you directly to the list of companies we want to divest from. And that information you can view quickly on our website. Awesome, thanks for that. Carly, and I saw Robin pulled her hand up, so I'll pass it to Robin before we get to closing. Just quickly, I mean, this Dave must be talking about Century Arms up in St. Albans, that makes guns with the added, you know, ability to shoot multiple bullets at one time, what are they called? Bumstock, I think. They make it and it's been reported through seven days that many of them in cartels in Mexico, and I've been wishing for years that we would have like a march up there and demonstrate there because we passed a regulation against these bump stocks in Vermont at the latest time of passing some regulations on guns, and we excluded Century Arms from, in other words, that we permitted them to sell those, and I'm calling them bump stocks, there's another word for them, the thing to put on your gun to allow it to shoot more guns at one time. We exempted Century Arms from that regulation, and Brian Cena, I talked to him about it, and he felt bad that the way it had worked out that he hadn't spoken up more about including them in the restrictions than he did. So anyway, I think that is an area of work. It's not nuclear weapons, but it's small arms are killing more people than nuclear weapons right now. You know, next month, nuclear weapons could kill a lot more of us, but for now, it's small arms that are doing it. Thanks so much for that Robin. And thank you to everyone for the questions asked and for the very lively discussion that's going on in the chat. We're getting at the end of the webinar today. Thanks again so much James for having the conversation with me. Thank you to all of the divest Vermont activists who are here who really, you know, all of us have been carrying the campaign up to this point. And my hope is that at least a handful, maybe hopefully a huge handful of folks from this call will be interested to sign up on our forum and join the campaign. So to really finish us off, I'm going to pass it back to Carly. Yeah, thank you, Cody. And thanks everyone again for being here. It's been a really great conversation. I mean, both in the chat and also with you and James and Robin jumping in and also John in the chat box. Thank you so much to all of you. And I am just going to go ahead and post one more time in the chat box our sign up form that people can use to sign up. And if you're just interested in learning more about the campaign joining our listserv and also if you're interested in joining our bi-weekly campaign meetings to learn how you can get involved. I in particular, we have that exciting development from Robin about Burlington and moving forward with City Council there. So this is all really exciting and people have already signed up. So thank you to everyone who has already signed up. I just checked on the back end. Really appreciate that. And everyone here should sign up as well. Because really, I mean, I think we've talked about it a lot on this on this call so far. But we're really not going to be able to sort of end industries that make a profit on war and killing. The same industries that we see all over TV right now, bombing Gaza, we can't end that war for profit unless we start really taking them on in our local communities. And like people have referenced educating people in our local communities, but also hitting them where it hurts and divesting from those companies. It's only something that we can do if we all come together and across Vermont, people are coming together. So we want to welcome you onto that campaign and please sign up at the link in the chat box. So with that, that ends our webinar pretty much on time. I know it's late for people in Vermont. So I want to respect everyone's time, but I really appreciate everyone's time here. It's really exciting to have you on the call. And with that, I'm going to end our webinar and thank you so much, everyone. Everyone here will receive the recording of the webinar. And I think importantly, we'll receive all of the resources that we've talked about in a follow up email. So it's been really exciting to have people on the call. I see people saying thank you in the chat box. Thank you for joining us. And have a great rest of your night, everyone. Really appreciate your time. Thank you so much, everyone. Bye. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Thank you, Jaina. Thank you, Patrick. Thanks, John, of course. Thanks, Cheryl. Bye, everyone.