 So thanks to everyone for joining us. If you're just joining, welcome to Code Pink and World Beyond Wars webinar addressing divestment myths and organizing in the time of coronavirus. If you're joining us, please introduce yourself in the chat box. Tell us your name, where you're calling from, and one reason why you decided to join the webinar today. And then you should see a poll popping up on your screen asking you a question about divestment myths that you may have heard. Go ahead and answer that poll question for us because we'll reference it later. So thanks to anyone who's joined us. Just wanna say welcome and make sure you introduce yourself in the chat box, include your name, where you're calling from, and one reason you decided to join our webinar today. And then you should see a poll pop up. If you could just answer the poll question, we'll reference it later in the webinar. Thanks again everyone for joining. It's five o'clock in LA and eight o'clock on the East Coast, so we'll probably get started in a couple of minutes. So while you're waiting, it would be great if you could introduce yourself in the chat box, including your name, where you're calling from, and one reason you decided to join today, and answer our poll questions. So we can talk about it a little later. Thanks everyone for participating in the poll. If you're just joining, welcome to our Could Think and World Beyond War webinar addressing divestment myths and organizing in the time of coronavirus. Please go ahead and introduce yourself in the chat box and answer our poll question. It looks like people are answering and we have some interesting results. It looks like people have heard a lot of myths about divestment. So happy to get to talk about them today. Awesome, it looks like there are people from around the country and around the world joining. So thank you so much. We're actually gonna get started now. Thanks everyone for participating in Introducing Yourself. If you haven't yet, please go ahead and introduce yourself in the chat box. Tell us your name, where you're from, and one reason why you wanted to join today, something you wanna learn more about. Some people have told us about some campaigns that they're already working on, which is really exciting. So that's great. And if you could answer our poll question, that would also be great. I'm going to go ahead and stop sharing my screen now so we can get started. Again, thank you everyone for joining us today. Really excited to see so many people here. And thanks to everyone who has answered our poll question so far. We'll leave it open for people who are joining us to answer and we'll reference it a little bit later in the webinar. So we're gonna go ahead and get started. Thank you so much for joining the Code Pink and World Beyond War webinar, addressing divestment myths and organizing in the time of coronavirus. Our webinar today is actually the third installment of our five-part series. I've seen people on here who have been to others exploring the divest from the War Machine campaign, which organizes local grassroots activists to utilize divestment from the War Machine as a tool to really educate and mobilize the public around ending the effects of the US War Machine. So we wanted to spend some time addressing divestment myths and how to organize during this really precarious time because we are living through such an unprecedented moment, right? A global pandemic has taken thousands of lives across the United States, across the world. And just the United States has caused over 22 million people to file for unemployment. Over 12 million people have lost their health insurance during a global pandemic. And we're really facing likely a global recession. And with that, a serious discussion about in the coming year, in the coming decade, has really cropped up about implementing even more austerity around the world. So because of this renewed focus on austerity politics, there's really never been a more important time to really come together as a movement to demonstrate that while COVID-19 is the virus, right? An economy that really profits from war and the destruction of our planet is really the disease that made this entire experience so horrible. It's more clear now than ever that the last 50 years in which we've shredded the social safety net while at the same time funneled a lot of our public funding into the Pentagon budget and in turn the pockets of defense contractors has made us more vulnerable, not safer. So really now is the time to push back against the accepted wisdom that investing in weapons of war is good for anyone. Really, it's not good for anyone except for the weapons manufacturers who really continue to profit from causing death and destruction around the world. So now is the time to join our growing movement of people and coalition partners to demand that our universities, our religious organizations, our individual investors, our retirement funds, our mutual funds and any other financial institutions in the United States really stop making a killing on killing and start instead in investing in an economy that cares for all of us. So something that we're gonna talk about today is how do we organize to divest from the war machine in this time? How can we respond to the good and even the bad faith questions about the ability of institutions to divest from the war machine and other bad actors? What is the alternative to economy that profits from war and the destruction of our planet? So these are all really important questions that are often asked of anyone participating in a divest campaign. So really wanna just take a moment to appreciate everyone who's on this call today who really wants to address those questions head on, right? So I wanted to take a minute and just pause and take a look at the poll that people have been answering when they joined our webinar today and just take a look and see some of the results of what people have said they've actually heard surrounding some of the divestment myths when they've talked about this with their colleagues or with anyone they're talking to. Great, thank you so much Greta. So hopefully people can see on the screen sharing our polling results. So we asked which of these myths about divestment have you heard before or most often, right? So it looks like the majority of people have heard that divesting from war fossil fuels is bad for investment returns, right? It's not a good investment to invest in things other than weapons and fossil fuels. So that's a really interesting myth and we're actually gonna be talking to one of our speakers today to really speak back to that idea, right? We can't divest from war and fossil fuels. We have a fiduciary responsibility. Okay, so we're gonna address what does that mean when people say fiduciary responsibility and what does it mean? How can we respond to that line of argument because it's very common, right? Another great myth that people often hear there is no good alternative. So why should we divest, right? That's why I'm really excited that one of our speakers, Dirty Evans is going to be speaking back to that myth. There is a good alternative and we can talk about that here today. And finally, divestment is a complicated financial concept that local governments or individual people don't know how to navigate. That's a really, really big myth that we hope to dispel, of course, in our campaign, right? One of our first speaker is gonna talk more about the fact that you don't have to necessarily be a finance expert to take part in this really important campaign to divest from the war machine. So I'm really excited to talk more with people. All right, so I'm gonna go ahead and stop sharing the results. Thanks everyone for participating in that. Interesting to see some of the myths that you've heard. If you've heard other myths, go ahead and drop them in the chat. That would be great. We can maybe talk more about them later in the Q&A and I'll talk about how you can do that. Sorry about that, Grena. All right, so thanks for, you know, kind of speaking a little bit about some of the divestments that you've heard. And today, you know, I'm really excited to introduce you to two of our speakers who will address all of those myths head on. So first we'll hear from Roberto Giordano, a campaigner with BlackRock's Big Problem Network, a network of NGOs and social movements that are pressuring asset managers like BlackRock to align their business practices with the climate-safe world. So Roberto would really address some of the common myths that we talked about on the poll about divestment campaigns and how to effectively respond to them as activists and people who aren't necessarily finance experts. Then we're gonna hear from Jodi Evans about how to invest in a local peace economy. Jodi is the co-founder of Code Pink, a women-led grassroots anti-war organization. She's been a visionary advocate for peace for several decades and is currently writing a book about divesting from the unjust extractive war economy and how we can build a just, sustainable peace economy. So after we hear from both of our speakers, we'll have time for a Q&A from the audience. So as I said, you can really start, if there are other divestments that you want addressed or you wanna talk about, you can go ahead and type those in the chat box. We'll have people monitoring those throughout the presentations. So during the presentations, all of our participants will be muted. But at the end, we'll have time for this Q&A where you can type in questions in the chat box. You can raise your hand on the Zoom function here and we'll unmute you to ask the question directly. Or if you're joining us by phone, you can press star nine and we'll make sure you get to ask your question at the end. And just a really quick note that all participants will receive at the end of this, not only the links that we're adding in the chat box, but also a recording of today's webinar. So if you wanna make sure you can review this later, don't worry, we'll send that over to you. So without further ado, I wanna introduce you to Roberta who will be addressing common myths about divestment campaigns. Roberta? Thank you so much Carly and good evening everyone. Thank you all for joining this webinar today. As Carly mentioned, my name is Roberta and I live in the Oloni territory, Oakland, California. And I am a campaigner with Sunrise Project which is one of the groups that is part of the BlackRock's big problem network that it's actively working to move us and managers like BlackRock to move their money away from fossil fuels and other extractive industries. Particularly that are driving deforestation around the globe. And so today, before I actually start a little bit on my presentation, I was curious to see how many of you have heard of BlackRock before? So if you don't mind just typing in the chat yes or no so I can get a sense of where people are at. So the question is, have you heard of BlackRock before? Great. Yes, that's amazing. I see a lot of yeses. Great, so then in that case, I'm just gonna briefly remind us who is BlackRock, what is BlackRock's problem and what our campaign is about. So Carly, if you don't mind sharing my screen, thank you. So great, so looks like most people already know who BlackRock is but just to make sure that everyone's on the same page. So the question is, who is BlackRock? BlackRock is an asset manager. So what's an asset manager? An asset manager is a financial institution that manages investments on behalf of others. And they make very important decisions that help their clients portfolio grow. Asset managers like BlackRock primarily invest other people's money through index funds like exchange traded funds, meaning that most of the time they don't pick and choose individual stocks but rather they put their clients' money into these pooled funds, special mutual funds that really track the ups and downs of the market as a whole. And BlackRock is the world's largest asset manager with seven trillion assets under management as of January 31st. I think now it's a little less but BlackRock still remains the largest, the world's largest asset manager. And because of the nature of its business model and the size of its portfolio, guess what? BlackRock is involved in virtually every major corporation across the planet, including destructive companies like fossil fuels or private prison for examples or companies that produce weapons and the list goes on. And so why is BlackRock a target? Our campaign particularly focus on really exposing BlackRock's climate problem. And so the reason why BlackRock is a target is because of its business model, BlackRock is the largest investor in coal, oil and gas companies and also companies that are driving deforestation. And furthermore, BlackRock is a shareholder of many, many companies. And so at such it exercises huge influence over the companies it's invested in. And so BlackRock is this financial giant which has a lot of power, wealth and influence. And also it sets an example for other companies, other asset managers, other financial institutions. Next slide, please. Next slide, please. Thank you so much. So what is our campaign all about? So as I mentioned, the BlackRock's big problem network is a global network of NGOs and social movements that are pressuring BlackRock to align its business practices with the climate-saving world. And major partners include Amazon Watch, Sunrise Project, Friends of the Earth, the Vest-Invest Network, Sierra Club and the list goes on. And we're also part of the Stop the Money pipeline coalition network. Next slide, please. And so briefly, what are our demands as a campaign? So simple, you know, divest from fossil fuels, defund the first station and support pro-climate resolutions at the companies that BlackRock invest in. Next slide, please. So now that we have talked a little bit about BlackRock and it's amazing to know that a lot of people already knew about BlackRock and it's kind of a problem, I'm gonna talk a little bit about, yeah, like kind of rebuting these myths around the investment campaigns and just, you know, I just wanted to emphasize because my work is around climate, some of the examples that I use are specific to climate. However, they can be applied to other industries as well. So yeah, so I actually really love like to define this process of like really debunking the needs as putting on our financial armor. So there you go. So that's us putting on our financial armor. Next slide, please. So yeah, so a couple of things that I wanted to mention before we continue. First of all, I noticed that there's a lot of people here in this group that are already doing this work. So I know that there's already a lot of knowledge. And so please, like at any moment, if you have any thoughts or any comments, like please just like write it in the chat, like please do share your knowledge at any moment. And then the second part is I actually don't believe that to be an effective investment campaigner, you have to know everything. And so I think that ultimately you need to know a little bit, but you don't need to understand absolutely all the ins and outs of the financial ecosystem because it's very complex. And I feel like the most important things to know is that these companies like BlackRock, they need to stop giving money to bad projects and bad companies. I think that is the most important thing. And also the other thing that I wanna add, I think the beautiful thing of working in broad and diverse coalitions is that, you can have other folks in your coalition who are very like all about the needy greedy of the finance and technical stuff. And you don't have to be that person if you don't like it to be. Like I am certainly not the expert. And so I'm still like learning as I go. And so anyways, I just wanted to preface that that you don't have to know it all, but we have to know just a little bit, right? So anyway, next slide please. Okay, so these are like kind of four points of how the finance mindset neutralizes critique. And so the first one is denial, right? Like we know what that looks like. It's not a problem. Our money mix will go around. And so also finance is really complicated. You don't understand it. So your argument doesn't stand, right? We know that very well. The second one is like inevitability. So it's like, well, if my firm does not invest in X company, someone else will. Besides we have to follow the market. Then the other one, the third one is the lack of agency. You know, that's especially I think for institutions like BlackRock, right? We are just an asset manager. It's not our money. It's our clients money. We just, you know, make our clients happy. It's not our responsibility. And then the other one is the diversion, right? Like, hey, look here, we have alternatives, right? Like we've got these green funds and other cool things, right? That are supposed to be good. And then you find out that they're not. Next slide, please. So, yeah. So I know I would like to kind of take a deeper dive into some of the kind of like myths that some people pointed out in the poll at the beginning. So, you know, there's quite a few. I just picked these three just because I, my understanding is that these are the most common to run into, but absolutely like there's more. And I'm sure that people, if you have questions, we can talk about those later too. So the first one is the investment means losing power and influence over companies. The second one is the investment is a breach of fiduciary duty. And the third one is asset managers have no control on what's included in index fund. That's what I mentioned before. It's like this idea that you can pick and choose what's in an index fund. So therefore we are stuck with whatever it's in that index fund. Next slide, please. So let's talk about the first one. So yeah, so that's, you know, myth number one. The investment means losing power and influence over companies. So I find this, like it took me kind of a while to wrap my head around this argument, but I, you know, would experience and like kind of like just learning from other folks that I've been running the investment campaigns for a long time. I've learned that ultimately an investor like as big as BlackRock, you know, ultimately will not lose power by simply selling shares for my company. In fact, investors actually can continue to engage with the company privately and publicly, especially if perceived as a future buyer. And so the other point is that actually if an investor is seen as unwilling to divest, its power to influence a company's decision will likely decrease, right? Because these companies are gonna be like, well, this investor is staying in. So it doesn't really matter what they're asking us to do because they're not gonna exit. They're not gonna pull their money out anyway. So that's the first one. Next slide, please. Yeah, so the second one is investment is a breach of fiduciary duty. So first of all, like just to remind us what's a fiduciary duty. So a fiduciary is a person or organization that acts on behalf of another person or persons to manage assets. And so fiduciaries have a duty to provide care to their clients and really put their clients best interests before their own. And so this concept of fiduciary duty is perceived in Wall Street as really needing to ensure that a client's portfolio generates a maximum profit. And so today, depending on the sector, you can actually argue that remaining invested in certain companies is posing a risk to a client's portfolio. And I think this is especially true for fossil fuel stocks. And so we are learning, especially now during the pandemic, I'm sure that many of you have seen how the prices of the fossil fuel industry are like even going negative. So we're really seeing that, ultimately these fossil fuel stocks are underperforming and unvolatile. And so it wouldn't make sense for companies to, if the reason is their fiduciary duty so that they can really make sure that their clients portfolio generate maximum profit, then yeah, you need to go. Like you need to leave these companies out, right? But also, we know that this concept of fiduciary duty perhaps can be also expanded to talk about the moral obligations of a company, right? Especially if you look at the long term, for example, the sustainability of the planet and even the client itself. Next slide, please. Thank you. This is the third myth, which as I mentioned, you know, as a manager of BlackRock, I have no control of what's included in the index funds. And so, you know, we call index investing as like passive investments, meaning that you don't like I mentioned at the beginning, you don't get to pick and choose, which stocks to invest in. But actually, you know, we're learning that, you know, an index is essentially a list of companies that it's based upon a certain set of criteria. And so this selection of that criteria is a decision point. So for example, you can have the hundred biggest companies or guess what, you could have all companies except also fill companies, right? So too is an asset manager's choice to offer a fund that tracks that particular index. And so, you know, with that, I kind of just like wanna leave it at that. I'm sure that there might be some questions or some other thoughts, but we will be able to cover some of the questions and answers later. I also just wanted to share the next slide real quick. So this is the list of sources that I used. I think it's really important that this goes back to some of the perception that divestment is complicated, that we don't know enough about divestment and the finance ecosystem is like too complex, and it is. But actually there's a lot of like legitimate studies, there's a lot of legitimate literature that is peer reviewed out there in the world that really proves all the rebuttal arguments that I share today with you. So I'm pretty sure that this PowerPoint will be shared with you all afterwards. I really encourage you to take a look at some of the resources that I use so that you can really just like reinforce your financial armor. So yeah, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share tonight. I'm gonna pass it back to Karli. Thank you so much, Roberta. That was really great. And as you said, we'll share those resources with everyone who attended today. So don't worry about taking a screenshot of that. We will share that with everyone. So I'm now going to pass it on to Jodi Evans. He's gonna tell us a little bit more about, you know, addressing what is the alternative? If we want to divest from war, what should we be investing in? Thank you, Karli. So Roberta, that was excellent. I was so excited to hear your presentation. Thanks for breaking it down so well. We've been in the streets with you often in New York and it's always been great. Also the Board Chair of Rainforest Action Network where the Chase stopped the money pipeline came out of. So surreal to hear what you're doing and how all you do it, thank you so much. So yes, we need to divest from war but we also need to see the world holistically and we have to also invest in peace. And so the divest from the war machine project came from a realization that if we want to end war, we have to end the war economy. So I just wanna say that again, war serves the war economy, the entire structure that we live inside of, the extractive, oppressive, destructive economy. As peace activists, we work to end war while all around us are invested in it including us, our time and our talent. We personally need to divest and invest as we are asking our institutions to do the same but more on that later because always the most responsible thing to invest in is a healthy future. To help us in teaching about the costs of war that are relational to our lives and how deeply war is embedded in everything including our culture, it is the very water we swim in. We have the divest from the war machine campaign. This helps students, citizens of states and cities, owners of funds and pensions, learn about war in relationship to a return on investment that is actually making a killing on killing. This tool helps us to build an anti-war and peace movement that is relational to our daily lives. Sometimes so hard to build a peace movement when people can't relate to it, it feels very far away and this brings it super relational. War is invested in because we are told the story that security comes from weapons and wars and it is our movies, it is driven by our media, the lobbyists in Washington make sure all members of Congress are voted out if they're not for wars. They may talk a good game but let's remember that all but one member of Congress voted for war in Afghanistan even though no one from Afghanistan was on the 9-11 planes and that they'd offered to hand over Osama bin Laden. But no, they're all frightened and they vote for war even as they know it's the wrong thing to do. Of course, security doesn't come from weapons, destabilization, violence and wars. Security comes from cooperation, connection, caring and building systems that support everyone and the planet. This is the peace economy, the giving, sharing, caring, thriving relational resilient economy without which none of us would be alive. And I wanna say that what gives life, we're learning right now, right? We're learning what is essential. Every single one of those essential things is the peace economy but it has been devalued, it has been crushed, it has been literally like what we do to countries that have a peace economy. They try to put the boot on it and crush the life out of it, which is our very life. So by confronting those who with ease and blindness invest in weapons, we are exposing the hypocrisy of their values. Investing and killing people is the opposite of what they say they're committed to. Cities and states are tasked to create care and support for their citizens. Educational institutions to teach us how to be conscious and smart and about living in harmony and responsibility. Churches are committed to brotherly love while their investments are bombing school buses of children in Yemen. The cost of investing in a war economy is bankrupting the needs of people we need healthcare not warfare. Imagine if the needs of people and planet we're invested in instead of weapons, both with our tax dollars and our investment dollars. So thank you for all you do to help make that happen. So I wanna also remind us that divestment is a tool and a larger strategy to end war and cultivate the conditions for peace and that it is that a tool. After 12 years of the divest from fossil fuel movement, $8 trillion has been divested. It has changed the way Wall Street operates an entire country has divested. All the big banks and finance houses have had to scramble to make new funds and fix other funds and move money out of fossil fuel into investing in alternative energy. Which I wanna remind everyone also helps with wars because they seem to be all about oil. So we took a page from their book but let's also look at what that divestment movement has done. It has built local movement. It has educated millions about the cost of fossil fuels to the planet and to their futures. Movements pushing for a green new deal now. So remember what you're also doing is building a movement for peace. When working to get someone to divest and confronted with the question, where to invest if not weapons, we've built a tool that tracks in real time where funds are bad and where they are good. It even comes with a grade. So we're gonna move over to that site. So here we are. This is the weapon free fund site that was built for us as you so and funded by one of our supporters. And it's a great tool to be able to use. So we'll tell you a little bit of a story about why I've gone to Goldman Sachs first. First of all, you should know that since we began this project, $750 billion assets under management as we learned from Roberta have pledged to divest from weapons. So like the bells and whistles should go off. That's a big number we started at zero. So just to give you some encouragement that every month we move that number up. But at the beginning of this, I went to Goldman Sachs and I wasn't even allowed in the building because I'd been arrested so many times at Goldman Sachs during Occupy that at the front desk, even though I had a meeting they wouldn't let me up. But once I got up there and was sat down and said, look, you've changed around the movements to divest from fossil fuels but there's a movement being built to divest from weapons. And just going back a bit, I was talking to a guy that invests the money at Hewlett Packard and I asked him, do you have a screen as I was kind of thinking I'm doing this? And he said, yes, we have an investment screen. It's for cigarettes because they kill. I was like weapons kill, but let me see that nobody even thinks about it that way. Nobody sees weapons in the way that they're used. And that's why also this is so important because this is happening just mindlessly and without thought. So I left Goldman Sachs and told them, we were coming and they hired someone that I talked to today just to see how he had done in the last couple of years. And John Goldstein was brought in with his idea was called imprint and he said today that he now oversees $75 billion in assets under management that have been moved out of weapons, both weapons and fossil fuels in the last two years. So this is, you can look at, you can see where the F's are. You can see where the A's are. You can say there's plenty of places to invest. And here this is at Goldman, but let's look over at BlackRock since we're talking about BlackRock. And just looking at BlackRock, you can see where they have A's is where they've been forced by the Divest Invest campaign to invest in clean energy. So of course in clean energy, there's no weapons. So even at BlackRock, there's places to invest. And if we look over the little button that says financial performance, you can see that in the financial performance, the best financial performance is in a fund that doesn't have any weapons or fossil fuels. So going to what Roberta said about return on investment, they can't use that argument anymore. And yes, especially since we see fossil fuels have bottomed out to a minus 30. So this is a tool you can use. There's a search bar. It's easy, feel free to play around with it and check with your aunts and uncles and talk to them about their pension funds. Sit down with the people that manage your city or your university or your church's funds and just have the conversation. It's a great tool to engage them in the conversation. So there's a couple of funds that have been committed to this for quite a few years. One of them is PACS. And on their website, it says bank on the future, not bombs, put your money where your values are. And Amy Domini, who's been one of our cohorts in this, she says our principles of universal human dignity and ecological sustainability mean that we must exclude the manufacturers of products that are only intended to cause harm to people and planet. So using those quotes, it's like everywhere we talked about, they have to have this commitment. So you can see whether you can make direct shifts from one to another. And the mantra you have to always have is stop making a killing on killing. Repeat after me, stop making a killing on killing. That is what they're doing. And that's the message you want to carry with you. So, why a peace economy? In this very short time I have, I wanna like make sure that we talk about the other side, which is the stock market is still the problem. It's still part of the war economy. And we need to transfer to an entirely different system. Our war economy needs war weapons to oppress and extract, and it runs on fear and greed that depletes not only the soil of our planet, but our souls and our spirits. It's time to stop the bad, change the rules and build the new. And they do, you know, they get us to hang into this horrible system by talking about jobs. But just remember that weapon manufacturing jobs can be replaced by new energy jobs that takes us out of the oil that drives us to war or other work that creates a healthy regenerative economy. And the jobs they're creating are indentured servitude. And so we don't wanna be investing that market really. We want a different economy, one that's based on regeneration and connection. When you talk about this, it forces those locally to become aware of where health is. It's in the community. It's in the needs that nourish the community. It's in healthcare, it's in wellbeing, it's in housing. It's in food, good food, and in our commons. Remembering that our activism always changes us as we learn and make new commitments. We need to grow as we ask others to grow and change. So it could paint or part of a new economy movement that works locally to create new economic forms to let money flow in a circle. And that model is a solidarity economy. Here's the map we made in LA. And I know I'm going fast because I have a very short period of time, but you're gonna get a copy of the slides so you can study these deeper. But here's the map we made in LA and you can see that it moves from surplus allocation, which now is profits that go to make the rich richer, to production, to exchange and transfer, to consumption and use and back around. In this model, we don't need a cancerous growth that destroys workers and planet. The movement generation is a coalition we're part of that's created this framework called Adjust Transition. Knowing this helps you talk about how the local end of investing in war needs to move to be an investment in peace, which is actually a healthy community, which is what all of those people you are going after are supposed to be committed to. And I think Angela is putting in the chat how you can link to movement generations, Just Transition. Why spread economic justice, social wellbeing, ecological regeneration, they're only possible when money inherently circulates through the economy. In all of its forms, the war economy is committed to economic growth which threatens our survival as a species. A peace economy has profits or excess circulating continuously through our economic system, cultivating conditions conducive for life. As the coronavirus is showing us, human connectivity is what matters most and that our shared desire for prosperity and security is dramatically easier when we focus to develop projects that exist to generate communal wealth. Cooperatives are an example of communal wealth. Workingworld.org is another place to tell people to invest in. It is a system that's been created to help local organizations build community banks and support cooperatives. So you don't have to do any heavy backend. They built it all for you. There's a beautiful example of this, which is Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi. We also produce a couple of articles a week highlighting local projects that you can find at alternate.org. Local Peace Economy and Angelo also stick that in the chat. And then here's Kelly Curry, our local art code pinker who has created the Electric Smoothie Lab of Pasa Carry in Oakland that takes fresh fruit and vegetables that have been discarded and makes smoothies for kids at risk and the homeless in her community. What is essential? Food has become clear in this time. We need to remember that the ways of being related and respectful as they have been strangled to the ends of their breath here in the U.S. just as the U.S. attempts to strangle other peace economies like Cuba, Iran and Venezuela and other cultures who work out of a peace economy like indigenous communities in the U.S. and across the world. Our vision locally is for thriving people to thrive locally, determined by local residents and to have a global vision which is respecting the wellbeing of all people and the planet. And you can keep an eye out for our new campaign coming out of code pink called the Good Neighbor Policy which will highlight how we live in peace. We also have ways for you to divest yourself from the war economy. We started with 21 Days of Mindfulness and then 21 Days of Love because learning to listen and be present and open our hearts are great tools to make anything happen. But we have an example of divesting ourselves which is divesting ourselves from being transactional instead of relational and we don't even realize that living in this war economy forces us to behave in certain ways. Like other examples that you can find and Angela's putting in the chat how you can get your own copy of the 21 ways. But other examples are alienation to connections, self-direction to community engagement, competition to interdependence, apathy to engagement. So I hope you'll download your own and find out ways that you can be divesting as you ask others to divest. So it all starts locally and we need to educate, inspire and activate and make visible the peace economy that is much yummier and more joyful than the war economy. And we end with what it is to invest because that is what inspires our work to divest. I thank you all for what you're doing to divest your community from weapons and war and invest in peace. Beautiful, thank you so much. Both Roberta and Jodi, that was great. Some really inspiring resources about how to start investing in a local peace economy. Really appreciate that. So what we're gonna do now, we actually have about 15 minutes left and this is a time we reserved for some Q&A with both Roberta and Jodi, so thanks for sticking around. So just a reminder to everyone for this Q&A section, you can either type questions in the chat box if you have them, you can raise your hand and we'll unmute you to ask the question yourself or if you're joining us by phone, you can press star nine to ask the question. So I wanted to start off with two questions that I had collected from the chat box already and then that'll give people to collect their thoughts and maybe generate some more questions as well. So the first question I think would be directed either Roberta or Jodi, whoever wants to take this on, the question was my bank told me that I can tell them not to invest in, for example, oil or weapons, but then the money might get invested in bank funds who indirectly will invest in those funds. So I guess the question is, how do you make sure that the bank or your financial institution is actually following through with your request to divest from fossil fuels or weapons? How can we do that? I was a sure if Jodi was gonna start. I can start and then, yeah, Jodi, please jump in anytime. Yeah, that is an excellent question. And that's part of the problem that I shared with this whole notion of index investing is this idea that, sure, we can stop investing in Exxon, for example, but ultimately our investing strategy is with index funds that already have companies that do other bad things or even are still Exxon itself because it's already in that fund, right? And so that kind of falls under the category. And I think my response to that is that, ultimately, I don't remember who shared this, but someone in the chat shared, and even what Jodi shared, like this weapon-free fossil, this weapon-freefunds.org, and then there's also the fossil-free version of that. You can certainly look at which funds don't have any of these bad companies and you can direct your bank to invest in those specific funds. But that's the technical response. But actually, I think that what is most powerful is to build a movement of people that demand nonstop for certain products. And when you do that, at that point, you get the asset managers, you get the banks that are gonna be like, oh my gosh, everyone is asking for this, we gotta do something. Because at that point, it's like, it's my client demanding it. So when you generate that type of demand, that type of momentum, then there's no way that they can still say that's something that we cannot do because anything is possible, right? And so my answer in a nutshell is, A, there are funds that are fossil-free and weapon-free. You can direct them to those website. And B, let's continue to generate a movement of people that really continue to ask and demand for these kind of changes. And that's when we will start seeing system-wide changes. It's all about people power. Thank you, Roberta. People are always gonna throw something up because they're lazy and war itself happens because people are lazy. So it's up to us just not to allow the laziness. And that's why the weapons-free funds is so important is because it tracks all the funds. So they can't tell you, oh, I don't know because it's in there. And what you wanna say is, doesn't it matter to you that you're investing in killing people? And so this is really about getting people to rethink, to actually maybe think for the first time about what they're doing because everyone we're talking to, these are public funds, these are funds that have a responsibility. And I can promise you that responsibility is not about killing people. So sometimes I get around the diversion by just saying, let's get to what we want to do, not what's in your way. Let's make, with the intent, let's move forward with the intention and not worry if something's gonna go wrong on the way. Well, let's keep an eye on it. Let's stay committed. And yes, it has changed Wall Street that I've asked in best campaign, fully changed Wall Street. And they've had to think differently and it changes the people at the desk. It changes the way people think. The staff person working for the mayor, remember, we're building a movement that says war's not okay and it's everyone you touch you're having an effect on. Beautiful, yeah, exactly. I think you both hit the nail right on the head, which is they are going to try to throw up a lot of roadblocks. So that's why we're talking and providing resources here about how we can actually practically divest and it is possible. So don't let people convince you that it's not, right? So we have a couple more questions from people. I have another two questions that I think I'll put together and maybe we'll start with Jodi. She might have an answer for this one. It's, is there a way to invest in farming? And another one that's similar is, are you aware of any groups who are working to demand that Catholic institutions divest in war and weapons? Oh, well, yes, there's ways to invest in farming and I will send those links in the follow-up email. There's actually a really wonderful one that goes around and is saving organic farms from being taken over by bad farming companies. So that's, I think it's called dirt money or something like that. Anyway, also, what was the other question? The question was, are you aware of any groups who are working to demand that Catholic institutions, and I'll broaden it out to maybe just religious institutions are to divest from war and weapons? Well, yes, Cude Pink is and Pocky is here on with us and she's been working on that and following up on different institutions. Nancy Mencius out of our BlackRock campaign has been working on Trident, which is a Lutheran fund that is invested in weapons and we've got a bunch of our, I think I even saw somebody from Minnesota on the signed in. So please join with us in going after Trident there in Minneapolis. But yes, you know, the Pope has made it very clear that investing in weapons is a really bad idea. So Pocky's targeting the Catholic universities. Fantastic. Thank you, Jodi. This next question is for both of you but I will start with Roberta. Another myth I've heard is we prefer engagement over divestment. For example, trying to change companies we invest in rather than divesting from them. I think you mentioned, you talked a little bit about this but maybe could you expand on that? Yeah. Yes, certainly that's another great myth. And that was, I touched a little bit upon it when I talked about how basically, if you were to divest from a company you lose all your power and influence. And so yeah, a couple of things on that. As I mentioned, actually basically divesting, pulling your money out of a company it doesn't mean that you automatically lose power and influence because first and foremost you as a financial institution are a future buyer. And so especially the bigger targets you choose to go after the more power and influence these targets have. And so if BlackRock were to even threaten to divest their money if company A, B or C were not to change the way they do their business models that company will likely listen to BlackRock and perhaps think about changing their model. But right now when you have companies financial institutions that say no we're not gonna pull our money out and then there's no interest for that so-called company to really feel threatened by BlackRock for example because then oh well they're gonna stay in anyway because that's how they wanna engage with us. So that's kind of like on a theoretical level. It's like actually the more you threaten to divest the more power you have because companies will try to make you happy. And then the second piece is that if you look at years of voting as shareholder at annual general meetings you will see that these financial institutions never ever vote for resolutions that are pro-climate or just in general they're like ESG resolution. So even looking at like for example like weapons, human rights they never vote for this kind in favor of this resolution. So honestly like I call BS when I hear that argument because I'm like well if that's where the case I should see a list of like years of you voting against. I'm sorry of you voting in favor of this resolution but you don't do any of that. So you're not really engaging you're not really pressuring these companies, right? And so you can certainly provide these two counter-arguments and I just wanted to share that actually AGM season and this shareholder season is coming up in a few weeks and so that's gonna be another test for all of us to see how these big companies are gonna engage this year. And I am pretty sure that we're not gonna see anything new coming out of this shareholder meeting so we can go once again after and really continue to pressure for divestment because engagement is not really working. Fantastic, Jodi did you wanna add anything? Well I wondered if Nancy or Yosef could just address also what we're doing at the shareholder meeting for BlackRock right now just as a follow-up for that. And I so agree with Roberta it's just like, it's just bullshit, like, yeah. Fantastic, Yosef did you wanna tell people because that's actually, yeah, a great segue into next steps for people. I'm not seeing any other questions in the chat box or any raised hands so I think it's time to move on to next steps. So Yosef could you maybe tell people about some of the ways that Code Pink is engaging around BlackRock and the BlackRock shareholders meeting? Yes, and also if Roberta could share about their action on the 20th. But yeah, so on the 21st, Code Pink is holding a people's shareholders rally, virtual rally that is obviously, and we are going, excitingly enough we are going to be reporting from the assembly as well. We will have Nancy reporting from inside. So we will have actions happening outside and inside. So we encourage folks to join us. It's going to start, we are going to start at 7.30 Eastern time. The actual. AM, AM. AM, yes, 7.30 AM. Yes, thank you so much Jody. So we are going to start at 7.30 AM. The event is starting at eight but we obviously want to build momentum beforehand and we want folks to be engaged in the Facebook and Twitter storms as well as we said we are going to have great presentations and great correspondence from what's happening inside directly. And yeah, we also encourage Roberta to share about the action on the 20th. Yes, super quick. Magashi, your online rally sounds so exciting. So I hope I'll be able to join. The Black Rock Speak Problem Campaign is doing something today before the Black Rock AGM so it's on the 20th. And basically one of the things that we were bombed the most like that we were so disappointed was that because the annual shareholders meeting is no longer in person, it's now online. Indigenous people and frontline communities were no longer able to go to these meetings in person and talk directly to the CEOs. And so what we are doing instead the day before the AGM is to basically provide a space, a platform for these Indigenous and frontline communities to speak about how the investments of Black Rock are impacting their communities back home. And so I don't have any links to send you yet. We're still in the early planning stages but as soon as I do I'll send it your way. Thank you. Awesome, thank you Yusef and Roberta, that was great. So people can sign up at the link we provided to participate in the virtual shareholders meeting protest that Code Pink is hosting when Black Rock it will be holding their shareholders meeting. So that's great. So I'm gonna start wrapping it up. It looks like we addressed everyone's questions and we're nearing the hour here. So I'm now gonna hand it off to Cody who is an organizer with the Divest in the War Machine campaign with Code Pink to just give us a couple of quick next steps. And thank you everyone for joining and I'm gonna pass it off to Cody. Thanks, Carly. Yeah, Echo what Carly just said, thank you everyone so, so much for joining this webinar. We're right in the middle of our five part series and we want really every one of these webinars to spur people into action which means we want all of you to join us on this campaign to divest universities, cities, state governments, individual pension funds all across the spectrum. So I'm gonna put a couple of links in the chat right now. If you wanna get in touch with us and we really hope you do, you can send us an email at divest at codepink.org. I've also linked a Google form, an interest form and you can fill out with some additional information if you wanna get us, start the conversation with us. We really hope you can fill out that form. Not just if you wanna start a campaign but maybe if you have an existing divestment campaign that maybe you want some help applying some of these tools to, that's another thing that we can help you out with. We really hope that you will join us, went up on, oh I didn't say the date on this, May 12th next week on 8 p.m. Eastern time and 5 p.m. Pacific time. And this one will be on university divestment. You can register the same link you registered for this at the Eventbrite page. I did drop the link in there and remember it's May 12th, I'm sorry for forgetting to say the dates. And also if you wanna hear a spotlight on the divestment campaign on codepink radio, this Thursday at 11 a.m. Eastern time and 8 p.m. Pacific time, you can tune in to hear some more stories of people divesting. And that is gonna be, you can go to codepink.org slash radio to plug into that. These are just a few of the ways you can get involved. And again, we really want all of these webinars to lead us into actions we can all take together, especially as we build up this strength in the midst of our social distancing. Something we've said at Code Pink is even if we have physical distancing, we wanna have continue social solidarity so we can really hit the streets again with full force 10 times more than we did when we had to start distancing. So thank you all again, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. We hope to keep talking and we'll see you all around. Thank you, everyone. Thanks, everyone.