Started by NYC Educators for Palestine
We, as rank-and-file members of the UFT and PSC-CUNY, call on the Teachers’ Retirement System of the City of New York to divest from all Israeli securities. We refuse to have our retirement savings aid, abet, and profit from the genocide in Palestine.
The settler colonial state of Israel’s 75 years of violence, dispossession, human rights abuses, and ethnic cleansing has been well-documented by many UN organizations and international rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. These abuses have intensified exponentially since October 7th, leading to unprecedented levels of death, injury, and displacement. As of early May 2024:
- Israel’s tightened siege and bombardment of Gaza has killedover 34,000 civilians, including 14,500 children. Nearly 10,000 people are reported missing under the rubble.
- Israel has bombed hospitals, schools, residential blocks, and refugee camps.
- Israel has severely limited humanitarian aid, including food, water, fuel, electricity, medical supplies, and internet access, resulting in catastrophic levels of food insecurity.
- Over 600,000 children in Gaza are out of school as the education system and infrastructure has been completely destroyed.
- Over 1.9 million people – 85% of Gaza’s total population – have been displaced.
It is in this context of ongoing and escalating genocidal violence, that we, the undersigned rank-and-file members of the UFT and PSC-CUNY heed the call of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions to demand that TRSNYC, our pension system, divest from all Israeli securities, which are inextricably tied to the genocide against Palestinians.
As of June 2023, TRSNYC holds approximately $71 million in Israeli securities, 0.0331% of its entire portfolio. These investments include:
- Over $2.5 million in state of Israel bonds, which directly funds Israel’s military forces and illegal activities, including
- the ongoing, indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza,
- the creation of 279 illegal settlements in the West Bank,
- the unlawful, indefinite administrative detention of Palestinians,
- the 16-year-long land, sea, and air blockade of Gaza, which has restricted the flow of people, goods, energy, and clean water into Gaza;
- Over $1.8 million in Nice Ltd, a company that profits from technology used to surveil protestors and activists and has contracts with the NYPD and other police departments across the country; and
- Around $500,000 in ICL Group, a chemical manufacturer that produces white phosphorus for American projectiles. The US Army then provides these projectiles to Israeli forces to kill and injure Palestinians in besieged Gaza. This investment has lost over 25% of its value since it was purchased by TRSNYC showing that investment in genocide is not only morally reprehensible but also unprofitable.
There is substantial precedent for TRSNYC to divest from entities that are complicit in human rights’ violations. TRSNYC voted to divest from Apartheid South Africa in 1985; from gun and ammunition manufacturers in 2013; from private prisons in 2017; and from fossil fuels in 2018. Most recently, in March 2022, NYC Comptroller Brad Lander successfully called for all five of New York City’s public pension systems to divest from Russian securities. He hailed the divestment as an act of solidarity against “a vicious and unjust war [that] continues to be waged on Ukraine, driving deaths, destruction and displacement of civilians.”
We call on the NYC Comptroller and the TRSNYC Board of Trustees to have the same moral clarity today and fully divest our pension system from Israeli securities that are clearly contributing to the death, destruction, and displacement of Palestinian civilians.
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