(Writer requests anonymity)
June 9, 2007
I'm waiting for the people at http://sudandivestment.org to step in. They watch everything. When Cody Willard wrote the FT column about how divestment not only wouldn't help Darfur, but would actually hurt Darfur, they were on it right away. From what I can tell, they don't miss anything. They have the most organized system I've ever seen. We've noticed that only freshman legislators introduce these bills, which is true for Ohio. Sudandivestment.org builds an organized group on a university somewhere in each state. Then this group approaches freshman legislators with the divestment bill which is very emotional and already written. These university organizations don't have a clue about the difference between defined benefit and contribution plans. But they do think they're helping Darfur. The legislators see the bill as a way to eliminate teacher pension.
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We here in ___and other states really feel that our well being and, of course, Ohio's, depends on how your Iran-Sudan divestment bill turns out. Florida's gov has had theirs on his desk for a month now, probably waiting to see how the wind blows in Ohio. California just sent theirs to the senate and Calpers is fighting hard. But...not one state that I've run across has the fighting spirit I've seen in Ohio. Hopefully we can take a page from your playbook, if and when Iran divestment is introduced here. Sudan divestment passed in ___before most of us even knew what the word divestment meant. Boy, do we ever know now! The real wake-up call came when we figured out that every bill introduced in every state contains a section that excluded defined benefit plans from divestment; only defined benefit plans are mandated to divest. All the bills are clones, provided by Sudan Divestment Task Force (sudandivestment.org). Getting people to read these bills is difficult. The Dems jump on the bandwagon because they feel sorry for Darfur (and that's another issue). Repubs just want to get rid of teacher pension funds. It's an unholy alliance and we're stuck in the middle.
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