Next week I am going to Charlotte, NC, and I want to bring your voice with me. You see, financial giant TIAA-CREF is having its shareholder meeting in Charlotte, but the company refuses to talk about the Israeli occupation.
That's why I am asking you to sign this open letter to TIAA-CREF CEO Roger Ferguson before Tuesday and ask him to divest from companies such as Caterpillar, which manufactures the bulldozers used to demolish tens of thousands of Palestinian homes, and Veolia, which operates buses in a segregated highway in the West Bank. Segregation! I am old enough to have witnessed myself segregation in the South. I did not like it then and I do not like it now.
I have been proud to be a Jew all my life, but after visiting Israel three times and the West Bank once, I've seen the effects of the Israeli occupation with my own eyes, and what I have seen harms not only Palestinians but also Jews everywhere.
I started investing in a TIAA-CREF pension fund back in the 1970's, and now as a retired professor, I draw almost half of my income from TIAA-CREF. I do not want to have my retirement money contributing to injustice. That's why I am asking you to sign this open letter to Mr. Ferguson.
Together with other TIAA-CREF participants, I filed a shareholder proposal asking TIAA-CREF to talk with companies that profit from the Israeli occupation and ask them to stop profiting from human rights violations. TIAA-CREF decided not to include that proposal on the ballot.
I also wrote TIAA-CREF personally to express my concerns. All I got was a brief letter from them saying no, and that profit was their only concern.
TIAA-CREF has already divested from Sudan because of the genocide in Darfur. And yet the company says that the case in Palestine is different because the genocide in Darfur was recognized as such by the US government.
Is TIAA-CREF waiting for a full-fledged Palestinian genocide before deciding to divest? How many more Palestinians need to be made homeless before TIAA-CREF takes action? And if the company can only take its cues from our government, does it mean that it was in favor of segregation when such a practice was legal in the US? It is certainly in favor of segregation today if it keeps on profiting from the Israeli occupation and its Jewish-only roads and settlements. And it is doing this with my hard-earned money.
Please, sign the letter to Ferguson.
Thanks.
Evalyn Segal, Ph.D.
Professor Emerita. Department of Psychology. San Diego State University.