Should anyone invest in a company that profits twice from a disaster it helped cause? Social justice activists say NO!
Community Labor United (CLU), with its partners Hedge Clippers, Harvard Student Labor Action Movement (SLAM), and Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, will demonstrate on the Harvard campus this Wednesday, January 24, to demand that the university divest from the financial firm Baupost Group. Baupost holds over $900 million in the debt of Puerto Rico, the island recently devastated by Hurricane Maria, one of 2017’s dramatic manifestations of climate change. Baupost is demanding that Puerto Rico, financially strapped and in desperate need of infrastructure repairs, adopt austerity measures to be able to pay its debt. At the same time, Baupost also owns $1.8 billion in oil and natural gas stock, and its CEO, Seth Klarman, is on the board of American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that denies climate change.
Local citizens are urged to join the event, which is titled “Harvard, Stand with Puerto Rico! Divest from Hate!” Meet at 1:00 PM in Harvard Yard. For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/events/2078067229147222/ , or call Khalida Smalls, CLU’s Organizing Director, at (857) 891-9466.
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