Drumbeat for Darfur advocates take action

Omaha, Neb.: UUs raise awareness at the annual Berkshire-Hathaway shareholder meeting
Indiana: Bill passes despite initial challenges
Colorado: Committed activists report on Colorado divestment

Read more stories from Drumbeat for Darfur advocates.

Omaha, Neb.: UUs raise awareness at the annual Berkshire-Hathaway shareholder meeting.
At 6:30 a.m., on a Saturday morning in May 2007, three Unitarian Universalists from Omaha joined a group of 20 volunteers to hand out 5,000 leaflets to shareholders arriving at the annual Berkshire-Hathaway meeting.

Shareholders Gerald and Judith Porter of Ardmore, Pa., submitted a proposed resolution to divest the company’s holdings in PetroChina. Drumbeat for Darfur supported the Sudan Divestment Task Force’s efforts to educate shareholders about the proposed resolution.

Indiana: Bill passes despite initial challenges
Despite major challenges early on, advocates like Toni Kring kept up the drumbeat for divestment in Indiana. Initial divestment legislation sailed through the Indiana House with a unanimous vote. But in the Senate, the two organizations that would be required to divest suddenly became very active and vocal.

The head of the Senate Pension and Labor Committee wanted to hear directly from people who receive checks from these two funds. Kring’s group gathered names on petitions, wrote letters, and testified.

In the meantime, the bill faced a new challenge when another senator tacked on an amendment that would require any pharmaceutical company that sells prescriptions used to aid in abortions to also be divested. The bill died in the Senate.

Fortunately, the language was attached to a later bill that was more acceptable to all and on May 3, 2007, activists witnessed passage of Indiana’s Sudan divestment legislation.

Colorado: Committed activists report on Colorado divestment
On April 19, 2007, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter’s divestment legislation was introduced by Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff. With Romanoff’s leadership, the Colorado House passed the bill with a unanimous vote. This legislation was written less than four months after a group of STAND students at the University of Colorado-Boulder visited Romanoff's office to express concerns about the atrocities in the Darfur region.

Drumbeat for Darfur Advocate Dan Moen shares, “The impact of the state of Colorado divestment is small financially, but as one of the few states to pass divestment… it is very important for us nationally. It seems as relatively new activists that we are involved in keeping the so called ‘ball rolling’ and the more the ball rolls, the larger it gets.”