Drumbeat for Darfur

Remarks by Charlie Clements
President, UUSC
Investors Against Genocide News Conference
Boston, Massachusetts
September 5, 2007

We have been told explicitly by Fidelity and by Berkshire Hathaway that they have no guiding principles other than remaining within the bounds of the law and maximizing the return on investment for their shareholders. That’s it…if their investments are indirectly abetting genocide, but making a good return on the investment that is what is important in their corporate culture.

This may be indicative of Fidelity’s values, but it is not always true for those whose dollars Fidelity invests. Many of them do care and we are here today, because they do. We are here for those who do not want their savings and their pension funds to be associated with genocide in any form, in any place, in any investment no matter how profitable.

Genocide is perhaps the most heinous collective act in human history and we each have moral imperative to stand up to it, to say not on our watch, to say “not with my dollars.” We know some things that allow evil to triumph and one of them is decent people standing by thinking, “I can’t do anything about this, so I won’t even try.” But that is precisely the opposite message of investing against genocide. There is something we can all do. We may not be able to participate in humanitarian relief in the camps in Chad and Darfur. We may not be able to be U.N. peacekeepers. We may not be able to vote on the floor of Congress and send President Bush a message about wanting the world’s only superpower to play a leading role in ending genocide. However, we can all vote with where we place our investments.

With the information provided by Investing Against Genocide no one can say “we didn’t know.”

We have heard from fund investors who say, “We can’t screen our investments for all of the social concerns of the world, it would be too complicated.” Well we want to make it less complicated, either your portfolio is genocide free or it is not. If it is not, we want to make investors aware, so that they can make the decisions that fund managers will not make.

We call on investment firms to do the right thing. Don’t wait until the government forces divestment. Don’t wait until investors flee. Take the moral high road – NOW. Don’t wait until it is too late. We don’t need more post-genocide apologies. We need investment firms that believe that they, too, can make a difference in stopping the heinous crime of genocide.

Posted September 5, 2007