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- Send an email to your Oregon Senator and Representative in support of the upcoming Treasury Transparency Bill – it’s SUPER easy and you can customize the letter or send it as is!
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Lewis & Clark’s Student-Driven Divestment Campaign a Success
In February 2018, Lewis & Clark College’s Board of Trustees voted to divest from fossil fuels (The Source). Lewis & Clark students, guided by the environmental club, Students Engaged in Eco Defense (SEED), had been pressuring the college to divest since 2012, but ultimately the success was a result of multiple factors lining up simultaneously. The support of key figures like Interim President David Ellis, Chief Investment Officer Carl Vance and Sustainability Manager Amy Dvorak were crucial, but this article will focus on the student-driven side of the divestment process on campus.
There were two main waves of activism. The first wave began in 2012 and culminated in 2015 with a 432-signature petition that was delivered to the college administration and sustainability council. In response to Lewis & Clark being named the “greenest college in the country,” by the Princeton Review in 2015, students also protested outside the Manor House to call attention to the unwarranted award, given that the college was still invested in fossil fuels (Sustainable Life).
350PDX Joins Nationwide Day of Action to Shut Down Chase
Why is ‘Mr. Monopoly’ hanging out in front of Chase Bank? What’s an oil pipeline doing on Yamhill Street? Do I hear ukuleles and singing? It’s May 7th, the nationwide […]
Confessions of a Fossil Fuel Divestment Activist
For four years I’ve been a leader of the Divestment Team at 350PDX but in all that time I didn’t divest my own investments. I 
knew I had to do it but I was too busy. It was too complicated. I just couldn’t seem to get around to it. And it weighed on me…
Oregon’s First Cooperative Solar Project Completed
View of solar at Mazama Mountaineering Center
The Divestment/Reinvestment Team has an announcement about one of the Reinvestment options they’ve found: A community-owned solar installation!
The Oregon Clean Power Cooperative, together with the Mazamas and local solar installer Elemental Energy, will celebrate the completion of the Co-op’s first solar project on July 11 from 6:30 – 8:00 p.m. at the Mazama Mountaineering Center (MMC), 527 SE 43rd Avenue, Portland. Solar panels installed by Elemental Energy now cover three sides of the roof of the MMC and are expected to produce half of its electrical needs.
Support for PERS Divestment is Growing!
The 350PDX PERS* Divestment group has been busy this month. We are currently working on reaching out to the Unions to make sure that we have their support and to ask them to help us build more support by notifying their members of this ambitious task. On the weekend of April 22nd (Earth Day and the March for Science!) I had the chance to table at the Oregon Education Association Representative Assembly. The OEA RA is a yearly meeting of elected representatives of educators from all over the state. We felt very privileged to be a part of the OEA’s event and extremely grateful for their support.
Portland City Council Votes to Cease Investments in Corporate Bonds
Portland’s foray into Socially Responsible Investing ended on April 5th with the City Council deciding it was too much time and trouble, at least that’s the impression this observer came away with.
When the City Treasurer’s proposed Investment Policy came before Portland City Council we were there, many of us wearing orange, with our orange divestment ‘wavies.’ Alongside us was the Occupy Free Portland Coalition, opposing the Treasurer’s proposal to dissolve the Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) Committee and to instead rely solely on a Wall St. firm’s inadequate rating system. We were also advocating for adding Wells Fargo and Caterpillar to the do-not-buy list (The Treasurer’s proposed policy named the Carbon Tracker 200, as well as Walmart, as securities that would not be purchased so we didn’t need to advocate this time for fossil fuel divestment).
A Short History of Fossil Fuel Divestment and the City of Portland (and how it became a Socially Responsible Investment issue)
July 19, 2012 Rolling Stone publishes Bill McKibben’s Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math, making the case for keeping 80% of fossil fuel reserves in the ground to try to keep the global rise in temperature below 2°C.
November 8, 2012, Bill McKibben speaks in Portland on the second day of his national Do the Math tour launching the fossil fuel divestment campaign.
June 3, 2013 350PDX meets with Commissioner Fritz to discuss fossil fuel divestment. Comm. Fritz agrees to support.
Background on the Portland Socially Responsible Investment Committee
The Socially Responsible Investment Committee spent a year discussing what companies should be on the City’s do-not-buy list with criteria of concerns about the environment, health (including weapons production), abusive labor practices, impacts on human rights, extreme tax avoidance and exercise of such a level of market dominance so as to disrupt normal competitive market forces.
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