Last night during the vice presidential debate, I held my breath during the answer to a question on Darfur. Because I have been working on divestment efforts over the past year, I was hoping that Governor Palin would discuss the Alaska divestment legislation that our partner organization the Sudan Divestment Task Force worked so diligently on with activists in Alaska during the last year’s legislative session.
Governor Palin did discuss the bill and came out publicly in support of it. She touted the bill as a law that must be passed “because all of us, as individuals, and as humanitarians and as elected officials should do all we can to end those atrocities in that region of the world”.
This coming year, we must work to hold her to her pledge to do all she can. While her words have yet to result in action, there is a new opportunity in the coming legislative year.
Just as Governor Palin has the opportunity to make this issue an important part of her campaign, there is a new opportunity in the coming year. The Alaskan legislature must listen to the activists knocking on their doors, calling into their offices, and writing in their support for the divestment legislation. It is up to us to make them act.
Economic pressure is one of the main tools by which the government of Sudan will be convinced to halt the violence in Darfur. It is one of the economic tools that has been carefully sharpened to affect only those companies that help to fund the central Sudanese government and limits the negative effects on marginalized populations in Sudan, such as Darfur and South Sudan. The companies that are helping to fund the genocide must instead become active agents of positive change for Sudan.
This year, if you would like to be part of the campaign for divestment in Alaska, email divest@savedarfur.org and check out the Divest for Darfur portion of our website. Let’s get Alaska to divest for Darfur!
The opinions expressed here are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Save Darfur Coalition.
spencer says:
I was delighted that the candidates spoke out on Darfur, even Sarah Palin, until I read this:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5948944&page=1
Record Refutes Palin’s Sudan Claim
Palin Administration Against Sudan Divestment Before It Was For It, Documents Show
By JUSTIN ROOD
October 3, 2008
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Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin fought to protest atrocities in Sudan by dropping assets tied to the country’s brutal regime from the state’s multi-billion-dollar investment fund, she claimed during Thursday’s vice presidential debate.
Governor Sarah Palin at VP debate
Republican vice presidential candidate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speaks duringa vice presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., Thursday, Oct. 2, 2008.
(J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo)
Not quite, according to a review of the public record – and according to the recollections of a legislator and others who pushed a measure to divest Alaskan holdings in Sudan-linked investments.
“The [Palin] administration killed our bill,” said Alaska state representative Les Gara, D-Anchorage. Gara and state Rep. Bob Lynn, R-Anchorage, co-sponsored a resolution early this year to force the Alaska Permanent Fund – a $40 billion investment fund, a portion of whose dividends are distributed annually to state residents – to divest millions of dollars in holdings tied to the Sudanese government.
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In Thursday’s debate, Palin said she had advocated the state divest from Sudan. “When I and others in the legislature found out that we had some millions of dollars [of Permanent Fund investments] in Sudan, we called for divestment through legislation of those dollars,” Palin said.
But a search of news clips and transcripts from the time do not turn up an instance in which Palin mentioned the Sudanese crisis or concerns about Alaska’s investments tied to the ruling regime. Moreover, Palin’s administration openly opposed the bill, and stated its opposition in a public hearing on the measure.
“The legislation is well-intended, and the desire to make a difference is noble, but mixing moral and political agendas at the expense of our citizens’ financial security is not a good combination,” testified Brian Andrews, Palin’s deputy revenue commissioner, before a hearing on the Gara-Lynn Sudan divestment bill in February. Minutes from the meeting are posted online by the legislature.
Gara says the lack of support from Palin’s administration helped kill the measure.
“I walked out of that hearing livid,” Gara recalled of the February meeting. Because of the Palin administration’s opposition to the bill, “We could not get a vote in that committee,” he explained. At no point did Palin come out in support of the effort, Gara said.
The bill’s Republican co-sponsor remembers things differently. “I know she was very strongly behind this,” said Rep. Lynn. Asked why, if Palin supported the bill, one of her administration’s officials would speak against it, Lynn demurred. “We don’t all work in lockstep here,” he said. “People have different opinions,” he added.
Lynn said he and Palin agreed to re-introduce the bill next January, and push to pass it then. He declined to consider whether stronger support from Palin would have helped the bill survive this winter. “I’m not going to do this what if, what if, what if,” he said. “These are hypotheticals.”
Gara said that after it was clear the bill had stalled, he and others pressed the administration directly on Sudan divestment.
“We were outraged,” Gara recounted. “We went to the Commissioner of Revenue and said, ‘What the hell are you guys doing? This is genocide. We’re going to keep pushing this until we divest.”
Two months later, at the end of the legislative session, the administration softened its position. Appearing before a Senate committee which was considering a companion measure to Gara’s bill, Palin’s Revenue commissioner, Patrick Galvin, stated the administration supported such a measure, though it hoped to amend the bill to allow for investments held indirectly, for example in index funds.
“At the last minute they showed up” and supported the divestment effort, Gara said. But by then the legislative session was almost over, and there wasn’t enough time to get it passed.
The Alaska Permanent Fund currently holds $22 million in Sudan-linked investments, according to the non-profit Sudan Divestment Task Force. Divestment advocates say the fund does not need an act of the state legislature to divest itself of those holdings.
The McCain-Palin campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has been a strong supporter of Sudan divestment efforts, and has urged Americans to liquidate their holdings in companies who do business there. He was criticized for that position when it was revealed in May his wife Cindy held $2 million in investment funds owning shares of Sudan-linked companies. She sold those holdings following a reporter’s inquiries.