TIAA-CREF Censors their Investors

TIAA-CREF is a retirement fund giant that bills itself as “serving the greater good”, in part, they claim, by engaging with companies that behave badly, to end such practices. So, that’s why a few months back, nearly 20 CREF investors & anti-Occupation activists filed a shareholder resolution asking CREF to start engaging with companies that make money from Israel’s occupation.

Despite their stated commitment to transparency, they tried an end-run around shareholder democracy and asked the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to help them quash it. TIAA-CREF asked for and has now received assurance by the SEC that the SEC will not sue it for refusing to submit the anti-Occupation proposal to its investors for a secret ballot vote.

CREF has chosen to refuse to share with its own investors a shareholder proposal by CREF shareholders calling upon them to engage with corporations in its portfolios, such as Caterpillar, Veolia, and Elbit, that operate in the West Bank and East Jerusalem demolishing homes, confiscating land, and contributing to settlement expansion.

TIAA-CREF is censoring its investors, refusing to allow them to speak their minds or to decide for themselves if they want to retire with the help of Caterpillar D-9 bulldozers that demolish Palestinian homes, Veolia landfills on West Bank lands, and Elbit surveillance systems securing settlements throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem and on the Separation Wall.

You can email TIAA-CREF to let them know what you think of their decision to censor their investors here.

We will not sit by and watch TIAA-CREF censor their investors. Their censorship will not silence us–we will continue to demand that TIAA-CREF divest from the Israeli Occupation!

For campaign updates, follow us on Facebook. For questions, email us at divest @ jewishvoiceforpeace.org.

http://wedivest.org/2011/05/tiaa-cref-censors-their-investors/