Richard has a Darfur Update posted, with a focus on the progress being made by the group Investors Against Genocide. The group is leading a campaign to encourage/pressure major investment firms with holdings of certain stocks to divest from these stocks. The stocks in question were identified by a Taskforce, which listed about two dozen companies that are “highest offenders,” and the divestment effort is focused on the very worst of those highest offenders - the oil companies that are providing the funds the Government of Sudan needs to carry on the genocide in Darfur.
I, being of corporate ilk, have a 401k with Fidelity (the company matching funds are too hard to pass up). I’m sending in a shareholder resolution and encouraging my close work friends to do the same. If you invest in a problem fund, please consider submitting a shareholder resolution. I’ll let you know what I hear back from Fidelity.
I just saw an ad for Today’sMilitary.com in which a little black girl was talking into the mirror, practicing a speech for how going to be an xray tech or nursing aid would prepare her for nursing school when she makes it back home.
I am appalled that it takes a war to send kids to medical school.
As though it were prompted (by my references to poverty and California (in the prior post)).
L.A. Mayor raises heigtened awareness of programs to improve access to education and health care for all Americans. He looks good on camera. From the L.A. Times. Free in the Fresno Bee.
From the L.A. Times:
Villaraigosa declined to put a precise price tag on his plan, saying that would be revealed Thursday. “The cost is in the billions; the dividends are in the trillions,” he said.
Villaraigosa said poverty and poor education are interconnected and must be addressed in tandem.
More than 250 mayors from around the country gathered at the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C., this week for the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors coinciding with the start of the new Democrat-controlled Congress. They were discussing issues including energy, crime, climate change, affordable housing, poverty and education and hearing from a number of lawmakers including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Other people always have great ideas for how I should spend my money. So I’m gonna throw one back. I just learned about this micro-investing organization, KIVA.
In northern Uganda, as many as 30,000 children have been kidnapped and forced to serve as soldiers in a nightmarish civil war that the world has largely ignored. These innocent children are brutalized and mutilated, forced to commit atrocities, and given as sex slaves to military commanders. This targeted abuse of children is unacceptable.
As parents, people of faith, students and youth, we urge all parties involved in this conflict to find a peaceful resolution. We implore the United States government, the United Nations, and the international community to work diligently to bring peace and protection to the children of northern Uganda. All children deserve to have a childhood free from torture and a future free from cruelty.
Richard has a Darfur Update posted, with a focus on the progress being made by the group Investors Against Genocide. The group is leading a campaign to encourage/pressure major investment firms with holdings of certain stocks to divest from these stocks. The stocks in question were identified by a Taskforce, which listed about two dozen companies that are “highest offenders,” and the divestment effort is focused on the very worst of those highest offenders - the oil companies that are providing the funds the Government of Sudan needs to carry on the genocide in Darfur.
