Boycot Israel 123

Dear Stan,Here's the next chapter in our fight with financial giant TIAA-CREF to ensure that the company's client are able to vote on a divestment resolution this summer. TIAA-CREF is challenging the CREF divestment resolution, signed by over 200 shareholders, at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). We've replied to their original arguments to the SEC (see here), but TIAA-CREF went back to the SEC. So we had to respond again (see below.)The movement for divestment keeps on growing. In the last few weeks, we have seen a successful divestment vote at UC Berkeley andover 100 professors in Columbia and Barnard calling TIAA-CREF to divest. Sydney Levy on behalf of We Divest Coalition Shareholders File Response to CREF’s Refusal to Allow Vote on Divestment From Companies Supporting Human Rights Abuses FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE  April 30, 2013 Press Contact: info@wedivest.org Yesterday, lawyers for the We Divest Coalition filed two letters (see here and here) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in response to retirement fund giant TIAA-CREFF’s continued refusal to allow a shareholder vote on a proposal to divest from companies that support egregious human rights violations, including those supporting Israel’s occupation and colonization of Palestinians. The proposal calls for a shareholder vote in the proxy package that the company plans to mail to participants on June 10, 2013. On April 22, 2013, CREF asked the SEC for a statement saying that the regulatory agency wouldn’t take legal action against it for refusing to allow a vote. The request followed several filings by both CREF and the concerned shareholders since the proposal was originally submitted. “CREF’s arguments have no merit,” said Barbara Harvey, a member of the National Lawyers’ Guild International Committee, and an attorney submitting the response to the SEC on the We Divest Coalition’s behalf. “In essence, CREF is claiming that the Israeli occupation is not an important policy issue for shareholders to discuss, that it is too complex for them to understand, and that CREF need not handle this question because it has already divested from Darfur.” “CREF is hiding behind the empty threats of the Israeli legal organization Shurat HaDin, which has a history of attempting to bully American universities into treating campus divestment initiatives as anti-Semitic and illegal,” said Daniel Strum, a member of the We Divest Coalition. “We will not be intimated by Shurat HadDin’s threats, and neither should the trustees of CREF.” “This resolution is in the tradition of the U.S. civil rights movement and shareholder resolutions against South African apartheid,” added James Marc Leas, a member of the National Lawyers’ Guild International Committee, another attorney submitting the response to the SEC on the We Divest Coalition’s behalf. “Resolutions addressing such significant social policy issues have long been approved for a vote under SEC rules, and the First Amendment’s free speech clause protects such resolutions from claims that they are unlawful.” “CREF should listen to the voices of its clients,” said Steve Tamari, one of over 200 shareholders who filed the proposal on February 8, 2013. “We have a right to have a say in how our money is spent, and we want CREF to live up to its motto of ‘Financial Services for the Greater Good.’” We Divest is a national, coalition-led initiative by Adalah-NY, the American Friends ServiceCommittee, Grassroots International, Jewish Voice for Peace, the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and the US Palestinian Community Network.