Elders and Youth, Quakers & Jews and All, Against Vanguard’s Carbon Greed
Earth Quaker Action Team, Elders Action Network, The Shalom Center, and other groups will gather on Tuesday, September 19, at 11:00 AM at Vanguard’s HQ.
The Shalom Center is a longstanding partner of Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) in their legal public spiritually rooted actions and campaigns targeting investment behemoth Vanguard – whose headquarters is located just 20 miles or so from our own office in Philadelphia.
As the world’s second largest asset manager and number one investor in fossil fuels, Vanguard has a lot to answer for – they have not responded to repeated customer and activist calls for change, and have even withdrawn from their own biggest climate commitment. Just last week, Reuters reported that “Vanguard supported just 2% of shareholder resolutions on environmental and social issues at U.S. companies this year, down from 12% last year.”
If you live too far away for that gathering but near another Vanguard office or a Chase Bank, organize a gathering there.
September 19 this year falls between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur — during the Ten Days of Tshuvah — Returning Ourselves to Seeking Love and Justice.
We will live out the last words of Malachi, the last of the ancient Hebrew prophets, “that we prevent Earth’s utter destruction by turning the hearts of elders to the youth and the hearts of youth to elders.”
We call upon Vanguard to become the true vanguard of a healing future. Not the “rear guard” for Envy and Greed, for the modern Climate plagues of Flood, Fire, Famine, and Disease. We demand they use our investment money to invest in renewable energy, restorative agriculture.
For there is a truer path, the path of a fire that burns within our own selves, an inner fire of Love and Liberation like the Burning Bush, a fire that did not, does not, consume even the Bush in which it burned. A vital force of creation, not destruction.
This resistance of Love versus the destructiveness of Greed is a core spiritual dynamic that energizes our new commitment to “actifests” — activist festivals that give new meaning to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, to Palm Sunday and Passover, to Hanukkah and Tu B’Shvat. We will be there to make clear to Vanguard that there are many people who don't want to profit from climate catastrophe. We represent a growing tide of people moving their money out of Vanguard or pledging to not work with the asset manager until it deals with its climate problem and invests for a livable future for this and coming generations.
The event takes place at 11:00am on Tuesday, Sept. 19, at Vanguard headquarters in Malvern, PA – with an online training to be held on Wednesday, Sept. 13.
Register for the training and action on the EQAT website at:
www.eqat.org/grandparents_and_elders_action
Even if you can’t join the action in person, you can add your voice to the many others taking a stand against corporate greed by signing on to the Never Vanguard Pledge – click to read more!
I have been invited to speak. Please join me!
Shalom and good yontif, good year
— Arthur