Over the course of August, I’m republishing a series of posts from a now-defunct site that covered the first major municipal divestment fight that took place in Somerville MA between 2004-2006. A description of how that issue played out can be found here and I hope these essays will continue to be useful for those battling against the BDS propaganda arm […]
Tag Archives | Somerville
Somerville Divestment Revisited – Money
Over the course of August, I’m republishing a series of posts from a now-defunct site that covered the first major municipal divestment fight that took place in Somerville MA between 2004-2006. A description of how that issue played out can be found here and I hope these essays will continue to be useful for those battling against the BDS propaganda […]
I Owe It All to Ron – Part 2
In the last episode, I talked about the de-evolution of the Somerville Divestment Project (SDP) from an organization that in 2004 came “this-close” to tricking a city government into passing their divestment resolution, only to end up in 2008 flogging an incomprehensible bait-and-switch pseudo-human-rights ballot initiative as some kind of booby prize to their own […]
I Owe It All to Ron – Part 1
Well this week is flying by. Sorry for the infrequent updates, but that project I’ve been hinting at over the summer is getting close to completion so stay tune for some exciting Divest This news which should be ready to announce next week. In the meantime, I guess I should mention something about the remnants […]
Olympian Folly – In Whose Name?
As noted (and accepted) yesterday, decisions regarding who and what the Olympia Co-op boycotts apparently rests solely with the co-op’s board. I say “apparently” because my only source for this information is co-op members defending that decision online. But the Principle of Charity described yesterday means one should treat such sources of factual information as […]
Blast from the Past: Power
As we await what comes next at UC Berkeley, I thought I’d dredge out some real old stuff, things I wrote years ago when divestment came-a-calling at Somerville, Massachusetts. It’s interesting to note that now that BDS is attempting to use the paddles of life to resurrect itself, how little their arguments (or required rebuttals) […]
BDS Party Crashers
As with previous pieces I’ve written on what BDS does to civil society, it’ll take a couple of paragraphs to get to a recognizable point. So bear with me if you can stand it… For the fourth year in a row, I attended the variety show at my kid’s elementary school. Neither boy performed (although […]
Why do this?
Now that this site has finally reached critical mass (which, in blog-speak, means family members have started asking why I’m spending so much time focusing on this particular issue), I thought it might be worth republishing something I wrote five years ago at the end of my first divestment battle. It was when I was […]
A Fool for a Client – The National Lawyer’s Guild’s BDS Advice
The National Lawyer’s Guild (NLG) has published a helpful guide to the happy-go-lucky boycott, divestment and sanction brigade which purports to help them avoid BDS activity that might land someone in court. Like many “alternative” unions (NLG is basically a left-leaning “answer” to the more established and establishment American Bar Association), the Lawyer’s Guild has […]
BDS Countdown! – Be Still My Heart
According to their countdown clock, the 8th Annual Organizer’s Conference will be taking place in downtown Chicago in ten days, three hours and 43 minutes (whoops! make that 42 minutes). While the innocuous title is likely to have been chosen in the hope that the group won’t get thrown out of their venue before this […]
So where has divestment been successful?
FAQ#9: If divestment has failed at colleges and universities, has it been successful anywhere else? In 2004, a number of Mainline Protestant churches (notably the Presbyterians and Methodists) passed resolutions calling for divestment of their retirement portfolios from stocks identified by BDS activists as supporting the Jewish state. In fact, the success divestment had in […]
The Union Label
When divestment began to get its hooks into UK labor unions 5-6 years ago, local BDSers crowed that it would only be a matter of time before American labor took up their anti-Israel calls. “Good luck with that,” I recall thinking at the time, remembering my visit to AFL-CIO headquarters back in college where I […]