Caterpillar divestment

Chicago--On June 10 a diverse coalition rallied outside a shareholders meeting of Caterpillar.

Caterpillar sponsors Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine through its sales of equipment to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Caterpillar's equipment is used to build both the separation wall that illegally annexes Palestinian land and the illegal settlements. Caterpillar also sells weaponized bulldozers to the Israeli army, which uses them to demolish Palestinian homes. Despite years of condemnation, Caterpillar refuses to halt sales to the IDF, or even condemn the abuses.

While we rallied against Caterpillar's deadly profiteering, on the opposite side of the street, a smaller group of demonstrators voiced their support for the Israeli occupation. One man held a sign which read "I [heart] Nakba." Nakba is the Palestinian word for "catastrophe" and is used to refer to the forced dispossession of tens of thousands of Palestinians from their ancestral lands in 1948.

The campaign against Caterpillar is part of a growing movement to target corporations that profit from the occupation in Palestine. In February of this year, Hampshire College, a small liberal arts school in Massachusetts, became the first U.S. college to divest from companies that profit from the occupation of Palestine. Hampshire was also the first college to divest from apartheid South Africa in the early 1970s.

Divestment at Hampshire was brought about only as a result of tireless and organized pressure from Hampshire Students for Justice in Palestine (HSJP). In my two years of working with HSJP, I learned that it is possible to win against the odds. It was an international divestment movement that helped bring the apartheid regime in South Africa to an end. Today, divestment from corporations that profit from the occupation of Palestine has the potential to help stop the racist and colonial oppression of Palestinians.

It is important to remember that we are not alone, and that together we can win. Please, join the movement and the struggle. Do it diversely and diligently, with dignity and with delight.

For more info see http://www.bdsmovement.net/ and http://www.hsjp.org/

--Student militant

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