On Saturday, July 27, the SEIU Local 1021 Executive Board passed a divestment resolution drafted by rank-and-file members of 1021 Members for Palestine Divestment Committee. 

• The resolution calls for the local to disclose the current investment policy statement and also directs the local to amend the investment policy to:
  • divest from weapons manufacturers and companies that build technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and surveillance technology for military use
  • divest from private prison companies, immigrant detention companies and border patrol contractors
  • divest from companies that profit from apartheid, colonization, and ethnic cleansing
  • divest from the fossil fuel industry

This resolution passed thanks to the organized solidarity of the rank and file, who made personal calls to executive board members, provided visual testimony through a pamphlet sent by email, and physically showed up outside the executive board meeting in Fairfield to greet board members with art and passion to garner support. Many also joined the meeting on Zoom to speak in support of the divestment resolution, drawing connections between struggles, with the understanding that as labor we represent the working class in solidarity for justice.

Arlétte Jácome is a bilingual intake coordinator with Regional Center of the East Bay, which offers services for children and adults with developmental disabilities. She’s been with RCEB for about six years and currently serves as the chapter president. She said, “I’m proud of this resolution. I helped organize my fellow union members around it because it’s important to me that our union means what it says about our values. We lead as a union for our members and communities while also showing international solidarity. We want to make sure our union is spending our members’ money ethically and not supporting genocide.”

Many have inspired these divestment actions, from student encampments across the country; the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement; and labor coalitions heeding the calls of Palestinian trade unions.

All of this helps build working-class solidarity across our nation and the world. When organizations’ values are not reflected in their investments, it’s then time to look closer and make policy changes to support the best and most ethical and sustainable options. This is exactly what our rank and file did: They noticed things that were not aligning with 1021’s values, so they rolled up our sleeves and did the work to get a solid divestment resolution passed and to get our investment policy statement amended to shift many of our options to a best of sector option, where they were not previously slotted.

Trish Belenson, Oakland Unified School District chapter president and library technician, said, “Divestment efforts are important across all the various sectors of employment of our service workers. I saw a huge need for our union to shift funding that was going to weapons manufacturers, military efforts, surveillance companies, and companies that are environmentally irresponsible – all of which have ultimately been used to bomb schools, kill children and people in Palestine and elsewhere.

“As service workers, and for me, as one who works with students, teachers, and librarians in the education sector, it was antithetical to all we aim to provide and foster as education workers to have our union dollars complicit in genocide and the wholesale destruction of an Indigenous population, their land, and infrastructure, as a means for profit. 

“I’m so pleased that SEIU Local 1021 is finally divesting from companies that profit from occupation, apartheid, colonization, and genocide, severing financial complicity.” 

SEIU also signed onto a letter demanding a cease-fire in Gaza and a stop to military aid for Israel. This letter is rooted in longstanding union commitments to global solidarity and an understanding that the way our government acts — and spends – abroad has deep consequences at home. Working-class values of equity, integrity, solidarity, and justice demand that we act to oppose anti-semitism, Islamophobia, and hatred. It is time for this war to end.