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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 18, 2016)
News Page 4 Street Roots • Nov 18-24, 2016 ILLUSTRATION BY PHOEBE O; Dozens of local organizations tell Portland City Council it’s time to stop investing taxpayer dollars in privateprison profiteers DIRK MONEY BY EMILY GREEN bankroll the private prison industry and Caterpillar, which manufactures equipment n the wake of a presidential election that custom designed to bulldoze Palestinians’ homes and is a key contractor in the spurred an overnight upsurge in private construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. prison stock value, Portland City Council While the city sold its remaining HSBC is being asked to rid the city’s investment holdings in January 2015 and owns no portfolio of financial institutions that profit Caterpillar stock, it currently owns shares from private prisons. worth $96.3 million in the other three The timing is purely coincidental. banks, representing 7.2 percent of its total The opportunity comes in the form of a investment portfolio, which as of Sept 30 list of recommendations submitted to City was worth $1.3 billion. Council in late September from the city’s The committee estimated that potential Socially Responsible Investments losses in revenue from investments in these Committee. three banks, if no equivalently yielding It’s asking council to add nine companies investments are found, could be between $4 to the city’s Corporate Securities Do-Not- million and $5.1 million over a three-year Buy List, and four of them are major term. financial supporters of private prisons - City Council has set aside three hours for Wells Fargo, Bank of New York Mellon public testimony on the committee’s Corp., JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. and proposed recommendations from 2 p.m. to HSBC Bank USA. 5 p.m. during its Nov. 30 meeting and is Since the release of the list, a broad expected to vote on what companies it will coalition of two dozen unions, civil rights add to the Do-Not-Buy list on Dec. 7. organizations, churches and other local The list is currently occupied only by Wal- community groups, calling itself the Mart Portland Prison Divestment Coalition, is The seven-member advisory committee, pushing City Council to approve the championed by Commissioner Steve Novick committee’s recommendations. in 2014, also named Amazon.com, Nestlé Specifically, the coalition wants the city to Holdings, Credit Suisse and Société divest from the Wall Street banks known to STAFF WRITER I Générale among the “the worst of the worst” corporate issuers eligible for city investments on its first and long-awaited list of recommendations. Of those, the city is invested only in Credit Suisse, with $16.9 million in holdings. The Socially Responsible Investments Committee is charged with identifying corporate issuers that don’t align with pre- established values and ethics. Among reasons for blacklisting the nine corporate issuers listed, the committee , noted multiple examples of fraud, worker abuses, corruption and tax evasion among the companies. It was concerned about Nestle’s possible connection to “serious child labor abuses including forced child labor in the cocoa supply chain,” Credit Suisse’s criminal activity and alleged funding of terrorism, and Amazon.com’s questionable labor practices, investigations into tax evasion in the U.K. and France, and concerns about corrupt corporate ethics. The banks listed not only fund private prisons but profited from the subprime mortgage crisis that led to the Great Recession, and they have other concerning See DIVEST, page 5
