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May 20, 2006
Hedge Fund dumps CCA
*Farallon Dumps Corrections Corporation of America*
After national campus pressure, world’s fourth largest hedge fund
divests from controversial for-profit private prison corporationMay 19, 2006
National - Following a year-long campaign by students, graduate
teachers, faculty, and community members, Farallon Capital aid Silky Shah, co-director of the /Not With Our Money!/ campaign. “We hope other investment firms such as Lehman Brothers will follow Farallon’s lead and and refuse to do business with the for-profit private prison industry.”
In 2001, Grassroots Leadership’s /Not With Our Money!/ campaign, a
network of student and community activists working to end the use of
prisons for profit, successfully forced Sodexho, a campus caterer and at the time the largest CCA shareholder, to fully divest from the
corporation and to withdraw its representative from the CCA board of
directors.
Sarah Haley, a GESO member and primary author of the report /Endowing
Injustice/, which first exposed Yale’s investment in CCA through
Farallon holdings, welcomed the news.
“I am delighted that Yale and Farallon have listened to the outcry
against CCA and have done the right thing. On Yale’s campus and at
colleges around the country, teachers and students were firmly opposed to this investment,” Haley said. “This is a major victory for the values of higher education.”
At Yale, GESO collected over 1250 signatures in opposition to the CCA
investment. Students and faculty at eight other colleges and
universities had invested in Farallon also organized for divestment from
CCA.
The Graduate Employees and Students Organization works to represent and promote the interests of graduate students at Yale. GESO is a leader in the national movement to unionize graduate students.
www.notwithourmoney.org
Posted by lois at May 20, 2006 11:02 AM