Divestment: Send councillors a postcard!
Three County Councillors continue to block the East Sussex Pension Fund from divesting from the fossil fuel companies creating the climate crisis. This summer, please send them a message that this isn’t acceptable, says Gabriel Carlyle of Divest East Sussex.
On 20 July, Divest East Sussex held a four-hour vigil outside County Hall in Lewes: the culmination of a 72-hour ‘fast for fossil fuel divestment’, demanding that East Sussex County Council (ESCC) stop investing local people’s pensions in fossil fuel companies.
Clearly feeling under siege, Council Leader Keith Glazier had had the Hall sealed off and surrounded with dozens of security guards. The police had also been notified, resulting in two officers sitting there in a van for four hours.
All to protect the Council from the awesome threat posed by (at the vigil’s peak) seven people holding some signs, one of whom hadn’t eaten for 68 hours!
A £50k whitewash?
The vigil was timed to coincide with a meeting of the East Sussex Pension Committee and its advisers, where they discussed the long-awaited report on the “Merits of Divestment versus Engagement”, requested in July 2022.
The £50,000 report is currently still being withheld from the public, but we strongly suspect that it will turn out to be white-wash: attacking straw-men, rehashing long-refuted arguments and ignoring crucial evidence.
Meanwhile, the Church of England – after years of fruitless ‘engagement’ – has finally lost patience with oil and gas companies’ greenwash and made a public commitment to fully divest from fossil fuels.
Please send postcards to the Councillors blocking divestment
This September the East Sussex Pension Fund will vote, yet again, on whether to continue investing in fossil fuels or instead make a very public (and well publicised) commitment to divest from them.
Before then, we need everyone’s help to build further moral pressure on the three Conservative Councillors who are blocking divestment.
Please send one or more of these Councillors a postcard over the holidays. Include your name, address and a simple, polite divestment message (e.g. Please use your powers as a councillor to stop investment in fossil fuels!’).
The councillor addresses* are:
Cllr Paul Redstone: Edgingtons, Cripps Corner, Robertsbridge, TN32 5RY
Cllr Ian Hollidge: 79 College Road, Bexhill-on-Sea, TN40 1TN
Cllr Gerard Fox: County Hall, c/o Democratic Services, West E, St Anne’s Crescent, Lewes,
BN7 1UE
More information at: https://divesteastsussex.wordpress.com
*Provided on the ESCC website as their contact addresses for members of the public
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