HISTORY
Our Story
This is our story.
Claremont Climate Justice is the strategic evolution of the 5C (Claremont Colleges) Fossil Fuel Divestment Team. The 5C Fossil Fuel Divestment team started in the Fall 2012 semester with a kick-off event in UCLA with a march around the campus and a speech from 350 co-founder, Bill McKibben. This inspired the students who attended the event to demand divestment from fossil fuels at the Claremont Colleges. To get the conversation started, the team sent a letter to the president of each college asking them to divest from fossil fuels within a five-year timeline. There were varying levels of responsiveness, but all the schools were hesitant to go forward with a campaign they knew next to nothing about. After a year and a half of actions, meetings, debates, and campus-wide education, Pitzer College agreed to an extensive climate action plan that included fossil fuel divestment. This incredible victory encouraged the team to consider next steps in our campaign.
Divestment is only the first step towards larger climate justice action. The Climate Change Working Group at Pitzer College proved that divestment can lead to further action against climate change, so the team realigned its focus to larger-scale climate justice and shifted divestment to be a project within it. This does not mean that there will be less effort in winning divestment at the other colleges, but that we are expanding our goals and ensuring the longevity of climate justice at the Claremont Colleges. As Claremont Climate Justice, we are working towards continued conversation about actions our campuses can take against climate change and for many more projects and victories moving forward.
To start off the Spring 2013 semester we met with Pitzer’s President Trombley and Treasurer Lee, during which President Trombley stated, “I think your campaign is a worthy one; I think that you have very admirable principles. You are doing what I think is consistent with the values of Pitzer College.”
Two weeks later we met with the Pitzer Trustee Investment Committee and submitted a report on the financial impacts of divestment. We held a discussion panel with student leader and divestment organizer Jess Grady-Benson (PZ '14), who spoke with a number of faculty members about the details of fossil fuel divestment. We also passed a resolution in favor of divestment through Pitzer’s Student Senate. In April, we submitted a second report to Pitzer’s Trustee Investment Committee outlining the moral obligation to act for the sake of social, environmental, and intergenerational justice. The Committee voted to pass on the vote to the entire Board of Trustees, who will meet to discuss the topic in Fall 2013.
In October 2013, the Board of Trustees created a Climate Change Working Group (CCWG) to examine and develop a general climate action plan for Pitzer College which may include but is not limited to divestment. The CCWG includes 3 board members, 3 students, 2 faculty, and 2 staff.
For the February 2014 Board of Trustees meeting, students gathered outside the meeting for a Valentine’s Day Action. The Divest Claremont team created an artistic representation of a pipeline, and dressed in black to create a human oil spill. Pitzer professors Paul Faulstich, Dan Segal, Harvey Mudd professor Paul Steinberg, and Indigenous Student’s Alliance member Desiree Laurie Covarrubias addressed the crowd about the importance of divestment and student activism, and the urgency of climate change.