VACPUSA

by worker-correspondent Jonathan Vassar

“Movements like this are growing. They’re picking up steam, developing momentum. I think more and more people are starting to recognize that we actually do have the power to effect change, and they want to get involved.”

Te’Shaun Cleckley, activist organizer, is referring to the VRS Divest from Weapons and War Campaign, a grassroots coalition demanding that the Virginia Retirement System divest close to 400 million dollars from companies, arms manufacturers, and logistics companies that are deeply embedded in the global military supply chain, playing roles in the genocide in Gaza, the war in Iran, as well as countless other conflicts.

The coalition released a detailed report on the VRS’ investments in fourteen companies, including names like Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, Boeing, and BAE Systems, which was compiled along with analytical data received from FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests last April. These requests were placed, and the report was compiled, by VRS Divest in collaboration with the Palestinian Youth Movement and the Peoples Embargo for Palestine.

Recent pension divestment wins in Cambridge, MA, Sacramento, CA, Providence, RI, and in neighboring Maryland and North Carolina provide encouragement as the VRS Divest campaign passes its one-year mark. The coalition held its first Richmond, Virginia community meeting on September 19th of this year at St. John’s United Church of Christ. After a presentation of the FOIA report and a social mixer, the attendees organized into local work groups to strategize on how to build upon the pressure already being applied to the Virginia Retirement System’s Board of Trustees.

The Board of Trustees, a nine-member independent group within the state government, wields final authority over how pension assets are invested. They manage a globally diversified portfolio worth $122 billion in investments: stocks, bonds, private equity, real estate, and other assets.

When asked about the Board’s response to their campaign, Te’Shaun states, “We see a lot of pushback. They understand just how much power it would be giving; the precedent of a grassroots coalition’s direct action actually being able to affect positive change. They see just how much a campaign like ours winning divestment would shift public opinion.”

After peaceful attempts to start a dialogue with the Board in the fall of 2025, VRS Divest has been on the receiving end of both physical violence and the cold shoulder. While delivering a petition before a Board meeting, Te’Shaun was violently detained by police; taken away in handcuffs with charges pressed. This was not only an attack on Te’Shaun, a VRS pension stakeholder and beneficiary, but also a serious threat to his job as a firefighter and first responder.

“I had to call my union rep, I had to call my boss, and go through the whole chain of command…They had me in handcuffs, and I was gonna potentially lose my job.”

The Board’s subsequent response to the coalition was hardly an olive branch –an email with a link to the Code of Virginia. Under Section 51.1-124.30(C), which states that the Board is required “to act solely in the best interest of beneficiaries and to invest assets with care, skill, prudence, and diligence to their fiduciary responsibility.”

VRS Divest argues that fiduciary duty should include the perspectives of investors, the workers, and taxpayers who fund the retirement system. As their report points out, does investing close to $400 million in companies that profit from war crimes reflect “sound financial stewardship?”

After VRS Divest made their FOIA report public in April of this year, the Board posted a response in the form of a paper stating why they don’t invest or divest for non-financial reasons. Here, they provide the primary argument utilized against the campaign’s pressure.

Despite their claim, however, there have been a series of instances over the past thirty years when the Board has done just that: divesting for non-financial political reasons. In 1990, Governor Douglas Wilder urged the Board to divest from apartheid South Africa, which they did. More recently, for the past four years, the Board has divested from Russian assets, as was suggested in 2022 by then-Governor Glen Youngkin.

The Board goes further by restricting future investments in countries designated as foreign adversaries by the U.S. Department of Commerce, including Iran, Russia, North Korea, China, Cuba, and Venezuela. These are instances when the Board decided that political, non-financial reasons were aligned with its fiduciary duty. It turns out “the best interest of the beneficiaries” is open to interpretation.

This lays out a serious contradiction in the Board’s decision-making. Does the genocide in Gaza, labeled a genocide by numerous international agencies, not fulfil this? How about the wars in Iran, Lebanon, Syria, and all of the other conflicts across the world that bear the brand of US weapons manufacturing?

Stakeholders and beneficiaries like Te’Shaun are concerned about where their money is being invested purportedly “in their best interest.” However, the Board of Trustees won’t hear them out. Instead, as is made clear by FOIA data, the Board regularly conducts reviews of its investments, including “recently engaging with the 14 companies referenced in the divest petition, regarding their legal and regulatory compliance, and other business risk assessments.” This engagement with the targeted divestments stands in stark contrast to the Board’s unwillingness to engage in a discourse with concerned stakeholders and beneficiaries.

So what is behind the Board’s reluctance to divest?

Public policy economists call it the Race to the Bottom. In other words, the globalized market, or the mobility of international capital, incentivizes governments to offer stimulus programs and to invest in international corporations in order to keep them operating in their state. “A company like L3Harris can say, ‘If you’re not going to give us some stimulus, or you’re not going to give us incentive packages, we’ll just take this billion-dollar infrastructure investment and go to a different state.’ I see that same paradigm happening when pension funds invest heavily in defense contractors. They create this institutional continuity. They don’t just have regulatory capture over policy and over legislation; they have a kind of public institution capture as well.”

The Virginia Retirement System, which serves more than 858,000 active and inactive members, is the15th largest pension fund in the U.S.

VRS Divest from Weapons and War is taking the fight to the people: the stakeholders, the beneficiaries, and the taxpayers, with a petition to continue pressuring the Board. Mass outreach is channeled through grassroots organizations, labor unions, and churches.

Te’Shaun says:

“We can’t do anything if we’re not organized, so first and foremost, we have to organize. And they will do whatever they can to demoralize people into thinking that we don’t actually have power. But history has shown us time and time again that when people organize, they can change governments, win rights, challenge systems. That is what’s next. We work to build that.”

Te’Shaun and other VRS Divest volunteers face challenges trying to bring moments of clarity through their outreach to the public. These include concern over pension stability, lack of knowledge about how pension funds work, and lack of knowledge about how US weapons are affecting the world.

“The pension fund is very much out of sight, out of mind for a lot of people. I meet people who are invested in VRS, and they don’t know what the VRS is invested in, or they’re afraid that divestment’s going to hurt their pension fund, which it’s not going to.” The organizers remain hopeful and believe their target is winnable: divestment from the fourteen corporations in question comprises only 0.03% of the total pension fund portfolio.

VRS Divest also makes clear that non-beneficiary taxpayers in Virginia also have a role to play. As a public pension fund, employer contributions, from 11% to 14% of payroll for large plans like state employees and teachers, are drawn from Virginia taxpayer money. Clarifying this for taxpayers is important, as many are unaware of this distribution.

Three years of attacks have killed one in every thirty people, at least 74,000 Palestinians, 21,000 of whom are children. The casualties are much higher.

The United Nations’ report from its eightieth session describes the ongoing genocide in Gaza as a collective crime. A “live-streamed atrocity” that is “framed by colonial narratives that dehumanize the Palestinians. It concludes: “The world now stands on a knife-edge between the collapse of the international rule of law and hope for renewal. Renewal is only possible if complicity is confronted, responsibilities are met, and justice is upheld.”

For Te’Shaun, his clarifying moment came after his assault by the Capitol police. He took his car to an autobody shop within his fire district. There he met a Palestinian car mechanic who asked to take a picture with him and the Free Palestine sweatshirt he was wearing. An immediate friendship formed over solidarity. Te’Shaun describes this as a “monumental point” in his advocacy. That his pension is invested in weapons that kill his car mechanic’s family members in Palestine, as well as other first responders on the ground in Gaza, is unconscionable.

“This is my proximity to the issue. I like this person. I took an oath to serve him. This is in my first two fire districts. It’s 60 seconds from my firehouse.” A month later, a call came in to a fire truck Te’Shaun was riding in with the autobody shop’s address. He was the first one in the building, leading the search. “It felt like an insane sequence of events…Everything just fell in place.” No one was harmed in the fire, but Te’Shaun felt a renewed sense of urgency.

“As a firefighter, I took an oath to serve my community, and this is a commitment I take very seriously, and there are firefighters who still sacrifice their lives for that oath, and while I’m serving my community, the money that is being invested in my pension fund is being used either to facilitate or be complicit in the slaughter of their family members.”

As divestment wins build up across the nation, the pressure mounts for state pension funds still holding out. As Maryland led the way in divesting from apartheid South Africa in the 90s, perhaps their win this summer divesting from apartheid Israel will likewise lead to Virginia following suit. In the meantime, pressure needs to be applied and maintained. People must take control of where their money is being invested, and take heart in that they have the power to do so with collective action. This has been borne out across the country, as well as historically in Virginia, in particular.

Te’Shaun underlines VRS Divest’s fight with a quote from Fred Hampton: “‘If you dare to struggle, you dare to win’ –and we believe that we will win!”

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