We are all murderers

La Verdad
    By Terra Lawson-Remer

I am responsible for 420,000 deaths a year in the U.S., not to mention the endangerment of 28 species of animals. Perhaps that sounds a little extreme, but there's no other way to explain the fact that I both permit and profit from these, shall we say, unfortunate fatalities.

We tend to demonize corporations as untouchable others—ubiquitous, incomprehensible institutions controlling our world. In truth, the devil is inside. We own these corporate monsters. As college students, professors, workers, activists, and labor unionists, we profit from high corporate returns. When the endowment increases, when a pension fund is suddenly flush, when the savings of a union or nonprofit organization climbs, we are benefiting from corporate success. As the reapers of corporate profit, we cannot deny collective responsibility for corporate practices.

Although it's not as fat as Harvard's, Yale's $6.9 billion endowment remains a source of pride for the Yale Corporation. The highly-touted fund benefits students, professors, and employees with its investment returns. Yet there is a hidden cost behind these revenues.

For some, the sacrifice has been life, liberty, and property. In East Timor, the Indonesians have killed over one third of the population since they invaded in 1975, a genocide unparalleled since the Holocaust. Exxon has made illegal oil-operation deals in East Timor with the illegitimate Indonesian government. Even the United Nations doesn't recognize Indonesia as the rightful ruler of East Timor. The revenue from these deals buys machine guns, tanks, and facemasks to enable the continuing repression of the East Timorese. We, as Yale students, all own part of Exxon.

You undoubtedly remember the Exxon Valdez oil spill. It endangered 28 species of fish and wildlife along the Alaska coast and destroyed the livelihood of fishers from Alaska to California. Exxon has only cleaned up four percent of the spill and has yet to pay the $5 billion in damages awarded to the fishers in court. Our stock value rises as we refuse to reimburse the fishers or effectively clean up the spill.

I've yet to meet someone who doesn't care about the environment. Recycling? Great. Fly fishing with the kids? Even better. How's this for environmentalism: Monsanto, one of Yale's prize investments, is one of the top generators of toxic emissions in the U.S. Its "terminator seed" poses a real threat of a world food monopoly, and its use of bovine growth hormone (banned in Europe) may be harmful to humans.

Gay rights should mean more than a rainbow flag and a week of pride. Recently, a gay Chrysler employee was physically attacked at work by co-workers and managers. Chrysler was sued for failing to provide a safe work environment. Yale own stock in Chrysler. That homophobic work environment is ours.

And of course, there's tobacco. Go ahead and smoke. I'm not one to criticize lifestyle choices. But profiting from tobacco campaigns aimed at kids is more than a little unethical. We now know that tobacco executives lie to the public and to Congress; tobacco ads directly target teens; and tobacco products kill 420,000 people a year. We own stock in Philip Morris, one of the giants of shady tobacco dealing.

At other times we've held stock in almost everything else, including arms dealers—excuse me, arms manufacturers.

Corporate responsibility shouldn't be something only activists worry about. We're all obligated to care, because by profiting from corporate activities, we collectively perpetuate them. The Yale endowment—with stock in Philip Morris, Exxon, Monsanto, and Chrysler, to name just a few of the worst offenders—makes us all investors, and investors are the owners of these headless corporations.

Therefore, I plead guilty to responsibility for 420,000 deaths a year in the U.S., and even to the endangerment of all those fish.

Recent Herald Columns by this Columnist:
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• Breaking the policy paradigm, 3/4/99
• Doing the drug thing in Latin America, 2/19/99
• Presenting the Brita news filter, 2/5/99

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