🌆 St. Louis Just Became the Largest City in the US to Ban Investments in Companies/Countries Involved in Human Rights Abuses

A 10-1 vote made St. Louis the largest U.S. city to adopt AFSC’s human-rights investment standards—real divestment, not platitudes. Let me break it down...

Before we dig in: This is why our newsroom must stay free to the world—and why I need your help to hire two people (an editor and a producer) to put documents on screen every day. When cities pass policy with real standards, we’ll be the place that explains it, tracks it, and helps others copy it. The New York Times has 12 million subscribers and still struggles to tell Gaza’s truth. We have 3,100 members—and we side with the oppressed every single time. If this matters to you, please become a member. If you can, join monthly, annually, or as a founding member. Your membership is how truth becomes policy.

This morning, St. Louis did something big and practical. The Board of Aldermen approved an ethical investment resolution—“Ensuring Ethical Investment of City Retirement Funds”—that ties both pension and city dollars to the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) human-rights investment standards. The vote was 10-1-3.

Backed by the grassroots coalition Not Another Nickel, sponsored by Ald. Rasheen Aldridge and co-sponsored by Board President Megan Green, Ald. Alissa Sonier, and Ald. Shane Cohn, the resolution directs the City Employees Retirement System and the City to avoid companies that profit from war, occupation, apartheid, or systemic racism, and to align future investments with AFSC’s (a leading Quaker charity) published screen for companies. The campaign already identified 17 companies that fail the screen—less than 1% of total holdings (about $8 million).

It’s a start. This isn’t a generic “we care” statement. It’s standards + scope. It’s one of the largest U.S. cities adopting a third-party human-rights screen for public money. It’s not rhetoric—it’s operational.

It also sits inside St. Louis’s moral arc: a January 2024 ceasefire resolution, recent votes to redirect funds to public health, and a city history of anti-apartheid divestment. St. Louis has decided that public money should not underwrite what we report on every day—genocide, war crimes, apartheid, and systemic racism—in Gaza, Sudan, Congo, or in our own backyard.

Let me put this plainly: don’t fund the harm you condemn. St. Louis just found a way to make that sentence law.

Facts No One Can Spin

• Vote: 10-1-3; St. Louis becomes the largest U.S. city to adopt AFSC’s human-rights investment standards.

• Coverage: Applies to the City Employees Retirement System and city investments; avoids firms complicit in war, occupation, apartheid, systemic racism.

• Exposure: 17 companies identified; <1% of holdings (~$8M)—tiny to unwind, powerful to signal.

• Fiduciary clarity: The coalition and sponsors emphasize there are plenty of equal-or-better alternatives; financial responsibility and moral responsibility are not mutually exclusive.

• Continuity: Builds on St. Louis’s ceasefire stance and anti-apartheid legacy; connects local budgets to global accountability.

Now the work begins. A resolution sets the policy; implementation makes it real. That means updating the Investment Policy Statement, having pension trustees adopt the AFSC screen, publishing the list of 17 companies, and announcing a timeline (e.g., 90–180 days) to unwind exposure and replace it with screened funds. It means a public dashboard—quarterly—showing current exposure, transactions made, and how performance stays on target. It means spelling out the negative screens (occupation, war crimes, apartheid, torture, surveillance abuses) and any reform path for firms that tangibly change.

Here’s why I’m proud of St. Louis: they did the smart thing and the right thing at once. They used an established, publicly available human-rights index (AFSC) so no one has to reinvent the wheel. They acted where cities actually have power—how we invest—instead of issuing another “we’re concerned” press release. And they cut through the scare tactic I’ve heard my whole life—“fiduciary duty”—by showing the exposure is tiny and the alternatives are many.

And here’s why this matters beyond one city: your city can do this. This is copy-paste governance. If you have a municipal plan, a county plan, a state plan, a university endowment—adopt the AFSC screen (or an equivalent), publish your holdings, unwind what fails, and report until the public can see the change. That is how moral clarity becomes a spreadsheet, not a slogan.

I want to credit the people who did the organizing: the Not Another Nickel coalition, Ald. Rasheen Aldridge, President Megan Green, Alds. Alissa Sonier and Shane Cohn, and the community members who testified and pushed this forward. This is how movements make cities move.

If you do this right, you save lives you’ll never meet. Because public money is oxygen. Cut it off from the companies that bulldoze homes, bomb neighborhoods, arm occupation, and police apartheid, and the harm becomes harder to finance.

We’ll keep tracking this—and we’ll build a simple public page that lists the 17 companies, the phase-out timeline, and the template language other cities can adopt. If you want that—and if you want a daily show with receipts on screen—help me hire the two teammates who make it possible.

Please become a member. If you can, join monthly, annually, or as a founding member. We don’t have 12 million subscribers. We have 3,100. But our allegiance is clean: we tell the truth, and we side with the oppressed—and we help turn that truth into policy.

Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun

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