Not Another Dollar In My Name: How to stop your teacher's pension from funding environmental catastrophe.
Teachers are increasingly concerned about the risk of the climate crisis for students, as well as financial risk that puts hardworking educators’ retirement in serious danger. Did you know that your hard-earned pension savings are currently contributing to environmental collapse, mass extinction and ongoing colonial violence, oppression and land theft? Would you like this to change?
Institutional investors around the world are moving quickly to protect their portfolios from the financial risks of climate change and invest in a safe climate future for everyone. The Canadian pension sector - which includes the BC Teachers Pension - is falling behind, and remains heavily invested in the oil, gas, coal and pipeline companies as well financial infrastructure, like banks, whose business models and motives for enormous profit, are not aligned with the scale of action that is needed to combat the climate crisis. Teachers across British Columbia have been increasing pressure on the British Columbia Teachers Federation to divest its over $37.8 billion pension fund from fossil fuels.
In this most relevant workshop, you can find out more about the eco-destructive and racist projects your pension currently funds. Join with workshop presenters Kim Benson and Jillian Maguire (Co-creators of the group BCTF Divest Now), who will lead you through a mind-blowing, at times hilarious, session exploring the steps you can take to make a huge difference in the future of our planet.
As Jillian says, "...our [pension] investments are shockingly dirty and getting dirtier....Teachers want our students to thrive. To thrive, they need a climate-safe world, free of frequent storms, droughts, wildfires, and flooding. They need air that is free of smoke. In turn, teachers need our students’ respect. We want to look them in the eye and tell them that we are doing our best for them; we certainly don’t want to be profiting from things that will harm our students".
Workshop photo credit: Vancouver Daily Hive
Target Audience
Other
Sessions
This session is full.
Presenters
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Sea to Sky School District
Kim Benson
Kim Benson is a mother and teacher working and living on the unceded ancestral and occupied traditional lands of the Skwxwú7mesh Nation in British Columbia. Mortified after learning the BC Teachers’ Pension Plan is heavily invested in fossil fuels and other life-killing companies, Kim co-founded the BCTF Divest Now campaign with fellow teacher Jillian Maguire.
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Vancouver School District
Jillian Maguire
Jillian has been a classroom teacher for 27 years. She believes that teachers need to do whatever we can to save some shred of a future for our students, who did not cause this environmental mess. She is a Social and Eco Justice rep, staff rep and co-founder of the BCTF Divest Now campaign. She has been a part of numerous campaigns to stop fossil fuel expansion and save the remaining 2.7% of BC’s old growth forest.
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Joanna Shnaid