Farrow plans Boston trip to champion JCRC-backed bill
By Kristin Erekson
The Jewish Advocate
The actress will speak March 29 to encourage divestment from Sudan
A hearing next week at the Massachusetts State House will receive a boost from Hollywood, as actress Mia Farrow comes to town to speak about the dire situation in Sudan.
Farrow, 62, a U.N. goodwill ambassador, will be addressing a crowd of activists, student groups, legislators and Jewish organizations at the Gardner Auditorium on March 29 about her trip earlier this month to the Central African Republic and Chad.
Speakers at the hearing will be testifying in support of S1474, a bill introduced into the Legislature in January by Senator Harriette L. Chandler (D-Worcester), which is calling for the targeted divestment from companies whose business ultimately funds the murder of thousands of people in Darfur. Since 2003, at least 400,000 Sudanese have been killed and more than two million civilians have been displaced by government- sponsored Arab militias.
“The fact that I have been a witness [to the atrocities in] Darfur has had a huge impact on my life,” Farrow told the Advocate. “Darfur violence has now reached into the Central African Republic, and Eastern Chad is an inferno. The situation of humanitarian access is shrinking daily and there is a terrible escalation in violence. And yet the government behaves with complete impunity.”
Last October, officials from the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston unanimously voted to back the bill calling for the divestment from Sudan. The legislation would direct the state’s pension fund to sell shares in entities that purchase oil and other commodities from the Sudanese government or supply its military with arms.
The Pension Reserves Investment Management Board of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts reports that out of $42 billion in investments, more than $100 million is endowed in Sudan.
“This is a targeted divestment where we would request divesting from the worst of the worst companies,” said Irit Tamir, director of government affairs at the JCRC.
Ken Sweder, former JCRC president and former founding co-chair of the Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur, is one of many who will be testifying at the State House in support of the bill. He said he plans on giving a glimpse of the situation from a Jewish perspective, explaining that “what happened to the Jews in Germany is something we can help to prevent in Darfur.”
So as to not financially harm Sudan’s inhabitants, the divestment legislation ensures that Massachusetts would only pull out investments from companies that meet all three criteria: providing revenues to the Sudanese government; offering little substantive benefit to those outside of the Sudanese government; and having demonstrated complicity in the Darfur genocide, according to Daniel Millenson, author of the bill and national advocacy director of the Sudan Divestment Task Force, the group bringing Farrow to the State House.
Rep. Jay Kaufman (D-Lexington), who is also sponsoring the legislation, said that the Joint Committee on Public Service is expected to issue a report on the Sudan divestment bill approximately two weeks after the hearing.
