As members of the Darfur Action Committee pick their new leaders and the University of California Divestment Taskforce looks ahead to more state and national targets of divestment, the partner groups will lose two of the students who have been essential to their success.
The UCLA DAC and the UC Divestment Taskforce have been led by two graduating seniors who have left their mark on the groups by encouraging the UC to divest from Sudan, a decision UC officials and state policy makers have largely attributed to students’ efforts.
The divestment movement started out with the age-old goal of student activism – raising awareness for a cause. It soon developed into a systemwide campaign to stop UC money from going to companies invested in Sudan. The Sudanese government is engaged in a conflict in the Darfur region, labeled genocide by Congress, that has killed an estimated 400,000 people, displacing many more.
Graduating students Adam Sterling and Lindsey Hilde have been with the movement since its early stages, leading the group from its campuswide roots to its current nationwide campaign.
Adam Sterling, head of the task force and an African studies student, joined DAC shortly after it was formed. His interest stemmed from a class about the Rwandan Genocide and research he did on the “never again” rhetoric, which came into being after the Holocaust to refer to the idea that the world could never let genocide happen again.
Lindsey Hilde, a fourth-year political science student, became involved in DAC around the same time, and like Sterling was affected by the memory of the Holocaust.
“I’m Jewish, and the Holocaust has been something that has been a part of my life forever,” she said. “Saying ‘never again’ means never again.”
Hilde worked with DAC to build a coalition of student groups to get people to the regents’ meetings. “I was doing everything from picking up the speakers from the airport (to) organizing the program (to) advertising,” she said.
Sterling said he never expected the movement to get so big. The campaign at UCLA picked up in March 2005 when actor Don Cheadle came to speak on campus. They then spent the summer putting together a divestment plan, Sterling said. In March, the regents voted to divest UC funds from nine companies with holdings in Sudan.
The UC response to the proposal to divest changed dramatically over the past year. UC spokesman Trey Davis told the Daily Bruin in November that “this Board of Regents has decided its investment decisions on the basis of financial criteria.”
But less than four months later, divestment task force members found themselves negotiating with regents and also in the UC Office of the President as part of a broader task force the regents organized to propose a viable divestment option, Sterling said.
He said the success of this student group lies in the extensive research they did to understand the more technical economic aspects of divestment and developing press contacts, which backed up their mobilization and call to action.
“We weren’t just students holding up signs,” Sterling said.
The national campaign for divestment eventually reached the ears of the Sudanese government. In a letter written to the U.S., the Sudanese ambassador expressed a “deep concern with the campaign to force U.S. entities to divest themselves from any business operations that involve Sudan.”
The group has attracted extensive press coverage and endorsements from many politicians.
“It could be a model for student activism in the 21st century,” Sterling said.
The campaign will continue advocating for state and local divestments next year and has launched a new awareness campaign, Sterling said.
Hilde will be doing a public-affairs fellowship next year, but said she will continue her involvement with the cause that has broadened her interest internationally and made volunteering a habit.
Sterling was accepted to the African Studies master’s program at UCLA but has also been offered a full-time job doing what he does now as a student activist. He has yet to decide his next move, but said the divestment task force changed his path in life after college.
“I still plan on continuing with this,” he said. “Two summers ago, I took the LSAT, but now I haven’t even applied.”