CHICAGO—At its meeting in Chicago June 1, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Committee on Mission Responsibility through Investment (MRTI) invited representatives of two nearby presbyteries to “consult” with the committee. Each presbytery represented the home town of a corporation in MRTI’s engagement process, which could possibly lead to divestment of the stock.
First came representatives of Great Rivers Presbytery, where Caterpillar Corporation’s headquarters are located in Peoria, Illinois. Two parish pastors, Forrest Krummel and Doug Hucke, were joined by presbytery executive Susan Krummel and elder Gary Davis, recent moderator of the presbytery.
MRTI Coordinator Bill Somplatsky-Jarman (standing) briefs the committee on the Caterpillar Corporation. Clockwise from Bill: Gary Skinner, Elizabeth Letzler, Frosty Krummel (pastor from Peoria), Judy Breyer, Sue Krummel (Great Rivers Presbytery Executive), Karen Breckenridge, and Brian Ellison. |
After the MRTI associate, Bill Somplatsky-Jarman, presented a brief history of all the ways MRTI has engaged with Caterpillar Corporation over the years, he centered on the committee’s current beef with Cat: it sells enormous bulldozers that are used by the Israel Defense Forces “for military operations against civilians” and used by others to demolish homes, uproot olive orchards, and construct Israeli settlements, roads, and defensive installations, such as the separation barrier.
MRTI committee member Bill Saint quietly asked if the same kind of Caterpillar D-9 bulldozers were used by Israel when it cleared its own settlements in Gaza to return them to the Palestinians. Somplatsky-Jarman responded, “I’m assuming they were.” In other words, Caterpillar benefited the Palestinians, but no one dwelt on that fact, incongruous as it was amid the anti-Israel group-think.
Saint pressed on: “Would it be a reasonable assumption that if we were able to convince the military not to buy the D-9s that they would use private contractors?” Somplatsky-Jarman thought so, and added that Israel could also just use other suppliers, such as Komatsu or Volvo.
So why the big pressure on Caterpillar? Most likely because it is so easy to single out the company, due to the emotional nature of photos of houses being destroyed and especially the horror of the American activist Rachel Corrie being crushed to death in a tragic accident. How much easier to blame Caterpillar for building excellent tractors than to actually do something to solve the problems in the Middle East!
It very quickly became apparent that MRTI did not receive the Peoria delegation in order to listen in dialogue. The Peoria pastors told of their parishioners—executives who make corporate decisions and are sincere, thoughtful people—who are perplexed that their church is trying to make them look as if they are to blame for the uses to which their products are put, as if they had any control over how their tractors are used. “Why should I contribute to my church if my church finds what I do to be evil?” they ask.
MRTI would have none of it. So convinced were the committee members that (a) Israel is deplorable and therefore (b) Caterpillar is immoral to do business with it, MRTI members could not imagine the Peoria delegation and its Caterpillar-employed parishioners capable of thinking and acting morally. Ethically negligent self-interest was the only motive that MRTI members could attribute to the Great Rivers group.
“I found it difficult to hear a pastor say, ‘Don’t divest because it makes my life as a pastor difficult,'” confessed MRTI member Elizabeth Letzler after the Peoria delegation had left.
MRTI members and Great Rivers delegation listen to a presentation during the conference. From left: Don Kuespert, Gary Davis (recent Great Rivers moderator), Lynwood Battle, and Doug Hucke (Peoria pastor). |
“They don’t believe they should be responsible for the consequences of their action,” intoned another MRTI member, Brian Ellison. “To defend that uncritically, I find hard. I wouldn’t be able to stand in front of a group and say that.”
In other words, MRTI had already made up its mind about the supposed culpability of Caterpillar. The committee members were meeting with the Presbyterians from Peoria because they were supposed to—and maybe to teach the locals a thing or two about ethics—not to truly dialogue.
MRTI simply would not hear. “You have already made the assumption that what my people are doing is wrong,” pastor Hucke observed. “My people would say, ‘Hmmm, I don’t think so!'”
Still, MRTI persisted, apparently thinking the Presbyterians at Caterpillar just needed a little more MRTI instruction. “Whether or not we divest, at the end of the day, it’s a hearts-and-minds game,” explained Letzler, a college instructor and investment advisor from Long Island. “Since we do have so many good Presbyterians who are key decision makers at Cat—and they do care; they care a lot!—the point is that down the road as they make decisions, maybe they will make them differently. We need them to think about how we are contributing to a really bad situation [in Israel].”
Doug Hucke wasn’t so sure. “I think I understand the mindset of the Caterpillar people in my church,” he began. “They do care. They are good Christian people. They do have concerns about justice and peace. The issue is that they disagree with you. They disagree with a political outlook. We’re not talking about getting them to rethink how they do business. We’re talking here about having them see a particular problem from your vantage point, from your persuasion. Caterpillar is not going to do that.… Is Caterpillar really your opposition, or is it Israel?”
The Peoria delegation and MRTI passed each other like two ships in the night, with Peoria’s messages to MRTI falling on deaf ears, and MRTI’s preaching to Peoria as effective as spitting into the wind.
Not Much Loyalty to Motorola
The other ship passing in the night was Chicago Presbytery, home of Motorola Corporation, another company on MRTI’s engagement list. Motorola is suspect due to its sales of secure communication equipment to Israeli police and military units, and its Israel subsidiary located in disputed territories.
The Chicago contingent—retired pastor Richard Poethig, elder and recent presbytery moderator Gordon Zerkel, and elder Peg Griffith—obviously had less attachment to Motorola than the Peoria contingent had to Cat. It was clearly a large city–small town difference. For instance, the Chicago group couldn’t think offhand of a single Presbyterian employed by Motorola. It seemed to have only mild interest in sticking up for the home town company.
Bill Somplatsky-Jarman again laid out the facts of the case against Motorola. It has 3,300 employees in Israel, 2,200 of them doing research and development work. Motorola supplies cell phone communications systems that are encrypted for battlefield communications. It also is trying out a high-tech surveillance system that warns Israeli settlements about armed incursions in time for the Israelis to mount a defense and prevent deadly suicide attacks on civilians. Strangely, MRTI seems to consider it a bad thing to protect sleeping innocents from violent marauders sneaking in at night to murder them.
Chicago Presbytery elders Peg Griffith and Gordon Zerkel. (A third Chicago representative, retired pastor Richard Poethig, ducked the photo, growling, “I don’t want my picture taken by that person!”) |
Purportedly, Motorola has operated cell towers on Palestinian land without paying leases and taxes to the Palestinians. But no one knew for sure if the funds were actually paid by Motorola but not transmitted to the Hamas regime by Israel because Hamas is a terrorist organization bent on death and destruction. Also, Motorola is apparently opening a research and development facility in the occupied Jordan Valley. Motorola was also accused vaguely of being unable to provide equal economic opportunity information on its Israel workforce. Motorola’s ethics training does not speak about MRTI’s main concern: Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. And Motorola materials don’t reference international human rights conventions.
Then Somplatsky-Jarman showed a video clip produced by the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee. Quickly, one could see that it obviously was produced as Palestinian propaganda about Jewish settlers acting as violent thugs in Hebron. The story, as related in the video, was disturbing, with images of Jewish gunmen destroying Palestinian property and shooting Uzis down the street. One definitely wouldn’t want them moving into the neighborhood!
There was a definite sense, however, that there is much more to the story than what was depicted on the screen. MRTI, unfortunately, never let on about any other side. Finally, Chicago Presbytery’s Gordon Zerkel asked, “Has MRTI tried to avail itself of anything from the Israeli point of view?” That was a good question, not unlike the query a lone commissioner ventured on the floor of General Assembly in 2004 when divestment was pushed through.
The MRTI response was much the same as the commissioner received in 2004: an attempt to dodge the obvious, that the mainstream Israeli point of view was apparently considered unworthy of serious consideration. In 2004, staff Middle East Coordinator Victor Makari answered that Jewish voices had been consulted—the voices of American activist Jews opposed to Israel. Mainstream Israeli Jews, majority American Jewish leadership, and members of the Israel government certainly weren’t consulted in 2004.
So it was with Bill Somplatsky-Jarman’s reply to Zerkel. “We’ve certainly talked with proponents of the Israeli policy,” he hedged.
About the video, Zerkel pressed graciously: “That’s a very powerful process, but it’s just one side of the issue, and I’m just wondering if there is any chance to see something on the other side.” No, there really wasn’t. That kind of balance didn’t fit into the MRTI plan.
“What’s the justification for the settlements?” Zerkel asked.
Elizabeth Letzler was quick to respond: “A land grab.” Obviously the only possible thought on the Jewish mind, according to Letzler, was to steal Palestinian land and drive out the inhabitants. Although Letzler had recently returned from a visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories, “We stayed in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem,” she had claimed earlier, “so we didn’t deal that much with the Israeli folk.” It was obvious that she had little regard for the Jews and what they might think.
Somplatsky-Jarman piped in to answer in a little less damning way: “We certainly have talked with the Jewish community about…” he began, when Zerkel interjected, “American Jews?”
“Yeah, well, some of them have dual citizenship,” Somplatsky-Jarman offered. In other words, no, MRTI has not taken the effort to hear the story from Israeli government sources or even from mainstream Israeli Jews. That part became painfully obvious through Zerkel’s respectful persistence.
MRTI met with Motorola in November 2005 and has scheduled another meeting this month with the company. That meeting will also include partners from an ecumenical coalition involved in socially responsible investing. For the last two years, however, there has been practically no interchange between MRTI and Motorola, so there seems to be scant rush to judgment. MRTI appears not to be into precipitous action.
No one seemed to know who among Chicago Presbyterians works for Motorola, other than Linda Valentine, the Executive Director of the General Assembly Council, who held a high-ranking position in Motorola leadership a few years ago. Gordon Zerkel promised to try to find names of Chicago Presbyterians in positions of responsibility at Motorola and pass them on to MRTI.
And that concluded the opportunities to confer with communities that would be affected by engagement with local corporations. One had the feeling that the presbytery contingents learned a lot more from MRTI than MRTI did from the local Presbyterians. MRTI seemed to already have determined for itself exactly what was right and wrong, and its job was to inform the presbyteries.
In the end, MRTI and the presbyteries seemed like ships that passed in the night, eerily in proximity with each other, but hardly communicating.
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