Notes From My Purple State: Kansas Says No to Divestment

by Jesse Zerger Nathan, 2007-02-15

Sudan and Kansas might not have much in common at first glance, but only an ignoramus would deny the connections between this purple state and that bloody one in today’s globally interconnected economy. Officially, the State of Kansas makes mutual fund investments through the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System (KPERS). KPERS, in turn, manages and administers retirement plans for state and local employees. Glenn Deck, executive director of KPERS, says that while Kansas does not have any direct holdings in Sudan or any Sudanese businesses, “it does hold securities of companies that have business connections to Sudan,” to the tune of about $43.5 million, according to the Lawrence Journal-World.. This is why activists have asked Kansas lawmakers to divest the state’s assets from Sudan, thereby joining a blossoming movement to use economic tools against a genocidal regime. But so far, the GOP-controlled Kansas Senate and House of Representatives have offered a polite, but firm, “No.”

The violence in Sudan is, by now, almost a cliché in its horror and scope—as is the apathetic Western reaction. Everyone knows what’s happening—200,000 dead and 2.5 million homeless since 2003—and no one is sure what to do, or who should do it. Aside from a few rhetorical flourishes, the West, and especially President Bush, has been largely passive in response to the steady, gruesome reports from Darfur and the surrounding region.

Still, outcry is growing. And one strand of activism is a burgeoning conglomeration of grassroots organizers, business leaders, and Christian activists who’ve combined forces to call for divestment from Sudan and companies doing business in the country.

The effort brings together a strange collection of people: far-right Kansas Senator Sam Brownback announced last fall his plans to divest as much as $565,000 from ten mutual funds invested in companies (mostly Western energy corporations) that are operating in Sudan and often with the direct support or even subsidy of the Khartoum regime. “Each one of us can make a difference in Darfur, and it’s important that we as individuals do everything we can while calling on the rest of the world to do their part, especially when so many lives are at stake,” Brownback told the Kansas City Star.

Later that same month, Topeka activist Sonny Scroggins was among a handful of Kansas progressives who echoed Brownback’s call for divestment—only they asked the state legislature to put some moral muscle behind the state’s money. “Any benefits received from investments in that country is blood money because of the human lives lost,” Scroggins said. “Swift and prompt divestiture of investments is the humane thing to do and a noble concern.”

Kansas would join six other states that have already divested from Sudan—and twenty others are considering proposals that call for full or partial dissociation from the Sudanese economy. Most recently, North Carolina’s pension fund declared that it was selling all holdings in corporations that U.S. officials have accused of providing financial support to the government of Sudan. That spelled a divestment of nearly $24 million. Despite this loose, national coalition of left and right—a group that models its divestment activity after similar economic efforts that many experts say eventually helped topple the apartheid government of South Africa—GOP lawmakers in Kansas refuse to be anything but predictable. Last November, Representative John Edmonds (R-Great Bend) and Senate President Steve Morris (R-Hugoton) both declined to push for a governmental sell-off of holdings in Sudanese-connected companies.

Despite the fact that KPERS has indicated a divestment would constitute such a small part of its portfolio that it would have a negligible impact on the state financially, GOP lawmakers offered weak excuses for their cowardice: “This gets to be a big thing if you start doing it,” said Edmonds. “It may be Sudan today, but who knows who it could be next year,” said Morris.

Though the legislation is not dead—activists plan to bring it up this month again—Scroggins was sad to see his leaders act so spinelessly. “They are supposed to be the conscience of the people,” he told the Lawrence Journal-World. But “they worry about big business and money at the expense of life.” The refusal of the Kansas government to divest is moral failure—perhaps a small one, but a moral failure, nonetheless.

And whether it ultimately happens or not, the legislature’s failure thus far reveals the insidious side of a global economy in which economics and politics are ensnared so tightly that sometimes even human life comes second. Maybe this isn’t a new thing, but either way, it stinks of the same moral rot that allowed apartheid to flourish for so long.

The historians of the future won’t go easy on us—and nor should they.