Last night, the President of the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC) announced that he would not veto a UC Berkeley Student Senate resolution in favor of divestment from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation.
This is an incredible divestment win - and you helped make it happen!

In 2010, a similar vote was vetoed by a previous ASUC president. Make no mistake - this is a precedent setting win, on a high-profile campus, in the midst of a series of UC student body resolutions in favor of divestment. The growing momentum behind this movement could not be more obvious.

The ASUC President was under enormous pressure to veto the resolution, including a nationwide email campaign organized by the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs referring to the divestment bill as "alienating and hateful." These are strong and misleading words to describe a resolution that focuses on the relation between investments and human rights.

Thanks to you, we managed to post an online banner in the Daily Californian (see image in box) reminding the ASUC Presidents that we are Jews and we support divestment. A larger ad in the printed version of the paper (see below) carried the same message.




Thanks especially to the Berkeley chapter of Student for Justice in Palestine, whose leadership, moral clarity, and tireless organizing is truly the foundation of this victory.

I am more hopeful and determined than ever to keep this momentum growing.

Thanks for making a difference when it really counted.

Sydney Levy
Jewish Voice for Peace

P.S.: Yesterday hours before this announcement in California, over 100 professors at Columbia and Barnard added their signatures to a petition at their university, calling on pension fund giant TIAA-CREF to divest from corporations profiting from Israel’s. Congratulations to the student, faculty, and staff organizers!