THREAD on Morty’s response to his involvement with Marsh & McLennan during the Conversation with the President on May 19

No one at any time has questioned President Schapiro’s personal commitments or ideologies to sustainability or said he didn’t care about climate change. No one ever made those remarks about Northwestern either.

In fact, in the Letter to the Editor that Fossil Free and the ASG Sustainability Committee wrote, we praised Northwestern for their sustainability commitments + said: “we believe and trust in [Schapiro’s] leadership from his time at Northwestern.”

His need to defend himself + clarify his and Northwestern’s commitments to sustainability clearly show a lack of engagement with what folks are actually saying and asking of him

Also — let us be clear. Fossil Free of course cares about sustainability but we have a mission of fighting for environmental and climate justice. This means the basis of our advocacy relies on the recognition that climate justice requires racial justice and socioeconomic justice.

We are NOT focused on sustainability efforts + encouraging others to do so. Other groups on campus do that, and we support them. We are focused on climate justice, on bringing attention to the ways climate change affects racialized and poor people.

We are focused on pressuring key figures like Morty, who as we said have “a crucial role and material power” to make decisions that will bring about climate justice, in this case for the Indigenous Wangan and Jagalingou people.

Further — Morty’s interpretation of our petition and our demands completely mischaracterized them and the nuance that we presented

He said, “the idea that I could tell them to drop a client is ludicrous.” That was his interpretation of what we are demanding, and clearly shows he 1) didn’t actually engage or 2) purposefully misconstrued to absolve himself of responsibility

What we actually demanded: “we call on President Schapiro to use his power, influence, and position on the Board of Directors to help ensure Marsh’s new global position on coal includes ruling out further work with the Adani Carmichael mine.”

Our ACTUAL statement and demands recognize his position + influence — the material power and sway that he has — without making preposterous claims that he could alone do this

He is one of 13 Board of Directors, he of course can’t just cancel Marsh’s involvement with Adani. We never suggested he could. We instead recognized his material power and influence in the situation and asked him to leverage it to persuade others to make the right decision

We hope this thread has clarified our position + what we are actually demanding of President Schapiro. For further understanding, we encourage everyone to read our statement in the Daily and to read our petition.

We stand by what we’ve asked Morty to do and we know that it’s time that @MMC_Global make the right decision to #StopAdani #MarshDumpAdani