Re: [Pen-l] Begging the alumni: time for Schadenfreud (reformatted)

[Patrick Bond <pbond@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

John Gulick wrote:
> ... PS Patrick, I understand the merits of tactical interventions and 
> tactful prose, but really... social investment funds? This coming from 
> someone who has compellingly ripped to shreds the Grameen Bank and micro-credit hoaxers?

And also CSR - a group of progressives have a special issue of 
Development&Change (Inst for Social Studies, The Hague) off the press 
this month with exactly that in mind, critiquing investment 'funds' 
which claim that Corporate Social Responsibility is making progress (my 
humble riff on the topic will soon be posted here: 
http://www.ukzn.ac.za/ccs/default.asp?5,75 )

But I actually said 'diversifying into social investments', not social 
investment funds. And there I'd perhaps suggest Swarthmore invests its 
endowment in cooperative limited-equity housing in Chester (a nearby 
ghetto hosting the reserve-army-of-unemployed and Swarthmore's low-paid 
service staff) or in West Philly, or in worker-owned enterprises (Philly 
spawned some of the earliest initiatives in the 1970s wave), or in some 
other lower-earning but more appropriate green technologies... the weird 
Quaker tradition there meant that no tobacco, alcohol or firearms were 
allowed in the portfolio, but my friend Dennis Brutus had to do lengthy 
sit-ins and protests to get them to even consider SA apartheid 
disinvestment 25 years ago.


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