It has claimed 400,000 lives. It has displaced millions. It has tortured countless millions more. And it continues to this very day, with no end in sight.

The situation in Darfur is real. Real people are being forced from their homes. Real people are being tortured. Real people are dying. To date, the genocide waged by the government of Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir has taken the lives of well over 400,000 people, and the attacks by the janjaweed, local mercenaries hired by the regime, have tortured and displaced millions.

We can help. Michigan has over $150 million of public pension funds invested in the foreign companies that support this atrocity. Michigan Senate Bill 555 and House Bill 4854 would use this financial clout to push these companies to end their horrible practices and help the people of Darfur, without harming a single American worker.

This plan is actually quite well known and accepted. In the 1980’s and 1990’s, Michigan passed legislation to divest from South Africa in protest of Apartheid. In the past several years, twenty-four other states, both Republican and Democratic, passed legislation based on the same model as the Michigan bills. The United States Senate even passed legislation expressly confirming the constitutionality of this state-led effort.

Now, this legislation is languishing in the Michigan Senate’s Appropriations Committee, never receiving a hearing. Despite being passed in the House of Representatives with overwhelming bi-partisan support and endorsement by the Michigan Department of the Treasury, the leadership has failed to press this issue, instead letting partisan bickering get in the way of fighting genocide and terror.

Please, show your support. Demand that Lansing take immediate action on this important piece of legislation.

Sponsored by Spartans for Progressive Divestment