16 March 2020
Market Forces, like the rest of the world, is changing the way we operate in order to help limit the spread of COVID-19. We are trying to stay ahead of government and health authority directives and are taking steps that do this while allowing our advocacy work, and the fight to stop finance and investment from worsening climate change, to continue.
As things stand, Market Forces will not be organising any new public events at any scale. The public events that we had in development at the time of writing this post – mainly the Divestment Day activities on Friday 20 March – are postponed, and we will work with individuals who had planned to divest or send a message to their bank to do that in a way that does not require people to assemble for a public gathering.
The power of divestment and calling on financial institutions to change their behaviour rests in people’s ability to make their voices heard. We consider it part of our job to help people tell those stories and will do what we can to facilitate people being able to send their message to a bank, super fund or other financial institution even while we are avoiding public gatherings. We can help you record a video, get a picture or publish a story from you about why you’re divesting and share your experience on social media – we just have to know about your plans!
If you had been planning to attend one of our public events or just divest from your bank or super fund at a different time, get in touch at [email protected] and we can talk about how we can support you make that as action as powerful as possible.
It’s encouraging to see that when the global community really wants to treat something as an emergency, it can. We hope that efforts to fight the spread of this coronavirus are successful, and that climate change is then treated with the same degree of international concern, coordination and action.
Julien, on behalf of Market Forces.