Dear Larry Fink,
Dear Larry Fink,
You vote democrat, but democracy isn’t ensuring the profit of a few at the cost of destabilizing the planet and all of its inhabitants.
Why keep digging, extracting, burning and emitting, when you have the ethical responsibility to admit that your company is in fact a key stakeholder in the destruction of our planet and the disparity of those significantly impacted. Blackrock alone invests $260 billion US dollars in fossil fuel companies.
It will take some inconvenience to reverse the trajectory of planetary destruction and species extinction. To shift from the business-as-usual-exponential-growth-mindset to one that honors limits, will require resistance.
Yesterday at Blackrock’s headquarters in Manhattan, a company you started with 7 partners that manages $10 trillions worth of assets, employees stepped over us, squeezed in between us as we stood in front of the escalator entrance. Clergy, Rabbis and mindful rebel Buddhists were arrested for doing what civil disobedience movements have always taught us - nothing. More specifically, we were physically sitting, standing and positionally blocking, with eyes closed or singing “Earth, Water, Fire, Air, return, return, return” a chant that we learned together earlier in the morning or simply holding a sign that read, “Protecting the Planet is Sacred.” There was no violence or resisting arrest. Only resisting the reality that Blackrock’s investment in fossil fuels, once burned, will tip the planet’s warming beyond 2 degrees, making the planet as scientists understand it, unlivable. Climate change is inescapably inconvenient. Your legacy is what you choose to leave. What would your grandchild want?
You nor any executive management did not come down from your tower to express curiosity, gratitude or courage. No one said, tell me why you are here and how we can change. Though we had a very clear list of demands signed by all of us delivered as best as possible up the escalators by a brave Rabbi. The overarching demand being divest in fossil fuels and invest in a Just Transition.
As a teacher, I’ve always believed in the potential for conversation as means of conversion. Not the preaching kind, the curious kind. Mothers, children, youth, elders, scientist, doctors, professors and faith leaders across the spectrum aren’t in the cold atrium of Blackrock on an early Wednesday morning performing sacred ritual because it’s what we want to do. Similarly, no working professional wants to navigate how to enter their workplace and squeeze between a crowd after getting out of a crowded subway commute. All of this is preventable. It’s also incomparable to the inconvenience of Floridians who lost their home from the recent hurricane, extreme natural disasters a known symptom of climate change, or being a refugee from war as a byproduct of nations grabbing oil.
Your company violates the natural laws. But no one ultimately can defy the laws of relativity nor life as diversity nor the scientific fact that healthy systems have limits. You are only a guest in this home we call Earth and your decisions have overstayed their visit.
Accountability is required when indirect violence is inflicted upon the planet and people because of profit. In this current economic system, corporations have more rights than any human within or beyond it. Your notion of stakeholder capitalism defined in the 2022 CEO letter to employees as “mutually beneficial relationships” does not include the mutual relationships you have with the billions of people outside your company or the planet itself as a stakeholder. Your money cannot buy the 1 degree of safety all of us need to sustain life on this planet. But your divestment from fossil fuels, investment in renewables, localizing investments in smaller companies that follow ethical standards, and the jobs that support a Just Transition, can begin to support a possible future the reflects an authentic democracy.
Thank you for considering common sense,
Rev Alison Lee Schuettinger