Blog

by Dawn Kane
Interview with Eve Gutman, Media and Research Coordinator

For more than two years concerned residents of Southeastern Pennsylvania have been protesting at Vanguard’s Malvern headquarters to call for an end to “its complicity in the climate crisis,” says Eve Gutman, Media and Research Coordinator for the Earth Quaker Action Team. Vanguard, the world’s largest investor in fossil fuels with assets under management in excess of $7 trillion, has out-sized influence in the struggle to move away from the fossil fuel industry and its resulting impacts on the environment, says Gutman. In April of last year, this effort morphed into a global campaign, Vanguard SOS, and joined with local, national and international partners, in a push for change.
“As the world’s largest investor in fossil fuels, [Vanguard] has a tremendous influence over the companies that we most need to be transitioning… so we believe it’s really strategic to be pressuring Vanguard…it’s a vital actor in this much larger climate movement,” Gutman says
Last month, in an action at Vanguard’s headquarters, 16 protestors were arrested for disrupting the company’s operations when they stepped into company entrances at the start of the business day with signs advising Vanguard employees that the company was backsliding on its commitment to the environment. However, this was not the EQAT’s first attempt to influence the company, nor was it the first time that protesters were arrested.
“We started off with direct actions that had letter deliveries to board members or petition deliveries to Vanguard leadership,” says Gutman. “And as Vanguard has refused to make any progress and has actually taken steps backwards on climate the campaign has been escalating pressure.”

In September of last year, EQAT members entered the Vanguard campus to request meetings with John Galloway, the global head of stewardship. Instead of agreeing to meet, Galloway and Vanguard management had eight individuals arrested.

When the company backed out of a net zero initiative in December of 2022, EQAT and its partners again stepped up the pressure. “A group of about 100 people went to Vanguard’s headquarters during morning rush hour and staged an intervention in business as usual,” Gutman says. Of the roughly 100 protestors, 22 people stepped into the driveways leading into Vanguard’s headquarters in four different locations and unfurled banners.” The point, she explained, is to let “employees see that a large group of people could not accept Vanguard’s backslide,” and that those employees would then go speak to their supervisors and leadership and have conversations about why Vanguard is lagging on its climate efforts. So that is the hope, that the employees take some action.”

Gutman says that they don’t know the full reaction to the action, they have heard that the employees were talking. “And while we don’t know the full extent of the impact of this one action, we do know that the actions that we are taking in this campaign with our partners over time are really exerting a sense of pressure,” she says.

This has worked for the EQAT team in the past. “We like to say…the role of nonviolent direct action in these corporate campaigns is that it equates [to their] first campaign targeting PNC Bank [regarding] its financing of mountaintop removal and coal mining. “We ended up winning that campaign, but it was only after 125 direct actions,” Gutman says. “And so any one action, it can feel hard to see what the impact is, but we know it’s part of this longer arc of pressure.”

Gutman and her fellow activists do see signs that Vanguard is responding. Gutman cites the recent interviews by CEO Tim Buckley and the Global Head of Stewardship, John Galloway to defend the company’s actions. “And these interviews are, to me, very clearly an attempt to defend the company’s actions…. ”Vanguard leadership “feels a need to go on record and defend itself because there’s this pressure not just from activists but also from customers.”

Partner organizations are important to the effort, Gutman says. At the April 19 action, activists joined together not only from EQAT, but also from Extinction Rebellion, Dayenu, Elders Action Network, POWER Interfaith, the Sierra Club, Third Act, and the Shalom Center. “It’s a real web—a network of groups,” she says.

In addition to the physical presence of the protestors at the April 19 action, on the same day Greenfaith, an international faith-based climate organization, and Elders Action Network, a national elders’ organizing project, performed a call-in, in which people from across the country were calling Vanguard and asking for change. They logged about 700 calls, says Gutman.

In the months leading up to EQATS action, Vanguard was also feeling the heat from supporters of the fossil fuel industry. “Attorneys general for Texas, Ohio, Indiana, and 10 Southern and Great Plains states on Nov. 28 filed a protest with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), seeking to block Vanguard from buying electric-power utility company shares for the next three years. They cited Vanguard’s attempts to pressure utilities into disclosing fossil-fuel pollution and its agreements with environmental organizations that want investors to push to eliminate natural gas and coal plants altogether,” in an article by Joseph N. DiStefano published in The Philadelphia Inquirer in November of last year. Then, according to an article published by Reuters in December of 2022, after receiving pushback from the conservative states, Vanguard pulled out of an industry initiative to reach net zero by 2050.

Activists have no plans to let up on the pressure. Of the 16 protestors arrested in the April action, who ranged in age from 22 to 84 years old, all are facing charges including: defiant trespass, a misdemeanor; failure to disperse, another misdemeanor; and disorderly conduct which is a summary offense. They’ve been summoned to appear in court on June 9, Gutman says.

Still, the EQAT team is making plans. “We are about to launch a new phase of this campaign called Never Vanguard,” Gutman says. The team is calling for people to impact Vanguard’s brand by collectively coming together to publicly refuse to participate in a business model we know is dangerous, says Gutman. For one aspect of this phase, organizers are asking people to pledge to move their money out of Vanguard, and for those currently without Vanguard investments can pledge to never invest in the company until Vanguard deals with its climate problem and invests for the future.

EQAT is inviting people to participate in two actions in June:

1. Saturday, June 10 EQAT protest: Chester PA to support residents’ struggle against polluting industries in which Vanguard is a major investor.

WHEN: June 10, 2023 at 2:00pm – 3:30pm
WHERE: Highland Ave near Front St, Chester, PA 19013 …
Contact: Lina Blount · lina@eqat.org
Register: https://www.eqat.org/never_vanguard_launch
2. EQAT action to announce the first round of money disinvested from Vanguard
When: Wednesday, June 14, 2023 at 3:30pm – 5:30pm
WHERE Vanguard Headquarters, Malvern, PA 19355
Contact: Berenice Tompkins · berenice@eqat.org
Register: https://www.eqat.org/never_vanguard_move_our_money_action

For the June 10 action EQAT members will gather in Chester with Chester residents who are concerned about the impacts of nearby polluters using the Delaware River next to their neighborhoods, and in which Vanguard is a major investor. They plan to highlight the real human costs of these investments and show the reason why we are pledging Never Vanguard.

On June 14, EQAT members will take action at Vanguard headquarters to announce the first wave of people who are moving their money out of Vanguard and encouraging more Vanguard customers to do so together collectively. “We really believe in the power of not just taking individual action, but to align one action with one’s values,” Gutman says. “We really want to help people do so collectively because we know that moving money as part of a collective total, [and] doing so during a direct action, makes our actions all the more powerful.”
Gutman and EQAT organizers encourage Vanguard customers who are interested in moving their money as part of a larger group to reach out to us. We have a form for Vanguard customers to fill out so we can make sure we know about them.

Links:
– page to donate to the legal expenses of those who were arrested: https://www.eqat.org/donate_legal_support
– action launching “Never Vanguard” on Sat 6/10 in Chester: https://www.eqat.org/never_vanguard_launch
– action announcing first round of money moved out of Vanguard on Wed 6/14 in Malvern: https://www.eqat.org/never_vanguard_move_our_money_action
– information for Vanguard customers about how to get involved as customers: https://www.eqat.org/vanguard_customers
– press release for last month’s intervention protest: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sa0bOwLVL69ZOHb0hW76pGc5tn5QEZ9Ize_O3Cj-cLE/edit?usp=sharing