Medford City Council passes sweeping divestment ordinance

Medford City Council voted 5-1 in the early hours of Wednesday to divest city funds from weapons manufacturers, fossil fuels companies, private prisons and entities engaging in human rights violations. The measure must go through a few more procedural steps before it makes it to Mayor Breanna Lungo-Koehn's desk for her signature.

Zac Bears is Medford's council president and the bill's sponsor. He spoke to WBUR's All Things Considered about how this proposal seeks to set a standard for city investments.

Highlights from this interview have been lightly edited for clarity.

On the purpose of divesting city funds:

" Right now, the context is obvious. There are very clear human rights violations happening in Gaza, Ukraine, Congo, Sudan, Myanmar and other places.

"But this is about making a framework for what it means for communities to invest in ways that lift up and support basic human rights."

On how much money would be withdrawn or divested:

"It looks to be about between $10 [million] and $40 million dollars funds that this would apply to. Part of this ordinance is actually making that determination from preliminary research.

"The amount is likely very little. But we don't want to make those investments in the future. And this is really a forward-looking ordinance about saying that both now and in the future, these are the kinds of investments that we don't think Medford's public funds and the funds of our residents should be invested in."

On why the ordinance does not apply to retirement assets: 

"This ordinance doesn't apply to the retirement fund because it can't. We've seen efforts in recent years around fossil fuels divestment and they've stopped at the state's pension commission. I would really like to see the state legislature take action to allow for values aligned investing for our state controlled retirement funds. They're highly regulated by the state.

"I think it's really worth the state legislature taking a look and coming up with a more broad and comprehensive framework to make sure that we're not investing the pension funds of our educators, our city and state employees in industries that are harming our communities and harming our planet and perpetuating violence."

On whether move is largely symbolic or if it will have an impact:

"I think that we are adding our voice to a chorus that is opposing the agenda of the Trump administration and the right wing extremist allies that he has been building across the world who are spreading autocracy.

"Medford alone can only do so much. If we work together and work in common effort and common cause, we can have a much bigger impact than we have when we work alone."