TD Bank + COVID prison investments
- Details
- Published on Thursday, 06 August 2020 04:22
- Written by editor
During the early days of the pandemic, TD Bank bought tens of thousands of shares in private prison giant GEO Group.
Now, GEO Group facilities have become hotbeds of COVID, and death toll keeps rising.
Call on TD to divest from GEO Group and all private prison companies now.
A,
We just found out that in the midst of the pandemic, TD Bank increased its shares in private prisons giant GEO Group by a whopping by 8000%.
And now, TD has blood on its hands from COVID deaths because of its GEO investment -- people are dying of the virus at GEO Group’s facilities because of a total lack of preventative measures.
That's just the tip of the iceberg of GEO Group’s appalling track record of human rights abuses. Along with CoreCivic, they run Trump’s concentration camps along the Mexican-US border where kids are held in cages and separated from their parents.
This is why every major bank in the world promised... to end financial ties with GEO Group and CoreCivic in 2019 -- a massive victory against the American prison industrial complex.
Through the pressure of tens of thousands of SumOfUs members, including hundreds who showed up at Canada Pension Plan’s public events, we forced our pension fund to divest from Geo Group and CoreCivic.
We thought the message was clear -- Canadians do not want our money invested in US private prison corporations like GEO Group. Now we need your help to make sure TD gets the message again.
Sign the petition calling on TD to cut financial ties with Trump’s private prison corporations.
It's not just customers that want out of GEO Group. Investors, alarmed by the rising death toll at GEO's facilities, just brought a class action lawsuit against the company over its blundering response to the pandemic in July.
For customers and investors alike, TD's purchase of GEO Group shares is baffling. In the wake of George Floyd’s death, TD pays lip service to Black Lives Matter after its purchase of thousands of shares in GEO Group -- a corporation that is notorious for profiting off the mass incarceration of Black people.
And not only that, TD received an ‘F’ in the Is Your Bank Loaded? report card due to its heavy investment in the gun industry -- involvement that has led to the disproportionate gun deaths of Black people.
Meanwhile, RBC, TD's biggest competitor, confirmed in March that it does not do business with the private prison industry in the U.S.
So we’re asking TD Bank: why did you increase your investment in GEO Group by over 30,000 shares? And also, what other financial ties do you have with private prisons corporations like GEO Group, CoreCivic, and other profiteers of the US prison industrial complex?
Action by SumOfUs members in Canada has supported campaigns in the US time and time again. In SumOfUs' biggest win in Canada last year -- we got the Canada Pension Plan to pull its investment US prison corporations like Geo Group and CoreCivic after a year of sustained pressure.
And just last month, 24 hours after thousands of SumOfUs members emailed, called, and posted on social media about Walmart Canada’s All Lives Matter shirts, it stop selling the dog-whistle shirts. And a few days later, Walmart US stop selling the shirts as well.
Together, we can hold TD accountable in its role in supporting the prison industrial complex if we take action now.
Thanks for all that you do,
Angus, Nick, Vicky, and the team at SumOfUs
More information:
Private Prison Firm GEO Group Faces Investor Lawsuit Over 'Blundering' Coronavirus Response, Newsweek, July 20th, 2020
GEO Group Running Out of Banks as 100% of Known Banking Partners Say ‘No’ to the Private Prison Sector, Forbes, October 10, 2019
Canada pension fund quietly divests from US migrant detention firms, The Guardian, July 5, 2019
Is Your Bank Loaded Report Card, Guns Down America, 2019
TD Bank 13F-HR filing, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, May 13, 2020
SumOfUs is a community of people from around the world committed to curbing the growing power of corporations. We want to buy from, work for and invest in companies that respect the environment, treat their workers well and respect democracy. And we’re not afraid to stand up to them when they don’t.
Please help keep SumOfUs strong by chipping in CA$3
This email was sent to s6. |r0
