To be perfectly honest, I wasn't expecting Arizona Governor Jan Brewer would sign SB 1070 on Friday. I knew the teabaggers wanted their racism codified into law, but "show me your papers or go to jail" was so fascist I just couldn't imagine anyone wanting to declare a race war over such grounds. I was wrong.

As the messages to Boycott Arizona begin to fill my inbox and feeds, I wanted to escalate. My Mom's side is Latino and I'm actually a lot darker skinned than my name might suggest. My first thought was that beyond the boycott, we also needed to apply pressure through socially responsible investment. That's when I started thinking about the State of California's role in helping end Apartheid by pulling money out of South Africa. Then I knew the move.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) has over $200 billion in investments and a history of activism. A few years back, they charted a new approach towards investing in emerging markets, requiring countries to provide, "evidence of political stability, humane labor laws, a fair and functional legal system." I want CalPERS to take the same approach to investments in Arizona companies and real estate holdings in the state. On all three counts, Arizona fails.

Next, I needed a mechanism to spread the word. I decided upon Act.ly, which isn't a boring old petition site, but a list of everyone who has decided to broadcast their position on a move to everyone who follows them on Twitter -- petitions 2.0. Quickly, big names in progressive politics jumped on board and to-date the petition has been signed by twitter users who are followed by a collective 187,133 people (obviously with overlap, if you look who has signed you should be following most of them).

Act.ly provided an immediate way to kickstart this move, identifying who supports it concurrent with the researching going on to bring this move into the real world on Monday. If you'd like to see CalPERS make this move, please join. After the jump, you can see the chronology of how this move rolled out via tweets and retweets. And please use the comments for ideas.

There's more...

To be perfectly honest, I wasn't expecting Arizona Governor Jan Brewer would sign SB 1070 on Friday. I knew the teabaggers wanted their racism codified into law, but "show me your papers or go to jail" was so fascist I just couldn't imagine anyone wanting to declare a race war over such grounds. I was wrong.

As the messages to Boycott Arizona begin to fill my inbox and feeds, I wanted to escalate. My Mom's side is Latino and I'm actually a lot darker skinned than my name might suggest. My first thought was that beyond the boycott, we also needed to apply pressure through socially responsible investment. That's when I started thinking about the State of California's role in helping end Apartheid by pulling money out of South Africa. Then I knew the move.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) has over $200 billion in investments and a history of activism. A few years back, they charted a new approach towards investing in emerging markets, requiring countries to provide, "evidence of political stability, humane labor laws, a fair and functional legal system." I want CalPERS to take the same approach to investments in Arizona companies and real estate holdings in the state. On all three counts, Arizona fails.

Next, I needed a mechanism to spread the word. I decided upon Act.ly, which isn't a boring old petition site, but a list of everyone who has decided to broadcast their position on a move to everyone who follows them on Twitter -- petitions 2.0. Quickly, big names in progressive politics jumped on board and to-date the petition has been signed by twitter users who are followed by a collective 187,133 people (obviously with overlap, if you look who has signed you should be following most of them).

Act.ly provided an immediate way to kickstart this move, identifying who supports it concurrent with the researching going on to bring this move into the real world on Monday. If you'd like to see CalPERS make this move, please join. After the jump, you can see the chronology of how this move rolled out via tweets and retweets. And please use the comments for ideas.

There's more...

To be perfectly honest, I wasn't expecting Arizona Governor Jan Brewer would sign SB 1070 on Friday. I knew the teabaggers wanted their racism codified into law, but "show me your papers or go to jail" was so fascist I just couldn't imagine anyone wanting to declare a race war over such grounds. I was wrong.

As the messages to Boycott Arizona begin to fill my inbox and feeds, I wanted to escalate. My Mom's side is Latino and I'm actually a lot darker skinned than my name might suggest. My first thought was that beyond the boycott, we also needed to apply pressure through socially responsible investment. That's when I started thinking about the State of California's role in helping end Apartheid by pulling money out of South Africa. Then I knew the move.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) has over $200 billion in investments and a history of activism. A few years back, they charted a new approach towards investing in emerging markets, requiring countries to provide, "evidence of political stability, humane labor laws, a fair and functional legal system." I want CalPERS to take the same approach to investments in Arizona companies and real estate holdings in the state. On all three counts, Arizona fails.

Next, I needed a mechanism to spread the word. I decided upon Act.ly, which isn't a boring old petition site, but a list of everyone who has decided to broadcast their position on a move to everyone who follows them on Twitter -- petitions 2.0. Quickly, big names in progressive politics jumped on board and to-date the petition has been signed by twitter users who are followed by a collective 187,133 people (obviously with overlap, if you look who has signed you should be following most of them).

Act.ly provided an immediate way to kickstart this move, identifying who supports it concurrent with the researching going on to bring this move into the real world on Monday. If you'd like to see CalPERS make this move, please join. After the jump, you can see the chronology of how this move rolled out via tweets and retweets. And please use the comments for ideas.

There's more...

It has been so easy lately for anyone who disagrees with anyone else in politics to label them as radically as possible. In the past week or so, for instance, I've heard Obama, with his handling of the Economy and his goals for healthcare and education, called a "socialist", a "communist", a "fascist" and other things, some too nasty to mention.

Both parties (the major, parties, that is... the hundreds of mini-parties, those single-issue groupings of certain individuals, are prime offenders at name calling, but have relatively little effect) are guilty of this kind of stuff... and they do it to themselves as well as the other side (just look at what Republicans are doing to Michael Steele and what Paul Krugman is pumping out about Obama.)

There's more...

Contemptlating the working of the stimulus package through the Congress reminds me of a canard that I used to conjure up back in the primaries, seduced by the message of change, but old enough, cynical enough too, to recall the old political adage: the more things change the more they stay the same.

No longer am I a mere witness to the national crises, I am now one of the victims (that is a real exaggeration of course, compared to the worst off victims, I am probably blessed) of the economic downturn.

An employee of three different insurance companies since 1973, I have labored for relatively modest wages, but with some nice benefits, medical and otherwise. Insurance companies are financial institutions, at bottom, for most of them have huge cash reserves, which can be invested in a myriad of ways. The market collapse hurt insurance companies as much as banks.

There's more...