Tuesday, December 06, 2016

Hooray! A BIG BDS Win!

G4S, the security company that has long been a target of Boycott, Divest and Sanctions activism, has sold most of its business with Israel, where it had been extensively involved in Israel's notorious prison system, and provided services to Israeli checkpoints and illegal settlements on Palestinian land. 

Pressure from BDS campaigns worldwide, including educating the public about G4S activities, and persuading individuals and religious and civil institutions to withdraw their investments in the company, has caused enormous damage to G4S's reputation and cost it millions of dollars in lost contracts.

Step by step, sometimes slowly, sometimes with sudden victories like this one, BDS is working around the world, wherever G4S and similar corporations repress the most vulnerable.




For even though G4S has found it unprofitable to continue to do most of its business in Israel, the company still deals in oppression worldwide.







In the U.S. alone, G4S played a role in the repression of the Standing Rock Sioux water protectors.






G4S still aids ICE and Homeland Security with immigrant deportations. 










G4S still runs youth detention facilities and provides prison technology as part of the U.S. prison industrial complex.  







"Two things have never been clearer," says the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights. "(1) BDS works. and (2) We have a lot more work to do."

Congratulations to activists and institutions around the world that have been a part of the Stop G4S campaign, illustrating the tremendous ability of grassroots organizing to impact multinational corporations and send the strong message that profiting from oppression is not so profitable after all. Now -- on to the next big win!