[The following, by Will Spotts, is crossposted from The PC(USA) on Israel and Palestine.]

One of the burning issues the 219th General Assembly of the PC(USA) will consider is what they will do with Caterpillar, Inc. The Presbyteries of San Francisco, Newark, and San Jose are calling for divestment while the Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee and the Middle East Study Committee are calling for denunciation. I think the PC(USA) holds 54 shares of CAT stock, so the material effect would be negligible. It is likely that the MRTI's process of corporate engagement directed at Caterpillar has already cost more than the total value of CAT stock owned by the PC(USA). It is clear that the action is more rhetorical than practical.

Actions of this type - because they are rhetorical - can cause far more significant harm than their immediate material result. That potential harm must be a significant factor in commissioners' decision making process (and I will address this more directly in another post). But if commissioners want to make responsible, moral, and ethical decisions, they must also deal with other considerations.

As of right now, the MESC is scheduled to present its report - taking about an 1:15 (in three sessions), the MRTI is to be given about 30 minutes (in two sessions), the presbyteries of San Francisco, Newark, and San Jose will have about 10 minutes. About an 1:30 of open hearings will be held. Commissioners will be given about 1:00 (in two sessions) to discuss what they have heard in "small groups".

In what we must assume to have been unintentional, the only contrary proposal (item 14-06) is, of course, not being heard until after the commissioners are supposed to have decided Caterpillar's fate. [An observe might be tempted to think that whoever sets the schedule determines the outcome.]

Central to this entire issue are the activities of the MRTI. In order to make an informed decision, commissioners will need to ask the MRTI some serious questions about those activities. They will find asking meaningful questions of this type difficult, but the questions themselves are crying out for answers.

1. Of the, no doubt, hundreds (perhaps thousands) of companies who do business in Israel - whose practices you exhaustively reviewed, how did you determine to focus on Motorola, Citibank, Caterpillar, ITT Industries, and United Technologies? What companies did you review? How many companies whose stock is owned by the PC(USA) actually do business in Israel? And what evidence did you consider to exonerate those companies and focus on these five?

2. Was this determination the product of your own research, or did you draw from lists already selected by the larger activist community - lists designed for maximum effective publicity? In other words, what assurances can you give, from YOUR research that these five are the worst offenders - or the least compatible with historic PC(USA) investment policies?

3. In 2006, when the 217th General Assembly explicitly removed the Israel divestment instruction and actually limited the MRTI's corporate engagement in Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza to making sure that the companies in which the PC(USA) invests are only engaged in peaceful pursuits, how did your policies change? The instructions from 2004 - a phased selective divestment in corporations doing business in Israel - are very different than the corporate engagement instructions from 2006. Naturally, in order to comply with such a different set of specific GA instructions, you must have re-evaluated your positions. What criteria did you use when you re-evaluated all of the stocks held by the PC(USA)? What corporations did you examine? How did you decide which companies to engage?

4. In 2008, the 218th General Assembly expanded your mandate (at your recommendation) to include requiring companies to:

At that point, how did your process change? Since you were only given permission in 2008 to apply these expanded criteria, what activities did you change in order to fulfill the instructions of the General Assembly?

5. How might you account for the fact that the Caterpillar denunciation you recommend seems to spring in a direct line from the instruction of the 2004 General Assembly, uninterrupted by the actions of the 2006 and 2008 General Assemblies when you work for and are accountable to the General Assembly?

Will Spotts