The cheers went up and the drums rang out. The Seattle City Council had voted to take the city’s money out of Wells Fargo, a bank that invested in the Dakota Access Pipleline (DAPL).
“The city is listening to us,” said Rachel Heaton, a member of the Muckleshoot tribe and the No DAPL movement in Seattle.
Heaton and others involved in the resistance to the pipeline were confident in their victory. So confident, in fact, that they performed an honor song for the City Council and gave them gifts of mountain water, sage, lavender, cedar and a rock from their sacred river in gratitude before the vote was even cast.
“I realize the vote has not taken place,” Heaton said. “Allies, people who work with us, we honor them. On the behalf of the Native American Community, we honor all nine of you today.”
Their trust was not misplaced. The City Council voted unanimously to not only remove money from Wells Fargo, but to ensure that the city avoid business relationships with companies that hold values contrary of those espoused by the city government.
“People say, ‘Money talks.’ No, it doesn’t. We do,” said Councilmember Debora Juarez, a member of the Blackfeet nation.
Seattle’s stand is an example and a symbol for communities across the country that seek to get out of environmentally abusive relationships with companies such as Energy Transfer Partners, the company in charge of DAPL. It demonstrates that governments can put their money where their mouth is, even when it would be easier to stick with the status quo.
Although many knew it was coming, the City Council vote still sent a powerful statement: Seattle isn’t putting up with this.
The vote was a victory, and the product of months of talks within the city and with the communities opposed to the North Dakota Access Pipeline, a project meant to take oil from North Dakota to Illinois. The pipeline is slated to run underneath Lake Oahe, a water source for the Missouri River. Originally, it was to travel north of Bismarck, North Dakota, until a predominately White community shot it down.
The pipeline will likely still travel under the lake — the Army Corps of Engineers approved an easement, the final permission needed to construct the pipeline just two days after the vote. The decision scrapped the environmental impact statement that the Army Corps of Engineers agreed to under the Obama administration. The transfer of city dollars will happen in time — Seattle has an existing contract with Wells Fargo until the end of 2018, and there’s no expressed interest in breaking that deal. It’s also unclear where the money will go instead, and even how much is invested in the bank.
A Wells Fargo spokesperson said that the city had $10 million in accounts, a figure the city disputes. Seattle has roughly $56 million in Wells Fargo accounts on average, wrote Julie Moore, a spokesperson for Seattle’s Finance Administrative Services in an email.
That’s counter to the $3 billion figure oft-cited by city councilmembers and the press alike. Roughly $4 billion flow in and out of city accounts in a given year, Moore wrote.
Where the city will stash its cash is up in the air. Washington law prohibits Seattle from using any bank without sufficient capital to cover potential losses, in this case meaning between $300 million and $450 million. City officials found 63 banks that fit the criteria, only four of which are in the region.
The thing is, 17 banks invested in DAPL, and it’s hard to tell if any bank that the city decides on will live up to Seattle’s standards.
“There’s often a feeling in our work that there’s no perfect company and no perfect bank,” said Meg Voorhes, director of research for the Forum of Sustainable and Responsible Investment. “It may be a question of finding a bank that’s pretty good on a number of issues of concern.”
Voorhes and her organization study corporate social responsibility for a living. Closing accounts with a bank like Wells Fargo will have a direct impact, Voorhes said, unlike other forms of financial protest that serve more to raise awareness and ire against a company that uses bad practices.
Consider the example of universities pressured to take their pension funds out of tobacco or firearms stocks.
“If we’re talking about selling off investments in a company, selling off stock for instance, you can’t sell shares in a public traded company unless someone buys them,” Voorhes said. “It’s part of an exchange.”
That means that the companies against which people protest aren’t actually feeling the pain. At least, not directly.
The impact on their reputation is another matter.
Companies work hard to avoid negative labels. Nike got branded as the best company for child exploitation, while Ikea got slammed for its impact on forests. Both put a lot of effort and money into improving their reputations. It’s what organizations like the Forum of Sustainable and Responsible Investment and Natural Investments call “corporate social responsibility.”
Natural Investments is a company that takes its clients’ money and invests in businesses that live up to their ideals, generally eco-friendly and empowering to communities at home and abroad. It is possible to invest sustainably and wisely, said Ryan Jones-Casey, director of client services for Natural Investments’ Seattle office.
“We would say that it’s an extra layer of analysis that we are performing,” Jones-Casey said. “Whereas the stereotypical firm is laser focused on financial factors, we also demand that the companies we invest in evaluate hundreds of environmental social criteria.”
Seattle’s move does more than just invest, Jones-Casey said.
“While it might not have an immediate, tangible benefit for the city of Seattle to move funds to another bank, it sends a message to Wells Fargo,” he said.
Message received.
Seattle’s decision has made headlines across the country, and several cities and local groups have already contacted the city to see how they managed to accomplish it.
It bodes well for ending projects like DAPL, but it should go further, said Matt Remle, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, on whose land the pipeline is scheduled to run. He said the city needs to consider creating an alternative to private banks.
“Let’s push for a state bank, a city bank,” Remle said. “It’ll be a paradigm shift in where our money goes.”