CFFD campaign timelines and institutional memory in Canada

Amanda Harvey-Sánchez — who played a key role in the first Toronto350.org / UofT350.org divestment campaign — has written a detailed timeline of the campaign at the University of Toronto.

This kind of effort is especially valuable given the limits on institutional memory in the campus fossil fuel divestment (CFFD) movement. In part that’s because of how campaigns of student volunteers will experience constant turnover, though it is also the product of the informal style of organizing promoted by 350.org and implemented by most CFFD campaigns.

The closest document which I have a record of is from the SFU campaign, though it is much less detailed.

With student volunteers dispersing in all directions following graduation, and with few institutionalized structures to preserve knowledge between cohors of organizers, it has been especially useful to see some of the campaign debriefs which have followed divestment commitments. Climate Justice UBC (which I think is the new name / successor organization to UBCC350) released an especially good presentation about their campaign.

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