Vote your conscience on Fidelity mutual funds

Mutual fund shareholders can build the momentum for genocide-free investments and help to end the four-year-old humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan. Join UUSC and other major human rights and religious organizations in this unprecedented initiative to demand that our investments are not used, directly or indirectly, to support genocide. A second round of voting will be held Wednesday, April 16, 2008.

What you can do

If you are a mutual fund shareholder, you can vote your conscience on shareholder resolutions now under consideration at Fidelity Investments and many other large firms. UUSC’s colleague organization Investors Against Genocide has submitted shareholder resolutions on genocide-free investing to many Fidelity funds. Proxy ballots that include the genocide-free resolution are being distributed by Fidelity for shareholder meetings on April 16 and May 14, 2008.

But time is of the essence to mail in your proxy ballots for the upcoming Fidelity meetings. You can vote and send it before April 16 if you own any of these Fidelity Funds:

Canada - proposal 5 on the proxy ballot
Contrafund - proposal 3 (deferred from 3/19)
Diversified International - proposal 5
International Discovery - proposal 5
Low Priced Stock - proposal 3 (deferred from 3/19)
Mid-Cap Stock - proposal 5
Puritan - proposal 3 (deferred from 3/19)
Overseas Fund - proposal 5

Whether you own one share or thousands, you can have a voice in genocide-free investing. Please vote your shares by returning your proxy ballot, by voting online, or by attending the shareholder meeting.

Other ways to build momentum

Additionally, you can help get the word out to hundreds of thousands of people who own shares in Fidelity funds. Please visit Investors Against Genocide for helpful information and advice on submitting a letter to the editor of your local newspaper and other ways to publicize the campaign.

Background

On March 19, 2008, the first vote ever on this shareholder proposal was held and received a surprising 28 percent of votes in support of the resolution. This was an unusually large expression of support for a first-time resolution that had relatively little advance publicity. The meeting and results of the voting received extensive media coverage, some of which you can see at Boston Globe, Jewish Advocate, and Social Funds.

UUSC has been working with Investors Against Genocide and its founding organization, Fidelity Out of Sudan, to urge U.S. mutual funds to divest from companies doing business with Sudan. Two of the largest financial investment companies in the world, Fidelity Investments and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, sold off large holdings in PetroChina in response to pressure from UUSC activists and others. PetroChina, the second largest corporation in the world, purchases the vast majority of Sudanese oil, providing the genocidal Khartoum regime with more than enough funds to purchase military weapons.

On September 5, 2007, UUSC President Charlie Clements took part in a protest organized by Investors Against Genocide staged at Fidelity’s Boston headquarters. Clements helped deliver more than 150,000 signed petitions calling on the firm to divest its remaining shares of PetroChina.

For more information and updates on the Sudan divestment campaign, visit Investors Against Genocide and UUSC’s Drumbeat for Darfur.