About 80 protestors waved placards and banners outside Fidelity Investments to protest the mutual fund company’s holdings in a company that plans to drill for oil in Colombia.
Sponsored by Rainforest Action Network and Amazon Watch, the demonstrators urged Fidelity to use its status to prevent Occidental Petroleum from drilling just outside a reserve inhabited by the 8,000-member U’wa Indian nation.
Fidelity controls 30 million Occidental shares through its mutual funds, according to Lauren Sullivan of Rainforest Action Network.
“Basically the onus is on them to step in and pressure Occidental to stop the drilling,” Sullivan said. Sullivan said Occidental’s project would pollute rainforests and destroy lands considered sacred by the U’wa people.
Similar demonstrations outside Fidelity offices were staged Thursday in nearly a dozen cities throughout the U.S., including in New York, Los Angeles and Houston, according to Fidelity spokesman Vincent Loporchio.
The company said the issue was for others to decide.
“The appropriate authorities of the world have the responsibility to address matters of this type and we would hope that they would do so fairly and wisely on behalf of their citizens,” Loporchio said.
“Our responsibility is to weigh the impact of these issues on behalf of our shareholders.”
The groups recently protested Vice President Al Gore over the issue.
Gore’s father was on the board of directors of Occidental, and the group said the vice president owns stock in the company.
