Fifth "official" TIAA-CREF (TC) Coalition Update --mainly for TC participants with an interest in social responsibility by TC

Dear TC Coalition allies: As you know, the annual meeting of TC has been postponed till December 15. You also know that we will be out in full force both inside and outside the meeting. Additionally, we work with the TC participants who have filed five of the six shareholder resolutions at the meeting! In your own voting and in talking with others, we encourage you to vote for all resolutions except the “anti-gun control” one – unless your leanings otherwise. We have already been quoted or contributed to stories in Dow Jones NS, Barons, Newsday, NY Post, and likely elsewhere. And we will likely be in Business Week, Washington Post, and elsewhere. Plus, this is even before our press advisory and release go out widely in the few days preceding the meeting! If you have any connections to media yourself, we have available that press release and advisory. We would like to get publicity far and wide either at the local or the national/international levels. Now, here is where you can come into play as well. PLEASE get out the below demonstration announcement for the meeting to as many folks as you can. And do encourage NYC area folks to either come to the meeting to speak (will require calling TC to get a pass if a TC participant – 1-800-TIA-CREF) or joining us outside for the demonstration. Actually, our coalition will already have at least 15 folks inside representing our various causes, so we can probably use folks even more outside. Or be outside from 8:30 to 10 or 10:30 AM and then go inside to raise voices in the Q&A period at the end--- or in support of any of the shareholder resolutions. The latter type of support is particularly needed (see shareholder resolutions on the agenda at the TC website, www.tiaa-cref.org. Click on appropriate place about the annual meeting near the bottom of the first page. Then go to where you can get to a noting of the proxy statement. For the vast majority who can’t get to the meeting, PLEASE call TC offices (and encourage others to) during he week before the meeting (see demo announcement below). It is a way to take less than five minutes and have a big impact when you are in unison with all the others calling who are associated with our various coalition groups. We want to flood them with calls the week before!! "In announcing, on November 20, a sale to Metropolitan Life Insurance Company of the long-term care contracts of 46,000 faithful TIAA-CREF policyholders, the new TIAA-CREF management is showing extraordinary, and totally unnecessary, disloyalty to its horrified clients. TIAA-CREF's press release suggesting this was a "smart" business move reveals the commercial attitudes being injected into TIAA-CREF's non-profit corporate culture by its new Chairman, Herb Allison, from Merrill Lynch. If this sale goes through, TIAA-CREF will reap the whirlwind as all of its policy holders get the message that loyalty to TIAA-CREF will not be reciprocated by the new TIAA-CREF management." FROM SOMEONE EFFECTED Finally, we try to highlight one of our coalition groups each update where we can. This time, it is Infact, and here’s what they say. As one of the largest institutional investors in Philip Morris/Altria, TIAA-CREF has high level ties with the tobacco giant. Philip Morris/Altria Board member Elizabeth Bailey also sits on the Board of CREF. For the several years, Infact has been an active participant in the TIAA-CREF Coalition. Infact has mobilized activists across the country to pressure TIAA-CREF, generating dozens of letters to the editor, and hundreds of calls, including through national call in days. Infact has participated in actions both inside and outside TIAA-CREF Annual Meetings and at many other strategic locations. Since 1977, Infact has been exposing life-threatening abuses by transnational corporations and organizing successful grassroots campaigns to hold corporations accountable to consumers and society at large. Infact is a non-profit, national membership organization building an active, aware public and a core of well-trained organizers to lead the grassroots challenge to unwarranted corporate influence. Through the Tobacco Industry Campaign, launched in 1993, Infact is pressuring Philip Morris (now Altria) to stop addicting new young customers around the world, and to stop interfering in public policy on issues of tobacco and health. The Kraft Boycott, targeting Philip Morris/Altria’s Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, contributed to the adoption of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC)—the first global public health treaty! Infact’s current work builds on the successes of two earlier Infact campaigns: the Nestlé Boycott (1977–1984), which brought about significant reforms in the life-threatening marketing of infant formula in economically poor countries; and the GE Boycott (1986–1993), which helped push industry leader General Electric out of the nuclear weapons business. The GE Boycott gave rise to Infact’s last film, Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons, and Our Environment, which won an Academy Award in 1992. Good bye for now, Neil ======================================================= Neil Wollman; Ph. D.; Senior Fellow, Peace Studies Institute; Professor of Psychology; Manchester College, North Manchester, IN 46962; nwollman@bentley.edu; 260-982-5346; fax 260-982-5043 ACTIVISTS PROTEST AT ANNUAL SHAREHOLDER MEETING TO PRESS PENSION FUND TO INVEST RESPONSIBLY AND IMPROVE CORPORATE GOVERNANCE "Out of the Bad and into the Good" Monday, December 15, 8:30-11 a.m. Annual Shareholder meeting of TIAA-CREF. A call for the $300 billion pension giant to invest in positive ventures (like low-income housing); divest Unocal, Nike, Wal-Mart, BP, Costco, and Philip-Morris/Altria; and boycott World Bank bonds. Outside of TIAA-CREF headquarters in New York City; 730 Third Ave. (between 45th and 46th streets). TIAA-CREF pension system participants can call to receive an admission pass to attend or speak up inside the meeting (800-842-2733, 212-490-9000). During the week before the meeting, TIAA-CREF participants and others please call CEO Herbert Allison at the same phone numbers and note the above issues. For information, see www.maketiaa-crefethical.org ; 260-982-5346; nwollman@bentley.edu Sponsored by Citizens' Coalition, Infact, International Tibet Independence Movement, Press for Change, Students for a Free Tibet, U.S. Campaign for Burma, U.S. Tibet Committee, World Bank Bonds Boycott, and Social Choice for Social Change.

As the nation's largest pension fund, TIAA-CREF, a retirement fund mainly for educators, prides itself on being responsive to shareholders and a socially responsible "concerned investor." However, the fund continues to hold large investments that support tobacco sales, sweatshop labor, harmful environmental practices, and oil companies tied to brutal dictatorships. Other funds earn good returns while investing in more socially beneficial ways. A broad-based coalition is calling for funds to be invested in affordable housing and in companies that are, for example, pioneering socially or environmentally responsible products or services. Also, TIAA-CREF is weak or contradictory in its own governance practices, despite being considered a leader in good corporate governance. Three relevant shareholder-proposed resolutions are on the annual meeting ballot. Things went very well in several ways at the recent annual meeting. We may file a fuller report later, but for now, here aÿre some highlights: We had between 15-20 folks from our various coalition groups that went inside the meeting and raised voices on their social responsibility concerns. Other folks in the room raised other issues with TIAA-CREF on other corporate responsibility and corporate governance concerns. Besides his work on the TC Coalition and the Social Choice for Social Change (positive investing) effort, Neil played a leadership role in a small group of TC participants that filed the majority of shareholder resolutions this year. So, as a combined group of individuals spanning various concerns, we raised a multitude of issues with TC that needed to be raised. And we are dominating discussion at their annual meetings. Without going into detail here, we may be starting to have influence in a few areas (just as one example, they want/are willing to meet with those interested in starting a new socially responsible fund—since confirmed in an email from them). But we will need to carry our efforts beyond the annual meeting so that they don’t feel they just have to worry about us for a few hours once a year. As some of you may know, we have been doing that via contacts with trustees, phone calls and emails to TC, demonstrations at local TC offices, and media publicity. Relevant to the latter, we again gained much major media surrounding the meeting, with some further story possibilities. At the time of this writing, stories concerning one aspect or more of our joint concerns have appeared in the following major publications/news services (due mainly to our initiation in some way): Barons, Dow Jones NS, Wall Street Journal, Corporate Social Responsibility New Service going to thousands of outlets, Bloomberg NS, New York Daily News, NY Post, Investor Relations web, NY Times (great photo of our particular folks during the meeting), Newsday, prominent WFUV in NYC, Voice of America, and Investor Relations in January). So TC knows we hit all the major NYC area print media. And, of course, stories with the two prominent news services could appear in many outlets. If you know of further places, PLEASE let me know so we can keep track A Business Week writer was there, but she communicated later that her editors decided against a story because Wall Street Journal and NY Times had written on. Always have to be first! But she did say she/they was quite open to a more in depth story and asked for suggestions on that so I will be in contact with her. Outside the building, at one time or another, perhaps 40 were present, but not at any one time. There was a Christmas theme (a plastic Santa Claus and Santa hats), plus we had a jazz band and a great banner! We also talked with several TC employees who supported us and some misgivings about TC. Others definitely refused to accept the fliers we distributed to several hundred folks coming inside or outside the building – and we also distributed fliers inside as well. If you attended the meeting or have other things to note/report/suggest regarding media coverage, what went on in the meeting, ways to proceed in the future, please let us know. Thanks for all your work. Together we are doing it. Neil