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The city of Sacramento will divest from Lockheed Martin under a new city investment policy that advocates say will restrict the city from investing public funds in companies that “profit from human suffering.”
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The policy amendment, passed 6-0 at Tuesday’s afternoon council meeting, establishes further ethical investing standards for the city treasurer’s office as it manages the city’s main investment pool. A local alliance of progressive nonprofits and unions called the Reinvest in Sacramento Coalition lobbied for the new policy, and found champions for the cause in council members Roger Dickinson and Mai Vang.
The city divested from fossil fuel and tobacco companies around five years ago at the request of the council, but the new policy codifies these restrictions and adds additional “socially responsible” investment guidelines.
“This policy recognizes that investment decisions are not value neutral. Where we choose to invest sends a message about what we prioritize and what we are willing to support,” Vang said at a news conference Tuesday morning.
City Treasurer John Colville said that the new policy won’t significantly change operations, nor will it risk the investment fund’s capital.
“We as an investment office really maintained a lot of these principles that are already written, so it really doesn’t affect our ability to do our job, but it does dictate the kind of philosophy that we want to project,” he said at Tuesday’s council meeting.
Under the new policy, the city will end its $5 million investment in Lockheed Martin, which amounts to just 0.3% of the pooled fund.
Caterpillar, Amazon also questioned
The main target of the new policy are companies that provide arms to Israel for its ongoing military actions against Palestinians and in Iran. Contractor Lockheed Martin is one of Israel’s largest suppliers of military equipment, supplying fighter jets, attack helicopters and precision missiles to the tune of $743 million between October 2023 and November 2025. The company has also received more than $1 billion in contracts with federal immigration and border patrol agencies, according to a government website that tracks federal spending.
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“Sacramento residents need to see that their tax dollars should not go to profiteers of genocide, apartheid, war crimes abroad, nor support domestic terror by ICE here at home,” said Sarah Alzanoon with the Palestine American League.
Under the new policy, the city treasurer shall follow a set of socially responsible investment standards, barring city pool funds from being invested in:
- Fossil fuel companies
- Tobacco manufacturers
- Weapons and arms manufacturers
- Companies that have “committed or enabled” violations of human rights
- Private prisons
- Companies whose primary operations facilitate immigration detention
- Companies that primarily create surveillance technology
“Primary operations” is a key phrase here — while Reinvest in Sacramento wants to see city divestment from Amazon, IBM and Caterpillar Inc. under the new policy, city treasurer John Colville said that those companies do not fit the parameters described in the new policy.
“Amazon’s primary business is not to listen to other people,” he said. “Caterpillar is another one I have an issue with — Caterpillar does a lot more than create military use vehicles.”
The city holds $15 million investments in Amazon and IBM and $5 million in Caterpillar, amounting to another 1.9% of the city’s pooled fund.
Amira Elmallah of Reinvest Sacramento said that they will continue to push the city treasurer to interpret the new policy the way they do, which would support divestment from these companies because of their relationships with the Israeli government, U.S. immigration enforcement agencies and mass incarceration.
“(Caterpillar) is complicit in the same way that Lockheed Martin is complicit,” Elmallah said. “It’s absolutely our interpretation that Amazon is knowingly and intentionally enabling mass human rights abuses against immigrants in this country by contracting with the entity that is perpetuating those abuses.”
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