by Cole Harrison
Testimony Presented to the Joint Committee on Financial Services
In support of An Act Promoting Responsible Investment (H.1264/ S.767)
November 18, 2025
Thank you, co-chairs, for convening this hearing. I am Cole Harrison, administrative director of Massachusetts Peace Action. Peace Action was formed in 1957 as the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy. Today Massachusetts Peace Action has 2,400 dues paying members in the Commonwealth. I am here today to support An Act Promoting Responsible Investment, H.1264 and S.767, introduced by Rep. Sam Montaño and Sen. Pat Jehlen. The act would divest public pension funds from entities involved in manufacturing, producing, selling, or promoting weapons of mass destruction.
The renewed nuclear arms race between the great powers has now brought the world to the most dangerous point in history. One by one our arms control treaties with Russia have been cancelled, and our last treaty with Russia, the New Start treaty, will expire in February. Most people across the world now understand that nuclear weapons are just too dangerous to ever be used. They are as dangerous for the countries that possess them as for those that are threatened by them.
Massachusetts is a nuclear target. Submarine launched missiles are designed at Draper Labs in Cambridge; nuclear command and control systems are designed at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford and Lexington. Any adversary would surely target these locations among others and few Commonwealth residents would survive a nuclear exchange.
The brutal Gaza genocide over the past two years was carried out using high explosive bombs and shells provided by US companies in which the Massachusetts pension funds are invested. We should end our complicity in this slaughter.
The lawless Trump administration is attacking civilian boats in the Caribbean and Pacific and deploying troops in US cities. It cannot be trusted to use our $1 trillion military budget wisely or lawfully.
Divestment is not a new concept. Massachusetts has used divestment five times before for moral or public policy reasons. We divested from companies doing business in South Africa in 1982, from tobacco stocks in 1997, from companies doing business in Northern Ireland in 1983, from Sudan in 2007, and Iran in 2010. Massachusetts state retirees do not need to invest in producers of weapons of mass destruction, which are making their grandchildren, and the world, less safe, to fund their retirements. They can receive safe and comfortable returns by allocating their investments to socially constructive products.