Pictured above, college students Grace Cowell, Maevon Cohen and Sam Levine were among the many to testify at the public hearing for An Act Promoting Responsible Investment on November 18, 2025 at the MA State House in Boston.
Massachusetts state legislators heard compelling testimony on November 11th from students, pension beneficiaries, labor unions, doctors, financial experts and many others calling on the state to divest its $80 billion pension fund from companies complicit with the production of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. Several mayors, city councilors, state legislators and members of the US Congress also filed written testimony in support of the bill that would make Massachusetts the first state in the country to divest from these companies.
Massachusetts was the first state to pass the Nuclear Freeze resolution in the 1980s. It was the first state to divest from apartheid South Africa as well the first state to divest from tobacco companies. So there is precedence for passing this divestment bill. The chances are rather slim, however, that this bill will make it to a vote and become MA law during this legislative session.
The Massachusetts Warheads to Windmills Coalition consists of 37 local and statewide organizations in Massachusetts who are committed to working together for an end to fossil fuels and nuclear weapons. The coalition has been trying for six years to get a bill passed in the State House that would set up a Citizens Commission to look into what could most effectively be done at the state level to address these twin existential threats.
Despite widespread support for a Citizens Commission, including favorable votes in several state house committees and a clear majority of state senators who said they would vote in favor of setting it up, the bill was never brought to the floor of the House or Senate for a vote. At the end of last year, the coalition decided to ratchet up the pressure by calling for divestment from the state pension fund – an obvious step that the state could take without waiting for a recommendation from the Citizens Commission.
Two state bills were therefore submitted in January: H.2811, an Act to Review Climate Risk in Order to Protect Public Pension Beneficiaries, would divest the MA state pension fund from fossil fuels (and other climate risk investments). And H.1264/S.767, an Act Promoting Responsible Investment, would divest the MA state pension fund from nuclear weapons (and other weapons of mass destruction).
Both of these bills are supported by wider coalitions of MA-based organizations, together with the MA W2W Coalition. State branches of Mothers Out Front, Elders Climate Action, Sierra Club and Third Act have been supporting the fossil fuel divestment bill, while the weapons divestment bill has been supported by the Massachusetts Teachers Association, Jewish Voice for Peace, Greater Boston PSR and numerous local groups opposing the genocide in Gaza, all under the umbrella of the MA Coalition for Responsible Investment (CFRI).
The fossil fuel divestment bill had a public hearing in Boston earlier in the year, in front of the Joint Committee on Public Service. The committee has since sent the bill “to study,” which means it will not be voted on and is effectively dead for the rest of this legislative session.
Sooner or later, MA will divest from fossil fuels and from nuclear weapons. This will be a huge step forward in putting pressure on the companies involved. Of the $80 billion in assets invested by the MA state pension fund, at least $2 billion is directly invested in nuclear weapons companies. Another $15 billion is invested in financial institutions, like Bank of America, which are themselves heavily invested in these companies. The bill calls for divestment from all entities with ties to weapons of mass destruction. That would be a major blow to the industry and a much-needed step towards the final abolition of these weapons.