NEW YORK - Fifty New Yorkers gathered in the cold in front of TIAA-CREF national headquarters to show support for a shareholder resolution asking trustees to end investments in companies that contribute to or enable serious human rights violations, including companies whose products support Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands.

CREF shareholders, including a professor of peace and conflict studies, addressed the crowd, emphasizing that it is crucial that the retirement company let shareholders have a conversation about the human rights abuses their investments are supporting. Also present was Omar Barghouti, one of the founders and leaders of the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions National Committee. Barghouti's evening talk with Judith Butler at Brooklyn College this evening has been the object of much recent controversy among local city officials and in the national media.