Burnaby
Goldcorp: We Don’t Want Your Dirty Gold
10:00am
Thursday November 25 2010
Public funding not corporate funding! Keep corporate names off public buildings!
In September, the office of the SFU president announced that Canadian mining giant *Goldcorp* has donated $10 million to SFU. In return, SFU has rebranded its downtown eastside Woodwards campus, "The Goldcorp Centre for the Arts."
The Woodwards development has already been widely criticized for its role in the ripple of rent-increases and gentrification. Adding Goldcorp's name to the Woodwards campus raises serious questions.
A notorious environmental, human rights, and colonial criminal company, Goldcorp is facing federal criminal charges in Honduras and has been involved in legal battles in Argentina and Guatemala. From toxic levels of lead in the wells and cyanide-poisoned workers in the San Martin mines in Guatemala, to the toxically high levels of mercury, copper, arsenic and zinc in the bodies of Mayan communities near the Marlin mine in Guatemala too, and the coercion and even the murder of anti-mining community members at the Marlin mine; from the bulldozing of sacred Quechen Indigenous land in California, to the active support of a coup in Honduras, the bodies are adding up.
How much is $10 million really worth?
Why is SFU accepting donations from a notorious human and environment-rights corporate criminal? Does this make SFU complicit in Goldcorp’s crimes? Why are criminal names on our public buildings?
These decisions about our public university should not be made behind closed doors!
The problems of corporate funding in the university are generated by the erosion of public education by all levels of government. Instead of accepting dirty money, university administrators should be fighting with students and communities to restore public funding!
For too long decisions about our university have been made behind closed doors. On Thursday November 25th, let’s open the doors and take back the university!
Public education and human rights are not for sale!
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