By Cathy Rowan, Director of Socially Responsible Investments for Trinity Health
In celebrating SGI’s 50th Anniversary, I am grateful for the years of working with and learning from one of your founders, Rev. Mike Crosby.
In the mid-1990s, when I began participating in the ICCR conferences, I did not know Mike well, but knew him as the person who was always busy typing during the meetings. He produced extensive summaries of all the conference sessions, for the benefit of all the regional coalitions for responsible investment. No one had asked him to do that; it was one of his many ways of faithfully serving others.
Tobacco is a priority issue for Trinity Health, for whom I started working in 2003, and Mike helped and welcomed me in engaging tobacco companies, working to change their marketing practices – with a vision of ultimately transforming those companies to stop selling cigarettes – and in engaging the parent companies of movie studios, to eliminate the depiction of tobacco in youth-rated films.
Mike’s own past experience as a smoker, his sensitivity to the overwhelming marketing of cigarettes to recruit new smokers, plus his faith that does justice were what drew him to take on the issue of tobacco and corporate responsibility.
His work was often questioned by those involved in the tobacco control movement: “Why would you engage with tobacco companies?” His reply: “Why wouldn’t you?”
Mike’s thinking was that if one person’s life could be saved, if one young person decided not to start smoking because the dangers of secondhand smoke were attended to, and incessant marketing to young people was stopped (e.g. Joe Camel or via the portrayal of smoking in movies), he had to engage the companies as a shareholder.
What impact has his work had? Well, for one, we no longer see Joe Camel ads. His efforts to stop the advertising, marketing and selling of cigarettes using the terms ‘light’ or ‘ultra-light’ contributed to the Food and Drug Administration’s 2010 rule banning the use of ‘light’, ‘mild’ and ‘low’ on cigarette packaging. All the parent companies of major studios have policies to limit the depiction of tobacco in youth-rated films, with Disney banning tobacco depictions in all its movies.
Mike’s shareholder advocacy was grounded in human rights. His concerns around tobacco extended to the working, living and health conditions of tobacco farmworkers. He heard about green tobacco sickness – which can occur when farmworkers absorb nicotine through the skin as they come into contact with the leaves of the tobacco plant, causing nausea, vomiting, headaches, dizziness – from Sisters in Kentucky for whom he was giving a retreat. He took the issue to the Altria CEO, who said he never heard of this occupational poisoning.
His initiative led to all the major tobacco companies adopting polices that take into account the health and the working conditions of farmworkers. The resolutions Mike crafted around human rights led to the creation of a multi-stakeholder effort, the Farm Labor Practices Group — companies, labor, government and investors – working to promote worker and human rights in agriculture.
Mike witnessed to Life before an industry whose products produce so much sickness and death. We will never know how many lives have been saved – thanks to his decades of shareholder advocacy.
He is still mentoring me, and cheering us all on as we continue his work.
This reflection is part of a series to observe SGI’s 50th anniversary. On September 12, 2023 Seventh Generation Interfaith Coalition for Responsible Investment (SGI-CRI) will hold its annual conference. This year’s theme is Celebrating 50 Years: The Evolution of Responsible Investing. Learn more here.
Seventh Generation Interfaith Coalition for Responsible Investing 