Minnesota investment board fails to intimidate pro-Palestine divest movement

St. Paul, MN – On Friday, March 21, the otherwise obscure Minnesota Retirement Systems building was guarded by dozens of state troopers who blocked entrances to the parking lot. More troopers manned the building entrance, screening bags and limiting entry to only a few dozen members of the public. Inside the small conference room where the State Board of Investment (SBI)’s quarterly meeting was to be held, more troopers along with plainclothes security lined the entire perimeter.

These extraordinary measures were the SBI’s latest attempt to demoralize and discourage members of the public from calling on it to divest the billions of state funds it manages from Israel and companies enabling Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The attempted intimidation failed. Despite the show of force by law enforcement and arbitrary new restrictions on public comments, dozens of Palestine supporters showed up to deliver testimony and show support for divestment.

The SBI’s decision to limit the number of people in the meeting room backfired spectacularly. Most of the divestment advocates found themselves shut out of the building, but just steps away from the windows of the ground-floor room where the meeting was held. The crowd quickly morphed into an impromptu protest, with chants of “Free free Palestine” and “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest!” clearly audible through the entire meeting.

The SBI is composed of its chair, Governor Tim Walz, along with Attorney General Keith Ellison, State Auditor Julie Blaha and Secretary of State Steve Simon. According to the watchdog site DivestMN.com, out of $146 billion total in managed assets, the SBI invests approximately $5.4 billion in entities complicit in Israel’s apartheid regime. That figure includes investments in weapons manufacturers, Israeli banks that fund illegal settlement construction in occupied Palestine, and even Israel Bonds, which directly fund the state of Israel.

Abir Ismael is a Minneapolis public school teacher and member of Minneapolis Federation of Teachers Local 59. “My pension was part of the demolition of almost every educational institution in Gaza. My pension was used to burn children alive,” she told the SBI. “I demand that my pension be divested from companies complicit in the murder of children.”

Several members of the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE), a labor union representing state workers, also testified.

“We’re here to remind you that we, the state workers of Minnesota, will not tolerate the investment of our pension funds in these violations of human rights,” said Tracy Waterman, a state Department of Natural Resources employee represented by MAPE. “We haven’t forgotten that Governor Walz once said the situation in Gaza is intolerable, and he was right. It was intolerable then, and it’s intolerable now, this week, as we’re hearing news that Israel has broken its ceasefire and launched new airstrikes on Gaza.”

“Our pension funds were divested from apartheid in 1985; we can, and we must do it again, now,” Waterman added. In 1985, the SBI passed a resolution initiating broad divestment from any corporations deemed to be supporting the apartheid system in South Africa.

Naveen Borojerdi, another state employee and MAPE member, asked the SBI, “With the investments that we have in Israel, and arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and Israeli weapons companies like Elbit systems, in the case that what we’re seeing in the Middle East turns into a global energy war, how much of the portfolio potentially becomes affected by that?”

In a powerful moment, city of Minneapolis worker and Minneapolis Professional Employees Association union member Alison Thorson yielded her remaining time for a moment of silence. The SBI was forced to sit through minutes of nothing but the sound of protesters chanting outside the building.

The SBI meeting adjourned immediately after the public comments, with no response from the board members. Afterwards, the testifiers joined with the protesters outside for a press conference and rally.

“Within the structure of settler-colonialism, indigenous people are seen as a demographic problem. Therefore Israel is engaged in an extermination campaign,” Kalani Matus, indigenous Hawaiian and member of the Twin Cities-based Climate Justice Committee, told the crowd.

Many speakers highlighted the Trump administration’s recent attacks on pro-Palestine immigrants, making divestment from Israel a potential route for Minnesota leaders to fight for civil rights. “Palestine is a civil rights cause,” said Matus. “It’s becoming more and more apparent to everybody that anti-Palestinian repression is the tip of the spear when it comes to removing our freedom of speech.”

On March 8, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents abducted and initiated deportation proceedings against Mahmoud Khalil, an activist involved in the Palestine protests at Columbia University in New York, despite him being a lawful permanent resident of the United States. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security alleged that Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization,” without providing evidence.

Speakers underscored that the growing tactics of intimidation and repression could not stop the divest movement. “This is going to be a long fight,” said Barry Kleider of Jewish Voice for Peace. “But I’ve learned a lesson from my sisters and brothers fighting for gay marriage. What we’re asking for, what we’re fighting for, is going to be impossible – until it’s inevitable.”

The next SBI meeting, as of press time, is scheduled for May 22 at 10 a.m., with the location yet to be announced. In the meantime, the Minnesota Anti-War Committee has called for a community march to say no to Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan for Gaza, on Saturday, March 29 at 1 p.m., beginning at the northwest corner of Powderhorn Park in Minneapolis.

#StPaulMN #MN #AntiWarMovement #Palestine #MFT #MAPE #MNAWC

Source: https://fightbacknews.org/minnesota-investment-board-fails-to-intimidate-pro-palestine-divest-movement?pk_campaign=rss-feed