Activists from across MI demand divestment from Israel, host statewide panel
Grand Rapids, MI – On Saturday, October 10, activists from across Michigan came together in Grand Rapids to unite their campaigns to divest from apartheid Israel and discuss the importance of such campaigns to the wider antiwar movement.
“These discussions around strategy and tactics are constantly on an organizer’s mind,” said Anthony Hegarty, the emcee for the panel. “The end goal is to get people moving politically, to build up the mass movements, to transform our society, and to strike blows against our enemies. These are not easy tasks. So how do we get there? What methods do we use? How do we respond to failures and successes? To sum it up, we learn by doing. By hitting the streets and fighting for our demands.”
Daanyal Syed from the Detroit Antiwar Committee told the crowd, “We are beginning to target the city of Detroit pension plan, which, across the separate plans, has a total of $6 billion in investments. At every step along the way we are denied information. So we're beginning with a disclosure campaign. We want to know what the city employees’ pensions are invested in. And if there are investments in Israeli companies, we are going to demand they drop those investments.”
Similarly, Libby Sinn and Nick Young from Grand Rapids spoke on their pension plan divestment campaign:
“There's precedent for this. Grand Rapids divested from apartheid South Africa in the 80s after a campaign forced the city to meet their demands,” explained Sinn. “We want them to repeat what was done in the past.”
Young explained the current day campaign: “Through FOIA requests we found out about a $1 million investment in an Israeli AI firm called N.i.C.E. We want the retirement board to drop this investment and to adopt an ethics statement that'd force them to drop any investments in countries being charged with genocide.”
City employee pensions weren't the only topic of discussion.
Matt Clark from the Michigan Divest Coalition spoke on their past wins and their current campaign.
“The MI Money Out of MIBA campaign wants to end the transfer of public funds to MIBA. And where to start with them? The acronym stands for the Michigan Israel Business Accelerator. They're an organization that promotes Israel's interests in Michigan that has been getting public money since at least 2018. As an organization, 70% of their funds come from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) and in turn MIBA gets Israeli companies’ setup in our state.”
Clark continued: “Our demand is for the Michigan Economic Development Corporation to terminate MIBA's current $650,000 grant and refuse to award any future contracts, loans, or grants to MIBA.”
All the panelists gave more details on their campaigns, their next steps, their successes and failures, and left the event ready for whatever struggles lay ahead them.
Attendees enjoyed coffee and snacks as the event wrapped up, ending with chants of “Free Free Palestine!” and “Michigan Divest!”
Follow Palestine Solidarity Grand Rapids (@palestinesolidarity_gr), the Detroit Antiwar Committee (@detroitantiwar), and Michigan Divest (@michigandivest) to learn more about all their campaigns.
PSGR and DAWC are proud members of the Antiwar Action Network, which can be found online at antiwaractionnetwork.org.