MN board slammed for hiding from divestment advocates as Israel invades Gaza City
Saint Paul, MN – Advocates for divestment from Israel held a press conference and rally outside the Minnesota Governor’s Residence on Tuesday, August 19, over the State Board of Investment (SBI)’s decision to continuously postpone, cancel or otherwise limit public access to quarterly SBI meetings.
The action was initiated by the Minnesota Anti-War Committee and endorsed by MN Labor for Palestine, a group of public employees and labor activists; and the Twin Cities-based Free Palestine Coalition, a diverse collection of local advocacy groups that coalesced in 2023.
The SBI is chaired by Governor Tim Walz, joined by Attorney General Keith Ellison, State Auditor Julie Blaha, and Secretary of State Steve Simon. Since late 2023, growing numbers of public employees, pension holders and other community members have spoken at quarterly SBI meetings, calling on it to divest state-managed funds from the state of Israel and companies complicit in Israel’s apartheid system and genocide in Gaza.
The SBI meeting for 2025’s third quarter had been scheduled for Wednesday, August 20. However, on July 31, when pro-Palestine groups announced plans to “pack the room” at that meeting, within hours the SBI announced that the meeting was postponed until at least October, with no firm date set as of press time.
This marked the fourth consecutive SBI meeting to have been postponed, canceled, or held in a format that restricted public engagement.
In December 2024, the SBI convened in what it termed a “hybrid” format, disallowing live public comments and allowing the public to witness the proceedings only via a video screen in a small conference room in the Department of Administration Building. In February 2025, the SBI abruptly postponed its first quarter meeting, rescheduling it in March to a smaller room with limited capacity, while arbitrarily disallowing some public comment applicants from speaking.
In May, the SBI repeatedly postponed its second quarter meeting, before canceling it altogether in June. According to a Minnesota Public Radio report, SBI Chief Investment Officer Jill Schurtz said the rescheduled June 18 meeting was cancelled due to the shootings of members of state congress Melissa Hortman and John Hoffman, for which right-wing activist Vance Boelter has been charged. The MPR report did not explain why the original May meeting date was postponed.
Curiously, Schurtz reportedly also cited the shootings, which took place on June 14, as the reason for the postponement of the August 20 SBI meeting.
Outside the governor’s mansion, divestment advocates denounced the SBI’s delay tactics. The rally highlighted an August 17 call from the nationwide Anti-War Action Network for emergency protests against the imminent Israeli invasion of Gaza City. Anti-War Committee member Wyatt Miller accused the SBI of “trying to play petty hide-and-seek games instead of acknowledging the growing call of Minnesotan taxpayers, public employees and pensioners who want their money divested from mass murder.”
“Israel has killed so many people that there are villages of orphans. There are 17,000 orphans in Gaza today during a genocide that has taken the lives of thousands of people,” explained Nadiyah Sawaldeh of U.S. Palestinian Community Network. “Tim Walz was a teacher for 20 years. Every day for the last 682 days, he has watched a classroom full of children be murdered, and continues to invest pensions in those doing the murdering. If the death of thousands of children doesn’t fill you with fury, you should have never been a teacher.”
Speaking of teachers, two members of the Minneapolis Federation of Educators (MFE) Local 59, Theresa Tauer (also of Minnesota Educators for Palestine) and Neil Radford (also of Minnesota Workers United), spoke about progress toward divesting their pensions from Israel. In April, Education Minnesota, MFE’s parent union representing 84,000 educators across Minnesota, voted to create a task force to investigate the SBI’s investment of union pensions in human rights violations, including illegal occupation and land theft.
Another statewide union, the Minnesota Association of Professional Employees (MAPE), representing 18,000 workers across the state, recently published a statement calling on the SBI to divest from assets that provide material assistance for violations of human rights and international law – citing Israel’s war on Palestine as an example. “It’s no longer about shame, it’s about organizing,” MAPE member Jon VanOeveren said at the press conference. “If [Walz] wants to run for governor again, he better listen to the people, because we’re organized.”
The SBI manages a number of Minnesota employee pensions and other funds. Approximately $5.4 billion is invested in entities complicit in or profiting from Israel’s apartheid and genocide, according to estimates from researchers at DivestMN.com. These include investments in Israel Bonds, Israeli banks and corporations, weapons manufacturers, engineering equipment companies that provide the Israeli military with heavy machinery, tech and surveillance companies, and other companies that profit from Israel’s crimes.
“Divestment is not the ceiling. But Governor Walz and his colleagues on the SBI refuse to crawl out of the basement,” explained rally emcee and AWC member Maeve Aickin. “The time of action was yesterday. The time for action was 1948. The time for losing hope is never. We owe every inch of our hope, our energy and our grief to the people of Palestine.”
The AWC has been holding a series of divestment teach-ins across the state, with one upcoming in Sait. Cloud on Saturday, September 6, 2 p.m. at the Great River Regional Library.