St. Paul, MN – The Saint Paul city council unanimously passed a ceasefire resolution at their meeting on March 6. Councilmember Cheniqua Johnson introduced the ceasefire resolution in front of a packed chamber. The resolution calls for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, an end to unconditional U.S. aid to Israel, the release of the thousands of Palestinian prisoners, and facilitation of the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

With passage, Saint Paul is the fifth Minnesota city to pass a ceasefire resolution, following Minneapolis, Columbia Heights, Hastings and Moorhead. However, the wording is not as progressive as the Minneapolis resolution, which is being held up nationally as being groundbreaking for calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel.

Elizabeth McLister was in the chamber during passage, “ I'm grateful that another city council has passed a ceasefire resolution. I'm proud of the hard work that facilitated this achievement. But this move needn't have taken so long and the resolution that wound up passing should have been Yang's more principled draft. As a Saint Paul resident, I won't soon forget that Nelsie Yang was the solitary conscientious voice within a body of supposedly forward-thinking elected officials – a body that thwarted attempts at transparency, collaboration and accountability at every step and finally relented for fear of bad optics.” McLister, a Saint Paul resident, is a member of the MN Anti-War Committee and MN Families for Palestine.

Supporters from the Free Palestine Coalition attended weekly city council meetings and participated in call-in days for a month to pressure the council to take action. At last week’s meeting, Councilmember Nelsie Yang tried to introduce a ceasefire resolution but she was stopped by Council President Mitra Jalali, who abruptly ended the meeting. The Free Palestine Coalition had been working closely with Yang to get a resolution introduced.

Sarah Martin, a member of Women Against Military Madness and the Free Palestine Coalition explained, “Despite being an all women, young, progressive council representing many oppressed nationality communities, all but one were reluctant and resistant to passing a resolution and refused to meet and collaborate with the Free Palestine Coalition. We gave them a version modeled on the strong progressive Minneapolis resolution with the addition of the costs to the community of the U.S. support of the Israeli genocide. Councilwoman Nelsie Yang, daughter of Hmong refugees, worked closely with us. In the end, the council bowed to the community pressure and passed a watered down version of the resolution we wanted.”

The Free Palestine Coalition’s next action is to march in Saint Paul on March 9 for International Women’s Day.

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