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‘Not on Our Dime’: Divesting from Genocide through Direct Democracy

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With both political parties ignoring popular support for an arms embargo on the state of Israel, ballot initiatives offer a tool for voters to reject genocidal policies. This campaign is working to make Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania the first city to put divestment directly on the ballot. 

“What about a referendum?” It was sometime after dawn and Karim had just burst out of a tent at Pittsburgh’s Palestine solidarity encampment, hair disheveled, clad in basketball shorts and last night’s t-shirt. Before I could respond, he was called away to weigh in on some other urgent situation.

Students had been camping out at universities across the country in protest of the billions of dollars their government and schools send to Israel while that country wages genocidal war against the Palestinian people. The local encampment started in April 2024, taking the form of a loose circle of Palestine flags, banners, and protest signs enclosing an assortment of chairs, colorful blankets, food tables, and a dozen or so tents on a central lawn on the University of Pittsburgh’s main campus. In between daily rallies, teach-ins, and events, students and local activists mingled, munched, made art, and talked about organizing.

Karim Safieddine is a Lebanese organizer and sociology graduate student at Pitt, where I also earned my PhD a few years back. I had mentioned to him that my day job is studying ballot initiatives and referendums—votes on a policy instead of a politician—and specifically how movements can use these forms of direct democracy to win on issues that are popular but opposed by both parties. Karim was suggesting the peace movement could use that tool here, and the No War Crimes On Our Dime campaign was born.

The campaign launched in June, aiming to put a referendum on the November ballot. It mobilized unprecedented energy and brought together an extensive cross-section of volunteers and endorsers. The sudden traction it gained also generated full-throttle opposition from the political establishment, which brought extensive lawsuits that forced the petition’s withdrawal after it had initially qualified for the ballot.

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The question of divestment did not make it to the November 2024 ballot, but the nuts and bolts of this direct democracy experiment taught us a lot. While we’re presently working to apply what we learned locally with another run at the ballot, we also want to share these lessons widely. Our first attempt demonstrated the remarkable depth of public support for shifting U.S.-Israel policy, and revealed just how fearful the defenders of Israel’s war machine are that the issue could go to a popular vote. Most importantly, it opened the door to a new, democratic tactic that could enable us to tangibly support Palestinian freedom while simultaneously building movements from below.

Experimenting with direct democracy

In one sense, we did everything wrong. Anyone experienced in citizen initiatives will tell you time and preparation are crucial. So are having money, robust polling, and a thorough knowledge of the local rules and regulations. We had none of these to start with. But we had urgency, and the more conversations rippled around the possibility, the more excitement grew. As Karim had said at a rally, “Now is a time to be bold.” 

In February 2024, residents of Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, had tried calling on our County Council to endorse a ceasefire resolution. So many people signed up to testify that they had to spread hearings over two days. Palestinian Pittsburghers spoke in the most wrenching, heartbreaking terms about losing family members to the Israeli assault on Gaza. Jewish Pittsburghers and others spoke of their deep commitment to Palestinian safety and freedom alongside their own. There were some who voiced opposition of course, but the overwhelming majority of testimonies supported a ceasefire call, nearly 10-to-1. County Council voted against it, 8-to-3. 

With protests and local government channels hitting a wall, the referendum campaign provided a ladder from the urgency so many of us felt to the possibility of real policy change.

Elyanna Sharbaji, who came to Pittsburgh as a refugee from Syria, first heard rumors about the referendum at the university encampments. After they were dispersed, she got involved. “We tried protesting our politicians, calling our representatives, asking for a ceasefire resolution, but we were ignored by those in power,” she said. “I knew that while the referendum might not stop the war immediately, it could spark grassroots initiatives across the country, sending a clear message to politicians that the people are against funding Israel’s crimes.”

What we lacked in funding and preparation we made up with in volunteer energy. Once it really started snowballing, the enthusiasm that the campaign mobilized was breathtaking. Matt Rubin, who served as field director, put it simply: “This was the most beautiful, inspiring campaign I’ve ever been part of.”

No War Crimes On Our Dime would bring together nearly 500 volunteers in a matter of weeks, an unprecedented amount in the city of Pittsburgh. The campaign was endorsed by local chapters of national organizations like Democratic Socialists of America, Jewish Voice for Peace, Students for Justice in Palestine, Sunrise, Green Party, Veterans for Peace, and Council on American-Islamic Relations, as well as a host of other local groups. Droves of newly mobilized activists worked alongside seasoned organizers to collect 15,000 signatures, qualifying for the November ballot. The effort sparked forceful opposition from the political establishment and its allies, which used all manner of voter disenfranchisement, legal threats, and harassment to push the referendum off the ballot.

The terrain

Pittsburgh is perhaps the quintessential rust-belt city. Often described as the cradle of the American labor movement, the city retains a blue-collar pride despite corporate coaxing to convert the city into “the next Silicon Valley.” After decades of post-industrial decay, Pittsburgh’s city government has been working with industry to re-brand as a hip tech hub through, among other things, tax incentives to lure companies like Uber, Google, and Duolingo. The result is a city bursting with art, music, and new construction above cratering roads and simmering class and racial tensions. Publications like Forbes and the Economist have consistently ranked Pittsburgh among the country’s “most livable” cities, while a recent white paper from the city’s Gender and Equity Commission found Pittsburgh to be among the worst places to live for Black women.

The famous U.S. Steel Tower, once home to its namesake corporate giant that crushed the last great industrial labor uprising a century ago, now houses the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), a hospital chain, private health insurance company, and multi-billion dollar “non-profit” that pays no taxes but handsomely rewards its top executives, and has spent over a decade busting its workers’ union efforts.

Pittsburgh joins most cities in the U.S. as a site of racist police violence, including the 2018 police murder of teenager Antwon Rose II, whose smiling picture can still be seen gracing local houses and storefronts—and was home to mass protests throughout the recent waves of Black Lives Matter uprisings. It is also a city scarred by the deadliest synagogue shooting in American history, when a white supremacist murdered 11 people during Shabbat services at the Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha synagogue, also home to the New Light and Dor Hadash Congregations, in November 2018.

Electorally, Pittsburgh is still solidly Democrat in a Western Pennsylvania sea of MAGA yard signs and thin-blue-line bumper stickers. Ed Gainey, the first Black mayor of Pittsburgh, bills himself as a progressive and defeated the former incumbent mayor in the 2021 Democratic primary in large part by promising to tax UPMC. There are a number of left-progressives among local elected officials, most prominently House Representative Summer Lee, who won her seat in 2022, holding off an opponent funded by the Israel lobby.

Untangling the red tape

Our initial idea was simple: city resources should not go to entities doing business with the state of Israel on three conditions: a ceasefire in Gaza, provision of humanitarian aid to those in need, and equal rights for everyone living in the territories under Israeli control.

American democracy is complicated. Most municipalities have some form of ballot initiative process that voters can use to put policies to a direct vote, but the rules and regulations differ. Even for someone whose job it is to research ballot initiatives, figuring out what it took to put a referendum on the local ballot was no easy task. The mechanism has only been used a handful of times here before, institutional knowledge about the process is scarce, and in general ballot initiatives are rarely designed to be accessible.

After weeks of emailing, calls, and meetings around town, we managed to connect with the proper office at the County Law Department, which provided a petition template, dates, and wording parameters. Even then, the information we received was not all clear or accurate. If not for subsequent follow-ups, the campaign could have gone into the field with the number of signatures needed and the petition specifics wrong.

Putting an initiated amendment to the Home Rule Charter on the ballot in Pittsburgh requires collecting signatures from 10% of the previous gubernatorial vote in the city. That worked out to about 12,500 people. For scale, that would be about a quarter million signatures in New York City. In Pittsburgh, you also have a predetermined seven-week window to collect those signatures. By the time we had enough information and got the green light from the County Elections Department, the signature-gathering period was upon us.

Our first real in-person meeting to discuss launching the campaign took place the night before the signature-gathering period began. It went as well as you could hope for a last-minute, MacGyvered campaign. New information came to light, the coalition shifted, and we lost our fiscal sponsor due to eleventh-hour accounting realizations. We had no money and no agreed-upon structure. But energy was high. 

The idea of putting divestment to a popular vote tapped into a deep well of frustration and rage at politicians continually stonewalling and gaslighting the majority of us who want to stop sending more weapons and money to a country that is massacring civilians. This is exactly the type of situation the ballot initiative process was created for: to enact policies that majorities desperately want but which legislators refuse to pass. With the standard repertoires of protests and lobbying showing declining results—this campaign was kicking off just before the Harris ticket effectively spit in the face of the Uncommitted Campaign—the referendum tool presented us with the possibility of bypassing the politicians and making policy change ourselves. Not only did no one quit amidst the chaos, we all remained steadfast that we’d continue taking the next step.
 

‘Constituents nearly ripped the clipboard from my hands to sign’

Robert Chung heard about the campaign at a punk show. He got involved for the same reason many of us did: “The public has relentlessly protested U.S. participation in Israel’s genocidal siege of Gaza, but our elected officials dismiss our calls for humanity,” he said. “This felt like something that was in our power in Pittsburgh to lessen the suffering in Gaza and also the West Bank.”

A few days into the circulation window, we were finally ready to start gathering signatures—just a handful of us outside a farmer’s market. A week after that, we put up a rudimentary website. After two weeks we had about 400 signatures. After three weeks, it was 1,000, and after four weeks, 2,000. As Robert described it, “Some constituents were so enthusiastic when they heard what we were doing that they nearly ripped the clipboard from my hands to sign.”

Despite doubling our signatures every week, bringing in more and more volunteers, and getting positive responses from the public, we were about halfway to qualifying with only two weeks left. There were some very anxious looks exchanged at that week’s meeting, but we bit down and kept taking the next step—if we continued to double our signatures every week, we could still qualify.

That’s exactly what we did. That last week, you couldn’t step outside in some Pittsburgh neighborhoods without tripping over three canvassers. We were at parks, concerts, markets, pools, bus stops, outside grocery stores, libraries, and office buildings. 

To Elyanna, who was the campaign’s top circulator with more than 400 signatures on her petition sheets, the most powerful moments were in those last couple weeks. “People were staying out until the early morning, running from one bar to another to collect signatures. Even some people who didn’t initially agree with us would sign the petition once they saw us out there, voluntarily and enthusiastically collecting signatures at all hours,” she said.

The public approval was palpable. That final weekend, I went up and down lines at diners and cafes, up and down sidewalks. When I collapsed into a bar seat at the end of the day to grab a bite and beer, I signed up the bartenders, bussers, and patrons sitting next to me. When I got home, envelopes full of signatures from neighbors were waiting for me.

Perhaps our biggest win outside the petition itself was the polling. We managed to interest some analysts from a major polling agency, who were eager to collect data on all kinds of factors leading up to the party conventions. They agreed to run high-level polling for us pro bono on the condition their name remained confidential. 

The results stunned the analysts, but fit with what our canvassers were seeing. Of the people who responded yes or no, 63% supported the divestment initiative. More than 70% of Democratic voters and a whopping 75% of voters under 35 years old said they’d vote yes. In fact, every demographic apart from Republican voters showed majority support.

These findings validated other targeted and nationwide polls. For months, a majority of Americans have voiced support for both a permanent ceasefire and an arms embargo on Israel. Our poll showed that voters not only support peace, but will vote to directly legislate it if they have the opportunity.

They go low

We submitted petition sheets with more than 15,000 lines by the August deadline, qualifying for the November ballot. The campaign had been DIY all the way, with volunteers bringing together all manner of skills and riding on the energy and heart of the Palestine solidarity movement. The week that followed, however, was in the hands of lawyers and bureaucrats.

Pittsburgh allows one week for opponents to file court challenges. And challenges there were. The Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh challenged the validity of our signatures—bringing in Ron Hicks and Carolyn McGee, lawyers Donald Trump initially hired to overturn the 2020 election. Rachael Heisler, the City Controller, filed more challenges; hers targeting the referendum language. Two of the lawyers Heisler hired, Clifford Levine and David Russey, litigated for Biden and the Democrats in the 2020 election turmoil.

The combination of lawyers our opponents brought in to kill the referendum is telling. “Nothing is more polarizing in the political establishment than Trump’s 2020 election denials, but when it comes to unconditional funding for Israel, the establishment is all on the same page,” said Kirsten Rokke, one of the campaign’s core organizers.

In public messaging, the Jewish Federation and its allies lobbed the sweeping accusations of antisemitism so commonly weaponized to discredit anyone who cares about Palestinian lives, despite the fact that many of the campaign organizers, including myself, are Jewish. (It should go without saying that cynically applying the antisemitism label to peace activists does incalculable harm to our collective ability to identify and fight the very real antisemitism of neo-nazis and other far-right groups, whose presence we can expect to multiply in the coming years.)

The Controller, meanwhile, combined anti-BDS arguments with wild claims that divesting from Israel could prevent the government from “carrying out basic City functions, like providing electricity, purchasing life-saving medications, buying protective equipment for first responders, and even fueling police vehicles.” 

The lawyer who represented us brushed off the ballot language challenges, and the opposition’s public statements about them, as “an amalgamation of premature, specious, extremely exaggerated and hyperbolic arguments which indubitably and unfortunately advanced fear and divisiveness in our community.” The signature challenges, however, were insurmountable.

Attempting to invalidate petition signatures is one of the most common ways that those with access to resources try to kill popular referendums. Every campaign will accidentally collect some signatures that won’t count—for example, those from people who aren’t registered to vote. Other signatures can be struck down for a host of minor reasons such as misspelled street names, mistakes in address or zip code, unclear handwriting, and the like. If someone moved and re-registered at their new address, it might take time to show up in the system, and their signature could be invalidated for appearing to have the wrong address. 

Petition challenges are often part of a broader attack on direct democracy that is escalating around the country. Such challenges inflate the costs of a campaign too. Signatures must be defended in court, which requires the money to hire legal counsel, and volunteers need to pour countless hours of mind-numbing data work into preparation. 

Ballot initiative campaigns that are going up against powerful opposition often aim to double the signature requirement, just to make sure they have enough to overcome legal challenges. In this case, our quick start and shoestring budget prevented us from doing that, and it’s a reminder of how important it is for movement-fueled ballot campaigns to be prepared to overshoot signature numbers.

The opposition didn’t stop there. At times our canvassers were harassed, followed, and physically accosted. More than once I had someone screaming in my face that I was a terrorist. In the most brazen attempts at repression, petition sheets were used to dox people who had signed, posting names and personal information on social media. All this not just to oppose a policy, but to prevent the question from ever going to a vote.

Onward

The last thing that warmongers and those who blind themselves to Israel’s crimes want is for U.S. foreign military aid to be decided democratically. We know that majorities of voters across the country support withholding weapons from Israel in order to stop the killing and displacement in Gaza and beyond. If politicians won’t listen, the simplest thing to do is to put it to a popular vote.

Witnessing a seemingly endless stream of horrors in Gaza and the West Bank and across the region, people are desperate to overcome the sense of helplessness—to be able to actually do something. The Uncommitted Campaign organized to discipline the Democratic Party by demonstrating how much its constituents care about Palestinian lives alongside all others. It was met with scorn and derision, and the Democrats paid the price.

If we’re going to shift policy in more places, we need ways of legislating that don’t rely on politicians from either party. Popular referendums provide exactly that opportunity.

Protests and boycotts remain essential tools, and a handful of cities have divested from Israel through city council votes. But if we’re going to shift policy in more places, we need ways of legislating that don’t rely on politicians from either party. Popular referendums provide exactly that opportunity.

Those who say you need time and money to run an initiative campaign are not wrong—I would not advise doing it the way we did. The summer campaign was brash, perhaps, but not thoughtless. With the urgency so high, sometimes the only way to prove something is possible is to just do it, even if the deck is stacked against you.

The ballot initiative tool not only opens space to materially push Palestine solidarity; it enables us to do popular education attached to a specific ask, and to build our movements—things that will matter in the long run regardless of what happens at the ballot. We spent the months since August organizing volunteer trainings in canvassing, data, and communications. We took into account critiques of the former version in consultation with community members and attorneys and re-drafted the petition language, making it more universal than Israel-specific and adding legislation (we’re now Not on Our Dime). We can expect even harsher pushback from a well-resourced local opposition combined with a national far-right political strategy to target peace activists, but this will continue to expose broader questions about who should get to decide how our tax dollars are spent.

Pittsburgh is one small city. If we are ultimately able to shift our investments through popular vote, it would materially withhold resources from the Israeli war machine, but that amount alone would be a drop in the bucket.

However, without access to a political party willing to align policy with the public’s values on this issue, the direct vote is the only option we have to change policy ourselves. And as we know from the movement to divest from apartheid South Africa in the 1970s and ‘80s, it can take time for such a campaign to gather steam, but once it does, the tides turn quickly.

If the movement needs a direction where you live, consider the question that started us down this path—what about a referendum?

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