A city council in the state of Massachusetts on Tuesday voted to divest from entities contributing to human rights violations in Israel's war on Gaza, making it the third municipality in the US to do so.
Members of the Medford City Council voted to pass legislation that would divest city funds from weapons manufacturers, private pensions, fossil fuel companies, prisons and other organisations that contribute to human rights violations.
Medford City Council president Isaac Bears sponsored the investments ordinance, which overwhelmingly passed with five council members voting in support, one member opposing, and another abstaining.
In the initial proposal for the resolution, it said the city of Medford would “strive to invest its funds in ways that promote the wellbeing of our communities and our environment, favoring investment of its funds in entities that support the needs of peacetime in daily life and meet the city’s goals of conducting local government in an ‘accountable, transparent, innovative, stable, ethical, representative, and responsible’ way”.
While the ordinance did not specify companies that support what many human rights experts call a genocide in Gaza, the wording specifically outlined not investing in companies contributing to any human rights violations, including apartheid, genocide, ethnic cleansing and illegal occupation.
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Bears explained in an interview that the context of the sweeping ordinance was clear.
" Right now, the context is obvious. There are very clear human rights violations happening in Gaza, Ukraine, Congo, Sudan, Myanmar and other places," he told WBUR.
Bears added that the ordinance would divest anywhere between $10m to 40m in funds.
Media outlet Patch reported that the ongoing events in Gaza directly inspired the motion, titled the "Values-Aligned Local Investments Ordinance".
Patch quoted the council vice president Kit Collins as saying, “This policy is foundationally aligned with my Jewish faith and with the imperative to repair the world."
"I feel offended and saddened to know that there are people with whom I share a Jewish identity who see me as illegitimate or claiming a Jewish identity that is not mine because I do not share their politics or ideology about Zionism and the state of Israel.”
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Additional clauses prohibit investments in companies that obtain more than 15 percent of their revenues from the operating, maintaining, servicing, or supplying jails, prisons, or detention facilities, as well as the combustion, distribution, extraction, manufacture or sale of fossil fuels.
Boston.com reported that Bears said at the meeting on Tuesday: “If we have these public funds, we are not going to invest them in this global effort that disregards and dehumanizes people in so many different ways, whether that’s for political gain or for private profit - or in many cases both - in a neverending cycle of destruction and violence”.
Medford is home to almost 60,000 people, and Tufts University is partially based in the city.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) praised the decision.
“We applaud the leadership and moral courage of the Medford City Council in choosing to divest from companies profiting from crimes against humanist such as those being carried out in Israel’s ongoing Gaza genocide. This ordinance reflects a growing national awareness that taxpayer dollars must not fund human rights abuses or international war crimes," a statement on Cair's website said.
The vote makes Medford the third municipality in the country to choose to divest public funds from companies that invest in military weapons after Dearborn, Michigan, and Portland, Maine, did so last year.
Dearborn City Council voted to divest from companies providing military equipment or weapons to Israel in October 2024.
Meanwhile, the Portland City Council voted to divest from companies involved in weapons sales and other business in Israel in September 2024.
The Trump administration threatened US states, cities and territories that boycott Israeli companies or those operating in Israel with not allowing them to access federal funds for natural disaster preparation last week.
However, it quietly removed the relevant clause in the Federal Emergency Management Agency's guidelines on Monday after backlash.
But the Department of Homeland Security said it would “enforce all anti-discrimination laws and policies, including as it relates to the BDS movement, which is expressly grounded in antisemitism”.
BDS refers to the Palestinian-led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement that aims to make Israel comply with international law.
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