Above photo: St Paul, Minnesota protest demands divestment from apartheid Israel. Kim DeFranco / Fight Back! News.
St. Paul, MN – On December 5, 45 people protested outside of the Minnesota Senate Building in 15-degree weather to demand that members of the board vote to divest the state of Minnesota from investments in Israel. The protest, held ahead of the board’s December 10 meeting, was organized by the Free Palestine Coalition.
Andrew Josefchak, a member of the MN Anti-War Committee, spoke to the crowd, “Minnesota’s State Board of Investment invests $5.4 billion of our money in genocide and apartheid. That’s $5.4 billion of a pension fund that union workers across Minnesota bargained for, fought hard for, waged strikes for. If we believe Minnesota money is being used unconscionably, to slaughter children, to steal land, to exploit Palestinian workers, all in the name of profit, we should be the ones who make the call that no, we will not tolerate this! We demand this money be divested!”
The protest targeted Minnesota State Auditor Julie Blaha, who is one of the four decision makers on the State Board of Investments. The SBI invests state worker pensions to further enable genocide and give financial support to the apartheid state of Israel. She has refused to divest SBI funds from Israel, saying that divestment is not a risk she’s willing to take.
In November, in an effort to hide from residents and state workers demanding divestment, the SBI made the decision to move their public meeting online. However, during the protest, activists learned that the SBI had now posted online that they are now conducting the meeting as a hybrid, with an in-person option.
The Free Palestine Coalition committed at the protest to organize for people to come to the public meeting to again show their outrage at the SBI’s refusal to divest from Israel and companies benefiting from the genocide of Palestinians. The emcees told the protesters to come back on Tuesday, December 10 by 10 a.m. to Room 1200 in the Minnesota Senate Building at 95 University Avenue W in Saint Paul.