Portland, Maine, City Council unanimously votes to divest from companies that do business with Israel
Mark Dion, mayor of Portland, Maine, votes in support of a city council resolution to divest from companies doing business with Israel, Sept. 4, 2024. The resolution passed unanimously over the objections of the local Jewish federation. (Screenshot)
(JTA) — The city council of Portland, Maine voted unanimously Wednesday evening to divest from companies that do business with Israel, becoming the fourth U.S. city to pass such a measure since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7.
The resolution, passed after a raucous public comment session in which supporters outnumbered opponents, calls to “divest the City of Portland from all entities complicit in the current and ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and occupation of Palestine.”
The Portland legislation included a list of dozens of companies from which the city will divest after the law is enacted. Mayor Mark Dion indicated that he will sign it.
“I try to align what I believe and try to figure out what is right and just. And I’m going to vote to support this,” Dion, a former sheriff who is also a voting member of the council, said following public comment.
He added that while he understood Israel’s “desire for retribution,” he believes that “our role collectively is to grab their shoulder and say, ‘It’s enough. It’s simply enough.’ And pull them away. And that’s sometimes the greatest act of friendship you can do for someone you hold dear, as I hold my friends in the Jewish community.”
Dion’s office did not immediately return a request for comment.
The Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine, the local Jewish federation, said it was “outraged, and unbelievably disappointed” at the resolution’s passage.
“At this time, we are focused on concrete ways to ensure the Jewish community who lives in and around Portland, Maine feels supported and safe,” chief development officer Ashley Inbar told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “We are investigating every possible avenue in front of us to make those goals manifest.”
The passage of the resolution marks an escalation of how local governments are addressing the war in Gaza. In the months following Oct. 7, a range of cities passed symbolic resolutions calling for a ceasefire in the war. Now, the Portland measure and others like it are seeking to materially penalize Israel for its military campaign by depriving it of economic investment.
The vote also signals that divestment campaigns, once largely the province of university student governments, are gaining traction on the municipal stage, as well.
The Jewish federation, which recently announced the hire of its first-ever CEO, had encouraged members to show up to the meeting to oppose the resolution. In a statement prior to the vote, the federation argued it was a “performative gesture” that promotes a “one-sided blame for the conflict.”
“We want peace and an end to the war, but demanding that Israel capitulate to Hamas, allowing it to rebuild its terrorist infrastructure, is not pro-peace,” Inbar said during the meeting. She added that the city council “is a municipal body with no standing in matters of international law or foreign policy” and said that “divestment could have significant economic complications for Portland.”
The measure was backed by the Maine chapter of the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace and by the Maine Coalition for Palestine.
“We are outraged and grief-stricken by the continued atrocities perpetrated by Israel and fully support our city heeding the call to divest,” the state’s JVP chapter said in a statement on Instagram.
The resolution mentions the death toll of Palestinians killed in Gaza since Oct. 7, as well as the number of Palestinians wounded and at risk of famine. It does not mention Hamas, the Israelis killed on Oct. 7 or the Israeli hostages being held in Gaza.
“We acknowledge that members of our community are directly impacted by the ongoing violence that’s happening, and we have a duty to voice our concerns and take steps that we can control on the local level,” April Fournier, the councilmember who sponsored the resolution, said during Wednesday’s council discussion on the measure.
Portland is not the biggest city by population to endorse such a resolution. The California cities of Richmond and Hayward, which passed similar resolutions earlier this year, are larger. But Portland, the first East Coast city to approve an Israel divestment measure, also marks the first time the largest city in a state — and the center of the state’s Jewish community — has done so.
Portland’s council passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire earlier this year. Many municipalities have debated and passed ceasefire resolutions in the months since Oct. 7, but municipal resolutions specifically calling for Israel divestment remain relatively rare.
The text of the Portland resolution includes a “Divestment List” of dozens of companies, ranging from well-known businesses including General Electric, Intel, Boeing, Caterpillar and Volvo to Israel-based organizations such as Israel Bonds and the Bank of Jerusalem. It also includes weapons manufacturers such as Northrop Grumman. The local federation claimed that at least 7,000 Portland residents were employed by the listed companies.
Local Jews showed up to both support and oppose the resolution during the evening’s public comment session, where supporters of the resolution outnumbered opponents and which the mayor interrupted several times to warn spectators against clapping and whistling. The raucous scene was typical of public meetings nationwide at which Israel-related measures are on the table.
The first person who rose to public comment was a Jewish Portlander who voiced support for it, called Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide” and said there should not be a Jewish state. Another Jewish speaker, who opposed the resolution, focused his remarks on countering the genocide allegations against Israel; a third, who runs a local venture capital firm that invests in Israel, argued it was a bad business move. Other speakers said they had relatives who had been killed by Israeli settlers.
Among the Jewish opponents of the bill was Rabbi Levi Wilansky, who works at the Portland-based Chabad Lubavitch of Maine. Wilansky argued that the resolution was “antisemitic,” saying it suggested that Israel should abandon the hostages held by Hamas.
But the mayor was undeterred by the Jewish opposition.
“I don’t harbor any fantasy that we’re changing the economic playing field for those who invest in providing arms and supplies to the effort in Gaza,” he said. “I’m voting yes because I think it’s important that we say ‘it’s enough’ and to send a signal, and the conversation will begin.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
