Pittsburgh Can’t Vote on Whether to Divest From Genocide in May Election

Pittsburgh residents will not get to vote on whether to divest from genocide in the May 20 primary election after legal challenges ultimately killed a local ballot effort.

The grassroots campaign Not On Our Dime withdrew its petition for the ballot question a second time last month despite spending months campaigning and collecting over 21,300 signatures to add the referendum to May’s ballot. The move came after the campaign faced legal objections from the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and City Controller Rachael Heisler, who challenged the validity of signatures and argued that the referendum, if passed, would prohibit the city from doing business with major companies that provide essential services.

The Jewish Federation went even further on April 30, filing a motion seeking $85,783 for costs and lawyer fees from the Not On Our Dime campaign. In a statement to Prism, the Jewish Federation alleged that the Not On Our Dime organizers’ “failure to secure the required number of signatures, as they stipulated in court, created a significant and unnecessary burden on our organization’s time, resources and dollars that could have been better spent serving our community.”

The referendum would have allowed voters to choose whether their tax dollars were spent in contracts with companies and governments that are committing “genocide, ethnic cleansing, or apartheid.” If voters had approved, the amended policy would also require the city to publish an annual report revealing a list of corporations from which it purchases goods or services.

Organizers of the campaign said they opted to start a ballot petition because elected officials were not listening to constituents when it came to Israel’s genocide in Gaza. “We don’t need our politicians to change anything. We could do it ourselves,” said Elyanna Sharbaji, an organizer who is also a Syrian refugee. “That was one of the reasons why I wanted to be involved in this campaign, because I know the politicians are not listening to us.”

This is the second time the referendum has been withdrawn after legal challenges. Organizers tried to introduce it to the November election ballot, but were forced to withdraw, citing the challengers’ overwhelming legal resources.

“If it’s true that we’re the vocal minority, then the Jewish Federation and the controller, and all the people who [are] the Israel lobby here should be happy to put it on the ballot to show that the people who want to divest from genocide are a minority,” Ben Case, an organizer with Not On Our Dime, said. “And then it would lose. That would be the best way to put the issue to bed, I would think, from their side. But the reason they use lawfare is because I think they know that this is very popular.”

In the motion for cost against the organizers, the Jewish Federation disputes this characterization of their challenges as “lawfare,” calling it antisemitic, and arguing that this characterization and the campaign’s refusal to “abide by the most basic procedural requirements to get a question on the ballot (even a facially discriminatory and illegal one) reflect not a devotion to, but a disdain for democratic principles and the rule of law.”

“This process required substantial legal and administrative expenses,” Jeff Finkelstein, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, said in an email statement. “Given the circumstances, we believe it is appropriate to seek reimbursement for these attorneys’ fees and costs.”

In response to the recently filed motion for costs, Not On Our Dime’s lawyer Chuck Pascal said, “Unfortunately, we seem to be in a time in this country when money is increasingly being used as a cudgel to suppress speech and enforce conformity of speech.”

The legal challenges against the Not On Our Dime ballot petition rely on bureaucratic details that disqualified a majority of signatures collected, with the Jewish Federation alleging that there were “material errors and defects” in the petition, including the lack of valid signatures. It’s a similar playbook to challenges against Pennsylvania’s mail-in voting law, Act 77, which was the center of a Republican-driven campaign in 2022 but upheld by the state’s Supreme Court.

According to Case, allegations about the validity of the signatures came down to “a number of legal technicalities,” most of them related to a provision in Pennsylvania law that invalidates signatures if the address line is not written exactly as it appears in the voter’s registration. In the petition form, the voter is instructed to write down their “place of residence” rather than their “place of registration.” Case alleged that the opposition has been using these provisions as “lawfare” to stop the referendum in its tracks.

“This is an extreme case of a common situation,” organizer Kirsten Rokke told Prism. “The procedures serve a gatekeeping function, and they’re often using an argument of fairness. We want to make sure that [the process] is fair, and we want to have these standards to make sure that people do support [our ballot]. But when you actually go to do it, it’s very difficult, the measures that are ostensibly for fairness become barriers to entry.”

A “Grave Threat” to Pittsburgh

While the ballot initiative was withdrawn due to allegations of invalid signatures, the Jewish Federation and Heisler also argued that if the ballot passed, it would stop the city of Pittsburgh from functioning.

“Not On Our Dime’s proposed referendum initiative poses a grave threat to the core values and financial viability of the City of Pittsburgh,” a statement by the Jewish Federation announcing the legal challenge reads. “It would prevent our city from providing basic and vital services to the community, and it attempts to implement the discriminatory Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement here in Pittsburgh.”

The statement also cites Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey, who argued that nearly every city function would have to be halted if the referendum passed: “It is clear that the proposed change would bring nearly every function of city government grinding to a halt by prohibiting the City from doing business with global companies, from Microsoft to Ford, upon which we rely to perform basic administrative functions and provide core services.”

In an email to Prism, the Jewish Federation also alleged that the referendum “violates state and federal law” and “burdens the City of Pittsburgh in ways that would be harmful to city residents.”

“The referendum requires the city to evaluate the conditions in 195 countries and fails to define what constitutes ‘genocide, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing,’” said David Heyman, spokesperson for the Jewish Federation, in an email. “Even without providing the definitions of those acts, the referendum presupposes and declares that only one country, Israel, is already deemed guilty of those acts.”

The amendment document, publicly available on the Not On Our Dime campaign website, starts with definitions of the terms genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, chemical weapons, and military drones.

In the motion for cost filed by the Jewish Federation, the organization also argued that if the ballot passed, it would have barred the Jewish Federation from working with the city of Pittsburgh to fund Jewish grantees and stop antisemitic hatred through the Federation’s work with local police.

The proposed referendum also adds that divestment should be done “to the greatest extent possible.” Organizers expressed that voters were enthusiastic when signing the petition; they noted the contrasting responses from the opposition and the people who wanted to put the issue to a vote.

“Rachel Heisler would say, ‘This will grind the city to a halt, this is not implementable,’” Rokke said. “[But] people on the street, the most common response was that people would say, ‘Not supporting genocide? That’s a low bar.’”

Prism approached Heisler for comment over email, but received no response.

The Not On Our Dime organizers are in the process of rethinking their next steps, now that their efforts to introduce a ballot referendum have been withdrawn twice. But Case said he believes the campaign momentum will be important for the city of Pittsburgh in the years to come

“With what we see going on in the federal government, with how quickly these universities are caving, to big law firms caving with the smallest amount of pressure from the Trump regime, I think these types of grassroots networks that are interested in direct democracy are going to be incredibly important in the coming years.”

Prism is an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color. We report from the ground up and at the intersections of injustice.