Thursday, September 29, 2005
The attempt by backers of the effort to get the City of Somerville, Massachusetts to divest itself of its Israeli investments has once again failed. After the Board of Aldermen dismissed the effort last December, the same group turned toward putting together a ballot initiative. Now the city has refused to certify the petitions they put together due to irregularities in the forms they used and a failure to comply with the timing window they were given in which to collect the signatures. This is good news.
Somerville Journal: Divestment backers lose case
The group, which opposes the city's investment in Israel and military equipment companies that do business there, said it collected about 4,500 signed petitions to place a nonbinding question about divesting the bonds on the Nov. 8 ballot.
But Julian Houston, a Middlesex County Superior Court judge, ruled Thursday that the Somerville Elections Commission had the right to refuse to certify the petitions because SDP did not follow instructions from the commission about the wording of the petition and the collection timeline...
Congratulations to all those, like Jon Haber at Somerville Middle East Justice, who were working hard on defeating the effort, although it appears that in the end the SDP's own sense of personal specialness and entitlement defeated them. A flawless victory would have been the citizens of Somerville recognizing the inherent bigotry of that group of rogues and refusing to sign altogether (it's understandable that they didn't at this juncture, of course), but this will do.
I recognize that reasonable people can differ about the Middle East and about this issue, but -- I can still say that everyone associated with the divestment campaign that I've encountered is complete and total scum, and completely batshit, to boot. The guy who came to my door a few weeks ago led off with "Are you aware that Somerville invests over a million dollars a year in the State of Israel?" Gee, buddy, I think you've confused Somerville with the UAW pension fund -- uh, yeah, a million a year in Israel bonds.
Thanks for the plug and for updating your readers on the last act of the Somerville drama. I'm wrapping up commentary on my www.somervilleMEjustice.com site this week and thinking ahead towards how we can use this second victory in less than a year to ensure that municipal divestment does not rear its head anywhere in the country again.
As noted in Will Spotts' remarkable essay on divestment at the Presbyterian Church, to which you also link, divestment is quickly heading towards failure at cities and schools, and is likely to remain isolated to the mainline churches for all of the reasons Spotts highlights. I recommend anyone intersted in seeing divestment defeated for good to read this important work.
I wouldn't be too quick to hang things up yet. The SDP people are still out there trying to raise money and keep the fires burning. I've seen several mentions of the "4500 signatures" they collected -- without any mention that they are now useless. They're simply using the signatures to give themselves legitimacy. Tomorrow they're having Cindy Corrie come speak. These people are obsessive and will likely keep on as long as they manage to avoid their medications. The "battle for hearts and minds" goes on.