Editor’s note: The meeting will happen at the Oak Park Library’s Dole Branch. A previous version of this article listed an incorrect location. Wednesday Journal regrets the error.
Oak Park residents will take part in an obscure direct democracy process this week, with a question about boycotting, sanctioning and divesting in Israel on the line.
Oak Park Township is hosting its annual Town Meeting at the Oak Park Dole Library’s second floor at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 14. The township’s annual meeting provides an opportunity for residents to gather signatures to put an item on the agenda that Oak Parkers at the meeting will then vote on to decide whether or not the matter will go before Oak Park voters as an advisory referendum on the ballot in November’s general election.
The question on this year’s meeting agenda is “do you support the right of individuals and organizations, including state contractors, to boycott, divest and sanction Israel?” The same question is on the agenda for several other townships around the state.
The petitions come as violence in the Middle East escalates and the Illinois legislature considers repealing a 2015 law banning state pension funds from being invested in companies that divest from or boycott Israel. The boycott question is the only resident petition on this year’s agenda and it’s the first petition to make it on Oak Park township’s annual meeting agenda since 2024.
The deadline to submit petitions to the township was March 1.
Petitions need only 15 signatures from registered Oak Park voters to get on the township’s annual meeting agenda. The boycott petition received 26 Oak Park signatures that were verified by Cook County officials, according to Oak Park Township Clerk Lou Anne Johannesson.
Any registered Oak Park voter can attend the annual meeting, speak about the issue and vote on whether or not to put the question on November’s ballot. Each township in the state is hosting an annual meeting Tuesday night, Johannesson said.
Johannesson said she spoke with more than 30 residents on Friday about the upcoming town vote, leaving each of them a “civics lesson” on the township’s arcane annual meeting process. There’s understandable confusion about the meeting, as Oak Park township is the only local government entity with a process like this, she said.
“I think one of the wonderful, exciting things about townships is that we act as a conduit for the direct voice from the public,” Johannesson said. “The village of Oak Park’s board will vote on behalf of the people that elected them. It’s representative government. The township has that in terms of its board, but once a year there is an opportunity for direct voting from the public, which is why townships, unlike any other municipal government in Illinois, are the vehicle for people to drop off a petition and have something be considered by the community at-large.”
If Tuesday’s meeting ends with the petition’s approval and Oak Park voters support it again in November’s election, the referendum would not have specific legislative implications but it would advise local governmental bodies on voter’s position on the matter.
The vote on Tuesday comes amid a larger push in Illinois to revisit the state’s decade-old law banning state pension funds from investing in companies that boycott Israel. Illinois is one of 38 U.S. states with a law on the books banning public pension investments into companies that boycott or divest from Israel.
House Bill 2723 and Senate Bill 2462 were both introduced last year to repeal the law, with supporters saying that the restriction goes against freedom of speech.
Both bills have slowly worked through the committee process, according to state house records. The Senate bill has 13 co-sponsors while the House bill has 22, according to legislative records.
Illinois Senate Majority Leader Kimberly Lightford, whose district includes parts of Oak Park south of I-290, had signed on to co-sponsor the bill last year but is no longer sponsoring the bill as of last month, according to legislative records.
She is one of eight state senators whose sponsorship for the bill has been removed, according to legislative records.
There are currently 28 companies listed as boycotting Israel by the Illinois Investment Policy board, including Adidas and Air Canada.
In 2022, Chicago-based investment research giant Morningstar came very close to being put on the investment backlist over one of its subsidiaries’ “Human Rights Radar” investment research product was found to have an “anti-Israel bias” in an outside law firm’s investigation. One of the concessions the company made to avoid Illinois sanctions was ending its use of UN Human Rights Council information for the product, according to a report at the time by the Times of Israel.
A referendum on Israeli boycotts could come before Oak Park’s hyper-liberal electorate this fall, as support for Israel has become a dividing line among Democrats.
Candidates’ views on the war in Gaza and the U.S. support for Israel loomed large in primaries across the country last month.
This was true in Illinois’ 7th district primary, where the American Israel Public Affairs Committee poured millions of dollars into the campaign of City of Chicago Treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin, who lost to longtime West Side State Rep. La Shawn Ford. Progressive activist Kina Collins, who finished fourth overall, was the top vote-getter in Oak Park after campaigning on a platform sharply critical of Israel.
In response to a news article about Conyears-Ervin’s loss posted on X, AIPAC called out Collins’ campaign in the 13-way primary in particular.
“In this race, we were proud to help defeat Kina Collins, an anti-Israel candidate and would-be Squad member who was endorsed by @TrackAIPAC,” the group wrote in a post on X.
It’s now been two-and-a-half years since the war in Gaza began, while a fragile U.S.-brokered ceasefire has been in place since last October.
More than 71,000 Palestinians were killed and more than 171,000 were injured between Oct. 7, 2023 and Jan. 28 of this year, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
Around 2,000 Israelis have been killed and there’ve been 35,355 Israeli casualties since the start of the war, according to Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies.
The national interest in U.S.-Israeli relations has only grown in the wake of the U.S. and Israel’s new shared war with Iran, with recent ceasefire talks between the nations reportedly collapsing over the weekend, according to the Associated Press.