One by one, local storytellers and poets made their way to the stage July 2 at Robert’s Westside to share stories of freedom, tying into the coming 4th of July holiday.
Deborah Adelman, a retired College of DuPage professor, was one of them. She spoke about marching in her hometown of Milwaukee as a child in the turbulent late 1960s.
Thursday, she wore a black t-shirt with the words Free Palestine and spoke with a reporter afterward about the issue that brought together about 100 people to Robert’s – bills in the state Senate and House of Representatives that would amend the Illinois Pension Code to remove the requirement to include businesses that boycott Israel on its list of restricted companies for investment.
On April 28, at Oak Park township’s annual town meeting, residents voted down 352-134 a non-binding referendum that asked if they supported the right of individuals and organizations, including state contractors, to boycott, divest and sanction Israel.
“I thought it was so apparent that many people coming out to vote when normally five people would show up for something like that is an indication of how high the stakes are, how important the matter is,” Adelman said. “So, I feel strongly that this should become an issue that the entire community has a right to vote on.”
Like many, Jesse Bauer, co-organizer for Oak Parkers for Free Speech, wore a yellow t-shirt with a circular logo that said Oak Park Supports Free Speech. He referenced that April 28 vote in his opening remarks.
“There is a very small, very active, very organized group in our community that worked together to deny the broader Oak Pak electorate the chance to weigh in on that issue, and the vote putting that forward to the ballot failed 352 to 134.
“We could have stopped there, but instead, we’ve decided to go straight to the voters ourselves,” he said, noting the mechanism is collecting signatures, petitioning the Oak Park village board and getting a non-binding referendum on its November ballot that would be advisory to politicians in Springfield.
He added the specific wording of the proposed referendum question: “Should the state of Illinois repeal laws that ban state investment in businesses that boycott the state of Israel?”
The group Jewish Community and Friends for Democracy thinks not.
In a prepared statement to Wednesday Journal, the group said, “This is a repackaged initiative – same organizers, new name – that 72 percent of Oak Park voters rejected in April.
“Rather than accept that result, this group is now siphoning resources that could be better spent taking back the House and Senate, all while using misleading claims to get Oak Parkers to sign their petition. Oak Parkers’ right to boycott has never been compromised by this law. And after more than a decade, there’s no evidence this law has hurt Illinois’ pension returns. We should be working together on the many issues that impact Oak Park – not pretending a village advisory referendum can resolve the Middle East conflict.”
Don Harmon, the State Senate president and Oak Parker, appears to have his reservations as well.
“Senator Harmon respects the right of everyone to petition their government, but he is concerned this particular referendum will leave lasting divisions in a community that has more to gain from working together,” said a statement to the Journal from Harmon’s office.
Caren Van Slyke, another leader of Oak Parkers for Free Speech, also spoke at Thursday’s event.
“Tonight’s organizers have asked me to address the elephant in the room of our campaign,” she said, “the claim that many of us have heard or read that the referendum discriminates against Jewish Oak Parkers. As a Jewish Oak Parker, I reject that claim.
“At a time when antisemitism and all forms of bigotry are rising, we need to distinguish between hatred against Jews and criticism of Israel. Efforts to conflate those issues weakens the fight against antisemitism and undermines protection of free speech for human rights.”
She said the referendum asks whether Illinois should stop shielding Israel from boycott, a form of constitutionally protected free speech. Bauer echoed that sentiment.
“This first and foremost is about free speech,” he said. “We are looking to repeal this law which restricts our free speech, which penalizes a form of peaceful protest, which penalizes companies to make their own decisions in terms of boycott.”
On Sunday, Van Slyke noted Oak Parkers for Free Speech raised $4,980 at the event at Roberts in Forest Park last week and shared a statement from the group responding to Harmon’s remarks.
“At his June 23 Oak Park town hall, Senator Harmon said Illinois’ 2015 anti-boycott law would not have passed if he had been president of the Senate at the time,” the statement said. “If that’s true, why hasn’t he joined the 37 legislators who have already cosponsored its repeal? We’ve been asking him to do so since the repeal bill was introduced.
“Too often, when people fight for human and civil rights, those in power say the timing is wrong, the issue is too divisive, or that we should be patient. Senator Harmon has the opportunity to undo the wrong.”
As for Thursday’s presenters, who faced three vertical rows of seats full of people coming off the stage, it was an opportunity, Oak Park poet James Madigan said. He read selections from his book “Political Prisoners USA and Other Poems.”
“This is a serious issue and people came together in order to be entertained, to have fun and to raise money to accomplish a political goal,” he said.
Dueling claims
Jewish Community and Friends for Democracy surveyed Oak Parkers for Free Speech website and purported to debunk two claims. The first was the claim that “since 2015, Illinois law has prohibited pension fund investments in businesses that boycott or divest from the state of Israel for any reason, including ethical or human rights concerns.” Thus, “the ban on boycotts is a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech.”
“To our knowledge, in the 11 years since passage, no lawsuit attempting to overturn the law has ever been filed,” the group said. “If this law in fact was a violation of the First Amendment, it would long ago have been found unconstitutional by a court.”
Caren Van Slyke, one of the leaders of Oak Parkers for Free Speech, had her own view.
“I think that just demonstrates a misunderstanding of how the U.S. system works,” she said, referencing the unanimous 1982 U.S. Supreme Court decision in NAACP vs. Claiborne Hardware Co. that said nonviolent political boycotts are constitutionally protected free speech and association under the First Amendment.
“Until that changes, that’s the law of the land,” she said. “The Illinois ACLU is part of the coalition to overturn the law. Boycotts for social change are protected as free speech.”
The second claim from the Oak Parkers for Free Speech website was that “the law violates the fiduciary responsibility of Illinois to its pension holders. One analysis of the Illinois anti-boycott law shows that companies were banned from investment cost the Illinois pension fund approximately $149 million in foregone returns.”
Jewish Community and Friends for Democracy said its team includes a former Northwestern economics professor and a business professional with an MBA from the University of Chicago.
“We conducted extensive research and could not find any publicly available analysis claiming the law led to foregone returns,” the group said. “Assuming the analysis was conducted privately, we used our internal expertise to conduct our own assessment. We did not get very far due to a lack of available data.
“Of the 27 ‘banned investments,’ only five had publicly available stockholder returns data,” it said. “The remaining are privately held companies and investment funds that do not make their returns public. In short, the $149 million claim, or any claim about foregone returns, is a false claim because there is no performance data available for the large majority of these investments.”
Van Slyke said the Illinois Coalition for Human Rights conducted its own analysis using publicly available data.
“What happened is restricted companies have outperformed in international benchmarks by 59 percentage points,” she said, noting that analysis covered five years of data.
“(This has a) systematic impact on the pension system. All it does is make a deeper hole. What’s most important is we have a deeply underfunded pension system.”