Oak Park’s Nov. 3 ballot asks whether Illinois should repeal its 2015 ban on state pension investment in companies that boycott Israel. This Illinois law singles out Israel for protection from boycott. A Yes vote on this advisory referendum tells our local legislators we want them to stand up for the right to boycott.
Boycotts are core to America’s civil rights history: the Montgomery bus boycott that helped end Jim Crow, the grape boycott that won farmworkers a union, and the global fight against Apartheid. In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that a boycott of white-owned businesses by Black residents of Claiborne County, Mississippi, organized with the NAACP to challenge the systemic racism directed at them, was protected free speech.
After Illinois acted, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporate-backed engine behind “show me your papers” immigration laws, voter ID laws and “Stand Your Ground,” circulated a model bill … and more than 35 states followed. Texas then copied the model to punish firms that boycott fossil fuel companies or shun gun makers. Attorney Richard Goldwasser, who clerked for the Israeli Supreme Court, told an April 30 hearing in Chicago on the proposed repeal bill that punishing the protected right to boycott “is of a piece with the growing fascism in our country.”
We never should have surrendered this nonviolent democratic tool. Congressional candidate and Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, who voted for the law as a state senator, now says he would not cast that vote today and supports its repeal. Such laws, he wrote, “feed into the framework” that the Trump administration uses to attack free speech.
As a scholar, I’ve studied authoritarian movements for two decades, and my research has found some consistent patterns. Autocrats rarely ban dissent outright; they punish it through money and contracts. Once rights are seized or surrendered, they are rarely won back.
Last fall, Oak Parkers stood up to ICE because we recognized it as an authoritarian assault. We are called upon to do the same here. Illinois handed the country this cudgel against democracy a decade ago, and it is our responsibility to take it back. Vote Yes on Nov. 3.
Sources
NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., 458 U.S. 886 (1982)
Coalition for Illinois Divestment from South Africa: https://news.wttw.com/2021/02/11/new-film-highlights-chicago-efforts-end-south-africa-s-apartheid
ALEC model legislation and state adoption: https://justvision.org/node/322
Libertarian policy shop outlines how Texas fossil fuel law modeled on Israel anti-boycott laws: https://www.texaspolicy.com/press/tppf-bill-to-end-energy-discrimination-sent-to-governors-desk
Richard Goldwasser testimony, Illinois House hearing on HB2723, April 30, 2026:
Daniel Biss statement, April 30, 2026: Substack post, “A note on Illinois’ anti-BDS law repeal effort,” https://danielbiss.substack.com/p/a-note-on-illinois-anti-bds-law-repeal
Annie Wilkinson, PhD
Oak Park
Public Library trustee