The Northampton City Council will introduce a resolution this Thursday calling for divestment from entities complicit in “substantial, ongoing, intentional, and severe” violations of international law and human rights in Israel and Palestine.
Supported by a community-led divestment campaign, the resolution also calls for the city to refrain from any future investments in entities deemed complicit in human rights violations in Israel and Palestine, as identified by the American Friends Service Committee. Councilors Jeremy Dubs, Rachel Maiore, and Stanley Moulton III are the co-sponsors of the resolution.
The resolution comes after a team of experts commissioned by the United Nations published a report Tuesday that found Israel is committing genocide in Gaza — the latest in a growing list of human rights organizations, genocide scholars, and others who have reached that conclusion. That same day, Israel announced that it had launched a ground invasion of Gaza City.
Northampton leaders passed two previous resolutions in 2024 calling for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an arms embargo to Israel.
According to the latest resolution, information that the city treasurer provided to the campaign showed that Northampton currently has an estimated $71,010 invested in companies that organizers say are complicit in human rights violations. They include First International Bank of Israel, General Electric, Heidelberg Materials, Primo Water, and RTX — the company formerly known as Raytheon.
These investments are made with the city’s “other post-employment benefits funds” and trust funds, which together constitute 0.62% of the city’s total investments, the resolution says.
The resolution is primarily aimed at divesting these two funds managed by the city treasurer, according to Eve Glazier, an organizer with the divestment campaign and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.
The Northampton Retirement Board, which manages the city’s pension funds, faces more restrictions on its investments because of the regulations of the Massachusetts Public Employee Retirement Administration Commission. Glazier said that campaign organizers hope the resolution can prompt changes in state law to allow and encourage divestment and ethical investment.
The city holds many of these investments through what are known as “exchange-traded funds” or ETFs — a pooled collection of investments that firms sell like a conventional stock. For example, the city invests in the First International Bank of Israel through “IGOV,” a BlackRock-managed ETF fund.
If passed, the city treasurer would have a two-year period to divest assets identified as complicit in international law and human rights violations in Israel and Palestine. For indirect holdings such as ETFs, Glazier said the city will need to divest from those funds or pressure the funds to exclude complicit entities in its investments.
“There is precedent for this,” Glazier said. She explained that the city previously approved a fossil fuel divestment resolution in 2013, and that the resolution called for divestment from complicit companies regardless of how the investments were held.
In 2018, then-mayor David Narkewicz issued an executive order to divest from companies involved in manufacturing nuclear weapons.
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The divestment resolution is largely the work of a campaign organized by pro-Palestine community members, said Dubs, a co-sponsor of the resolution.
The campaign has gathered organizers and community members from a variety of local organizations, including the local chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace, the Democratic Socialists of America, Demilitarize Western Mass, and Showing Up for Racial Justice.
With the energy of local pro-Palestine rallies and campaigns, the idea for a divestment campaign began to emerge among local organizers in the spring of 2024, Glazier said.
“We started thinking, we had this big mass movement, how do we channel it strategically to actually get at the forces that are upholding this genocide?” Glazier said. “We realized that this genocide is a local issue.”
Organizers hope the resolution can help end the city’s current and future complicity in funding companies enabling Israel’s genocide, according to Ella Carlson, another organizer with the divestment campaign.
Beyond immediate local impact, she said that Northampton could become “part of the national and international movement for divestment … that would help snowball to other municipalities.”
Leading up to the resolution, the organizers said they have been regularly tabling at the local farmers’ markets and engaging with community members about their campaign for divestment.
“It’s been really heartening to see that the vast majority of people … are horrified by what’s going on in Palestine right now, and really want to be able to take action on a local level,” Glazier said.
This past winter, campaign organizers met with Maoire and Dubs, who decided to support the resolution and assist in acquiring information from the city treasurer, Glazier said. Moulton joined later as a third co-sponsor of the resolution.
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A few other municipalities in the United States have passed similar divestment resolutions in the past year, including Hayward, California, and Portland, Maine. Most recently, the city of Medford, Massachusetts, passed an ordinance to divest city funds from a range of entities, including weapon manufacturers and companies engaging in human rights violations.
In the nearby town of Montague, pro-Palestine activists are advocating for a resolution to declare the town an apartheid-free community. Launched in July, the campaign is part of the global Apartheid-Free Communities Network that aims to work toward an end to Israeli apartheid.
Organizers of the campaign have completed collecting signatures, which allows residents to discuss and vote on the resolution in a special town meeting scheduled for Oct. 22.
Although there are several pro-Palestine campaigns in western Massachusetts, organizers are sharing lessons with each other through the Western Massachusetts Coalition for Palestine, according to Molly Merrett, an organizer with the apartheid-free campaign in Montague.
Learning from the ceasefire campaigns in other municipalities like Northampton, Merrett said their campaign organizers understand that ceasefire or apartheid-free resolutions are a non-binding statement, and that they should serve as a “building block” toward divestment.
For organizers like Glazier, the network of pro-Palestine organizations is energizing.
“It’s really inspiring,” Glazier said. “To know that we’re doing it together, in tandem with folks in municipalities all across the country and the world who are working towards the same goals, and that collectively we can have a really strong impact.”
The Northampton City Council plans to vote on the divestment resolution on Sept. 30.
Dubs, the co-sponsor of the resolution, said that he feels optimistic about the vote.
“[Gaza] has become such a crisis that you just can’t even deny that it’s happening anymore,” he said. “It’s become something that people can all agree that we need to do something, we need to at least speak out and make our voices heard.”
Correction: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Eve Glazier’s name.
Stacey Zhang is an independent reporter studying history at Amherst College. She can be reached at staceyzhang03@gmail.com.
