By CARLOS SAPIR
Long lines to get into bars are a common scene on New Year’s Eve in Pittsburgh. This year, the regular throng of people looking to party were joined by equally enthusiastic Pittsburghers collecting signatures for a ballot measure initiative that would see the city of 303,000 divest from entities—such as Israel—engaging in military occupation, apartheid, and genocide, as well as divestment from and the discontinuation of city contracts with entities that do business with them.
Officially, to get on the ballot, the campaign needs to submit 12,500 valid signatures. In practice, they need closer to twice that amount. This is the second attempt to get Pittsburgh to divest from genocide and war, following a similar attempt in the summer to get ballot access for the past November election.
Formed in the wake of a pro-Palestine encampment at the University of Pittsburgh, the first attempt at divestment got off to a late–if energetic–start, beginning their campaign nearly halfway through the allotted public petitioning period. Despite ultimately crossing the 12,500 limit with room to spare, the campaign—then named No War Crimes On Our Dime—had to confront a pro-Israel legal team that challenged 10,000 of the roughly 15,000 signatures collected. With the campaign facing possible legal fines in the event that the challenges were heard and upheld, campaign organizers retreated, resolving to return better prepared and better organized for the next petitioning period.
The campaign has been also slightly rebranded, now going by the catchier slogan of “Not On Our Dime,” and organizers have set plans in motion to collect 25,000 signatures by the February deadline.
Participants in the campaign are quick to point out how the whole process is littered with anti-democratic obstacles, details which are also shared with people considering signing the petition. Petitions must be signed in person and with a pen, and even minor spelling errors or stray marks on petition sheets can be cause for throwing out entire pages of signatures. Water damage is another serious concern: with a very wet climate and temperatures ranging from 5° to 40° F (-15° to 4° C), both rain and snow can quickly ruin petition sheets, and campaign organizers have had to quickly innovate ways to keep petition sheets dry while petitioning outside. The temperature itself is also an obstacle, reducing the amount of outdoor foot traffic and at times even freezing the pen ink that must be used to sign the petitions.
Even the official bar for ballot access—12,500 signatures—is itself a demonstration of the contempt that Pittsburgh’s government has for public democracy: While 12,500 signatures are required for a ballot measure, nominal ballot access for elections that are dominated by the capitalist party machines require only a minuscule fraction of this level of support. Candidates for city mayor—a post that has been solidly dominated by Democrats since 1934 and firmly entrenched in capitalist machine politics even before then—only need to collect 250 signatures for ballot access, less than what the current campaign is collecting on a daily basis. Cheekily, campaign organizers have minted a “mayor’s club” consisting of anyone who collects over 250 signatures for the ballot measure, a lofty individual goal that has nevertheless been reached by several organizers as the campaign enters its third week.
While city government officials and Zionist local publications like the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle have slandered the ballot measure as being antisemitic and impossible to implement, the response from regular Pittsburghers could not be more different. While getting people to slow down in sub-freezing temperatures long enough to sign a petition can be difficult, people engaged in petitioning have reported that of the people who stop long enough to listen to what is being asked of them, a solid majority express enthusiastic support. This has included vocal, if not unanimous, support from Pittsburgh’s large Jewish community, with many petition-signers sharing stories about how their personal upbringing as Jews brought them into opposition to the atrocities that Israel is committing with U.S. backing. Squirrel Hill, one of the city’s most Jewish neighborhoods, is one of the most active spots for petitioning. While campaign organizers do not keep a formal tally of participants’ backgrounds, informal estimates suggest that about a third of the campaign’s organizers are themselves Jewish, participating at a rate that is roughly double the proportion of Jewish people in the Greater Pittsburgh area.
People signing the petition have also defied media cliches about support for Palestine more broadly; the campaign has reported high response rates from elderly people, as well as from self-professed Trump voters. At least one cliché, however, has continued to hold: the tested-and-true support for Palestine in the Queer community—born from a shared experience and understanding of oppression, with drag shows, Rocky Horror screenings, and other LGBTQ+ community events—provides large amounts of signatures.
In petition-collection training sessions, organizers point out that in addition to being serious about the goal of getting the city to divest from genocide, a secondary goal of the campaign is to engage people politically and raise consciousness around Palestine, imperialism, and the anti-democratic outlook of the bourgeois parties that dominate U.S. politics. Many of those who sign the petition confess to having felt completely alone and disoriented in the face of U.S. corporate media and politicians’ continued embrace of lockstep pro-Israel rhetoric even in the face of clear evidence of genocidal intent and practice pronounced by the highest courts of the UN. One conversation at a time, this facade of manufactured consent is being shattered by Not On Our Dime, with people realizing that they are not alone, but rather part of a majority who are outraged by what is happening.
With a little over a month of petitioning time left, Pittsburghers in solidarity with Palestine still have a lot of work left to do and show no signs of stopping. If you are a Pittsburgh resident who has yet to sign or get involved, you can find more information about upcoming canvasses and trainings close to you at https://notonourdimepgh.com/ . Residents of Pennsylvania who are not registered to vote inside Pittsburgh’s city limits can also help volunteer as petition circulators, and the campaign is also accepting donations to cover the costs of materials and anticipated legal expenses.
Photo: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette