Providence voters approve Israel divestment measure with 75% support

The campaign collected more than 10,000 signatures and deployed nearly 300 volunteers

Voters in Providence, Rhode Island, approved a ballot measure requiring the city to refrain from investing in foreign countries that profit from “genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and prolonged military occupation.” The measure passed with 75% support, making Providence the second American city to divest from Israel after Somerville, Massachusetts, voted to do so last year.

The result came during a broader shift in the 2026 midterms, when candidates who demanded an end to Israel’s war in Gaza defeated opponents funded by the pro-Israel lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac). Organizers said the Providence victory reflected both broad support for divestment and a canvassing operation that could be replicated by pro-Palestinian groups in other cities.

Recent polls cited by The Guardian indicated that one-third of Americans, including a similar share of Jews, said Israel had committed genocide against Palestinians. More than half said they wanted the government to stop sending weapons to Israel.

The Providence for Palestine campaign launched a little less than a year ago with 40 volunteers, according to Zack Kligler, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace – Rhode Island. Local chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace, Democratic Socialists of America, the American Federation of Teachers and American Muslims for Palestine, together with the local housing justice organization Reclaim RI, led the campaign. The coalition pursued a ballot strategy after traditional legislative efforts failed.

In 2024, then-mayor Brett Smiley and other city councilors blocked an ordinance to divest from companies with Israeli ties. Brown University officials rejected a similar student-led proposal. Organizers said at least $2.5 million in city funds was invested in companies directly profiting from what they called a genocide in Gaza and Israeli apartheid. The city also held more than $2 million in Israeli bonds as recently as 2022.

During the spring and summer, the coalition collected more than 10,000 signatures, twice the threshold needed to qualify the measure. It then placed nearly 300 volunteers at street corners, businesses and community events. Volunteers knocked on 17,000 doors, made 18,000 phone calls and spoke with 30,000 neighbors about Gaza and what divestment would entail.

Jackie Goldman, an incoming Providence city councilor and key organizer for the measure, said few voters at the start of the campaign season knew about the city’s investments. Once they learned about the ballot initiative, most people were eager to support it and saw divestment as “an empowering action,” Goldman said.

Adit Sabnis, a graduate student at Brown University and a local union organizer with the American Federation of Teachers, said campaign volunteers were overwhelmed by the positive results and by people who were thankful for a meaningful opportunity to do something about Palestine. “This is an overwhelmingly pro-Palestine and anti-genocide city,” Sabnis said.

Although a broad coalition of Providence residents supported the measure, Kligler said many Jewish organizers and voters powered the campaign. “It’s a demonstration that the idea that US Jews are in line behind Israel is just absolutely false,” he said. “We ended up mobilizing Jews across the city, and we won every ward, including the most heavily Jewish ones.”

Organizers said the measure’s success was bolstered by the September primary victories of a progressive, pro-Palestinian candidate slate that included Goldman and mayor-elect David Morales. Morales, a Democratic Socialists of America-backed challenger, defeated Smiley. Both candidates gathered signatures for the measure while canvassing for their own campaigns.

Although the measure and the candidates shared goals, Kligler said pro-Palestinian groups did not endorse specific candidates. “This is a case of not just the movement getting behind candidates – it’s the movement forwarding its own policy priorities and pulling candidates behind it,” he said.

Creating a replicable blueprint for other cities was a leading priority for Providence organizers. The coalition posted a call on Instagram encouraging organizers across the country to contact it and discuss the campaign’s lessons and tactics. Kligler said the coalition was not actively working on another ballot effort, but organizers in different cities had reached out.

Providence organizers studied ballot efforts in Somerville, Massachusetts, the first U.S. city to vote to divest from Israel last year, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where a divestment referendum was blocked by a legal challenge. Kligler said Pittsburgh organizers provided especially useful guidance on checking addresses and ensuring petitions were signed in acceptable colors so they would not be disqualified on a technicality.

On the same election night, officials in Palm Beach County, Florida, voted not to reinvest $67.5 million in Israeli bonds that matured on 1 November. The county was described as the world’s largest local government investor in Israeli bonds. The decision followed months of organizing by activists with the “Our Taxes, Our Needs” campaign, who sued the county and attended board meetings in large numbers.

Advocates are seeking to block three more Palm Beach County investments scheduled to expire over the next couple of years, said Lydia Ghuman, executive director of the Internationalist Law Center, which leads the county’s divestment effort. She said the next step was to redirect the bond investments into housing, education, healthcare and other local needs, which she called “a more appropriate use of taxpayer funds than enabling violence.”

“The compass that fuels us is injustice,” Ghuman said, adding that the investments were “also just poor investments, especially in Florida, where many people work three jobs.”