Iowa City Council passes Israel divestment resolution
On August 5, the Iowa City Council unanimously voted to boycott and divest from Israel bonds and all companies complicit in the Gaza genocide and occupation of Palestine.
August 20, 2025
MONDOWEISS
Iowa City (Iowa City Action For Palestine Facebook)
Earlier this month, the Iowa City Council unanimously approved a resolution that bars the city from directing any public money toward any entity “complicit in the current and ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and occupation of Palestine,” including corporate investments and Israel Bonds.
“Tonight is a resolution that is rooted really in our community values of what we really stand for, which is peace, justice, dignity for every human,” Mayor Bruce Teague told the crowd at the City Council meeting. “This resolution does call for the city of Iowa City to boycott public investments and entities complicit in the ongoing humanitarian crisis (in) Gaza, including assistance and the oppression of the Palestinian people. I have no issues calling it what it is. It’s genocide, and that does not make me antisemitic at all.”
The chamber was packed with supporters, but Uchechi Anomnachi, a member with Iowa City Action For Palestine, says activists certainly didn’t view victory as a foregone conclusion.
“The meeting itself is actually not representative of how uncertain this seemed while we were working on it,” says Anomnachi. “We went into the meeting thinking, ‘This could go either way”’- and then a hundred people showed up to support us, and we could see the council members’ gears turning as they realized that it wasn’t politically viable to vote no in that room.”
Mondoweiss U.S. correspondent Michael Arria spoke with Anomnachi about how the resolution process developed, what Palestine activism looks like in Iowa, and what other ‘red state’ activists could learn the victory.
Mondoweiss: Can you explain the organizing around the resolution and the process to get it in front of city council?
Anomnachi Uche: The resolution prevents the city from making investments in companies that are on the American Friends Services Committee (AFSC) divestment shortlist.
The city has a certain number of securities investments, which means that it cannot trade securities with these companies. We wanted to look at the city government as a wealth fund because, in some ways, it is, and we wanted to think about how we could introduce BDS principles to the way that the city chooses its investments.
We worked with the city manager in the lead-up to it. We were inspired by a similar resolution that passed in Portland, Maine, in 2024. The resolution we passed is almost identical to the one in Portland, with some tweaks to make it more specific to Iowa City.
Iowa City passed a ceasefire resolution in January 2024, only a few months after the Al-Aqsa flood. That resolution had “both sides” language, so it was very of the moment.
With this one, we wanted the city to have a record of strongly condemning the violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers specifically, so we changed the language of the Portland resolution to reflect that position more strongly.
Then, we started investigating the city’s investment holdings. The city does trade securities. The city manager releases a quarterly report, and we dug through the report to see with whom the city was invested. The city was not invested with companies on the AFSC divestment shortlist. So we refocused towards this language of boycotting and wanted to make a public statement to block the council from investing in certain companies in the future.
I have to imagine a lot of our readers aren’t familiar with politics and activism in Iowa. Can you talk about the state of Palestinian organizing and some of the activism around this issue?
This isn’t really comprehensive because I obviously don’t know about everything that’s going on in the state, but activism surrounding Palestine in Iowa is so grassroots.
A group will spring up in Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, in the Quad Cities, and it will serve as a real point of genuine connection for people whose awareness of this issue has increased and who previously felt like there was nothing they could do about it.
This resolution was possible because of an emergency election in January, in which our totally awesome punk rocker city councilman, Oliver Weilein, won against an establishment Democrat.
The thing that has marked a lot of the politics here is a reactive posture to the state government, but this resolution was something proactive. It was a way for a ‘blue city’ to set what the state of blue politics looks like in Iowa and a way for us to keep Palestine in that conversation.
Iowa City has reputation as a progressive city in a deeply red state. The Iowa Republicans like to derisively call the County we’re in Johnson County, the People’s Republic of Johnson County. However, we’re still lagging behind in terms of Palestine fitting into that progressive platform.
Multiple Palestine groups in Iowa City worked on this issue; it was a coalition effort.
I belong to a group called Iowa City Action For Palestine, a newer organization that formed during the January 2024 push for a ceasefire resolution. That took a lot of hard work from a lot of committed people, but it also underscored how much more work there was to be done.
Even before 2024, there have been Palestinian community members in Iowa City who advocate for this as part of their everyday lives, including real OGs in in Palestine organizing who have been doing this work for 10-20 years.
We had a lot of help from another group, Iowans for Palestine, which has fought to keep this issue at the forefront of progressive politics in the city. Then there’s Jewish Voice for Peace of Eastern Iowa, which was a big coalition partner as well.
In many ways, Palestine activism was latent in Iowa City, but October 7 brought a renewed sense of purpose to many people who anticipated what was coming. Even beyond our blue bubble more broadly, I know there are people in Des Moines, there are people in the Quad Cities, people in Cedar Rapids working on this and we make an effort to support each other’s work, share knowledge, and resources.
Were the lawmakers who voted for this on board right away or was it a process in terms of getting them to that point?
It was definitely a process. Like I said, politics here is very reactive. There was a lot of worry about some sort of retaliation from the state government, which was always a very vague and amorphous worry.
We started out knowing that we had two city councilors out of seven who had made Palestinian human rights a centerpiece of their platforms and understood the conditions that we were trying to organize against. Weilein, and Mazahir Salih, who was the first Sudanese-American ever elected to public office back in 2017.
The two of them helped tremendously with getting, not just city politicians, but the city as an institution on board. They took meetings with the city attorney and the city manager.
We had a working group for the campaign that met very regularly. We planned out talking points. We were careful to include some things in the resolution that we could sacrifice if needed to get it passed. Weilein kept us up-to-date on what the talk was like in City Hall, so we could react very quickly to changes in attitudes.
We flyered neighborhoods for an email campaign, which eventually got drowned out when CUFI caught wind of it and started spamming councilors with thousands of emails.
The process in Iowa City specifically requires either the mayor or three city councilors to place any resolution on the agenda, and we were confident that we would have those three required to place it on the agenda.
The fourth vote that we targeted was the mayor, who believes strongly in the principles of diversity and, I think, really wants to see human rights protected in Iowa City. I think he felt maybe ignorant of the issue or fearful of how people would respond, originally.
There was definitely an effort to get people on board and make them see or feel that this was something worth standing up for. In the end, we are seeing a larger shift in public opinion on this issue that I think some people weren’t aware of. They had this fear of retaliation, but we had to keep reminding our mayor and our city councilors is that they have this power that has been vested in them to direct the finances of the city. That is discretionary power that the city council has. If the city council did not have that power, it would not be a body with any power, really.
We hope to keep building power at the grassroots level and bring this to representatives of the people directly because we know that the people are on our side. People don’t want to see what they’ve been seeing for the last two years, during this genocide.
What would you say to other people who want to organize around this issue, but are also living in Republican-controlled states where it seems like the odds are against them?
The biggest thing that I’ve learned through this process is that you have to ask for more.
We were dealing with a progressive city council in a progressive city, and we got what we asked for in terms of city investments, but there’s obviously still more for us to ask for. There’s still more levels at which we hope we can affect change.
These state governments want you to believe that you’re not allowed to ask for these things and that you can’t organize a boycott, but we’ve realized it’s totally feasible.
People asked [Iowa Governor] Kim Reynolds’s office for a comment on the resolution and she just said, “We support Israel.”
I’m assuming that by “we” she meant Iowans, but we want her to make her feel alone in saying that. We have the power at the grassroots to counteract whatever monetary benefit the state can provide by taking our money back. We can make it clear that the people don’t support Israel.
Whatever way you can do that in your red state is worth doing because even if the other shoe drops, you cannot put that genie back in the bottle. A boycott announces principles as something that guides your actions. Even if the state does organize some way to prevent or counteract your boycott, the principles that guide the action still stand.
Earlier this month, the Iowa City Council unanimously approved a resolution that bars the city from directing any public money toward any entity “complicit in the current and ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza and occupation of Palestine,” including corporate investments and Israel Bonds.
“Tonight is a resolution that is rooted really in our community values of what we really stand for, which is peace, justice, dignity for every human,” Mayor Bruce Teague told the crowd at the City Council meeting. “This resolution does call for the city of Iowa City to boycott public investments and entities complicit in the ongoing humanitarian crisis (in) Gaza, including assistance and the oppression of the Palestinian people. I have no issues calling it what it is. It’s genocide, and that does not make me antisemitic at all.”
The chamber was packed with supporters, but Uchechi Anomnachi, a member with Iowa City Action For Palestine, says activists certainly didn’t view victory as a foregone conclusion.
“The meeting itself is actually not representative of how uncertain this seemed while we were working on it,” says Anomnachi. “We went into the meeting thinking, ‘This could go either way”’- and then a hundred people showed up to support us, and we could see the council members’ gears turning as they realized that it wasn’t politically viable to vote no in that room.”
Mondoweiss U.S. correspondent Michael Arria spoke with Anomnachi about how the resolution process developed, what Palestine activism looks like in Iowa, and what other ‘red state’ activists could learn the victory.
Mondoweiss: Can you explain the organizing around the resolution and the process to get it in front of city council?
Anomnachi Uche: The resolution prevents the city from making investments in companies that are on the American Friends Services Committee (AFSC) divestment shortlist.
The city has a certain number of securities investments, which means that it cannot trade securities with these companies. We wanted to look at the city government as a wealth fund because, in some ways, it is, and we wanted to think about how we could introduce BDS principles to the way that the city chooses its investments.
We worked with the city manager in the lead-up to it. We were inspired by a similar resolution that passed in Portland, Maine, in 2024. The resolution we passed is almost identical to the one in Portland, with some tweaks to make it more specific to Iowa City.
Iowa City passed a ceasefire resolution in January 2024, only a few months after the Al-Aqsa flood. That resolution had “both sides” language, so it was very of the moment.
With this one, we wanted the city to have a record of strongly condemning the violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers specifically, so we changed the language of the Portland resolution to reflect that position more strongly.
Then, we started investigating the city’s investment holdings. The city does trade securities. The city manager releases a quarterly report, and we dug through the report to see with whom the city was invested. The city was not invested with companies on the AFSC divestment shortlist. So we refocused towards this language of boycotting and wanted to make a public statement to block the council from investing in certain companies in the future.
I have to imagine a lot of our readers aren’t familiar with politics and activism in Iowa. Can you talk about the state of Palestinian organizing and some of the activism around this issue?
This isn’t really comprehensive because I obviously don’t know about everything that’s going on in the state, but activism surrounding Palestine in Iowa is so grassroots.
A group will spring up in Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, in the Quad Cities, and it will serve as a real point of genuine connection for people whose awareness of this issue has increased and who previously felt like there was nothing they could do about it.
This resolution was possible because of an emergency election in January, in which our totally awesome punk rocker city councilman, Oliver Weilein, won against an establishment Democrat.
The thing that has marked a lot of the politics here is a reactive posture to the state government, but this resolution was something proactive. It was a way for a ‘blue city’ to set what the state of blue politics looks like in Iowa and a way for us to keep Palestine in that conversation.
Iowa City has reputation as a progressive city in a deeply red state. The Iowa Republicans like to derisively call the County we’re in Johnson County, the People’s Republic of Johnson County. However, we’re still lagging behind in terms of Palestine fitting into that progressive platform.
Multiple Palestine groups in Iowa City worked on this issue; it was a coalition effort.
I belong to a group called Iowa City Action For Palestine, a newer organization that formed during the January 2024 push for a ceasefire resolution. That took a lot of hard work from a lot of committed people, but it also underscored how much more work there was to be done.
Even before 2024, there have been Palestinian community members in Iowa City who advocate for this as part of their everyday lives, including real OGs in in Palestine organizing who have been doing this work for 10-20 years.
We had a lot of help from another group, Iowans for Palestine, which has fought to keep this issue at the forefront of progressive politics in the city. Then there’s Jewish Voice for Peace of Eastern Iowa, which was a big coalition partner as well.
In many ways, Palestine activism was latent in Iowa City, but October 7 brought a renewed sense of purpose to many people who anticipated what was coming. Even beyond our blue bubble more broadly, I know there are people in Des Moines, there are people in the Quad Cities, people in Cedar Rapids working on this and we make an effort to support each other’s work, share knowledge, and resources.
Were the lawmakers who voted for this on board right away or was it a process in terms of getting them to that point?
It was definitely a process. Like I said, politics here is very reactive. There was a lot of worry about some sort of retaliation from the state government, which was always a very vague and amorphous worry.
We started out knowing that we had two city councilors out of seven who had made Palestinian human rights a centerpiece of their platforms and understood the conditions that we were trying to organize against. Weilein, and Mazahir Salih, who was the first Sudanese-American ever elected to public office back in 2017.
The two of them helped tremendously with getting, not just city politicians, but the city as an institution on board. They took meetings with the city attorney and the city manager.
We had a working group for the campaign that met very regularly. We planned out talking points. We were careful to include some things in the resolution that we could sacrifice if needed to get it passed. Weilein kept us up-to-date on what the talk was like in City Hall, so we could react very quickly to changes in attitudes.
We flyered neighborhoods for an email campaign, which eventually got drowned out when CUFI caught wind of it and started spamming councilors with thousands of emails.
The process in Iowa City specifically requires either the mayor or three city councilors to place any resolution on the agenda, and we were confident that we would have those three required to place it on the agenda.
The fourth vote that we targeted was the mayor, who believes strongly in the principles of diversity and, I think, really wants to see human rights protected in Iowa City. I think he felt maybe ignorant of the issue or fearful of how people would respond, originally.
There was definitely an effort to get people on board and make them see or feel that this was something worth standing up for. In the end, we are seeing a larger shift in public opinion on this issue that I think some people weren’t aware of. They had this fear of retaliation, but we had to keep reminding our mayor and our city councilors is that they have this power that has been vested in them to direct the finances of the city. That is discretionary power that the city council has. If the city council did not have that power, it would not be a body with any power, really.
We hope to keep building power at the grassroots level and bring this to representatives of the people directly because we know that the people are on our side. People don’t want to see what they’ve been seeing for the last two years, during this genocide.
What would you say to other people who want to organize around this issue, but are also living in Republican-controlled states where it seems like the odds are against them?
The biggest thing that I’ve learned through this process is that you have to ask for more.
We were dealing with a progressive city council in a progressive city, and we got what we asked for in terms of city investments, but there’s obviously still more for us to ask for. There’s still more levels at which we hope we can affect change.
These state governments want you to believe that you’re not allowed to ask for these things and that you can’t organize a boycott, but we’ve realized it’s totally feasible.
People asked [Iowa Governor] Kim Reynolds’s office for a comment on the resolution and she just said, “We support Israel.”
I’m assuming that by “we” she meant Iowans, but we want her to make her feel alone in saying that. We have the power at the grassroots to counteract whatever monetary benefit the state can provide by taking our money back. We can make it clear that the people don’t support Israel.
Whatever way you can do that in your red state is worth doing because even if the other shoe drops, you cannot put that genie back in the bottle. A boycott announces principles as something that guides your actions. Even if the state does organize some way to prevent or counteract your boycott, the principles that guide the action still stand.
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