Over the past week, five Vermont towns voted to oppose Israeli apartheid. Brattleboro, Newfane, Plainfield, Thetford, and Winooski, voted to affirm the “apartheid-free” pledge, which contains a commitment to opposes Israeli apartheid, settler colonialism, and military occupation. With these votes, the five Vermont towns have become the first apartheid-free municipalities in the United States.
These votes come after more than a year of community-centered work by activists and organizers across the state, who gathered thousands of signatures in support. While Palestine may be far away geographically, many Vermonters are outraged that the U.S. is sending billions of dollars in lethal weapons to kill Palestinians instead of funding community care initiatives like mental health care, climate initiatives, and education at home.
The language on the ballot measures comes from the Apartheid-Free Communities campaign. Nearly 500 communities – including congregations, businesses, and solidarity organizations – are part of this global network. The Apartheid-Free pledge simply states: “WE AFFIRM our commitment to freedom, justice, and equality for the Palestinian people and all people; WE OPPOSE all forms of racism, bigotry, discrimination, and oppression; and WE DECLARE ourselves an apartheid-free community and to that end, WE PLEDGE to join others in working to end all support to Israel's apartheid regime, settler colonialism, and military occupation.”
Palestine is a Local Issue
Over the past year, I’ve gotten to travel to Vermont to support local activists in my role as an organizer at the American Friends Service Committee. While there, I was struck by how clearly Vermonters saw the interconnectedness between local issues and U.S. militarism around the globe. Vermonters' vocal opposition to war, militarism, and violence against Palestinians goes back decades. Organizers have led campaigns against basing F-35 fighter jets in Burlington, in support of the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, and against Ben & Jerry’s sale of ice cream in occupied territory. The apartheid-free campaign is the newest iteration of this intersectional work.
Today, More than 35 diverse groups in Vermont have already taken the Apartheid-Free pledge including mental health organizations, faith groups, unions, political parties, and climate organizations. They understand justice for Palestinians to be a local issue not only because three young Palestinians were shot in Burlington, but also because the struggle for Palestinian liberation intersects with other local justice struggles.
The apartheid-free campaign takes root
When Vermont organizers saw the apartheid-free pledge, they thought big. What if instead of getting smaller groups and organizations across Vermont to take the pledge, they could get whole cities and towns to take the pledge?
They started in Burlington, where they needed to collect the signatures of 5% of registered voters to get a measure on the ballot. I first joined organizers in Vermont in September of 2023, a month after they had begun to spread the word at the Burlington City Farmers Market. For the next few months, organizers collected signatures on Church Street, at community events, and on the University of Vermont campus. They carried petition sheets around, collecting signatures wherever they went.
By January, the organizers had collected more than enough signatures to meet the legal requirement to be on the ballot. And yet the Burlington City Council voted 7-5 against adding the pledge language to the March 2024 ballot – taking away voters’ opportunity to weigh in on the issue.
Organizers were frustrated with this undemocratic action by the City Council, but recognized the vote and the preceding hearing for what it was––a victory. Community members including teachers, parents, a poll worker, students, political activists, Jewish and Arab Vermonters, and local leaders spoke at the hearing in support of the ballot initiative. They spoke with conviction, explaining why they believed the work to uphold human rights abroad is a local issue. They demonstrated a deep awareness that, as Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
This January, the Burlington City Council once again voted against putting the pledge to the voters. This time, only five City Council members voted no and the Mayor stated she would vote to affirm the pledge if it came to her desk. The struggle in Burlington is not over, and considering the apartheid-free pledge has made space for communities across Vermont to talk openly about the realities of Israeli apartheid, occupation, and colonization.
The Apartheid-Free movement goes statewide
What was a year ago a campaign in one city, is now ten campaigns spanning the entire state. Organizers are distributing information, holding teach-ins and rallies, and even hosted a big conference to continue community education. Local organizing leaders, who take care to present the campaign in a manner specific to their communities, have been key to the expansion of the Apartheid-Free work into more rural and suburban areas in Vermont.
With their support for the apartheid-free pledge, Vermonters are drawing a line in the sand––not between Jewish and Muslim communities or progressive and conservative communities, but between those who are willing to make a principled stand for peace and justice and those who would rather sweep our differences and disagreements under the rug.
The Future of the Campaign
When I was last in Vermont, Wafic Faour, a Palestinian resident of Richmond, VT and a leader in the ballot initiative kept repeating something that stood out to me. He said, “the streets are ahead of us.” As a national organizer working for freedom, justice, and equality for Palestinians, I was surprised. I spend so much of my day trying to meet my community members where they are and discovering that there is so much still to learn and unlearn about Palestine and Palestinians. How could “the streets” possibly be ahead of us?
But watching the response the organizers are getting in Vermont, I’ve realized he was right. All over the country and the world, the people demonstrating in the streets calling for an end to genocide, apartheid, and colonization––terms that when used only years previous by respected human rights organizations were called into question.
A majority of people in the U.S. want a cease-fire and an end to U.S. weapons sales and transfers to Israel. Vermonters are eager to act in support of Palestinian human rights and dignity not only because of the tireless work of organizers in their communities, but also because stopping this violence is intuitive.
You don’t have to be an expert or an academic to see the throughline between the Jim Crow South, the South African apartheid regime, and the Israeli apartheid regime. Many Vermonters I met connected their outrage with the way undocumented immigrants are detained in the U.S. with the way Palestinians are held in administrative detention. They understand how settler colonization continues to affect the native peoples on this land, and recognize Israeli expansion of settlements and ethnic cleansing in Palestine as part of the same root harm.
Vermonters and people across the world are not content watching U.S. participation in genocide and apartheid without taking action. They’re not content with shaking their heads in sadness at their televisions and radios. Members of Congress have received a historic number of phone calls over the past 16 months. Large groups of people, including huge numbers of Jews, Christians, and Muslims have interrupted business as usual over and over again.
With this historic victory, Vermont organizers could just pat themselves on the back for a job well done, but with these apartheid-free declarations comes more work. I know that Vermonters will continue to demonstrate, educate, and refuse to be silently complicit in US participation in violence, at home or outside our borders.
Those with the power to stop the U.S. government’s active participation in Israel’s genocide, apartheid, military occupation, blockade, settler colonialism, and annexation may not see it until it is too late, but the streets are ahead of them. The outrage of watching our government give its unconditional support to systems of oppressive and genocidal violence is not going away. Those attempting to halt or re-direct our empathy will not succeed. Vermonters are helping to lead the way.
