CHICAGO—For the past eight quarters (two years), the Palestinian Community Network has organized a protest at the Illinois State Board of Investment (ISBI) meeting. Their demand? That the board stop investing millions of Illinois tax dollars in war manufacturers, including Palantir and Motorola.
The board oversees the state’s public retirement funds, acting essentially as a pension fund investment agency. It oversees $29 billion in funds, and during fiscal year 2025, it administered $3.4 billion in retirement, survivor, and disability benefits.
Critics want to make sure public employees’ money is invested ethically, and some of the ISBI’s decisions don’t stand up to scrutiny, they say. The high-tech firm Palantir, for instance, creates databases on behalf of the Israeli military that are used to spy on Palestinians. It does the same on behalf of Homeland Security and ICE’s efforts to keep tabs on U.S. citizens and residents, activists say. Motorola, meanwhile, manufactures walkie-talkies sold to the Israeli military.
On Monday, Sept. 28, the protesters were back at it. Close to 100 individuals demonstrated outside, kept on the sidewalk because the board only allowed 20 individuals inside, a clear violation of the Illinois Open Meetings Act.
Those who made it in had hoped to confront Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs, who is also vice chair of the pension board, but he was a no-show.
Nick Sous, co-chair of the Palestinian Community Network, spoke outside and led protesters in a chant of “Mike you can’t hide, we charge you with funding genocide,” after the treasurer failed to appear.
Sous said the Pension Board is “complicit in war crimes as well as in the kidnapping of our neighbors through ICE.” He slammed the board for “investing in Palantir and buying Israeli War Bonds.” The crowd erupted in a chant of “Money for education not for occupation.”
Alex, a young Chicago resident, told People’s World that she was there to “especially protest Palantir and other weapons manufacturers” and demand they stop helping in the “killing of Black and brown children and families all over the world.
“Illinois taxpayer money should be used to invest in Illinois schools and transit, not war,” she concluded.
Organizations attending in addition to the Palestinian Community Network included Anti-War Committee Chicago, Democratic Socialists of America, Chicago Peace Action, and the Illinois Green Party.
Attendees were also asked to expand into similar work by joining the national days of action Oct. 7-14 against Howmet Aerospace. The company manufactures essential parts for the F-35 jet, which is used by Israel to drop bombs over Gaza and is responsible for some of the more than 15,000 child deaths there during the current war.
The Howmet Accountability Project reports that without the essential parts for engines, landing gear, and rivets made by the company, the F-35 can’t fly. Though only 15% of Howmet’s business is defense-related, making parts for the Israeli war machine drives immense profits. The company’s stock price rose from $45.96 on Oct. 6, 2023 to $95.70 over the nine months following the start of the war in Gaza.
The project is calling for pickets at Howmet plants, calls to factories and the headquarters, letters to local papers about how the products at these plants are being used. In Illinois, the Evanston Free Palestine Coalition is planning a protest against the company in Skokie.
The next protest demanding ISBI divest from war manufacturing and ICE is scheduled for 8 a.m. on Dec. 8th at 160 N LaSalle Street in Chicago, with protesters attending the 9 a.m. board meeting.
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