‘We won’: Jewish Pittsburghers help defeat BDS ballot referendum
Scrutinized petition signatures didn't meet minimum requirements
Jewish Pittsburghers found reason to celebrate on Monday, Aug. 19, waking to news that the Pittsburgh Democratic Socialists of America — the fiscal sponsor of the group No War Crimes on Our Dime — had pulled the group’s petition to place a referendum on November’s ballot.
The referendum would have required Pittsburgh to cease doing business with any organization or individual that does business with or in Israel.
In a lengthy X (formerly Twitter) post, PDSA announced its decision on Sunday night, just hours before a hearing on the matter in Allegheny County Court.
“Unfortunately, today their efforts to push us off November’s ballot succeeded,” the PDSA’s statement read in part.
The revocation of its petition was made official before a full courthouse — packed mostly with members of the Jewish community and their supporters — by Judge John T. McVay during proceedings that lasted barely five minutes.
The decision to withdraw the petition, negotiated between PDSA’s legal team and lawyers for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and City Controller Rachael Heisler, was based only on the invalidity of signatures gathered to put the referendum on the ballot.
In it’s challenge, Federation maintained that 10,387 signatures were invalid for a variety of reasons including legibility, residency, address or problems with the circulator.
McVay did not rule on the legality of the referendum’s language, which could leave open the possibility of a similar petition being filed during the next election cycle.
“Those who support Israel unconditionally have poured resources into these legal challenges that we simply cannot keep up with,” the PDSA wrote in its online statement, seemingly conceding defeat.
Reaction from Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s President and CEO Jeff Finkelstein was succinct.
“We won,” he said outside of the courthouse. “Whatever the other side says, we won.”
And while Finkelstein said that he was happy with the decision, he also expressed disappointment at not having arguments heard about the legality of the referendum’s language, which he said would violate state anti-BDS laws.
“I think [it] would have set a good precedent for the future,” he said, “because we are worried about what the future could bring. We’ve seen this hatred for many years.”
In a prepared statement, Heisler called the decision a victory for the city of Pittsburgh.
“The referendum would have been impossible to implement, a threat to public safety and a significant legal liability,” she said.
Heisler said she was proud to have been part of the challenge but was disappointed that other government leaders chose not to intervene.
The referendum, she said, was fundamentally bad policy that would not make anyone safer, in Pittsburgh or in Gaza.
“I believe the referendum language itself is why they failed to get enough signatures,” she said. “City residents do not want to lose access to essential drugs our medics and EMTs carry or the safety equipment that protects our firefighters or the electricity to keep the lights on.”
Neither the city solicitor nor City Council challenged the petition.
A statement from Mayor Ed Gainey’s office said he expects that conversations and efforts to “end the war in Gaza” would continue.
“I believe the vast majority of our residents deeply wish for an end to hostilities in Gaza as well as for the return of all hostages, and we continue to pray for better, wiser leadership to emerge so that there can be peace. My role in this work is to keep Pittsburgh safe and to make common cause with those who refuse violence and who are actively listening to their neighbors and engaging in meaningful dialogue, as that is the only real path forward,” the statement said.
Julie Paris, mid-Atlantic regional director of StandWithUs, said that she felt a combination of relief and joy at the decision.
StandWithUs was one of the entities that helped organize more than 100 volunteers to examine the 15,000-plus signatures submitted as part of PDSA’s petition.
“It would not have happened without the mobilization of our community members meticulously going through every single signature not once, not twice but three times,” Paris said.
The Jewish community, she said, has been constantly attacked since the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting of 2018.
“We are a community that is traumatized by attacks, and this is another example,” Paris said.
The referendum, she added, has nothing to do with human rights or justice; instead, she said, it has “everything to do with antisemitism and discrimination.”
Jeremy Kazzaz, executive director of the Beacon Coalition, said he wasn’t surprised by the outcome of the case.
Like StandWithUs, the Beacon Coalition helped organize volunteers to pore through the signatures filed as part of PSDA’s petition.
“I think last night the DSA folks who filed the petition came to the realization that we had gained when our volunteers put their elbow grease into reviewing the petition,” Kazzaz said. “They failed to meet the minimum requirements. They couldn’t even get 10% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election in Pittsburgh to sign this petition.”
And while Kazzaz was pleased with the decision, he also would have liked to hear the arguments around the referendum’s legality. If nothing else, he said, it would have been good for public discourse.
Despite the win, this may not be the last time lawyers for the parties meet in a courtroom. Attorneys for the Federation have indicated that they will seek a judgment ordering the PDSA to cover the organization’s court costs. PJC
David Rullo can be reached at drullo@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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