Cambridge Council Returns Today to Israel Divestment and Boycott Orders, With No Public Comment This Time

The Cambridge City Council will hold a special meeting at 3 p.m. Wednesday to continue its debate on two policy orders that would have the city divest from and boycott companies tied to Israel's actions in the Palestinian territories, according to the city's meeting calendar as compiled by the Cambridge Civic Calendar. The meeting will also take up an order on the Harvard Square Kiosk. There will be no public comment, the calendar says.

The three items are listed as PO26#195 (Israel Divestment), PO26#196 (Israel Boycott) and PO26#189 (Harvard Square Kiosk). The council meets in the Sullivan Chamber at City Hall, 795 Massachusetts Ave., and by Zoom, and the meeting is televised.

The meeting exists because the council could not finish the orders on its own schedule. At its regular Oct. 19 meeting, the council recessed at 11:45 p.m. after more than six hours of public comment, almost all of it about the two orders, with no action on any agenda item, according to the Cambridge Civic Journal, which publishes notes on each meeting. The meeting resumed at 9 a.m. Oct. 20. The Cambridge | Somerville Independent, in its weekly meetings listing, put the number of public speakers at the first session at about 350.

When the orders came up on Oct. 20, Vice Mayor Burhan Azeem and Councillor Patricia Nolan used their "charter right" to delay discussion to a future meeting, Boston.com reported. The council then adopted, 9-0, a late order from Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui, Councillor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler and Councillor E. Denise Simmons asking that a special meeting be called the week of Oct. 26 to continue discussion of the two orders, according to the Civic Journal's record of the vote.

The divestment order would ask that Cambridge's pension and Other Post-Employment Benefits funds pull investments from a list of companies "with severe and consistent involvement directly contributing to genocide, apartheid, and occupation of Palestinians," Boston.com reported. The boycott order suggests language for an ordinance barring the city from contracting with companies on that list; if adopted, it would go to the council's Ordinance Committee for a hearing. Councillor Ayah Al-Zubi, who introduced both, said the divestment order affects "about 1% of our pension fund" and that "every line in this order is a request," according to Boston.com.

Opponents on the council raised two objections, according to the same report. Azeem said he does not believe Cambridge should involve itself in foreign policy and said he hoped a special meeting could "work on language and pass something." Nolan said the orders single out "just one country" and that she could support divestment, but "not this language." Al-Zubi noted that Cambridge previously voted to keep city funds out of fossil fuels, private prisons and apartheid-era South Africa.

Because the meeting has no public comment, the session will consist of council debate on the orders and any amendments. Azeem's stated hope for new language suggests a substitute could be offered, but none had been published in advance of the meeting as of the calendar's last update.

The Harvard Square Kiosk order, PO26#189, was carried over from the same backlog; the calendar does not describe its contents. The council's next regular meeting is Monday, Nov. 2, at 5:30 p.m.

What remains unknown: whether any councillor will file a substitute order, how the pension board, which is separate from the council, would respond to a request to divest, and when the Harvard Square Kiosk order will be decided.