PITTSBURGH — Not On Our Dime, a left-wing pro-Palestinian activist group that has been collecting signatures in Pittsburgh for a ballot initiative to restrict the city from doing business with firms tied to Israel, announced they have gathered enough signatures to appear on the May primary ballot.
It marked the second time in a year the left-wing group has initiated a discriminatory Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions measure onto the city of Pittsburgh ballot. The first effort was set aside last August after a judge ruled that their petition, which was backed by the Pittsburgh chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, lacked the required number of valid signatures.
The Jewish Federation celebrated the judge’s decision then as a “victory against” in a statement, describing it as the first attempt to qualify an anti-Israel boycott and divestment proposal at the municipal level.
The DSA said at the time that it had “made the difficult but strategic decision to withdraw our petitions,” the withdrawal would allow them the ability to “come back stronger, more experienced and fully ready to continue fighting for a free Palestine with all avenues available to us.”
In January of this year, the DSA announced they were once again endorsing the Not on Our Dime campaign, saying in their statement their support for the ballot effort was to “make Pittsburgh divest from Israel through a referendum in the May 2025 Primary, because we can’t watch a genocide play out and do nothing — especially not when it’s being funded by our tax dollars.”
However, it appears history is repeating itself when it comes to ballot signature problems for the free Palestine activist group. The Beacon Coalition, a nonprofit group formed a year ago to protect the rights and wellbeing of Jews in the United States, once again identified sufficient objections that would bring the count of valid signatures below the legal threshold.
The Beacon Coalition team, which is comprised of 200 dedicated local volunteers, quickly mobilized to carefully document the ballots, an effort that led to a signature challenge filed in court Tuesday by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and StandWithUs, an international nonprofit gorup supporting Israel and fighting antisemitism.
Jeremy Kazzaz, the executive director of Beacon Coalition, said their work and their volunteer infrastructure is a testament to the strength of grassroots activism and the power of strategic coordination.
“We built a massive petition review process to assist our partners in protecting all Pittsburgh residents, Jewish and non-Jewish, against this latest effort to spread extremist ideologies and to undermine the City of Pittsburgh’s ability to operate.”
Local volunteer Jaclyn Moldovan said she joined the effort because this ballot measure would harm all Pittsburgh residents.
“If this measure cuts off important partnerships between Pittsburgh and mainstream corporations,” she said, “the city will experience serious service disruptions, and we will all be affected.”
The Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh is the home of the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history at the Tree of Life Synagogue in October 2018. The shooter, Robert Bowers, barreled into the synagogue while it was hosting three congregations, Tree of Life, Dor Hadash, and New Light, for weekly Shabbat services.
Brandishing several guns, Bowers shot out of a large window near the entrance to the synagogue and then opened fire on congregants, killing 11 and wounding six, including four police officers who responded to the scene.
In those days and weeks after the massacre, the city rallied around the Jewish community. Signs popped in neighborhoods across the region reading: “Pittsburgh Strong.”
Since October 7 2023, a wave of antisemitism has struck not just across the nation, but also across the city of Pittsburgh, even here in the very Squirrel Hill neighborhood where the massacre has occurred. Just days before the city was set to mark the fifth anniversary of the violent rampage at Tree of Life, the city neighborhood woke up to pro-Palestine graffiti scrawled across the front of Allderdice High School in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood.
Nearby, a “We Stand With Israel” sign had “GAZA” spray-painted over the word Israel.
Last summer, a group of over 300 left-wing activists established a Gaza solidarity encampment on the private property of the University of Pittsburgh; the activists, some involved in local Democratic politics and a few actual University of Pittsburgh students, erected a barricade and set up a fence around an encampment filled with small and large tents.
The encampment also included defacing the Cathedral of Learning, blocking the entrances, and defacing the Frick Fine Arts Building with antisemitic graffiti.
Tensions in the Jewish community here have been on edge as the Left tries to flex power in city government. But Kazzaz and his volunteers are more muscular in their effort to debunk their accumulation of power.
“We built a massive petition review process to assist our partners in protecting all Pittsburgh residents, Jewish and non-Jewish, against this latest effort to spread extremist ideologies and to undermine the City of Pittsburgh’s ability to operate.”
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If the ballot signatures are approved and the referendum goes to the voters in the May primary, there is deep concern it will pass. Pennsylvania has closed primaries, which are often low-turnout affairs that attract the furthest Left of the Democratic Party.
It is not out of the question that it could pass. The city has elected left-wing former DSA members to office recently for state house, council, county executive, and even Congress. The referendum would be devastating for city finances, cause deep divisions in the community, and call into question whether Pittsburgh is truly stronger than hate.