MN: Rally at Governor Walz’s mansion demands divestment, slams cancellation of State Board of Investment meeting

St. Paul, MN – On a cold Sunday, November 30, Palestine advocates held a rally at Governor Tim Walz’s mansion to protest his and the other members of the State Board of Investment’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Palestine. The SBI manages the pension funds of Minnesota public employees and invests $5.6 billion of public assets in entities complicit in or profiting from Israeli apartheid and genocide.

Advocates and Minnesota public employees demanded that the SBI divest from genocide and apartheid as Israel continues to violate the October 2025 ceasefire agreement and use U.S.-made weapons to carry out strikes in Palestine and Lebanon. The Israeli military has killed more than 345 Palestinians in Gaza since signing the ceasefire, and it killed 13 people in the Ein el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon on November 18, in violation of its 2024 ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah.

Lina Jebara, a member of the Minnesota Chapter of the US Palestinian Community Network, spoke about Israel’s continued atrocities and ceasefire violations in Palestine and Lebanon. “We’ve seen over the course of the last several months that Israel only reacts to peace deals and ceasefire agreements with brazen violations. These deals and agreements act only to stifle the right to resist for those living under Israeli aggression and occupation. So long as Israeli violence continues to go unabated, those who are subjugated to it have every right to take up resistance and fight to protect their homelands,” said Jebara.

The SBI, which Governor Walz chairs, quietly reduced its holdings in Israel Bonds by about 96% over the past several years by choosing not to renew a $10 million bond that expired in July and by selling other bonds years before their maturation dates at a loss.

Wyatt Miller, a member of the Minnesota Anti-War Committee, spoke to the fact that the SBI divested from almost all of its holdings in Israel Bonds as a direct result of public pressure from advocates, Minnesota taxpayers, pensioners and people of conscience across the state, unified against the board’s investment of public funds in apartheid and genocide. Miller said, “Instead of taking credit for a good decision, [the SBI] tried to deny that anything newsworthy had happened at all. This has been the pattern of BDS victories for years.”

Noting this recent divestment victory for the Palestine liberation movement in Minnesota and many examples of other government bodies divesting from Israel, Miller stated, “I think the main issue is they’re scared of emboldening and energizing our movement by giving us a clear-cut victory. Another aspect is they’re trying to avoid accountability for their bad investments in the first place.” This push for divestment from Israel bonds has been going on for years and has been led by many organizations, including the Minnesota Anti-War Committee, the Minnesota BDS Community, Minnesota Labor for Palestine, and the US Palestinian Community Network.

Fueled by the growing frustration with the board’s lack of action and further complicity in genocide, advocates reminded the crowd that the fight for full divestment from Israeli apartheid and genocide continues in Minnesota. After hearing Walz speak at a recent event, Minnesota Anti-War Committee member Sam Ball spoke to Governor Walz’s hypocrisy, “He spoke about human rights violations, about gun violence in our communities, about starvation and food insecurity. While he was performing, I couldn’t stop thinking about how Israel forces all of those things on Palestinians.”

Advocates in the crowd demanded divestment of the remaining public investments in other complicit corporations, weapons manufacturers, and Israeli companies as event emcees listed off remaining target investments of the Divest MN campaign and how these companies shamefully profit off genocide with the support of our elected officials like Walz and the other members of the SBI.

Regarding the continued push for justice, Jebara reminded the crowd, “Here in Minnesota, that means pushing the State Board of Investment to divest from Israel and the corporations that enable its genocide. It means cutting Israel off from its financial lifeline that enables it to commit atrocities without repercussions. It means calling on the likes of Governor Walz to stop being cowards and stop hiding from their constituency, to acknowledge the role that they play in this genocide, and to heed the demands of Minnesotans who are making it clear that we do not want our money funding these atrocities and that we are not going anywhere until the SBI divests.”

The SBI was set to hold one of its mandated quarterly public meetings on December 3, the Tuesday following the rally, but it removed the meeting details from its website. This follows a yearlong trend wherein the SBI has postponed, cancelled, or put other significant restrictions on every scheduled public meeting, shutting the public and pension holders out from their right to weigh in on the allocation of public funds directly to their representatives.

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