Providence voters will decide Tuesday whether their city should pull its money from “countries and companies profiting from genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and prolonged military occupation.”
If they say yes, a lawsuit is likely to follow.
Question 7 is a binding initiative that would set some moral boundaries on the city’s investments. It doesn’t mention Israel by name. But Zack Kligler of the group Providence for Palestine says the message is unambiguous.
“It will absolutely send a message to Israel but also to our own government,” he said.
“When Providence divests, we will be the largest city in the country to divest and also the first to do so directly by popular vote,” Kligler said.
In September 2025, an independent United Nations commission concluded Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. Israel strongly rejects that charge.
The Providence vote comes just a week after Israeli voters went to the polls in an election that many hoped could be a turning point in the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Exit polls suggest no one has a clear path to forming a government there.
Here, the divestment ballot initiative has split the city’s political leadership, becoming one of many flashpoints in the mayor’s race.
Mayor Brett Smiley, a staunch supporter of Israel, is urging voters to reject Question 7.
“It’s not just divestment from Israel. It’s also businesses that do business with Israel,” Smiley said. “It would prevent the city’s pension fund from investing in Google, or Microsoft, or Apple, or Caterpillar. Blue chip, American companies.”
The proposed ordinance targets companies that “directly and knowingly enable and contribute” to human rights abuses. If it passes, it would direct the city to get out of direct investments in companies found to be “complicit” in those abuses.
The city’s $700 million pension fund rarely invests in individual companies, according to annual reports, but often invests in funds that hold a range of stocks and financial instruments, such as index funds. The ordinance directs the city to “officially and publicly ask the managers of these accounts or funds to consider adopting the above restrictions on its investments.”
The city treasurer would review the portfolio annually.
Supporters of the measure, including likely new mayor and current state Rep. David Morales, say the city can work out the details later. Ditto the potential legal challenges.
Smiley says even that will be expensive.
“It violates the city charter, and it likely violates state law,” Smiley said. “It will be challenged in court, and the only thing that Providence residents will have to show for their efforts is a bill for legal services.”
Smiley, a convert to Judaism, claimed the initiative poses a threat to the Jewish community.
“It will make many members of our community unsafe because we know antisemitism is on the rise in the country and here in Rhode Island,” he said. “And something targeting Israel will, in effect, target our Jewish community here in Providence.”
But Morales, who defeated Smiley in the September Democratic primary, calls that fear-mongering.
Morales wholeheartedly supports Question 7.
“I believe it sends a message,” he said, “that our values are reflected in our budgets. And our values are reflected in the way we choose to spend taxpayer dollars.”
Morales is part of a new generation of elected officials who’ve sought to separate Jewish identity from Israeli politics. Like New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed, Morales believes supporting our Jewish neighbors does not require financial and military support for Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime.
“We have that responsibility as elected officials, across all levels of government, to have layers of moral clarity, but to also be absolutely clear that the atrocities and the genocide happening in Gaza in no way, shape, or form ever justify any form of antisemitism,” Morales said.
In other words: think globally, act locally.
That’s not how Maria Friedman sees it.
“This is completely trying to target Israel and also harm the Jewish people,” she said. “It is antisemitic.”
Friedman is executive director of the Rhode Island Coalition for Israel, which has threatened to sue if the measure passes. She predicted Providence would have to pay “hundreds of thousands of dollars in costly legal fees, instead of focusing on city services.”
“This really doesn’t have anything to do with Providence,” Friedman said. “Providence should spend its money on Providence: trash pickup, snow removal, quality of life for the citizens.”
Providence for Palestine’s Kligler called the antisemitism accusation absurd.
“Many of the leaders of this initiative, including myself, are Jewish,” he said. “We're doing this rooted in our Jewish values.”
Kligler and Friedman are both looking beyond Rhode Island.
“We’re definitely nervous that if this passes here it will encourage other cities across the country to do the same,” Friedman said. “That’s when it starts having a huge impact on Israel.”
That’s exactly what Kligler hopes for. It’s a strategy that eventually pressured South Africa back in the 1990s to end Apartheid.
Would Question 7 survive a court challenge?
In 2016, Rhode Island lawmakers passed H-7736, a law aimed at countering the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. But Jared Goldstein, a constitutional law professor at Roger Williams University School of Law, says it’s unclear whether the law applies here.
“It stops the state from contracting with private parties that are boycotting Israel. But it doesn’t say anything about whether the city itself or any other state or local entity has to engage in business with Israel,” Goldstein said.
In other words, the city can’t serve Ben & Jerry’s at an ice cream social if Ben & Jerry’s is boycotting Israel. But, said Goldstein, “Nothing in the law requires Providence to invest in companies doing business with Israel.”
The ACLU of Rhode Island opposed the 2016 anti-boycott law on First Amendment grounds, but has taken no position on Question 7. Executive director Steven Brown agreed H-7736 wouldn’t apply here.
“People have raised other legal concerns about Question 7, but I don’t see any conflict with what the state law is doing,” he said.
Mayor Smiley claims the measure would violate the city charter provision that allows initiative petitions, as long as they don’t cost taxpayers money or imbalance the city budget.
Question 7’s proponents say that’s a fight for another day. And, they say, when it comes to Tuesday’s vote, that’s beside the point.
“It’s a way of showing the political establishment where voters actually are on this issue,” said Providence for Palestine’s Kligler.
“And if they don’t want to be left behind, they have to start taking action,” he said.
Early voting is already underway. The polls close Tuesday, Nov. 3, at 8 p.m.
