Members of Twin Cities Healthcare Workers For Palestine (HCW4P) and other community members were prevented from attending the State Board of Investments’s (SBI) quarterly meeting on Dec. 10 where they planned to encourage the board to divest from Israel, according to a press release from HCW4P. 

The meeting, normally public and held in person, was held in a hybrid format, according to the press release. 35 people were allowed to watch the Zoom meeting while about 25 people were left outside in 26-degree weather. 

SBI accepted public comments by email to be discussed at the meeting, according to the press release. 28 comments were submitted, but none of them were addressed. 

During the meeting, Gov. Tim Walz said the change was made to allow the public more time to voice their concerns. 

“We’ve made this change in response to concerns raised during the last several SBI meetings. In those meetings, members of the public felt constrained by the board ruling, particularly the need of grouping speakers together around the same topic to make sure we stayed within a limited amount of time,” Walz said. “This change gives more people an opportunity to submit comments to address the issues of their concern to the board.”

Barry Kleider, a member of Jewish Voices for Peace who attended the meeting from inside the viewing room, said there was no way for anyone in the room watching the Zoom meeting to communicate with members of the board. 

“The only contact we had with our elected officials was a TV monitor. They couldn’t see us,” Kleider said. “There was no microphone in the room, so they couldn’t hear us. It was really pretty quick that we realized it was a sham.”

The room they watched the meeting from was uncomfortable, Kleider said.

“With all the comfortable meeting rooms at the state capitol, they crammed us into a tiny, little conference room. Seating capacity was 35 and more than half of our group was outside in the cold,” Kleider said. “The closest restrooms were two blocks away and we sat on folding chairs.”

Kleider said SBI gave groups that signed up ahead of time about five minutes to speak after meetings in the past, but during its August meeting, Jewish Voices for Peace was only permitted one minute to speak. No one was allowed to speak outside of submitting email comments during the December meeting. 

“This time, they made it really clear that we weren’t welcome, that they weren’t open to hearing criticism over the state’s investments in Israel,” Kleider said. 

Kleider said Minnesota needs to divest from Israel because it makes the state complicit in the violence in Gaza and is fiscally irresponsible.

“SBI is required to protect our fiscal interests. And Moody’s Analytics has downgraded Israel’s bond rating to the lowest point that any international organization would recognize,” Kleider said. “So for us to be holding Israel bonds is fiscally irresponsible.”

Moody’s Ratings analyzes countries’ and companies’ level of financial risk, according to their website. 

According to Moody’s, Israel’s involvement in global conflict has decreased the country’s creditworthiness in both the short and long term. There are heightened security risks that will likely lead to a slower economic recovery for Israel.

SBI is responsible for making sure people’s pensions are growing as well, including for Minneapolis Public Schools where Kleider works, he said. 

“It’s personal for me, not just as a Jew, but also as a pension holder who works for the public schools,” Kleider said. “So fiscally, it’s irresponsible on their part, and Minnesota should simply not be complicit with a nation that’s bombing its neighbors.”

Sam Sharpe, a mental health worker with HCW4P who was not allowed into the meeting, said the format of SBI’s December meeting went through several iterations. Originally it was scheduled fully virtually, but was then changed to hybrid with an option to watch the live stream in person.

“I got there on Tuesday, about 10 to 15 minutes before the meeting started. And as I was walking up to the building, somebody came up to me and said, ‘Hey, they only let 35 people in, and everybody else is either leaving or staying outside,’” Sharpe said. “And so then I walked up to the building, and there were people outside who were holding signs and banners and chanting.” 

The meeting, Sharpe said, was also shorter than normal, being about 26 minutes long. Other SBI meetings are normally about an hour and a half long. 

SBI did not respond to the Minnesota Daily’s request for comment. 

Alycia Garubanda, a speech pathologist with HCW4P who was not allowed into the meeting, said the way SBI held the meeting felt like a way to silence people’s voices. 

“They’re actively trying to repress our voices from the conversation. It doesn’t feel like a democratic process,” Garubanda said. “It feels like they’re telling us to throw up our hands because there’s nothing that they can do which we know is not true. And it leads me to question what it will take for them to hear us.”

Kleider said only allowing a select number of people inside felt divisive. 

“It felt like they were really intentionally trying to divide us, the people who were inside and the people who were outside,” Kleider said. “So it just felt really mean-spirited on their part and like they really made every effort to let us know that they weren’t interested in hearing from us.”