On Town Meeting Day this year, Brattleboro, Montpelier, Newfane, Thetford, Vergennes, and Winooski will have the opportunity to vote to declare themselves Apartheid-Free Communities. Other communities will bring it to Town Meeting using the “other business” part of the typical meeting. That pledge, which originated with a campaign by the American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) in 2022, reads:

WE AFFIRM our commitment to freedom, justice, and equality for the Palestinian people and all people; and
 WE OPPOSE all forms of racism, bigotry, discrimination, and oppression; and
 WE DECLARE ourselves an apartheid-free community, and to that end,
 WE PLEDGE to join others in working to end all support to Israel’s apartheid regime, settler colonialism, and military occupation.

Apartheid is the segregation and separation of people based on race, and was the legal system of racial separation in South Africa from 1948 to 1994.

Some object to the application of the term “apartheid” to Israel, but the International Court of Justice found definitively that Israel is indeed responsible for apartheid, and even went further and ordered Israel to make reparations to the Palestinian victims of that crime.

South African president Nelson Mandela was also explicit in drawing the connection, saying, “we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

In an interview that just aired last Tuesday, Ebrahim Rasool, South Africa’s Ambassador to the US, said, “the growing consensus in South Africa is that whatever we’ve experienced in South Africa is on steroids in Palestine.”

Others object to the characterization of Israeli occupation as “settler colonialism”. Books have been filled with ample reason to apply this term, but the fact that Trump is now openly calling for the US to “own” Gaza, ethnically cleanse it of all Palestinians, and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”—while Israeli leadership and media nods in agreement—should put that debate to rest.

A common question about this pledge is: “what does this have to do with Vermont?” In a year where many towns’ budgets, and hence our property taxes, are set to increase, ignoring Israeli apartheid is something we can’t afford. In 2024 alone, the US sent $17.6 billion in arms to Israel to support its apartheid practices and military aggression. This amounts to $27.6 million from Vermont taxpayers – enough money to pay for 1 month of rent for 17,333 households or supply 58,000-plus households with groceries for a month. (Use this tool to see the impact on your own town).

Perhaps an even more significant reason this is a local issue lies in the meaning of apartheid itself.  Apartheid means simply “apart-ness” in Afrikaans. “Segregation” is a plain English word that means “separation”, which is more or less the same thing. Apartheid is not a phenomenon limited to South Africa, nor is segregation peculiar to the Jim Crow South.

In addressing Israel, Ambassador Rasool continued later on in the interview, “the template of apartheid has been completely magnified… That is the kind of DNA [of apartheid] that we recognized as South Africans.” Those strands of DNA didn’t begin in Apartheid South Africa, nor did they end there. In truth, those threads of DNA run through our entire culture.

Those threads went back at least as far as the American Indian reservations, snaked through the Middle Passage, wound through the Pale of Settlement, tightened around the Warsaw Ghetto, looped through the Japanese Internment Camps, cropped up in Jim Crow, multiplied and spread in South Africa and Palestine in the same year, and resurfaced in American inner cities, to name just a few historical landmarks.

On March 4th, Vermonters will vote on a city and school budget, and in doing so decide what and who they value. There are also articles on some ballots to determine if cities will further criminalize unhoused neighbors or treat them with dignity, allow rent gouging or protect renter’s rights, further stigmatize substance use, or address it as a public health crisis. In other words- there are many articles on the ballot that allow voters to choose reducing or increasing “apart-ness” and separation.

The pledge to be an Apartheid Free Community extends beyond a critique of Israel and is grounded in a broader commitment to community and solidarity. Will we as Vermonters be complacent as many historic and current political forces push for “apart-ness” from our unhoused neighbors, our undocumented neighbors, our trans neighbors, our neighbors fighting addiction or mental health challenges? In Winooski, Brattleboro, Montpelier, Vergennes, Thetford and Newfane, voters have a chance to pledge their commitment to freedom, justice, and equality for ALL people, from Palestine to Vermont. At its core, the Apartheid Free Community pledge is a call to what kind of community we want to have—and there is no issue more local than that

– Fhar Meiss