If passed next week, it will make Chicago the nation’s largest city to pass a cease-fire resolution.

By Grace Del Vecchio

A member of the public holds up a sign which reads, “Palestine will be free.” (Photo: Grace Del Vecchio/City Bureau)

Hundreds of Chicagoans descended upon City Hall on Wednesday, asking alders to pass a resolution that calls for a cease-fire in Gaza and urges President Joe Biden to facilitate a peace deal to de-escalate the conflict and provide access to humanitarian assistance, such as medicine and food and water, to Palestinians. The latest version of the resolution also includes “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages,” according to a WBEZ report. 

The cease-fire resolution, which drew the lines of demonstrators donning red, white, green and black — the colors of the Palestinian flag — along with keffiyehs and t-shirts with messages like “Jews say cease-fire now,” was debated, but never voted on. City Council delayed the vote.

Chicagoans wait in line on the first floor of City Hall, waiting to be let in the City Council chambers. (Photo: Grace Del Vecchio/City Bureau)

If passed next week, it will make Chicago the nation’s largest city to pass a cease-fire resolution. 

After remaining mostly silent on the ongoing bombardment of Gaza over the past several months, Mayor Brandon Johnson voiced his support for a cease-fire after Wednesday’s City Council meeting. 

Johnson’s pivot in clear public support for a cease-fire comes after City Council approved a controversial resolution on Oct. 13 that condemned the Hamas attack on Israel, during which the mayor had police remove protesters from the chambers.

WHY WAS THE CEASE-FIRE RESOLUTION STALLED?

Since Israel declared war on Hamas on Oct. 8, Chicago’s City Council has been rife with disagreement over the city’s response to “the deadliest and most destructive war in recent memory” where thousands are dead and up to 1.9 million Palestinians, nearly 85% of Gaza’s population, are displaced, according to a United Nations report. 

On Nov. 1, Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez (33rd Ward) introduced the cease-fire resolution, which currently lists a total of 15 City Council members as co-sponsors. The resolution was set to be put to a vote on Wednesday, until Ald. Debra Silverstein (50th Ward) led an effort with 27 alders to send a letter to Rodriguez Sanchez asking her to postpone to February in order to circumvent the vote taking place during the same week as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, “out of sensitivity to the Holocaust Survivors who suffered so horribly.” 

The letter received immediate pushback from local Palestinian, Jewish and racial justice organizations that support a cease-fire, united in the fight for Palestinian liberation. In a joint statement, the Chicago chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow called the letter “disgraceful” and an insult to the memory of family members who survived or were killed in the Holocaust. Leah Barr, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace, knows the impact of genocide firsthand: she is the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Holocaust survivors. Some of Barr’s earliest memories are of her great-grandmother telling her stories of the horrors she experienced in her young life. She called the letter from the alders a “cheap political ploy.”

“It's perverse for these alderpeople, especially because the vast majority of them do not have this lived or familial experience, to weaponize Holocaust memory,” she said. 

“To me, turning the suffering and anguish of survivors, including my grandmother, into a cheap political chess piece, in addition to delaying and deflecting a vote for this resolution — are the actual affront to Holocaust survivors and their memory.”

LOCAL PALESTINIANS SAY THE IMPACT OF THE ONGOING VIOLENCE IS PALPABLE IN CHICAGOLAND

While Israel’s war on Gaza may be geographically far away, its impact is felt locally. Cook County is home to the largest Palestinian diaspora in the country — a community that is feeling the incalculable loss in Gaza, here in Chicago. 

Muhammad Sankari is an organizer and member of Chicago’s chapter of U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), one of a handful of local organizations in the area leading demonstrations for a cease-fire and Palestinian liberation. According to Sankari, some local Palestinian families have lost over 100 family members in Gaza since Oct. 7.

Chicagoans crowd City Hall, holding Palestinian flags and signage in favor of a cease-fire. (Photo: Grace Del Vecchio/City Bureau)

“There's been a huge cost to the community here, the extended families here. There's been no one untouched by the ongoing genocide,” he said.

To Sankari, the cease-fire resolution is not making lofty demands. 

“[The cease-fire resolution] is not calling for the liberation of Palestine, it's not calling for an end to Israeli occupation or apartheid – these things that are the demands of our movement,” he said. “We don't believe that it's a very big ask — simply asking for an end to the killing. And that should be something that everyone can get behind.”

LOCAL PROGRESSIVE JEWISH ORGANIZERS SAY THE TIME IS NOW

Nationwide, there’s a bloom in Jewish left organizing taking place and Chicagoland is no exception. For decades, local Jewish organizers have challenged the establishment. (For instance, the Chutzpah Jewish Liberation Collective “took on Jewish establishment, the cops and the Nazis” in the 1978 Swastika War in Skokie, Illinois.) Today, local descendants of Holocaust survivors say a cease-fire resolution in Gaza deserves to pass. 

Barr calls on her family’s own history as survivors of genocide as a pillar of support for a cease-fire. She was periodically involved with Jewish Voice for Peace since 2018, but after Oct. 7, she drastically increased involvement, joining the longtime movement of Jews in the U.S. fighting for Palestinian liberation. In her organizing work, Barr said she has encountered and been in community with more descendants of Holocaust survivors than anywhere else in her life.

A member of the public in favor of the cease-fire resolution wears a sweatshirt which reads, “Jews say cease fire now.” (Photo: Grace Del Vecchio/City Bureau)

“To me, that's a very clear message that the people who have this generational linkage to the survivors that the alders and this letter are feigning to be sensitive to, [the people] that this actually affects and for whom that is their experience, are on the opposite side.”

In November, a coalition of progressive staffers from the Chicago Mayor’s Office and City Council formed, encouraging Chicagoans to contact their alders and tell them to support the cease-fire resolution. By the following month, over 100 Chicago organizations had signed onto the coalition’s letter to Mayor Brandon Johnson urging him to support the resolution. 

The group started an online campaign where constituents could send emails directly to their alders. Since Nov. 21, over 245,000 emails have been sent to offices of the mayor and City Council members. 

While a vote did not transpire this week, it’s on the horizon. City Council is set to meet on Wednesday, Jan. 31 to finally put the cease-fire resolution to a vote.

A version of this story was first published in the Jan. 26, 2024 edition of Newswire, a newsletter filled with civic knowledge and opportunities designed for Chicagoans who want to make a difference in the life of their communities by connecting them with civic knowledge and opportunities.

This story is available to republish under a Creative Commons license. Read City Bureau’s guidelines here.

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