Keep Oak Park Welcoming to All. Three Reasons to Vote NO!
Three reasons to vote no
Vote No on Discrimination
We chose Oak Park because it's a Welcoming Village, where everyone belongs.
In 2017, Oak Park passed its Welcoming Village Ordinance and declared that we stand against discrimination based on nationality. That is the standard we hold ourselves to as a community.
Yet this referendum asks voters to take a side on a boycott movement that the vast majority of Jewish Oak Parkers find discriminatory and hurtful. For many Jewish families here, that weight is personal, not political. When a similar debate reached the Village Board in 2024, a trustee had to tell the audience to stop heckling Jewish residents. We would never treat any other group in Oak Park this way, and it is wrong.
Whatever you believe about the Middle East, your vote won't change a crisis 6,000 miles away. But how Oak Park votes will tell our Jewish neighbors, and anyone else deciding if this is home, whether they belong. VOTE NO!
Vote No on Division
This referendum doesn't belong on our village ballot.
A conflict overseas doesn't belong on our village ballot. The Village of Oak Park exists to deliver local services, not to take sides in international conflicts. This question pits neighbors against each other on an issue where our vote has zero impact. VOTE NO!
Vote No on Distraction
Oak Park already has real decisions in front of it. This referendum isn't one of them.
Our village is in the middle of a zoning debate that will shape it for decades, and a health care access crisis after West Suburban closed. Those are the conversations that will determine Oak Park's future, whatever side of them you're on. This referendum won't build a unit of affordable housing or reopen an emergency room. It has no positive impact in Oak Park, only potential harm. Vote No!
What's on the ballot
This fall, Oak Park voters will see this question on their ballot:
"Should the State of Illinois repeal laws that ban state investment in businesses that boycott the State of Israel?"
Here's what to know:
- The referendum is advisory. No matter how it turns out, no law changes.
- The law that the referendum seeks to repeal passed unanimously in 2015. It bars state investment funds from investing in companies that boycott Israel.
- Only 27 companies are prohibited and they are all based outside of the United States, and most of these are not publicly traded and therefore not suitable for pension fund investments.
- The law doesn't limit what any individual, group, or US company can choose to boycott.
- Neighbors have already weighed in. At the April Oak Park Township annual meeting, a similar measure was voted down 352 to 134.
Wrong place. Wrong priority. Wrong for Oak Park.
Join Oak Park Neighbors United on November 3 and vote no.