MIAMI BEACH — Dozens of activists gathered outside of the Convention Center on the second public day of Art Basel Miami Beach, December 7, to call on the city to divest from Israel. On the sidewalk near the venue where the fair is being held, volunteers asked attendees to sign petitions calling for a boycott of Art Basel until Miami-Dade County and Miami Beach stop investing in bonds that support the war in Gaza.
Organizers from local groups including Jewish Voice for Peace South Florida, Al-Awda, and Students for Justice in Palestine at Florida International University used the international art fair as a platform to criticize the Miami Beach government, which doubled its investment in Israeli bonds to $20 million last year. They handed out informative leaflets with with the heading “Our tax dollars are funding the genocide of the Palestinian people.”
Nearby Palm Beach County recently voted unanimously to increase the cap on investments in the nation, making it the world’s largest investor in Israeli bonds, with approximately $700 million of its $4.67 billion dollar portfolio allocated.
Organizers gathered at the art fair entrance at 2pm and attempted to unfurl their “LET PALESTINE LIVE” banner on the steps of the Convention Center underneath the Art Basel sign as they did last year.
But Convention Center Drive was lined with police vehicles, and they were met by a dozen officers who told them that the area around Convention Center Drive was a “security zone” only accessible to those with tickets to the event. The protesters quickly relocated to the corner of 17th Street and Convention Center Drive near Miami Beach City Hall.
Alan Levine, a local lawyer and protestor at the event, believes this was an infraction of activists’ First Amendment rights and told Hyperallergic that he plans to pursue legal action against the city.
“It’s obvious that if the event is held in a public place on a public street, we have the right to reach those who are going in,” Levine said.
Police also required that protestors remove the poles which held up the sign, claiming that they had to be a certain dimension to be permissible even after they had left the perimeter of the fair. At least 20 police officers with riot gear watched the protestors from the parking spots on the street as they chanted.
The Miami Beach Police Department has not yet responded to Hyperallergic’s request for comment.
Protesters like Zaina Alsous felt that they were still able to accomplish their goal of disrupting the space.
“Miami is a very working-class city, where a lot of people, primarily immigrants, work for relatively low wages with high costs of living while the rich fly in to purchase art and stay in luxury hotels and then leave,” Alsous told Hyperallergic. “I think any time we have a moment where a lot of wealthy people are using Miami for recreation, we have a responsibility to uplift and puncture that space with the reality of what is happening in the world.”
Earlier in the week, organizers from the group held a similar demonstration at the “Great Elephant Migration” installation designed by Shubhra Nayar in the mid-Beach area. The nearby suburb of Bal Harbor was the first city in the nation to pass an ordinance against the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement, a kind of law that has now started to become commonplace.
The organizers hope that protesting Miami Beach’s largest event of the year will help them reach public commissioners and local residents to start a conversation about Israel’s ongoing attacks, which have killed over 44,000 Palestinians in Gaza and over 700 in the Occupied West Bank, and the way that bond funds could be better used by the community on local projects.
Donna Nevel, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace and longtime Miami Beach resident, sees this activism as a part of a long tradition of activism on the beach.
“My family marched with Martin Luther King against segregation on Miami Beach. I marched as a high school student with the farm workers during the grape boycott,” Nevel told Hyperallergic. “I am so proud to now be standing with the movement to call for justice for the Palestinian people …It’s my obligation as a Jew to say not in my name, never again.”
