As violent crime figures remain at “historic highs” in Portland, Ore., four socialist city councilors are pledging to launch an investigation—into any “complicity the city may have with Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid, or genocidal violence against Palestinians.”
Any actual investigation would need to be launched via a resolution voted on at a public city council meeting, a spokeswoman for the council said. The four socialist councilors—Tiffany Koyama Lane, Mitch Green, Sameer Kanal, and Angelita Morillo—nonetheless promised to conduct one during a virtual Friday afternoon press conference organized by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).
The councilors say the investigation would center on the “manufacturing of weapons and weapons parts intended for use by the Israeli government” as well as “investments in our contracts with companies complicit in Israeli illegal occupation, apartheid, or genocidal violence against Palestinians.”
“Every dollar that is going towards bombing and maiming innocent people abroad is a dollar that is not being spent on our infrastructure here at home,” Morillo said during the press conference, which the Washington Free Beacon attended.
The pledge comes as the DSA emerges as an increasingly dominant force within the Democratic Party. DSA members flexed their growing power at their August biennial convention, celebrating socialist Zohran Mamdani’s status as frontrunner for New York City mayor and mocking the Democratic Party’s plummeting approval rating, the Free Beacon reported.
Socialist power in Portland, however, is nothing new. The city’s DSA chapter, founded in 1982, saw a surge in membership—from 5 to 800—between 2016 and 2018. Lane, Green, Kanal, and Morillo all secured election to the city council last year. Green is the former treasurer of Portland DSA, and Lane serves as council vice president.
Portland struggled in the wake of its socialist surge. The city set a new record for homicides in 2022, and while violent crime has started to inch down, “it is still at historic highs,” according to a Portland Police Bureau report published in January 2025.
The city has also grappled with a drug crisis since Oregon voters decriminalized fentanyl in 2020. City leaders declared a 90-day fentanyl emergency in January 2024. At least 172 people died of drug overdoses in Portland’s surrounding county in the 3 months that followed the declaration.
It’s unclear what the socialist councilor’s probe into Israeli-linked “investments” would look like, given that a pension fund for city employees is managed by the state. Activists affiliated with the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement have called for the boycott of a wide array of companies for trivial reasons—the Palestinian BDS National Committee, for example, has instructed its followers to boycott Disney for casting Israeli actress Gal Gadot, a move that the group says furthers “Israel’s propaganda efforts.” The state pension fund holds over 155,000 shares of Disney stock.
Portland’s four socialist councilors, plus two of their left-wing allies, Candace Avalos and Jamie Dunphy, comprise a progressive voting bloc that calls itself “Peacock.” Those six members are one below the number of councilors needed to reach the quorum necessary to formally launch an investigation.
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