On November 20, 2025, the Philadelphia City Council passed, at long last, a resolution calling on the City of Philadelphia Board of Pensions and Retirement to consider divestment from nuclear weapons. “It is a moral obligation for the City of Philadelphia to invest in what our residents need,” said Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke, who submitted the resolution, “such as safe and healthy homes, affordable transit, working utilities, childcare, and more, rather than weapons that threaten life on our planet.”
The resolution was championed by the Divest Philly from the War Machine Coalition. Founded in 2019, the Divest Philly from the War Machine Coalition consists of 29 organizations raising awareness about the dangers of nuclear weapons and advocating for the City of Philadelphia to divest the Pension Fund from nuclear weapons. Organizations in the coalition include Peace, Justice, Sustainability NOW! (PJSN), the Greater Philadelphia branch of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), World Beyond War, Green Party of Philadelphia (GPOP), the Granny Peace Brigade of Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia Public Banking Coalition.
The City of Philadelphia has been a member of Mayors for Peace since 1985, and in 2019 passed a resolution calling on the US to join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The City also committed in 2013 to divest from guns and in 2017 to divest from private prisons, so the precedent was already set for divestment from nuclear weapons.
The passing of this resolution is only one step towards achieving the divestment, however. It is a request from the City Council to the Philadelphia Board of Pensions and Retirement, but it is the Board itself which must make the decision to divest. So far, they have been unwilling to consider this. The next step in the campaign is to use this Resolution to show the Pension Board that city residents want divestment from weapons of mass destruction.
As in New York City, where the City Council voted in December 2021 to divest its pension funds from nuclear weapons, Philadelphia joins with cities and states around the world divesting from nuclear weapons. This is a major milestone – and an encouragement to every other city in the country: if New York and Philadelphia can decide to divest from nuclear weapons, so can you! Over 109 financial institutions have now offered nuclear weapons free divestment instruments. This can lead to making these weapons not only undesirable – but unprofitable as well.
“The global and multifarious movement to reduce and eliminate the risk of apocalyptic war is strengthened by every successful divestment — advancing the arrival of that day when investment in weapons of mass destruction will be the exception rather than the norm,” says David Swanson, Executive Director of World BEYOND War.
And in thanking the City Council for taking this courageous step, Jean Haskell, member of Granny Peace Brigade Philadelphia, reminds us all that “the United States was the first country in the world to drop a nuclear bomb. We believe it is now time for our country to lead the way to ridding the world of nuclear weapons and the enormous threat they pose. We applaud City Council for taking this important step today.”