In a Dearborn cafe, weeks before the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Abbas Alawieh tells Metro Times, “We never want to go back to the version of progressive politics where we’re allowed to be progressive on everything except for Palestine.”
Alawieh, who’s the co-founder of the antiwar Uncommitted National Movement, is reflecting an increasingly mainstream position, one that the movement hoped would soon build to a crescendo loud enough to force party leaders to listen. There were reasons to be hopeful. Polls show that over 80% of Democrats and 50% of Republicans want a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. The problem, as with a long list of progressive causes, is not a gap between activist voices and Democratic Party voters, but between Democratic Party elites and everyone else.
Throughout the convention, where party insiders gathered to nominate Vice President Kamala Harris last week, pro-Palestine voices refused to let the party run from its disastrous role in arming and funding Israel’s genocidal assault.
And they used every tool within reach. While the Uncommitted Movement’s delegates were working to persuade other delegates on the convention floor and making their case repeatedly in the press and on panels, others took to the street in the thousands to echo what the party’s base has been demanding from its leaders for months: a hugely popular ceasefire and weapons embargo on the country committing genocide. “Not another bomb” was the simple and morally indisputable cry.
Georgia State Representative Ruwa Romman, the first Palestinian American elected to public office there, summarized the movement’s core mission at a sit-in outside the convention: “The only reason we are here is to ensure that Donald Trump will never make it to the White House, and save the lives of the people we love.” Put another way: Democrats’ unconditional support for Israel’s wildly unpopular annihilation campaign risks driving away enough voters to cost them the election.
The right targets, the right time
From the beginning, “We were saying [Democrats] have an electoral problem,” Alawieh tells Metro Times.
“We don’t have the luxury to see what happens with Donald Trump,” he says. No one knows this better than the pro-Palestine movement. In remarks to donors, Trump has promised to “set that movement back 25 or 30 years” by throwing “[student protesters] out of the country.”
For that reason and countless others, “I want to be like, ‘OK great, let’s finally pivot to beating Trump,’” Alawieh adds. “But I really need to hear VP Harris differentiate her Gaza policy in some way from Joe Biden’s,” which “has inflicted levels of pain that were previously unimaginable.”
There are obvious political reasons for the Harris campaign to do this.
More than 730,000 voters were furious enough at Biden’s policy that they chose “uncommitted” over him in presidential primaries around the country, including 13% of the vote in Michigan. This allowed the Uncommitted Movement to send 30 delegates to the Chicago convention.
On top of that, recent polling shows that not only is a ceasefire spectacularly popular, but that significant shares of voters in key swing states like Georgia, Arizona, and Pennsylvania would be more likely to vote for a Democrat who supports an arms embargo to Israel and a permanent ceasefire.
But besides some unconvincing tough talk to the media, and a few empathetic words from Harris, the Biden administration hasn’t moved an inch to stop the killing. Just the opposite: Biden has approved billions in new weapons sales. And in a statement posted to X, Harris’s national security adviser, Phil Gordon, cleared up any confusion on where her administration will stand if elected: “[Harris] does not support an arms embargo on Israel. She will continue to work to protect civilians in Gaza and to uphold international humanitarian law.”
This is a cowardly way of saying “We’ll continue to do nothing to stop the bloodbath,” since the only way to “protect civilians” is to stop sending the bombs that are falling on their heads. In a press conference featuring doctors who’ve been to Gaza recently, Dr. Tammy Abughnaim gave the perspective from the ground:
“When we press the Biden admin for an arms embargo as physicians, what we are saying is we cannot do our jobs as bombs are falling,” she said, adding, “as Israeli snipers target children and civilians … Israel has made our jobs impossible … with the direct support of the U.S.”
Which brings us to the convention. The party’s whole job, after all, is winning elections. And all of the people responsible for that were in Chicago, along with the people who have the power to stop the slaughter in Gaza — making it the perfect place to inject concerns about the U.S. role in the carnage.
Making the party practice what it preaches
“This is a movement from within the Democratic Party that is urging the party to practice what it preaches,” Alawieh said at a morning press conference on the convention’s first day.
The Harris campaign and the DNC have cast this election as a choice between Harris — a champion of democracy, freedom, and the rule of law — and Trump, whose core belief is that the world should be run by lawless corporations with unlimited freedom to exploit ordinary people for their own personal gain.
In order for that argument to really stick, the Uncommitted Movement argues, powerful Democrats should start by respecting freedom and the rule of law themselves. Unlike right now, as the Biden administration flagrantly violates U.S. and international laws that ban sending weapons to human rights violaters like Israel, a country that’s blocked humanitarian aid from reaching a starving population, gunned down sheltering civilians in cold blood, and is currently running a network of torture camps where rape and abuse are tolerated and encouraged.
The way for Democrats to live up to their self-image as the party of “protecting families” and “ensuring safety for everyone,” Alawieh says, is by supporting Palestinian freedom.
A convention Fannie Lou Hamer would recognize
“We aren’t that different from any other movement,” Layla Elabed, the Uncommitted Movement’s other co-founder, said on a panel. “From unions to civil rights, gay marriage, reproductive rights or climate justice — we are fighting to be recognized. We are fighting for this party to believe in our equal rights.”
When party officials rejected grassroots pleas that a Palestinian American be given a five-minute speaking slot at the DNC, the Uncommitted National Movement turned to a tactic pioneered by antiwar and civil rights leaders at past conventions: civil disobedience in the form of an overnight sit-in.
One of several names submitted as a possible speaker was Georgia State Representative Ruwa Romman. Part of her drafted remarks read:
“They’ll say this is how it’s always been, that nothing can change. But remember Fannie Lou Hamer — shunned for her courage, yet she paved the way for an integrated Democratic Party. Her legacy lives on, and it’s her example we follow.”
You would think Democrats would be falling over themselves to show how much things have changed since 1964, when civil rights giant Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party had to disrupt the convention theatrics to plead for an end to the party’s support for apartheid in the U.S. South. Or since 1968, when anti-Vietnam war protesters did the same to draw attention to Democrats’ role in an avoidable war of unspeakable horrors. Instead, both groups would recognize the 2024 party’s willingness to shut out dissident voices as a clear echo of the past. Here they are again, sponsoring a war of unspeakable horrors carried out by an apartheid state where ethnic supremacy is enshrined in the constitution — and at the same time, doing everything they can to discipline and silence voices of conscience from their own base crying out for an end to genocide.
Whatever happens in November, the party blew an open lay-up of an opportunity to do the right and politically popular thing at the same time.
This makes it difficult to find a moral victory anywhere in the convention. In isolation, there just wasn’t much there for the horrified and furious voters who favor an immediate ceasefire. By the end of it, Vice President Harris was pledging to “ensure that America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world” and that “Israel has the ability to defend itself” to roaring applause. By ensuring Israel can “defend itself,” politicians mean sending the types of offensive weapons that are currently pounding Gazan society to dust and annihilating civilians by the thousands. To her credit, Harris also recognized the Palestinian people’s right to “dignity, security, freedom and self-determination,” though without any mention that as Israel’s main economic, military, and diplomatic sponsor, the U.S. is the primary obstacle to securing those rights.
But the Uncommitted Movement, and the wider movement for Palestinian freedom, has succeeded in one important respect. Palestinian freedom is now a mainstream position with wide support among labor unions like the UAW and progressive and faith organizations around the country, despite facing massive blowback from the party’s elite.
“Most Democrats and most people in our country are with us,” Alawieh said in a statement following the convention. “We’re not going anywhere. This is our Democratic Party … This is the beginning of an American majority for Palestine. We’ll be continuing to push Biden and Harris for an arms embargo and uniting our party to save lives and defeat Trump and his destructive agenda.”
Back at that Dearborn cafe, Alawieh tells Metro Times, “This movement that we started here in Michigan, in Dearborn, in Detroit. Our movement is a courageous one. And I’m really proud of the fact that we’ve stayed disciplined about the need to not take our eye off the suffering.” Fannie Lou Hamer would recognize this tradition as well.
