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UNCOMMITTED MOVEMENT DEMANDS SPEAKER AT DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION  
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Melissa Hellmann
August 1, 2024
Guardian
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_ The Movement also wants face time with more receptive Kamala Harris
to talk Gaza concerns to bolster party’s power _

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The Uncommitted National Movement has announced a number of demands in
the run-up to the Democratic national convention
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later this month, part of an effort to use its voting power to
influence Kamala Harris
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Democratic party’s stance on Israel’s war
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In a press call on Thursday, movement leaders demanded that the DNC
allow Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, an American physician who’s worked in
Gaza, to speak at the convention about the humanitarian crisis that
she witnessed first-hand. They have also requested that an uncommitted
delegate be given five minutes to speak at the convention, and
for Kamala Harris
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movement leaders about their concerns.

Uncommitted leaders say that hearing from Haj-Hassan will help the
Democratic party and Harris make informed policy decisions on Gaza,
where more than 39,000 Palestinians
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been killed since the 7 October attack on Israel by Hamas, according
to health officials.

More than 700,000 Americans voted “uncommitted” or its equivalent
in the Democratic party primaries this year in a message to Joe Biden
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count on their support if he did not change his approach to the war.
The movement has particular influence in Michigan, where more than
100,000 people cast “uncommitted” ballots in the primary. It will
send 30 delegates to the DNC in Chicago.

Kamala Harris says ‘I will not be silent’ on suffering in Gaza
after Netanyahu talks
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The movement’s latest appeal follows demands
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last week that include an arms embargo on Israel and support for a
permanent ceasefire in Gaza. Convention planners received the demands
in writing, say movement leaders, but they have yet to receive a
response.

Still, Abbas Alawieh, an uncommitted delegate from Michigan, said that
the movement is “hopeful that the vice-president will take this
opportunity to turn a new page as it relates to Gaza
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can start with this specific initiative”.

During the Thursday call, several doctors who volunteered in Gaza and
have experience in other conflicts said that the scale of atrocities
they witnessed in Gaza were the worst that they’d ever seen.
Haj-Hassan shared that she’d seen Palestinians “being killed in
1,001 ways”. In the emergency department, she often saw the dead
bodies of entire families, with only one surviving child who was
fighting for their life. “We received children maimed, killed,
beheaded, shot,” she said.

“And it is for that reason I have decided to become very vocal and
go beyond my capacity as a pediatric intensive care doctor confined by
the walls of the ICU,” said Haj-Hassan, “to get on the media to
speak to politicians and to advocate for this genocide to come to an
end.” Last week, Haj-Hassan and dozens of other US doctors and
nurses delivered a letter
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Biden that described the scene in Gaza’s hospitals and urged him to
withdraw military support for Israel.

Alawieh said that Harris’s team has signalled a greater openness to
engaging with their movement than Biden did. “She’s expressed a
level of concern about the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza that
perhaps we weren’t seeing from the president,” said Alawieh. He
was also encouraged that her team was in touch with Arab and Muslim
American leaders. “We’re getting more engagement than we did under
President Biden being at the top of the ticket, and so I’m hopeful
that we can move in a direction that leads to her engaging
directly.”

Layla Elabed, a Palestinian American organizer with the Uncommitted
National Movement, said a meaningful response from Harris could
influence her success against Donald Trump in November. “To have any
chance in fighting authoritarianism and fascism that will be on the
ballot in November, then the demands of Uncommitted need to be taken
seriously.”

The movement plans to host programming at the convention regardless of
the DNC’s response to their demands, said Elabed, and referenced the
famous address at the 1964 DNC delivered by civil rights giant Fannie
Lou Hamer, who recounted the violence that she experienced when
registering to vote and called for integration of the all-white
Mississippi delegation.

“We will find a way for Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan to speak officially or
unofficially, one way or another,” said Elabed, “in the tradition
of Fannie Lou Hamer and the civil rights movement, who made moral
witness in the 1964’s convention to human suffering.”

_Melissa Hellmann
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reporter on the Guardian US's race and equity team. _

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