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THE 2024 DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION: MORE 1964 THAN 1968  
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Liza Featherstone
August 23, 2024
Jacobin [[link removed]]

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_ The media kept comparing this year’s DNC to Chicago 1968. But
given the party’s rejection of the Uncommitted movement, Atlantic
City 1964, when Democrats refused to seat Fannie Lou Hamer and the
Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, is more apt. _

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party supporters march on the
boardwalk during the 1964 Democratic National Convention, Atlantic
City, New Jersey, August 24, 1964., Warren K Leffler / PhotoQuest /
Getty Images

 

It’s become an election year ritual: Every time the Left protests at
the Democratic National Convention, we hear the comparisons to 1968,
the year that tensions over the Vietnam War caused chaos in the
streets. Just as it did back then, the spectacle of unsightly
demonstrators, liberals warn, will only help the Republicans and
alienate the normies, or persuade antiwar voters to stay home from the
polls in November. Then, the thinking goes, just like Hubert Humphrey,
the Democrats will go down in defeat. Liberals and moderates deliver
this warning every single convention, at least whenever the protests
are significant, breathlessly reminding us that the hippies gave us
Nixon and, therefore, the Left must shut up.

This year was no exception. The fact that this year’s convention was
in Chicago made the comparison an especially irresistible trope for
cheap punditry. Political consultant Don Rose was already warning back
in April
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that it looked like “a repeat in the making . . . a perfect
parallel.”

But this year, 1968 turned out to be the wrong historical comparison.
The relevant one would have been 1964.

That year, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), objecting
to the exclusion of black delegates by the racist “Dixiecrats,”
white supremacists who ran the local parties and used violence to
suppress black votes throughout the South, went to the DNC in Atlantic
City to demand representation. Led by Fannie Lou Hamer and other civil
rights legends, the MFDP was intended as a parallel party open to all,
challenging the undemocratic, all-white Democratic Party.

In the months leading up to the DNC, the MFDP organized Mississippi by
precinct, county, and region and held their own state convention to
choose sixty-eight delegates. They then came to Chicago and demanded
that these delegates be seated as delegates at the DNC. Many of their
fellow delegates were persuaded, but President Lyndon B. Johnson,
afraid of backlash from the Dixiecrats, refused.

In a compromise, the MFDP was offered two seats, an offer that Hamer
famously rebuffed, quipping, “We didn’t come all this way for two
seats when all of us is tired.”

The MFDP had done everything right. They did all the things that
activists are always accused of not doing. They dressed nicely and
made clear they were part of the Democratic Party, not outsiders
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They held press conferences and spoke eloquently and politely. They
used the language of patriotism and stressed that they just wanted to
be treated as human beings.

Hamer, in a speech given before the DNC credentials committee
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and broadcast on national television, emphasized the plight of blacks
in the South:

We want . . . to become first-class citizens, and if the Freedom
Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America, is this
America, the land of the free and the home of the brave where we
have to sleep with our telephones off of the hooks because our lives
be threatened daily because we want to live as decent human beings,
in America?

Nowadays, the MFDP and its calls for racial equality and democratic
rights are acknowledged
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righteous
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by conservatives
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But at the time, the official Democratic Party couldn’t even concede
to their most basic demand for representation.

This is the history that is repeating itself so tragically. This year,
the Uncommitted National Movement used the same tactics as the MFDP to
demand basic humanity toward Palestinians who are being slaughtered by
Israel using weaponry paid for by the United States. The movement
elected delegates during the state primaries and sent them to Chicago.
Unlike the MFDP delegates, there was no controversy over seating them.
They spoke politely as full members of the Democratic Party. They held
professional press conferences. They persuaded fellow delegates, many
of whom then wore keffiyehs and Palestinian flags on the convention
floor in solidarity.

Harris’s words were an incoherent collage of triangulation. But
without the Uncommitted movement, she would have given a very
different speech.

Yet the Democratic Party would not accede to any of their demands,
which included an arms embargo and a Palestinian American speaker on
the floor of the convention. Representative Ruwa Romman, the
Palestinian woman in question — a state representative in the
critical swing state of Georgia — was a Harris supporter whose
speech, made public
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would have been as nonconfrontational as possible.

It goes almost without saying, unfortunately, that Harris was never
going to agree to an arms embargo. (As many have been asking, how do
you support a cease-fire when you keep fueling the fire?) But the
rejection of Romman was deeply insulting to the antiwar movement, to
many in the Muslim and Arab community, and to the millions of
Americans who long for an end to the genocide in Gaza.

“Uncommitted” delegates hold a press conference at the DNC in
Chicago. (Uncommitted National Movement)

The parallel with the MFDP was not lost on the Uncommitted movement,
which distributed pins with Hamer’s face and her famous quote “No
one’s free until everyone’s free.” Nor was it lost on Romman
herself, who referenced Hamer in her rejected speech, which she ended
up delivering outside the convention.

The Left of the Democratic Party was robustly united behind the
Uncommitted movement’s demand for a Palestinian speaker. Throughout
Thursday, the last day of the convention, that demand received vocal
support not only from the Squad but from milder progressive
Congresspeople like Pramila Jayapal and Lloyd Doggett. It was also
backed by UAW president Shawn Fain — a dramatic difference with his
predecessor six decades ago, Walter Reuther, who in 1964 threatened to
withdraw financial support from Martin Luther King’s Southern
Christian Leadership Conference if the MFDP didn’t back down on its
demands for representation at the DNC.

Harris’s speech showed that she was listening to the Uncommitted
movement and did want their vote, but it also showed that she wasn’t
willing to alienate any donors, weapons manufacturers, or her current
boss. To a nation yearning for peace, she promised the “most lethal
military ever.” She full-throatedly and unconditionally pledged
support for Israel and Israel’s “right to defend itself.” She
repeated unproven details about the October 7 attacks.

Yet Harris also reiterated her commitment to a cease-fire and deplored
the suffering in Gaza in sincere tones. What was new and unprecedented
for a Democratic presidential nominee was her emphatic language on
Palestinian self-determination. Her words were an incoherent collage
of triangulation. But without the Uncommitted movement, Harris would
have given a very different speech.

After the MFDP was rejected, the next convention year was the infamous
1968. The Left, this time hoping to end the war in Vietnam, had
learned from the MFDP’s experience that the party wouldn’t listen
to them if they played by the rules. The Democrats found out what
happened when they don’t even throw the Left a bone. It begs the
question: Without a serious shift on Palestine within the party
happening very soon, what will the 2028 DNC look like?

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Contributors

Liza Featherstone is a columnist for _Jacobin_, a freelance
journalist, and the author of _Selling Women Short: The Landmark
Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart_.

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