Uncommitted movement demands DNC allow a representative to speak on Gaza
Melissa Hellmann
Thu, August 1, 2024 a


People rally outside of a polling location for people to vote uncommitted in the Democratic primary in Dearborn, Michigan, on 27 February 2024.Photograph: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The Uncommitted National Movement has announced a number of demands in the run-up to the Democratic national convention (DNC) later this month, part of an effort to use its voting power to influence Kamala Harris and the Democratic party’s stance on Israel’s war in Gaza.

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 to meet with 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 have 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 that he could not 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.

Related: Kamala Harris says ‘I will not be silent’ on suffering in Gaza after Netanyahu talks

The movement’s latest appeal follows demands announced 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 policy, and hopefully that 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 to 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.”



Uncommitted Delegates Demand To Be Heard At Democratic National Convention

Sanjana Karanth
Thu, August 1, 2024 

Delegates for an anti-war, pro-Palestinian voting blocare calling for Democratic National Convention organizers to allowa doctor who’s been on Gaza’s front lines to speak at the presidential nominating event about the humanitarian crisis.

The “uncommitted” delegation represents a movement of Democratic voters who oppose the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. The movement sprang from the frustration of voters ― many of whom are Muslim and Arab American ― who refused to cast their Democratic primary ballot for President Joe Biden because of his Gaza policy.

What started as a statewide protest vote in Michigan spread across the country, garnering hundreds of thousands of votes and resulting in what the movement said is 30 “uncommitted” delegates for the DNC, where thousands of delegates will formally nominate the Democratic presidential candidate.

The delegation’shope is that having Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan address DNC attendees from the convention floor about what she has witnessed in the Palestinian enclave will help the Democratic Party face the human devastation of Israel’s U.S.-funded siege, which is entering its 10th month.

“The Democratic National Convention is a chance to declare our values to the American public, to set the tone for the next four years,” June Rosenbaum, an uncommitted delegate from Rhode Island, said on a call set up Thursday morning by the delegation. “The Democratic Party cannot espouse the values of freedom, justice and equality at home while being the party of death and destruction abroad. The Democratic Party cannot oppose fascism at home while enabling genocide abroad.”

“For 18 years of my life, I never heard a single person speak up for Palestine,” they said. “With a DNC speaker with experience on the ground in Gaza, we can make it so no American can ever say the same.”



The delegation said it sent written requests to Democratic National Committee representatives and convention planners nearly a month ago but has yet to hear back. The request includes for Haj-Hassan, an American pediatric intensive care physician, to have five minutes of speaking time on the convention floor during evening programming.

The group asked for one of its delegates to have speaking time as well as language in the DNC platform that calls for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and an immediate embargo on U.S. offensive weapons to Israel.

“We have been trained to protect human lives. We have been trained to preserve human life,” Haj-Hassan said on the Thursday call. “But what has become incredibly and absolutely clear is that it is impossible to do amidst a military campaign that is not only targeting civilian life wherever it is in the Gaza Strip but also targeting everything that’s indispensable to human life, from water to fuel, food, health care and infrastructure.”

“I’m not a politician. In fact, I’m not even an activist. My life prior to this year has been spent primarily doing clinical work,” she said. “But I’m hoping to provide moral witness to the delegates of the Democratic National Convention because an end to this military campaign is the only way to preserve human life under the current circumstances. And so it is vital that the most powerful decision-makers globally hear firsthand accounts from myself and from my colleagues that can impact our foreign policy.”

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan examines wounded children at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on March 16. The "uncommitted" delegation set to attend the Democratic National Convention has asked that Haj-Hassan, an American pediatrician, be allowed to speak at the convention about the humanitarian crisis she has witnessed in Gaza. Abdel Kareem Hana via Associated PressMore

Convention officials told HuffPost on Thursday that there was no news to share yet about the delegation’s request but that programming decisions have not yet been finalized beyond nominee acceptance speeches on the final two days of the convention, which will run Aug. 19-22.

“Our convention will be a celebration of all that unites us as Democrats because, though we may not see eye-to-eye on every issue, we all operate from the same set of shared values,” convention spokesperson Emily Soong told The Washington Examiner in May, before Biden exited the campaign, regarding the uncommitted delegation.

“We will continue to work around the clock to plan a successful convention, welcome all our delegates to Chicago in August, and bring the story of our party and president to the American people.”

Uncommitted representatives have repeatedly asked to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris now that she has replaced Biden as the likely presidential nominee. Harris has already been more outspoken about the plight of Palestinians and more critical of Israel’s offensive, however she still positions herself publicly as pro-Israel and has yet to call for a U.S. arms embargo.

“It’s almost like they’re looking for a reason to support her,” Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman (D), a Palestinian American who recently spoke with Harris, told CBS News of the uncommitted delegates. “It’s like, ‘We really do want to support you, we just need the bombs to stop.’”

Abbas Alawieh, a spokesperson for Listen to Michigan, which organized "uncommitted" votes in the Democratic primary, speaks at a news conference in Dearborn on Feb. 28, the day after the Michigan presidential primary. Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images

A spokesperson for the Harris campaign did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

In Thursday’s call, the delegation expressed that the decision to ask for Haj-Hassan to speak about Gaza is partly rooted in civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer’s historic speech at the 1964 Democratic convention. Hamer used her speech to highlight the racism that plagued Mississippi and the dire need for more Black representation in the state’s Democratic Party delegation.

This year’s DNC is expected to bring thousands of protesters from across the country, many of whom will demand a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and the halt of U.S. weapon transfers to Israel.