During the Democratic Primaries over 700,000 voters were convinced to vote for “uncommitted” delegates as a protest to President Biden’s support for the genocide in Gaza. There is now a bloc of 30 elected delegates who consider themselves to be part of this movement and often call themselves the “Ceasefire Delegates.” Their demands are for an arms embargo against Israel, a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, and emergency aid for the civilians. The organization, the Uncommitted National Movement which instigated the vote, is now fighting for their elected delegates to be heard at the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19-22 in Chicago. In a press call on Aug . 1 the movement issued three demands for the convention: 1) Their delegate be given five minutes to speak; 2) Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, an American physician who worked in Gaza also be allowed to address the convention; and 3) Vice President Kamala Harris should meet with the leaders of the movement.
Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, along with many other American health professionals volunteered their services in Gaza and reported that many of them have also served in other combat zones, but have never seen the level of cruelty and suffering that they witnessed in Gaza. It is not traditional combat, but genocide. Forty-five of these physicians, surgeons, and nurses signed a letter and sent it to President Biden and other leaders in Washington. They write of killed or wounded young children who were deliberately targeted, and who were not accidental casualties of war. Many of these medical professionals report that they still suffer nightmares from their service in Gaza.
The movement plans to provide programming with or without permission from the DNC officials. Layla Elabed, a Palestinian-American organizer is using the 1964 convention as a model—of some note, not the 1968 convention. At the 1964 convention civil rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer became a moral witness to the suffering in Mississippi, recounting the violence that she experienced simply in trying to register to vote. She demanded that the all-white Mississippi delegation be integrated. Elabed said, “We will find a way for Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan to speak officially or unofficially, one way or another, in the tradition of Fannie Lou Hamer.”
