NEW YORK, Aug 22 : A group of delegates at the Democratic National Convention started a sit-in protest outside the convention hall in Chicago Wednesday night, saying they will stay put until US Vice President Kamala Devi Harris, who is set to be nominated the party’s presidential nominee, allows a Palestinian to speak on the main stage, according to media reports.
“It is unacceptable for a Palestinian person to not be accepted on stage,” Abbas Alaweih, a Palestinian activist who is a delegate from Michigan, was quoted as saying.
Approximately 30 uncommitted delegates are attending the convention this week. The group has hosted daily events, pleading with the Biden-Harris administration to end the Gaza war and stop U.S. arms shipments to Israel.
On Wednesday night, the convention featured a speech by Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose son Sagui is a hostage in Gaza. “The time is long past due to end this war,” Dekel-Chen said in an interview with USA TODAY, a daily newspaper.
But no Palestinian-American was permitted to make the same case, it was pointed out.
Alawieh and other uncommitted delegates held a press conference on the sidewalk outside of the convention center not long after the parents of American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin addressed the crowd.
Alawieh said he would remain in front of the convention center until Vice President Harris and party leaders change their minds and allow for Palestinian voices to speak about Gaza in the same way the Goldberg-Polin’s were given the opportunity to speak about Hersh and call for a hostage deal.
Alawieh said that the group of uncommitted delegates “strongly supports” Israeli families on the convention programme, but he criticized the Democratic Party for not showing that Palestinian and Israeli lives were of equal value.
“We are the most powerful nation supplying billions of dollars to a country that is waging genocide against people who have been occupied, who have faced apartheid, who have been displaced,” Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota at a press conference Wednesday afternoon. “I beg Vice President Harris to not lose our democracy by not changing our policy towards Israel because the people behind me are not undemocratic.”
More than 40,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been reported killed in relentless Israeli bombing since Oct. 7.
As protesters outside the convention hall struggled to make their voices heard, Alawieh said it was wrong that not a single Palestinian anti-war voice was heard on the floor.”
Alawieh and a few other of the 30 uncommitted delegates then sat down outside on the street, where they were later joined by Congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
“We’re not going anywhere. Our movement is winning,” Alawieh said. “People see their humanity in the children whose limbs are being blown off in Gaza.”
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