The speaker list at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago includes names from across the Democratic Party, such as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and of course Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. But notably absent from the lineup are any Palestinian American voices.
“Uncommitted” Democratic delegates and political leaders, including Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, are pushing to correct the omission by urging DNC officials to include two Palestinian American speakers on the convention’s main stage to address the ongoing war on Gaza.
The Uncommitted National Movement announced its demands for Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care physician who works with Doctors Without Borders and treated patients in Gaza, to speak at the convention stage earlier this month. The group said in a statement on Monday it is pushing for a second speaking slot to go to an as-of-yet-unnamed Palestinian American speaker.
At a press conference on Monday, Uncommitted leaders floated several Palestinian American Democratic leaders as potential speakers, including Illinois state Rep. Abdelnasser Rashid, Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman, Colorado state Rep. Iman Jodeh, and Virginia Delegate Sam Rasoul.
DNC officials have yet to announce their decision on whether to include the requested speakers. The DNC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Waleed Shahid, a Democratic strategist who has been advising the Uncommitted movement, told The Intercept the group has been proposing names of possible Palestinian American speakers — mostly elected officials — multiple times a day to DNC officials.
“But we haven’t heard anything back,” Shahid said. “We also haven’t heard a no.”
As the convention kicked off Monday, there was a panel discussion on Palestinian human rights. The panel was a first-of-its-kind gathering for convention-goers, but it was little consolation for those seeking a main-stage speaker.
“The Uncommitted folks and I don’t see [the panel] as an alternative to somebody on the main stage,” said James Zogby, founder and director of the Arab American Institute, who was a panelist in the Palestinian human rights session.
The convention will feature a wide array of speakers, from household names to lesser-known figures. Among those offered speaking slots at the convention are family members of American hostages captured by Hamas on October 7, according to the New York Times. They will also be on the convention floor Monday evening for President Joe Biden’s speech, in which he is expected to address his administration’s efforts for a hostage deal.
“We in no way want to take away their time at all to speak about their pain,” Shahid told The Intercept, “but to once-again emphasize only one community’s pain over another does not hold the platform’s own statement that Israelis and Palestinians are equally valued by this party — and so we’re hoping if we’re going to uplift one community’s pain, we’re not silencing another.”
Lexis Dena Zeidan, a leader within the Uncommitted movement, worried the lack of response from the DNC so far could be a sign that party officials are stalling before ultimately denying their request.
“It could just be them running out the clock,” she said. “Folks want to be able to mobilize behind VP Harris and Walz to help elect them in November, but at the same time folks are also asking for real change when it comes to what’s happening in Palestine and our tax dollars funding bombs, and so listening to the requests and really considering it important.”
Zogby told The Intercept that while DNC officials had not given a clear answer, he and delegates with the Uncommitted movement had been in constant contact with them while organizing the panel, talking back and forth as many as three times a day. He said that DNC officials have been receptive to concerns that both sides of the conflict should be represented on the convention stage, but also acknowledged a lack of response so far from convention decision-makers.
DNC organizers have also been in contact with Ellison around the issue, Zogby said. Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, is scheduled as a mainstage speaker and was also on the Palestinian rights panel. He has been a longtime advocate for Palestinian rights, which made him a political target during his unsuccessful bid for Democratic National Committee chair in 2017.
Ellison has been a vocal supporter of Walz’s vice presidential bid, which in recent weeks has included praise of the Minnesota governor on national TV spots. During his tenure as state attorney general, Ellison has had a close partnership with Walz, who has assigned high-profile criminal cases from local prosecutors to Ellison’s office, including the 2020 murder of George Floyd.
When asked whether his relationship with Walz might help convince DNC officials to prioritize Palestinian American voices, Ellison said those two things are “unrelated.”
Zogby noted that the last time a speaker spoke on behalf of Palestinian rights at the convention was his own speech at the 1988 DNC in Atlanta in support of Rev. Jesse Jackson’s minority policy plank, during which he advocated for Palestinian statehood to be included within the party’s platform. While the party has since shifted to call for Palestinian sovereignty, it has remained a staunch supporter of Israel and its military.
At the panel, a host of speakers, including Haj-Hassan, recalled horrific scenes of treating children wounded in Israel’s bombardments of Gaza. Former U.S. House Rep. Andy Levin, who was targeted by pro-Israel lobby group American Israel Public Affairs Committee and lost his reelection in 2022, said Congress had neglected its responsibility on foreign policy and been distorted by the influence of dark money.
The push for Palestinian speakers at the convention highlights divisions within the Democratic Party over the U.S. stance on Israel’s war in Gaza, which has led to the death of more than 40,000 Palestinians and has prompted human rights organizations and activists to allege Israel is committing genocide. The United Nations’ top court is continuing to preside over genocide charges brought against Israel.
As a protest against Biden’s policy on Gaza, including sending unconditional military aid to Israel, hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters marked “uncommitted” during primary elections this past year. The Uncommitted National Movement includes democratic delegates from Michigan, Wisconsin, Washington, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Mexico, and Oregon. Their movement has continued to push Harris’s campaign on how she plans to shift from Biden’s policies and is calling on the party to include an arms embargo within its platform.
Advocates of the arms embargo point to the Leahy Law, a 1997 law that prohibits U.S. assistance to “any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”
“We need to hear specifically from Vice President Harris in how she intends to support a policy that will stop supplying weapons in contravention of U.S. and international law that are being used to kill civilians,” said Uncommitted’s co-chair Abbas Alawieh during a press conference on Monday at the convention. “We need to see a change in Gaza policy, because if we go to them and they say, ‘Hey, there’s a change at the top … and we feel like Vice President Harris feels differently in her heart’ — that’s not going to win back voters. We need a plan, we need to know how the killing is going to stop.”
Organizers including the Coalition to March on the DNC are expected to lead large Palestinian solidarity protests each day outside the convention in both permitted and unpermitted rallies.
Ahead of the convention, protesters arrested at the Democratic National Committee headquarters last year during pro-Palestinian protests sued Washington, D.C., police over violent law enforcement responses, foreshadowing concerns of police violence toward demonstrations in Chicago. Two protesters were arrested during a demonstration on Sunday.