Portside

The Uncommitted movement started as a way for voters to register their discontent with the position of the Democratic Party leadership in general, and Joe Biden in particular, with respect to Israel’s current war on the Palestinian people. When the campaign got underway in February 2024, Israel had been bombing the Gaza Strip for months, killing tens of thousands of civilians as well as expanding deadly operations throughout the West Bank, and President Biden had been sending the weapons that allowed them to do so.

Rather than voting for Biden in the presidential primary, the campaign urged voters to choose “uncommitted” or “no preference” in select primaries. The numbers bore out the movement’s contention: given the short amount of time the campaign had to organize before the primaries, the numbers were impressive, reaching double-digit percentages in multiple states. Especially in swing states like Michigan, the Democratic Party is at risk of voters deciding to either sit out the presidential race or vote for a candidate other than theirs.

In the months since, Biden has backed out of the 2024 presidential race, with Vice President Kamala Harris taking his place. But Biden is still sending Israel weapons, and he will remain in the White House until January 2025, by which time many more Palestinians will have been killed by American arms. Harris, while not sharing Biden’s notably ardent Zionism, has not committed to any significant change in the current policy toward Israel should she win the presidency.

So the Uncommitted movement switched gears: their delegation to the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago last month used the gathering to continue pushing Harris and the rest of the party leadership for a very simple demand: not another bomb to Israel. The delegation secured an official panel on the crisis during the convention, which featured health care professionals who have volunteered in Gaza during the bombardment, as well as Palestinian American elected officials.

They also asked party leadership to allow a Palestinian American or a health care provider who had spent time in Gaza to speak from the stage during the gathering in Chicago. Despite diverse support for that reasonable demand — Uncommitted even accepted having the proposed speech vetted by party leadership — the party refused. It was hard to understand that decision as anything other than a reflection of what the movement has long said: Democratic Party leadership is out of touch with the public, opposed not only to the liberation of Palestinians but even their mere existence, and captured by the likes of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other pro-war, pro-Israel lobbyists.

Abbas Alawieh was at the center of the events inside the United Center. Formerly a congressional staffer — he last worked for Cori Bush, who lost her campaign for reelection last month, thanks in part to AIPAC pouring money into the race to unseat her — and cofounded the Uncommitted movement. A Lebanese American from Michigan, Alawieh staged a sit-in outside of the convention center to raise attention to the movement’s demands, not merely for a speaker but also for an arms embargo. The party leadership never caved on Uncommitted’s request to speak from the stage, nor have they shown any sign of agreeing to stop sending bombs to Israel.

With the convention concluded, the election approaching, and Israel expanding its repression in the West Bank even as it continues killing civilians in Gaza, Jacobin’s Alex N. Press spoke to Alawieh about the Harris campaign’s response to Uncommitted, pushing for an arms embargo, and what Biden and Harris’s support for Benjamin Netanyahu might mean come November.

Alex N. Press: 

Let’s start with where things stand right now. As the DNC came to a close, the Uncommitted movement gave the Harris campaign a September 15 deadline for meeting with you.

Abbas Alawieh:

At this moment, we’re still trying to engage with the Harris campaign in the hopes of continuing to raise our request for a change in the policy that she’ll support, because we think that it’s not only unsustainable, but immoral and illegal for her to continue supporting a policy that sends weapons to kill civilians and harm people we love. We’re hoping that she will update her policy so it can be in line with what we know the majority of Democratic voters want, which is a stop to the unconditional flow of weapons to Netanyahu’s government.

We have followed up on our long-standing request to meet with the vice president and to meet with senior members of her team to discuss our policy asks. We’ve also included in our follow up specific requests for her to meet with Palestinian Americans who have family in Gaza. So far, we haven’t heard much of anything.

We followed up a couple of times. Thankfully, even if she and her campaign fails to take the opportunity to engage with us and try and rebuild trust with voters for whom Gaza is a top policy issue, we’re not going anywhere. We’re going to continue insisting that the policy changes so that we can save lives.
 

Alex N. Press:

Biden is still the president for several more months, and he is still sending weapons that are killing Palestinians. The Uncommitted movement’s focus on Harris makes sense, but what is the assessment and thinking about the current situation with President Biden?

Abbas Alawieh:

The pressure needs to be on both President Biden and Vice President Harris to change the policy now. If the idea is that, hopefully, the policy changes after we get a new president, that is a long time away. That’s January 21; many more civilians could be harmed in the interim.

Our organizing doesn’t stem from a love of working on presidential campaigns. It stems from a love of just and humane policies that could save people’s lives. So our focus is on continuing to keep up the pressure for not another bomb and continuing to identify opportunities to keep Gaza in the media in general and in the mainstream media in particular. Our efforts are just one part of a much larger movement of folks showing up in their communities, on their college campuses, on the phones calling into Congress, etc., urging a more humane approach here.

We certainly view continuing to pressure President Biden as a priority for getting the policy changed, and we view pressuring Vice President Harris — given the changing political landscape and given that she’s at the top of the ticket on the Democratic side — as an important piece of pushing for a policy change before January 2025.

Alex N. Press:

You mentioned the different wings of the movement: there are different tactics, different strategies, and different analyses within the movement for Palestinian liberation. Yet it’s notable that a movement this diverse agrees on a demand, and one that is very easy to understand: arms embargo, no more bombs to Israel.

We might consider the Uncommitted movement an inside strategy: you all are committed Democrats and attended the DNC as delegates, a gathering that saw protesters outside, demanding an end to the genocide. How do you think about the relationship between the wings of the movement?

Abbas Alawieh:

What feels really clear is that there isn’t just an antiwar side in our country. There is a pro-war side too. The antiwar side happens to be a whole lot of us; the majority of this country does not want funding for endless war. But there is a small faction within the Democratic Party that has outsize influence due to the profit interests of weapons manufacturers and other factors, and that pro-war side absolutely does not want us on the inside. They don’t want us at the United Center in Chicago. They don’t want us walking around the halls of Congress. They want to be able to take the ball and run it up and down the field within these institutions without any pushback for their championing of genocidal policies. So to me, it feels really important that we are on the inside and on the outside.

At the DNC, we got inquiries from folks, some of them well-intentioned, saying, “Don’t you think that the protesters outside undermine what you’re trying to do to get a seat at the table?” But what we’re trying to do with a seat at the table is push for not another bomb. The thing that’s preventing not another bomb is the Democratic Party leadership’s offensive and continued support for sending weapons that kill civilians. We need to be disciplined, as people who support this urgent policy demand, to not fall into the traps of attacking different tactics, but to be clear about who it is that is sustaining this policy and making sure they feel maximum pressure as long as they continue to support this horrendous policy.

Alex N. Press:

During the DNC, it was clear that there are a number of other groups and organizations who supported Uncommitted demands, not just about getting a Palestinian American speaker on the stage but about an arms embargo on Israel. From the [United Auto Workers] to Jewish-led organizations like IfNotNow to youth-led groups and black-led groups, you had a clear coalition. How are you building that coalition, and what’s the plan moving forward?

Abbas Alawieh:

It’s our assessment that our antiwar movement is at its strongest when we recognize what power we do have within the institutions as they exist, and within the Democratic Party in particular, and what power we don’t have.

Part of our analysis in this moment on the Uncommitted side of things is recognizing that those of us in our country who are against this war do not have enough political power in this moment to stop a genocide. That is a very difficult reality to sit with, but it means that part of our analysis too is that no one demographic alone will create political conditions necessary to change this policy.

It is not just Arab Americans or Muslims or Palestinian Americans voting one way or another that will change the policy. What’s going to be required is the party leadership realizing that across our Democratic Party coalition, whether we’re talking about unions or youth-led organizations or black-led organizations or Jewish-led organizations or Arab-led organizations, etc., folks are waking up to the reality and are continuing to build on, in many cases, long-standing leadership around this issue. Folks are increasingly aware that the issue of Palestinian human rights is something that is very important to a whole lot of Democratic voters, not just a few Arabs in Dearborn, which is what the more conservative elements within the Democratic Party coalition would like for the Democratic Party leadership to believe.

It’s no one candidate who will deliver Palestinian liberation. It’s our movement that will insist upon our government divesting from the illegal military occupation, from sustaining the siege, and from the ongoing genocide. It’s our movement growing that will force the political conditions necessary to generate the political will to stop sending weapons. That requires us doing the difficult work of not merely being preoccupied with the shiny object of November’s election, but sitting down and having the difficult conversations with union leaders and Jewish leaders and black leaders and youth leaders and so on, and deepening those relationships in this moment. We cannot say that we’ll do that later; we need to do that now.

That has been a critical part of our work and our strategy. We’re not just concerned with one candidate or the other, we’re concerned with how we lay the groundwork for a mass antiwar movement in our country that includes all of us and that includes key parts of the coalition that Democrats need. So we’re taking extra time to build with union leaders, before, during, and after the DNC, to build with everyone, including elected officials who are sympathetic to our cause. That is a project that outlasts the election. That is the work of changing the political landscape to deliver a policy of not another bomb.

Alex N. Press:

Your comrade in the Uncommitted movement Waleed Shahid recently wrote in Jacobin, “Much like the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party [MFDP], which challenged the segregationist stronghold of the Mississippi Democratic Party but was ultimately denied a seat at the convention, the Uncommitted movement didn’t win every immediate demand. But the true victory lies in the alliances forged, the hypocrisies exposed, and the narrative shift that will reverberate long after the convention doors have closed.” A lot of people in the movement have cited the MFDP as a precedent for your approach at the DNC, and the civil rights movement more generally as a source of strategic organizing insight.

Abbas Alawieh:

In taking the actions that we did at the DNC, we were walking not only in a very rich history of organizing in our country, but specifically of black-led organizing that insisted on not just representation in that moment, but also calling for justice and liberation more broadly. Understanding those traditions comes with a certain need for discipline, as I see it.

For example, a lot of the criticism and pushback that we’ve gotten, even from folks sympathetic to Uncommitted’s work, has been, “Why make such a big deal out of a Palestinian American speaker? That’s beneath our movement. Who cares if the Democrats don’t want to hear from a Palestinian?” But there’s a question of audience, and the need for a variety of strategies and tactics is one thing we learn from studying the civil rights movement.

My friend, who is a black American and a leader in his own right, said, “When I look back at photos of black people in the civil rights movement holding up signs saying, ‘I want to use this water fountain’ or ‘I want to cross this bridge,’ there’s something in me that cringes. Why are you asking for something so basic?” And the historical record shows that you know others in the movement did say at the time, “We need to be asking for our full liberation.” But what we glean from the civil rights movement is that there’s a moment when the audience isn’t just others who agree with us. At times we need to appeal to the broader public, including many who sympathize with this cause, and say, this is how badly these folks have dehumanized us. The Democratic Party leadership feels so okay about dehumanizing Palestinians and people who are allied with this cause that they are willing to engage in a blatant act of discrimination by not allowing a Palestinian American speaker.
 

We’re looking at those lessons and trying to stay disciplined even through the complexities of what it means to engage within the system and keep in mind the matter of what compromises we are making. We need to be disciplined about keeping it our demand while also recognizing that these sort of symbolic moments are necessary, not only for growing consciousness for folks who already agree with us but growing the broader American consciousness about what’s going on here.

Alex N. Press:

I heard throughout the DNC from various friends in the movement who felt the conversation went from “arms embargo” to “we want a speaker.” I think part of the blame for that falls on the mainstream media, who did a very poor job covering what you were actually saying.

Abbas Alawieh:

Every time we talked about a speaker, we talked about not another bomb. We frequently said, “We didn’t come here for a speaker, we came here because we want not another bomb.” But yes, the way that the mainstream media captured the story, it was about the speaker fight. That said, the flash point being about something so basic ended up being an on-ramp to so many people who don’t really understand the issue of Palestinian human rights, but understand that it’s not right that the Democratic Party isn’t even okay with letting Palestinians speak. A lot of people felt there was something wrong there.

Alex N. Press:

I’m sure you’ve heard criticism from other folks in the movement that Uncommitted is being naive in thinking that Democratic leadership are ever going to sign on to an arms embargo. The argument there is that it more or less doesn’t matter to Democratic leaders that the public, including the majority of Democratic voters, want the US to stop arming Israel because the weapons industry, AIPAC, and so on are not actually responsive to public pressure, so you are wasting your time trying to pressure Democratic leaders. What do you say to the idea that this is a dead-end strategy?

Abbas Alawieh:

I say, as someone who has family who lives in South Lebanon right now — who are living under the terror of US weapons raining down on them from the Israeli military — I do not have the luxury of giving up on the only one of the two major parties where there is room for this debate.

To be clear, there’s room for this debate not because the Democratic Party is friendly to Palestinian human rights. There’s room for this debate because A) the Republican Party is not the party where we can have this conversation; not a single federal elected official on the Republican side even supports a cease-fire as this genocide has raged on, and B) the Democratic Party speaks of being the party of justice and inclusion, and there are more and more of us within the party who are insisting that the party change its immoral and illegal support of sending weapons to harm and kill civilians.

What we’re saying isn’t that if we just ask the party long enough then one day, they will wake up and see our humanity. What we’re saying is that we want to be on the inside and the outside. We want to become the people who are making those decisions, to be the folks who have the influence within the party to shape policy positions right now.

The Democratic Party represents me on a whole range of issues that I care very deeply about, but on a few issues, this being one of them, the party does not represent me. The party leadership’s decisions do not represent me. That’s precisely why I think we need to grow our movement. We need to have an eye toward: How do we grow our movement everywhere, within the Democratic Party and outside of it? How do we grow our movement so that we force the political pressure necessary to inspire the political will in the Democratic Party leadership to change this policy — and if they won’t change it themselves, then to take their positions, to build the strength to take power within the Democratic Party. and wield it in the service of life and prosperity and not destruction as it relates to issues of war and peace.

That’s a longer-term project. It’s clear that the pro-war side in our country has a whole lot of power when the first time Vice President Harris is speaking as the Democratic Party’s nominee, she talks about wanting the most lethal military in the entire world. The pro-war side is working overtime, and they’re achieving this type of maximalist language from Democratic Party leadership that is out of touch with the pro-peace sentiments of the majority of Democratic voters. But it’s also clear that they’re working overtime because they’re spending more money than they ever have trying to obfuscate this issue and trying to eliminate any champions of peace or of Palestinian human rights, as they did in Cori Bush’s and Jamaal Bowman’s races.

To me, all of that is evidence that our movement is not only growing, but it is strong, and we’ve got to keep going. Now is not the time to say, okay, let’s just give up on the project of trying to influence the Democratic Party. I don’t have the luxury of doing that. My family is calling me from South Lebanon saying, “Have you convinced your country to stop bombing us?”

There are two major parties: the Democrats and the Republicans. I wish it weren’t that way. I wish we had a multiparty system, but this is the reality that we live in and as we work toward a more sensible political system long term, right now, we’ve got to pressure the Democrats. That feels urgent.

Alex N. Press:

Is there anything that hasn’t come up that you want to say, be it about what people are getting wrong about Uncommitted, how these conversations are going in your own community in Michigan, or anything else?

Abbas Alawieh:

A lot of us who are deeply in touch with the humanity of Palestinians in Gaza are operating from a place of deep pain. I don’t think any of us could have imagined that it would have gone on this long, and so I think we’re being asked to do a lot in oscillating between dealing with our grief and coming up with strong political strategies. So I think it’s important for us to not fall into the trap of attacking one political strategy versus another as we’re trying to achieve not another bomb, as we’re trying to achieve an arms embargo. We must not attack support for one strategy or another as the reason why the genocide persists. The reason why the genocide persists is because the people who can make the decision are making the decision to continue sending the bombs.
 

It’s important for us to have an eye toward not just the next week or two or the next month or two, even though that can be really hard for us to do through our pain, but to the question of how we build an antiwar movement in our country that gets more power than the pro-war side. As part of that analysis, I’m looking at what Donald Trump has planned for us, what he has planned for anyone working on Palestinian human rights, what he and Republicans have planned as far as taking away nonprofit status for any organization working on Palestinian human rights or funding that work, and what he has planned for our loved ones in Gaza and the West Bank.

Trump’s son-in-law is fantasizing about million-dollar condos on Gaza’s beach. He’s taking campaign contributions from people who want the full annexation of the West Bank. So we also have to be very clear about the rise of global authoritarianism, of which Trump and the Republican Party’s MAGA extremism is a face. We have to take stock of what it would look like for Trump to be president and whether we’re doing the difficult work of this moment — which is not pretty, and a lot of folks don’t want to hear it — in the sense of telling people and being clear about what our organizing would look like under Donald Trump.

The reality is that it would be really, really difficult to see student protesters deported, as Trump is promising, and it’s not just that. What is our responsibility to the people we love who are there? A few weekends ago, I was on the phone with my uncle, who’s living in South Lebanon now, and it was the heaviest bombardment he’d experienced since the war in 2006. He was asking me, “Do people over there know that if Trump becomes president, that he’ll give Netanyahu the green light to kill a lot more of us?”

Unfortunately, there isn’t a major party candidate — and I would argue that there hasn’t been one in the past several decades — who represents our antiwar movement’s values on this issue. We have to understand that it’s really not about the election. It’s about how we ensure that our movement continues growing rather than have our power undermined. We have a responsibility to our siblings there to grow our movement rather than undermine it, and that has to include charity in our analysis about what living under Donald Trump’s America would mean for our antiwar efforts.

[Abbas Alawieh is the cofounder of the Uncommitted movement. He is a political strategist and organizer based in Michigan.

Alex N. Press is a staff writer at Jacobin who covers labor organizing.]

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