Uncommitted DNC delegates stage sit-in, in protest of refusal of permission to address Gaza

On Wednesday night Abbas Alawieh, co-founder of the Uncommitted National Movement, said Democratic party leaders have denied his repeated requests to give a Palestinian American platform from the main stage during the convention.

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 Kamala Harris and party leaders changed their minds and allowed for Palestinian voices to speak about Gaza in the same way that the Goldberg-Polin’s were given the opportunity to speak about Hersh and call for a hostage deal.

“I do not want to stay here all night. I have asked the campaign that the vice president call us back and tell us that the suppression of Palestinian Americans does not belong in the Democratic Party,” Alawieh said. “And that a Palestinian American speaker will speak from this stage.”

Alawieh said after learning on Wednesday that the hostage family was going to be speaking from the stage that Uncommitted National Movement re-upped its request for a Palestinian speaker.

Democratic Party values

The Democratic Party platform said that it valued every Israeli and every Palestinian life equally, Alawieh said, and the ask for a Palestinian speaker was “made every which way.”

“I’ve been in touch with top DNC staffers. I’ve been in touch with advisers to Vice President Harris. I know she knows about this ask,” he said. “We’re not even asking you to change the policy right now with this specific task. Yes, we want you to change the policy, but we just want to be heard.”

Alawieh said he was thinking about what he heard “as an Uncommitted delegate who was privileged” to hear the Goldberg-Polin family.

“They said something from the Jewish tradition that I was thinking about before they said it. They were talking about how every individual is the universe,” he said. “And before they said it, I was thinking about how, in the Muslim tradition, we know that if you harmed or if you killed any one person, it’s as if you’ve harmed or killed all of humanity.”

Awlaieh went on, “And so as I was seated inside as a delegate and hearing about the 109 hostages still in Gaza, the 109 universes, I sat with them. Every one of those 109 people are people. They’re universes. I was also thinking of the 16,000 children.”

Jeremiah Ellison, an Uncommitted delegate from Minnesota who also sits on the Minneapolis City Council, said the Uncommitted delegates were honored to sit and hear from the Goldberg-Polin family.

“They deserve a spot on this stage,” Ellison said. “But a Palestinian American also deserves a spot on that stage. By not allowing what you are creating, the DNC is creating a hierarchy of whose life matters and whose does not.”