Asma Mohammed organized the uncommitted movement in Minnesota because she “was seeing children who look like my son be massacred”.
June Rose, an uncommitted delegate from Rhode Island, joined the cause because they were raised as an orthodox Jew, kept away from Palestinians and taught that the occupation of Palestine was for their safety. Then Rose went to Palestine. “And I realized that not one single child needs to die in order to keep me safe,” they said.
Abbas Alawieh, a leader of the movement, kept coming back to his experience as a 15-year-old in south Lebanon, where he said he survived US-funded Israeli bombings. “I remember what those bombs feel like when they drop. I remember how your bones shake within your body. I remember what they smell like. I remember what the dust feels like when it fills the room after a bomb drops and I can’t even see my own hand in front of my own face,” he said.
At the Democratic national convention in Chicago this week, uncommitted delegates repeatedly shared the personal reasons they had decided to start an anti-war movement within the Democratic party – and what Kamala Harris needs to do to win back the voters they represent, who don’t agree with the Biden administration’s policy of sending more weapons to Israel as a disproportionate number of civilians in Gaza are being killed.
