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Kamala Harris supports Israel’s Gaza genocide

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‘No,’ Kamala Harris Says to Withholding Arms From Israel

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Bodies of Palestinians, including babies, who were killed in the Israeli army’s attack on the Nuseirat Refugee Camp are brought to the Aqsa Martyrs Hospital morgue in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on August 30, 2024. (Photo: Ali Jadallah/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“Harris is saying she will reject 77% of Democrats, 61% of Americans, international law, domestic U.S. law, and basic humanity to continue the flow of weapons to Israel while it stands accused of genocide,” said one analyst.

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris said in a CNN interview that aired late Thursday that, if elected in November, she would not change the Biden administration’s policy of steadfast military support for Israel, rejecting widespread calls for an arms embargo to help bring about an end to the devastating assault on Gaza.

“I’m unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to Israel’s defense and its ability to defend itself, and that’s not gonna change,” said Harris, recounting the horrors of the Hamas-led October 7 attack. “Israel had a right, has a right to defend itself.”

Acknowledging that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed,” the vice president responded “no” when CNN‘s Dana Bash asked whether a Harris administration would implement a “change in policy in terms of arms” and withhold even “some” weapons shipments to Israel.

Watch:

The CNN appearance marked Harris’ first major television interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, a change at the top of the party’s 2024 ticket that Palestinian rights advocates hoped would open the door to a fundamental shift away from the Biden administration’s Gaza policy—which has been to arm Israel to the teeth while tepidly pressuring the country’s far-right government to protect civilians and agree to a cease-fire deal.

“The vice president’s statement was morally indefensible and politically shortsighted as the lack of American consequences for Netanyahu’s horrific assault on Palestinian civilians in Gaza has emboldened Israel to now invade the West Bank,” Layla Elabed and Abbas Alawieh, co-founders of the Uncommitted National Movement, said in a statement Friday. “Vice President Harris must turn the page from one of the most glaring foreign policy failures of our time by aligning with the American majority that opposes sending weapons to Israel’s assault on Gaza.”

Despite Bash’s characterization of calls for an arms embargo against Israel as a demand from the “progressive left,” survey data has shown that a majority of U.S. voters oppose sending weapons to Israel as it commits appalling war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. Since October, the U.S. has sent Israel over 50,000 tons of weaponry.

“Harris is saying she will reject 77% of Democrats, 61% of Americans, international law, domestic U.S. law, and basic humanity to continue the flow of weapons to Israel while it stands accused of genocide,” Middle East scholar Assal Rad said late Thursday, citing the results of a recent CBS News/YouGov poll.

A separate poll commissioned by the IMEU Policy Project suggested that voters in key U.S. battleground states would be more likely to vote for a Democratic nominee who pledged to withhold weapons from Israel.

The CNN interview aired as Israel continued its multi-day assault on the West Bank, a deadly military campaign that the head of the United Nations and others warned could become an extension of the nearly 11-month war on Gaza, during which Israel has killed more than 40,600 people, displaced 90% of the enclave’s population, and sparked famine across the territory.

On Thursday, Israel’s military killed five Palestinians in an airstrike on a vehicle convoy of the Washington, D.C.-based American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) agency. It is a violation of U.S. law to provide weaponry to a country obstructing the delivery of American humanitarian aid.

The attack on the ANERA convoy came a day after Israeli forces opened fire on a World Food Program vehicle, forcing the U.N. agency to suspend employee movement in Gaza.

Harris’ refusal to express openness to an arms embargo against a military that has repeatedly targeted aid and healthcare workers, journalists, and other civilians sparked immediate backlash from Palestinian rights advocates, including at least one member of Congress.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American in the U.S. Congress, said Harris’ answer signaled that “war crimes and genocide will continue.”

Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of IfNotNow, called the Democratic nominee’s answer on Gaza “terrible” and “out of touch with voters, especially those in key battleground states who Harris needs to feel motivated to go to the polls.”

“Poll after poll after poll tells us that a majority of Americans and even more key Democratic constituencies want the US to stop giving arms to Israel that it’s using to kill and displace Palestinian families,” Lieberman added. “Not sending bombs to Israel is politically expedient and—quite obviously!—the morally correct thing to do for anyone reading the daily headlines of Israeli massacres being done with U.S. weapons.”

In an op-ed for Common Dreams on Friday, RootsAction national director Norman Solomon warned that “time is running out for Kamala Harris to distance herself from U.S. policies that enable Israel to continue with mass murder and genocide in Gaza.”

“Polling shows that a pivot toward moral decency would improve her chances of defeating Donald Trump,” Solomon wrote. “But during her CNN interview Thursday night, Harris remained in lockstep with President Biden’s unconditional arming of Israel.”

This story has been updated to include a statement from the Uncommitted National Movement.

Original article by Jake Johnson republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Continue ReadingKamala Harris supports Israel’s Gaza genocide

‘History Is Watching’: Gaza Doctors Urge Harris to Back Israel Arms Embargo at Democratic Convention

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Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

An injured Palestinian baby is treated in al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital after an Israeli attack on Bureij refugee camp in Deir al-Balah, Gaza on August 7, 2024.
 (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“We are here to deliver a policy that saves and improves lives,” Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Abbas Alawieh said in opening remarks at a press conference on the sidelines of the DNC.

As humanitarians opposed to the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza continued to protest during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Tuesday, American doctors who recently volunteered in the besieged enclave implored the party’s presidential nominee Kamala Harris—based on the carnage and heartache they have witnessed—to embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate cease-fire.

during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the Uncommitted National Movement held a Tuesday press conference at which American doctors who volunteered in Gaza implored Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, to embrace an arms embargo on Israel and an immediate cease-fire.

“We are here to deliver a policy that saves and improves lives,” Uncommitted National Movement co-founder Abbas Alawieh said in opening remarks at Tuesday’s press conference. “We are here because we want to win a better world.”

Alawieh slammed the “hypocritical action” of Biden administration officials who, while “saying they want a cease-fire,” continue “to send more and more weapons” to far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “murderous government,” which “is using those weapons to kill civilians” and is “preventing any hope for all captives, Israeli and Palestinian, to be reunited with their families.”

Such support, Alawieh added, is also “preventing any hope of a departure from the horrors that we are seeing our siblings in Gaza experience with more than 16,000 children… being killed using U.S. weapons.”

“The Uncommitted National Movement mobilized Democratic voters—more than 740,000 nationally—specifically around the idea that our candidate, regardless of who they may be, needs an updated approach to their Gaza policy,” Alawieh continued. “Specifically, our stance is that our government should embrace an arms embargo. Stop sending weapons that are being used to kill civilians.”

“Vice President Harris is engaging with us on this issue,” Alawieh added. “Her team is engaging with us on this issue. We do view that as a positive step in the right direction. We want to be very clear that what we need to see urgently is for the bombs to stop. Stop sending bombs if you want us to believe that you want a cease-fire.”

There are 30 Uncommitted delegates attending the DNC after being elected in Democratic primaries in states like Minnesota, where the movement received 18.9% of the vote, and the key swing state of Wisconsin, where it won 13.3%. As polling reveals that Democratic and Independent voters in crucial swing states would be more likely to vote for Harris if she backs an arms embargo on Israel, her campaign has made some moves to accommodate Uncommitted voices, including providing space at the DNC.

Dr. Tammy Abughnaim, a Chicago-based emergency physician, said she asked Palestinians what she should tell people in the United States about Gaza, where she saw the aftermath of “massacre after massacre” and “suffering on an entirely unprecedented scale.”

“Tell the world what you saw,” she said they told her. “We cannot afford another day of this.”

On Monday, the DNC held its first-ever panel on Palestinian rights, which featured testimony from some of those who spoke at Tuesday’s press conference, including Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, an American pediatric intensive care physician who volunteered for two weeks at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.

On Tuesday, Haj-Hassan said that the American doctors who worked in Gaza “cannot unsee what we witnessed, it gives us nightmares.”

“I can personally testify that I have never seen anything so horrific, so egregious, so inhumane,” she stated. “We decided to come here and bear moral witness with the unfortunate recognition that the only way to protect civilian life is through putting pressure on the U.S. government to stop militarily supporting Israel in its campaign.”

Haj-Hassan continued:

For the past 10 months, we have witnessed civilian casualty after civilian massacre after civilian massacre. The bread massacre. The Nuseirat massacre. The multiple school massacres, where internally displaced people, who have been forcibly transferred, a war crime in and of itself… finally sought shelter only to be massacred. Entire families exterminated. Humanitarian workers and healthcare workers and journalists killed in record numbers. Children with their extremities amputated traumatically in record numbers…

Over 17,000 children have lost one or both parents in Gaza since October. We have treated children who are the only surviving members of their entire family who were killed in the same bombing. I have personally held the hands of children taking their last final gasps with no family alive… unable to comfort them during their final agonizing breaths… This phenomenon of children having their entire families killed and arriving to the emergency department is so frequent it actually has an acronym… wounded child, no surviving family, given the acronym WCNSF.

Children who are fortunate enough to survive their injuries are discharged into a Russian roulette of a hundred different ways that they could be killed… another bombing, starvation, dehydration, disease. Now we have alarming reports of an outbreak of polio. Polio is something that we were able to eradicate on the majority of this planet decades ago.

“And yet we continue to fund this,” Haj-Hassan added. “History is watching us. The world is watching us. I cannot make sense of this. I suspect you cannot too. And I hope that the Democratic Party recognizes the irony and the hypocrisy of what we continue to fund and chooses to finally stand by the values of human rights and justice that we claim to stand by.”

Harris has expressed sympathy for Palestinians suffering what she called a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. However, like Biden, she’s also proclaimed her “unwavering” support for Israel. When asked earlier this month if Harris would support a suspension in weapons transfers, one of her national security advisers said that “she will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups” and “does not support an arms embargo on Israel.”

Human rights advocates fear that if elected to a second term, former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, would be even more supportive of Israel’s obliteration of Gaza than the Biden-Harris administration.

According to Palestinian and international officials, at least 40,173 Palestinians have been killed—most of them women and children—and nearly 93,000 others have been wounded during Israel’s 319-day assault and siege on Gaza. Gaza officials say that at least 10,000 other Palestinians are missing, believed to be dead and buried under the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings.

Almost the entire Gaza population of 2.3 million has been forcibly displaced. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans are starving; dozens have died from malnutrition, dehydration, and lack of medicines and healthcare amid a crippling Israeli siege that has been cited as evidence during Israel’s genocide trial at the International Court of Justice. The blockade has also exacerbated the spread of contagious diseases including measles, hepatitis, and polio.

Original article by BRETT WILKINS republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading‘History Is Watching’: Gaza Doctors Urge Harris to Back Israel Arms Embargo at Democratic Convention

Support for Israel’s War on Gaza Plummeting Among Key Biden Voters: Poll

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Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Hundreds of demonstrators demanding an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip march in Washington D.C. on March 7, 2024. 
(Photo: Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“Given these numbers,” said one progressive campaigner, “I don’t know how President Biden can reconcile his stalwart support for Israel with the clear preference that his core constituents have for an end to this war.”

A Gallup survey released Wednesday shows that U.S. public support for Israel’s military assault on Gaza has plummeted since November, with the decline particularly sharp among Democratic voters whom President Joe Biden will need to turn out to win reelection against presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.

Just 18% of Democratic voters currently approve of “the military action Israel has taken in Gaza” and 75% disapprove, according to the new poll, which was conducted between March 1-20. In November, 36% of Democratic respondents expressed approval of Israel’s war and 63% disapproved.

“The crosstabs are even more striking—nearly two-thirds of people under 54, people of color, and women disapprove of the military action in Gaza,” Sam Rosenthal, political director of the progressive advocacy group RootsAction, told Common Dreams in response to the new poll. “That is effectively the Democratic Party’s base.”

“Given these numbers,” Rosenthal added, “I don’t know how President Biden can reconcile his stalwart support for Israel with the clear preference that his core constituents have for an end to this war.”

Overall, Gallup found that 55% of the American public—including 60% of Independents and 30% of Republicans—disapproves of Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip, up from 45% in November. Just 36% of the U.S. public approves, down from 50% four months ago.

“Biden is risking his second term and our democracy by continuing to support the kind of violence and cruelty that is being perpetrated in Gaza right now.”

Observers noted that Gallup’s new poll was conducted after the Israeli military’s February 29 massacre of Palestinians seeking food aid. Since October, according to one human rights monitor, Israeli forces have killed more than 560 people waiting for humanitarian aid, the delivery of which Israel’s government has intentionally hindered—fueling the spread of famine across the territory.

The Biden administration has backed Israel’s assault from the beginning, providing the Netanyahu government with billions of dollars worth of weapons and diplomatic cover despite widespread and growing protests at home and abroad. Gallup’s survey found that 74% of U.S. adults say they are following developments in Gaza “closely.”

Political analyst Yousef Munayyer wrote on social media that “Biden’s policy of continued support for Israel’s war on Gaza is in line with the views of the right-wing Republicans,” noting that 64% of GOP voters still approve of the Israeli assault—down slightly from 71% in November.

“Just to emphasize how extreme his position is and out of line with his voters,” he added, “more Republicans disapprove of the war than Democrats who approve.”

Growing Democratic opposition to Israel’s military action in Gaza has fueled grassroots campaigns across the country urging voters to mark “uncommitted” on their Democratic primary ballots to pressure Biden to change course ahead of the general election against Trump, who has voiced support for Israel’s devastating assault on Gaza.

“Uncommitted” campaigns won 11 Democratic National Convention (DNC) delegates in Minnesota and two in both Michigan and Washington state.

“Biden is risking his second term and our democracy by continuing to support the kind of violence and cruelty that is being perpetrated in Gaza right now,” Faheem Khan, president of the American Muslim Advancement Council and a lead organizer of Uncommitted WA, said earlier this week.

Rosenthal of RootsAction told Common Dreams on Wednesday that the U.S. decision to abstain and allow the U.N. Security Council to pass a cease-fire resolution earlier this week was “a step in the right direction, and a clear indication that domestic pressure from campaigns like Listen to Michigan and other uncommitted voting efforts is working.”

“However, actual policy towards Israel has changed very little,” said Rosenthal. “Biden is still clamoring for more military aid to be sent, and the U.S. still largely supports Israel’s line, i.e., that military operations in Gaza are solely aimed at rooting out Hamas. What is manifestly obvious to the rest of the world, that Israel is committed to the wanton destruction of the Gaza Strip, is somehow escaping the administration’s notice.”

“President Biden should decide quickly whether he wants to continue to uphold policy that is increasingly associated with the opposition party,” Rosenthal added.

Original article by JAKE JOHNSON republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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Continue ReadingSupport for Israel’s War on Gaza Plummeting Among Key Biden Voters: Poll

Biden delivers State of the Union speech while under fire for supporting genocide

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Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Demonstrators outside of the Capitol blocked Biden’s motorcade, causing a delay in his State of the Union speech (Photo: NYC-DSA)

US President Joe Biden’s unwavering support for Israeli genocide in Gaza has earned him the nickname “Genocide Joe” and made it necessary to hide from constituents on the campaign trail, due to the frequency of pro-Palestine disruptions at his events.

Yesterday, on March 7, Biden gave the annual “State of the Union” address amid protests from lawmakers themselves on his Gaza policy. When Biden began to bring up Gaza in his speech, Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian in Congress, was joined by several other progressive representatives in holding up signs that said “lasting ceasefire now.” Biden did say in his speech that “we’ve been working non-stop to establish an immediate ceasefire that would last for at least six weeks,” however, he still does not support a permanent ceasefire. Israel seeks the ability to revisit any ceasefire after six weeks. 

Outside of the Capitol, where Biden gave his speech, hundreds of protesters gathered to hold a “People’s State of the Union” and blocked the major streets outside the building. The protest was large enough to cause Biden’s motorcade to take the “long way” to the House of Representatives chamber to give his address, delaying his speech. Protesters held banners that read “Biden’s legacy is genocide” and “The people demand: stop arming Israel”. Left-wing and Palestine solidarity organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America, Dissenters, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Adalah Justice Project participated in the demonstration.

During Biden’s speech, he claimed that he is directing the US military to build a temporary pier on the Gaza coast that would increase the amount of humanitarian aid entering the Strip. At least five people were killed on March 8 after being struck by aid dropped into Gaza via planes. The United States has been carrying out aid drops, despite posing danger, in lieu of pressuring Israel to open land routes to allow aid trucks to move into Gaza freely. 

Aid to the besieged Gaza Strip has fallen due in part to Israeli restrictions on two crossing points, according to the UN. In February, an average of just 98 trucks entered Gaza per day, in comparison to around 200 trucks per day in January. Before October 7, Israel would allow around 500 trucks a day into the besieged territory for a population of over 2.3 million.

“That’s not what Gaza needs,” said a protester outside of the Capitol. “Gaza needs liberation. They need an end to US military funding for Israel, and they need to be able to finally end… 75 plus years of ethnic cleansing.”

Biden caves to right-wing on immigration

In his speech, Biden also appeared to continue the process of caving entirely to the right-wing about tougher policies against migrants and refugees, and the further militarization of the US-Mexico border. Biden was heckled at one point during his speech by ultra-right-wing lawmaker Marjorie Taylor-Greene, who shouted about Laken Riley, a student in Georgia allegedly killed by an undocumented immigrant. 

The right-wing has been using the example of Riley to push a racist anti-migrant policy, despite many studies showing that undocumented immigrants are less likely to engage in violent crime than US residents.

Instead of challenging the right, Biden caved to Taylor-Greene’s remarks by holding a pin that allegedly she gave him, and going on an anti-migrant rant. Getting Riley’s name wrong and referring to undocumented migrants as “illegals”, Biden made a jumbled comment saying, “Lincoln Riley, an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal. That’s right. But how many of the thousands of people being killed by illegals—to her parents, I say my heart goes out to you.” 

Biden also promoted a bipartisan bill to restrict immigration at the border, which would expand the authority of the president to crack down on migrants. “It would also give me as President new emergency authority to temporarily shut down the border when the number of migrants at the border is overwhelming,” he said. 

Protest votes threaten Biden’s run

Biden has been hemorrhaging support in the statewide Democratic primaries, with large percentages of Democratic voters casting protest votes against the incumbent President. This movement began with the Michigan primary, where over 100,000 voters voted “uncommitted”, with Arab-majority city Dearborn voting 56.22% uncommitted. The recent Democratic primary in US-occupied Hawaii generated 29.1% uncommitted votes, the highest percentage of any statewide primary in this election cycle.

The growing deluge of protest votes against Biden poses a looming threat for him in the election. Anger at Biden’s support for Israel’s genocide is growing in states like Georgia, which, like Michigan, became critical for Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election. In 2020, Biden won Georgia by only 11,779 votes.

Peoples Dispatch spoke to Edward Ahmed Mitchell, a board member with CAIR Action, the newly formed political arm of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR Action is a part of the Listen to Georgia coalition, which is encouraging Georgia voters to cast a protest vote against Biden in the March 12 Georgia Democratic primary. 

“The people of Georgia, like many people across America, do not want our tax dollars funding a genocide overseas,” Mitchell said. “That’s why Georgia voters are trying to send a message to President Biden in the Democratic primary. The message is: you risk losing the state of Georgia and the 2024 election if you continue to enable the genocide in Gaza.”

Original article by Natalia Marques republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingBiden delivers State of the Union speech while under fire for supporting genocide

Minnesota Dems Aim to Repeat ‘Uncommitted’ Campaign Success on Super Tuesday

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Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Protesters attend a rally in St. Paul, Minnesota to divest Minnesota from apartheid Israel, free Palestine, and stop sending Minnesota money for genocide on November 19, 2023.  (Photo: Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

“We are organizing our neighbors across the state to tell Joe Biden: permanent cease-fire now!”

On the eve of Super Tuesday, Minnesota Democratic primary voters are looking to replicate Michigan’s success with their own “uncommitted” campaign to protest President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s unrelenting assault on the people of Gaza.

The uncommitted vote in Michigan earned more than 100,000 votes—well beyond the campaign’s 10,000-vote goal—and secured at least two delegates for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.

While Minnesota is not a swing state, and therefore may not have the same leverage over the Biden campaign as Michigan, organizers hope they can still send a message and inspire voters in other states.

“We’re hoping that what we do here will just continue to push the wave of uncommitted across the United States,” Amanda Purcell of MN Families for PalestinetoldThe Guardian.

“Voting uncommitted is a chance for Minnesotans to ask the president we fought for to change course, and recommit to all of us.”

Progressive voters hope to use the uncommitted campaigns to persuade Biden to back a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, something that 68% of U.S. voters support, including 80% of Democrats. The campaigns seek to persuade the Biden administration that funding and arming an assault that the International Court of Justice has ruled a plausible genocide is not only immoral, but also a political liability as Biden prepares to face off against former President Donald Trump in November.

“We are organizing our neighbors across the state to tell Joe Biden: permanent cease-fire now!” reads the Vote Uncommitted MN website. “With his approval ratings bottoming-out and a tight race for re-election, we know he is paying close attention to what happens at the ballot box.”

Minnesota is not the only state to pick up the uncommitted call. It is, however, the Super Tuesday state with the most prominent campaign to date. Other Super Tuesday primaries that have an uncommitted or equivalent line are Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Tennessee, and American Samoa.

The Colorado Palestine Coalition along with local chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), launched a “Vote Noncommitted Colorado” campaign last Wednesday, though more than 762,000 people have already returned their ballots by mail.

“We figured if there’s a way to make some waves and let our discontent be known, we might as well,” organizer Grace Thorvilson toldAxios Denver.

However, organizers in Minnesota say an uncommitted campaign is primed to make an impact in the state because of its history of progressive, democratic engagement and its large Muslim and immigrant population.

“We vote in Minnesota. Number one in the country for turnout,” Abandon Biden campaign in Minnesota co-chair Jaylani Hussein told The Guardian. “And when it comes to minorities and immigrants, we also have historically high, record turnout.”

Campaigners have scrambled to get the word out in the wake of Michigan’s success.

“Y’all Michigan had three weeks. Minnesota now has four and a half days,” organizer Asma Mohammed said on a conference call last week reported by Minnesota Public Radio.

The campaign has received backing from local politicians, including St. Paul City Council President Mitra Jalali and Minneapolis City Council President Aisha Chughtai.

“When you elect leaders, you commit to navigating difficult decisions with them while holding them accountable and standing up for your communities,” the pair wrote in an op-ed Monday in Sajan Journal. “Our communities deserve better than the idea that ‘anyone is better than Trump’—we deserve real leadership that invites accountability. Voting uncommitted is a chance for Minnesotans to ask the president we fought for to change course, and recommit to all of us.”

Some members of the coalition, such as the Abandon Biden movement, want to ensure that Biden does not win the general election in order to impose consequences for his position on Gaza. Others, however, see the primaries as a chance to pressure Biden to reverse course before the general in order to strengthen his position against Trump.

“I’m hoping that President Biden listens, because I don’t want to have to organize my community out of becoming Republicans or just sitting at home,” Mohammed said. “And it’s not just my community.”

Abou Amara, who has previously worked on campaigns for the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party—the state’s Democratic Party affiliate—said that the primary was exactly the right time to put intra-party pressure on candidates.

“The Democratic primaries and the Republican primaries are the moment to exercise political power and to have your voice heard,” Amara told Minnesota Now. “And you’re seeing the Biden administration continue to respond, to say I have to listen to various aspects of my coalition.”

On Sunday, for example, Vice President Kamala Harris gave a speech in Selma in which she called for an immediate cease-fire and said Israel was not doing enough to stop a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. While Harris only backed a temporary, six-week cease-fire to facilitate a hostage exchange, her rhetoric reflects growing pressure on the party.

AJ+ media critic Sana Saeed said on social media that it was a “blatant attempt to put Harris as sober to Biden’s zeal in the wake of Michigan and polls showing his unpopularity.”

“They know they are in trouble,” she added, “so this is pure PR bait, and it seems some people are falling for it.”

Organizers of the Uncommitted MN campaign hope the pressure will keep up beyond Super Tuesday. Already the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 3000, the largest union in Washington State, has endorsed the uncommitted campaign in that state’s primary on March 12. Efforts are also underway in states including Wisconsin, Arizona, and Pennsylvania.

“This is a national movement,” Mohammed told The Guardian. “It doesn’t stop with Michigan. It doesn’t stop with Minnesota. All of us have to be all in to get the attention of the president.”

Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingMinnesota Dems Aim to Repeat ‘Uncommitted’ Campaign Success on Super Tuesday