Uncommitted delegates hold sit-in after Dem convention blocks Palestinian speakers

CHICAGO ? A group of delegates at the Democratic National Convention started a sit-in protest outside the convention hall Wednesday night, saying they will stay put until the Kamala Harris campaign allows a Palestinian to speak on the main stage in Chicago.

“It is unacceptable for a Palestinian person to not be accepted on stage,” said Abbas Alawieh, a Michigan delegate.

Approximately 30 uncommitted delegates are attending the convention this week. The group has hosted daily events, pleading with Biden-Harris administration to end the Gaza war and stop U.S. arms shipments to Israel.

On Wednesday night, the convention featured a speech by Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose son Sagui is a hostage in Gaza. "The time is long past due to end this war," Dekel-Chen said in an interview with USA TODAY.

But no Palestinian-American was permitted to make the same case.

Alawieh said that the group of uncommitted delegates “strongly supports” Israeli families on the convention program, but he criticized the Democratic Party for not showing that Palestinian and Israeli lives were of equal value.

“We are the most powerful nation supplying billions of dollars to a country that is waging genocide against people who have been occupied, who have faced apartheid, who have been displaced,” Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota at a press conference Wednesday afternoon. “I beg Vice President Harris to not lose our democracy by not changing our policy towards Israel, because the people behind me are not undemocratic.”

More than 40,000 Gazans have been reported killed in Israeli fire since Islamist militants rampaged across southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200.

As protesters outside the convention hall struggled to make their voices heard, Alawieh said it was wrong that not a single Palestinian anti-war voice was heard on the floor."We made the ask every which way," he said. "It's very reasonable...This level of suppression is unacceptable."

Alawieh and a few other of the 30 uncommitted delegates then sat down outside on the street, where they were later joined by Rep. Omar.

“We’re not going anywhere. Our movement is winning,” he said. “People see their own humanity in the children whose limbs are being blown off in Gaza.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Delegates hold sit-in at Chicago convention over snubbed Palestinians