CHICAGO — In one of the most moving moments of the Democratic National Convention, on Wednesday night, the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old American who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, took the stage at the United Center and spoke of the anguish they’ve experienced over the 320 days since their son was taken hostage.
They called for the release of the other hostages, including 8 American citizens, and for a cease-fire deal that “ends the suffering of the innocent civilians in Gaza.”
But the DNC’s invitation to the family created an uncomfortable contrast with the party’s refusal to provide space on the main stage for a Palestinian-American or doctors who have worked in Gaza. On Wednesday night, following that speech, the DNC informed the leaders of the Uncommitted Movement that they would not be given the opportunity to put a Palestinian speaker on the main stage of the convention, to discuss the Israeli military has inflicted in Gaza, with the backing of the United States.
The Uncommitted Movement — representing the over 700,000 pro-Palestine voters who cast “uncommitted” votes during the Democratic presidential primary — had requested speaking time at the convention and a meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign.
The DNC gave the movement space to speak at several untelevised forums. On Monday, a doctor shared harrowing stories from Gaza, where the Israeli military has led an unprecedented siege for 10 months, starting after Hamas’ October 7 attacks. The party refused to meet the Uncommitted Movement’s larger requests.
“I was working on it every day for the past week or more,” said James Zogby, who has held leadership positions in the Democratic Party for decades. “The campaign made a mistake — an unforced error. This didn’t have to happen the way it did and now needs to be fixed.”
The decision by the Harris campaign and the DNC threatens to torch the goodwill the campaign has enjoyed since Harris ascended to the top of the ticket. No significant protests have broken out inside the arena yet this week, and demonstrations outside have been smaller than expected. But already on Wednesday night that was starting to change. As delegates and convention attendees filtered out of the United Center, protesters with signs and bullhorns were reading the names of children killed in Gaza and encouraging passersby to turn back and join a 24-hour sit-in the leaders of the Uncommitted delegates had begun earlier that evening outside the arena.
“We are waiting for a phone call from Vice President Harris and the DNC to allow a single Palestinian-American speaker from the convention stage,” those delegates — Abbas Alawieh, June Rose, Sabrene Odeh — said in a statement. “Our party’s platform states that every life is valuable: whether American, Palestinian, or Israeli. We will conduct a moral act of sitting in at the convention to push our party to better align our actions, instead of just our words, with the notion that every life is valuable by simply allowing a Palestinian American to speak from the stage.”
Progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), one of two Muslim women serving in Congress, joined the Uncommitted sit-in Wednesday evening.
One Democratic lawmaker on Capitol Hill who’s been in Chicago this week tells Rolling Stone bluntly: “If we lose Michigan by a hair… it will be hard not to conclude that a reason why is because we did not treat these people with respect they deserve and instead just wished they’d go away and stop complaining.”
Two representatives for the DNC did not respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for the Harris campaign declined to comment about the decision.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said late Wednesday, “The Palestinian right to self determination was erased by the British with the Balfour declaration in 1917 which only mentioned civil and religious rights but not political rights for the Palestinian people. The Democratic Party, which aspires to be the party of human rights, must not in 2024 perpetuate this erasure of the Palestinian story.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who declared onstage at the United Center on Monday that Harris is “working tirelessly to secure a cease-fire in Gaza,” responded to the DNC’s decision to exclude Palestinian voices on Wednesday.
“Just as we must honor the humanity of hostages, so too must we center the humanity of the 40,000 Palestinians killed under Israeli bombardment,” she wrote on X. “To deny that story is to participate in the dehumanization of Palestinians. The @DNC must change course and affirm our shared humanity.”
President Donald Trump discussing Venezuela at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
Why Venezuela Could Be a Turning Point in Gen Z’s Support for Trump
When Donald Trump called himself “the peace president” during his 2024 campaign, it was not just a slogan that my fellow Gen Z men and I took seriously, but also a promise we took personally. For a generation raised in the shadow of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it felt reassuring. It told us there was a new Republican Party that had learned from its failures and wouldn’t ask our generation to fight another war for regime change. That belief stood strong until the U.S. overthrew Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Growing up in the long wake of the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan shaped how my generation learned to see Republicans. For us, “traditional” Republican foreign policy became synonymous with unnecessary conflicts that caused young people to bear the consequences. We heard how Iraq was sold to the public as a necessary war to destroy weapons of mass destruction, only to become a long conflict that defined the early adulthood of many millennials. Many of us grew up watching older siblings come home from deployments changed, and hearing teachers and coaches talk about friends who never fully came back. By the time we were old enough to pay attention, distrust of Bush-era Republicans wasn’t ideological, it was inherited from what we had heard.
As the 2024 election was rolling around, that dynamic had flipped. After watching wars in Ukraine and Gaza dominate headlines while Joe Biden was president, the Democrats were now the warmongers. My friends constantly told me how a vote for Kamala Harris was a vote to go to war. On the other hand, Donald Trump and the Republicans were the ones my friends thought could keep us safe. “I’m not voting for Trump because I love him,” one friend told me. “I’m voting for him because he cares about us and I don’t want to go fight in a stupid war.” For many of my friends, much of their vote came down to one question: Who was less likely to send us to fight? The answer to them was pretty clear.
Fast forward to now, and Venezuela has begun to complicate that belief. Even without talk of a draft or a formal declaration of war, the renewed focus on U.S. involvement and troops on the ground has brought back the same language of escalation my generation was taught to distrust. Young men online have been voicing the same worries, concerned that the ousting of Maduro mirrors the early stages of wars they were raised to fear. When I asked a friend what he thought about Venezuela, he shared that same sentiment. “This is how all these wars always start,” he told me. “They might try to make it sound like it’s not actually a war, but people our age always end up being the ones that pay the price for it.” For young men who supported Trump because they believed he represented a break from interventionist politics, Venezuela blurs the line between the “new” Republican Party they thought they were backing and the old one they were raised to reject.
For many young men, Venezuela has become a major part of a broader shift of how they view Trump. A recent poll from Speaking with American Men (SAM) found that Trump’s approval rating has fallen 10 percent among young men, with only 27 percent agreeing with the statement that Trump is “delivering for you”.
Gen Z men’s support of Trump was never about ideology or party loyalty, it was about the idea that he had their back and would fight for them. But that’s no longer the case. Recently, Trump proposed adding $500 billion to the military budget. Ideas like that will only hurt the president with young men. My friends don’t want more military spending that could get us entangled in foreign wars; they want a president who keeps them home and fights for their economic and social needs. As Trump pushes for a bigger military and more intervention abroad, the promise that once made him feel like a protector of young men now feels out of reach.
For my generation, Venezuela isn’t just another foreign policy dispute, it’s a conflict many young men worry they could be the ones sent to fight. Gen Z men didn’t support Trump because he was a Republican, but because they believed he was different from the old Republicans. He would be a president who would have their back, fight for their interests and keep them from fighting unnecessary wars. Now, that promise feels fragile, and the fear of being the ones asked to face the consequences has returned. For a generation raised on the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of another war isn’t abstract, it’s personal.