‘This is my political home’: how 30 Gaza ceasefire delegates changed the Democratic convention

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.

Over the course of the four-day convention, the delegates pushed for a Palestinian American speaker to get time on the main stage - a request the Harris campaign denied - leading to an impromptu sit-in and, ultimately, the support of lawmakers, hundreds of delegates, and far more attention to the cause.

These are Democrats. Most are activists, seasoned at turning out their communities to vote. Alawieh was a congressional staffer for multiple members of Congress. He was a staffer on 6 January 2021, he said, when rioters flooded the US Capitol building in Washington DC. "I don't need to be convinced how dangerous Trump is," he said.

There's no chance Mohammed changes parties because of this. "Imagine me, a hijabi Muslim woman, walking into the [Republican national convention] right now. It would never happen. This is our party. That's why we are working on our own party. This is my political home. That's why we are working on the inside."

At the Chicago convention, most Democrats focused on joy and celebration, rallying around Harris after a slog of an election abruptly changed course a month ago.

But there was a convention within the convention, so to speak, of hundreds racked with grief and despair over the ongoing war in Gaza, which has taken at least 40,000 Palestinian lives and left hundreds of thousands of people starving, sick and injured. Attendees could go from hearing a doctor describe children - the only remaining members of their families - covered in burns, then walk a few feet away into a display about coconuts, a nod to a meme-ified Harris quote.

The juxtaposition made Dr Thaer Ahmad, a doctor who grew up in the Chicago area known as Little Palestine, sick to his stomach. Ahmad worked in a hospital in Gaza early this year, and said he would never forget what he saw. First, a bomb would go off, shaking the hospital. Minutes later, families would pour into the doors of the emergency department.

"We didn't have any beds because the hospital was already totally full, so we're seeing five-year-olds, six-year-olds on the ground, some of whom have already been killed, are already dead, and others who are shrieking in pain who have had a limb blown off and we don't even have any pain medicine to give them," he said. "And you're just sort of looking around a room that's full of bleeding and suffering patients, some of whom will die while you're sitting there trying to figure out what your next move is. And you're lost."

Ahmad was among a handful of doctors who shared, time after time, what they saw in Gaza hospitals with reporters and convention attendees. He came to Chicago, he said, "to essentially spoil the party".

"I can't come in one place and talk to you about the five-year-old and the six-year-old and the family and the house, and then see somebody get up there on the main stage and just sort of pretend like we're in la-la land," he said. "I mean, it's so hard to even listen to. It's just very cringy, to be honest, and to be fair, that's how I've felt for a lot of the last several months."

Starting in Michigan, Democratic activists hatched the grassroots plan to vote "uncommitted" instead of for Biden in the Democratic primary earlier this year. The idea spread to other states, with nearly 800,000 voters selecting some version of an uncommitted vote on their ballots.

This protest vote would send a message that voters demanded a change on Gaza for Biden to get their votes. In some of the states, uncommitted won enough votes to earn delegates to the convention. Those delegates, organizers planned, would use their power inside the party process to win over committed delegates, amplify their voices and, hopefully, get Harris's attention - and action.

Throughout the campaign, the group has kept its sole focus on getting a ceasefire and arms embargo. Before the convention began, they added the call for a speaker on the main stage, first suggesting a doctor who had worked in Gaza and then a Palestinian American leader, as a way to bring attention to the issue.

Tens of thousands of people also took to the streets outside the convention throughout the week, but the delegates didn't join them. Their focus has been on working the system inside, finding allies among other Democratic activists and officials.

The Democratic party included the uncommitted delegates in the convention process - to an extent. They were allowed a space for press conferences, but it was in a far-flung corner of a building beyond the main action during the day - people would not accidentally happen upon this room. They were granted a panel on Palestinian human rights, a first of its kind, but it was scheduled for the last slot of the day, after shuttles started departing to the United Center.

The speaker request was shut down, without much reason given for why.

The Harris campaign later defended the decision not to allow a Palestinian speaker by saying the party had given the uncommitted movement lots of ways to engage in the convention process already. The delegates disagreed.

"The scale is just completely out of whack when we're talking about room space versus when we're talking about a Palestinian American getting to speak at the convention, or when we're talking about meaningful policy change, an immediate, permanent ceasefire and an arms embargo," Rose said.

But much of the process still worked: the 30 uncommitted delegates convinced more than 300 Harris delegates to sign a pledge to become ceasefire delegates, building their power tenfold. And, as the week wore on, and the speaker request languished, prominent progressive elected officials including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Greg Casar, started joining the public call for a Palestinian on the main stage and helped internally to send that message to the Harris campaign and Democratic party.

The caucus and council meetings offered to the group did not lend themselves to organizing large groups - they were essentially panel discussions. Instead, the delegates fanned out around the convention, at morning breakfast meetings where all convention attendees had to pick up credentials each morning, at press conferences, in the hallways outside panels, in the crowded walkways at the United Center.

They stayed visible. Their shirts, emblazoned with bright red flowers, said "democratic majority for Palestine". Their pins, in red font, said "ceasefire delegate". They wore white-and-black keffiyehs, some of which said "Democrats for Palestinian Rights".

On the first day, they handed out flyers for a historic event: the first time the convention had allowed a panel on Palestinian human rights. Outside the panel, delegates asked those attending to sign their petition, to join them in the ceasefire cause even if they were already pledged to Harris. The panel itself drew a few hundred people, who listened as a doctor who had worked in Gaza described children blown apart by US-funded bombs and as a Palestinian American shared the stories of the more than 100 family members she had lost.

Inga Gibson, an uncommitted delegate from Hawaii, said other middle-aged women, her peers, would come up to her as she sat in the hall. They said their kids were challenging them - "What are you going to do about this, Mom?" - and telling them they might not vote because of Gaza, Gibson said. She convinced several to sign the petition as ceasefire delegates.

On Tuesday, while a few delegates sat on a bench in a broad hall not far from where people had lined up to buy Democratic merchandise, a person with a "save the children" pin walked up. "I love your pin," Mohammed said, then started talking about becoming a ceasefire delegate. At another point, someone walked up and said: "I appreciate what y'all are doing." "Are you a delegate?" Mohammed asked.

On Wednesday morning, she said, a man came up to her and said: "Is that a ceasefire shirt?" She thought he was going to be upset. "What does a ceasefire even mean?" he continued. She started to reply when he added: "I'm going to stop you right there. I'm a Jewish American, and I hate that they're doing this in my name," Mohammed recounted. He signed on as a ceasefire delegate after their conversation.

Alawieh's hands had a slight shake as his voice cracked with emotion on the third day of the convention, after several press conferences where he had shared that he was waiting for a call to greenlight the main stage speaker and again recounted his story of surviving bombings as a teenager.

Standing amid dozens of reporters and delegates outside the United Center, he made an impromptu personal decision: he would just sit and wait.

He pulled his phone out in the middle of the press conference, calling his contact with the Harris campaign. "I'm someone who works within the system and I was asking a very reasonable ask, not to be suppressed," he told the person on the phone. "I've run out of options from my position as a delegate so I'm leaning into my power as an everyday citizen and I'm sitting here, and I'm not going anywhere."

In between the United Center, which displayed images of Harris and running mate Tim Walz bathed in bright red, white and blue lights, and a CNN Politico tent where journalists and politicians partied, the uncommitted movement started their sit-in.

About a dozen ceasefire delegates slept overnight on the pavement outside the United Center on the penultimate night of the convention, grabbing a few moments of sleep where they could. Mohammed was one of them. Asked how she was feeling the next morning, she said: "Really tired. Holding out hope."

By the next day, the final day of the convention, Harris's team still had not budged. The movement set a 6pm deadline, which passed.

The work they had done inside had convinced hundreds of their fellow Democrats, but it hadn't swayed the Harris campaign enough to grant a speaker on the main stage. And the speaker, they pointed out, had not been going to give a radical speech: Ruwa Romman, a Georgia state representative and one of the speakers the uncommitted delegates had suggested, wrote about her Palestinian grandfather's influence on her life and called for people to unite behind Harris and push for an end of the war in Gaza.

As political elite spoke inside, Romman gave her speech to the cameras gathered outside instead.

Alawieh said he was certain her speech had gotten more media attention this way than it would have if she'd been given a short slot on stage earlier in the week. "I would put all my money, she would not have had this many cameras pointed at her," he said.

The uncommitted movement then issued a demand to Harris to come meet them in their communities, in Michigan, to talk about a ceasefire and arms embargo. They gave a deadline of 15 September. The speaker request may not have been granted, but the uncommitted delegates cast their work at the convention as a success, leaders told reporters that evening.

The uncommitted delegates decided to go inside the arena, where their party was about to hear from Harris herself. They weren't going to disrupt the process - something party officials had worried about throughout the week. Instead, the delegates linked arms and weaved through the crowded hallways attempting to get to their seats. They stopped and stood in a circle, singing "ceasefire now".

Outside, helicopters whirred overhead as the uncommitted movement packed up the rest of the sit-in. They put away the snacks and water. They rolled up banners that said "not another bomb". They packed away extra ceasefire T-shirts and keffiyehs and an errant cheesehead, the preferred headgear of the Wisconsin delegation.

Standing outside as the sun moved lower in the sky, Layla Elabed, one of the co-founders of the movement, said that her belief in the democratic system hadn't been shaken.

"Power, for me, is with people," Elabed explained. "Because often it isn't electeds who wake up one day and decide that, oh, we should have a policy change that actually speaks to the most marginalized people, the most displaced people, the people without the most resources.

"Black folks didn't get the Civil Rights Act because those who were in office decided one day and woke up and said, oh, we should do this. It is because people mobilized and organized and advocated and put so much pressure on policymakers and moved those policymakers to make that right decision. That's what we're going to be doing."