Editor’s Note: A version of the following first appeared on Judge Wendell Griffen’s blog, “A Fierce Prophetic Hope.”
Like millions in the United States and across the world, last week, I watched Vice President Kamala Harris accept the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States in the November 2024 general election.
Harris delivered a stirring speech that described her personal and professional history. She forcefully expressed her commitment to civil liberty and extolled the role of working people.
Harris was blunt about her resolve to correct the wrongs done to women and girls concerning reproductive freedom by the right-wing supermajority that former U.S. President Donald Trump nominated and confirmed on the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the landmark decision of Roe v. Wade.
On those and other issues, Harris clearly showed if she is elected president, she will be a different kind of leader from Donald Trump.
However, Harris failed to do the one thing that mattered most to people who watched all week for the Democratic Party to show concern for Palestinians. She refused to allow Palestinian-Americans to speak during the official proceedings of the convention.
More than 40,000 Palestinian men, women, and children have been slaughtered in Gaza by Israel since October 7, 2023. Schools, hospitals, homes, places of worship, and life support systems have been destroyed by bombs, artillery shells and tank rounds.
The world has watched courageous Palestinian journalists daily report on the suffering of people in Gaza caused by Israel’s genocidal war. Humanitarian agencies have reported that Palestinians in Gaza are starving. Medical professionals have reported that Israeli war tactics have made medical care and treatment practically unavailable to Palestinians who have been shot, burned, bombed, and are being starved to death.
Palestinian-Americans begged for a few minutes to speak about the plight of their relatives in Gaza during the Chicago convention. Kamala Harris rejected their pleas.
Biden’s bid for re-election was not only doomed by his dismal debate performance against Donald Trump on June 27. His disregard for the suffering of Palestinians and his administration’s military and diplomatic support for Israel’s inhumane treatment of Palestinians in Gaza caused those voters to recognize that Biden does not care about Palestinian suffering, dignity, security and self-determination.
Kamala Harris could have shown that she is cut from a different cloth. She merely needed to allow Palestinian-Americans to be heard during the official proceedings in Chicago the same way she allowed the parents of an American hostage held by Hamas in Gaza to be heard.
However, for reasons she has not publicly explained, Harris refused to do so. Perhaps she didn’t think that being seen and heard about suffering and injustice matters for Palestinians. We may never know.
But one thing is clear. Whether Harris wins or loses in November will depend on Michigan, where 100,000 voters refused to support Joe Biden because of his disregard for Palestinian justice. By rejecting the pleas of Palestinian Americans to be heard during the official proceedings in Chicago, Harris did not give those voters a reason to believe that her policies towards Palestinian justice will be different from Biden’s.
Harris made a stirring acceptance speech in Chicago. But history will not forget that when she became the most prominent Democratic politician in the world, she turned her back on U.S. relatives of starving, unhoused, defenseless, and dying Palestinians whose plight is directly caused by the Biden administration’s support for Israeli genocide in Gaza.
A hundred thousand voters in Michigan will remember how Harris treated those relatives and their plea to be heard in Chicago – for even a few minutes – every day until November 5, 2024. Those voters cannot prevent Israel from starving, murdering and robbing their kinfolk in Gaza.
But they may prevent Harris from becoming the next U.S. president to help Israel do it.
Pastor at New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Arkansas, a retired state court trial judge, a trustee of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, author of two books and three blogs, a consultant on cultural competency and inclusion, and a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.
