Above photo: Under portraits of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz adorning the United Center where the Democratic National Convention is taking place, Uncommitted Movement co-lead Abbas Alawieh announces the DNC rejected their request to have a Palestinian speaker address the convention, on August 21, 2024. Prem Thakker, @prem_thakker.
Uncommitted movement activists and delegates are speaking out for the first time.
They criticize movement leaders for prioritizing party loyalty and media optics over confronting the Democratic Party.
The Uncommitted National Movement* was formed by activists and delegates to the Democratic National Convention following months of protest against the Gaza genocide and a groundswell of opposition against the Biden-Harris administration for its support for Israel. Although the pro-Palestine movement succeeded in carrying out a historic campaign that gathered hundreds of thousands of uncommitted and protest votes during Democratic primaries across the country, the Uncommitted Campaign thus far has failed in its efforts to shift the Democratic Party, or its presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, in any meaningful way on U.S. policy toward Palestine.
In interviews with 12 key members of the uncommitted movement, activists are sharing their critiques of the movement publicly for the first time. Critics argue the movement has prioritized party loyalty and media optics over genuine action. Internal fractures, exclusionary tactics, and an unwillingness to confront the Democratic establishment have disillusioned its grassroots base, as the leadership appears more concerned with maintaining visibility than holding the party accountable for its stance on the Israeli genocide of Gaza.
Reluctance To Challenge Democrats
Frustrations within the Uncommitted movement had been building for months when the Democratic National Convention met in Chicago in late August, and they spilled into the open. The movement’s failure to land a speaker at the convention became a symbol of the movement’s inability to meaningfully impact the newly formed Harris-Walz ticket’s approach to Palestine.
Essam Boraey, an uncommitted delegate from Connecticut, expressed deep frustration with the Uncommitted’s ineffective strategy during the DNC. Despite months of negotiations with the Party and the Harris campaign, the movement failed to achieve any tangible gains. “The DNC and Harris campaign strung them along, offering nothing in return,” Boraey told Mondoweiss.
A more impactful strategy, according to Boraey, would have been for Uncommitted delegates to disrupt the DNC proceedings from day one and force the issue. Instead, the movement opted for a more conciliatory approach, including a silent protest, covering their mouths—an action some delegates felt fell flat, especially when the DNC was already ignoring them.
Not all delegates agreed however with Boraey’s more disruptive approach. Asma Mohammed, a lead organizer and uncommitted Minnesota delegate, defended the movement’s silent protest by explaining that the Minnesota delegation, which made up over a third of the uncommitted delegates, prioritized engaging with other delegates and state party members and they didn’t want to jeopardize this access. “Our focus was on talking to delegates and state party people. Without credentials, we wouldn’t have been able to access other delegates, so we made sure to maintain that throughout the event.”
But Boraey maintains Uncommitted failed to achieve short-term goals and squandered a rare opportunity to make a real impact because Uncommitted leadership seemed more concerned with maintaining good relations with the DNC than taking bold action to advance the Palestinian cause. He says Uncommitted’s leadership had been compromised by agreeing to a deal with the DNC that forbade disruptions which led to little leverage. “By the time the convention was nearly over, there was no incentive for the DNC to listen or negotiate.”
“This movement focused on appeasing the DNC instead of fighting for results,” he laments. “There was no incentive whatsoever for the DNC or the campaign to talk to them, to negotiate, or to give them anything.”
Ultimately some felt that Uncommitted’s leadership was too tied to the Democratic Party to effectively challenge it.
Usman Jazz, a member of the DNC Standing Rules Committee, told Mondoweiss that he thinks the leadership’s background as former staffers might have constricted their willingness to truly challenge the Democratic Party power structure.
Jazz was perhaps referring to Uncommitted leader Abbas Alawieh, who has served in staff positions for Reps. Cori Bush, Rashida Tlaib, and Andy Levin. An August 21 profile in The Washington Post echoed a similar theme saying, “Alawieh may be an uncommitted delegate, but he is a committed Democrat.” And in that same article, Alawieh also made clear that for him the Uncommitted movement was not antagonistic to Harris but that its goal was to “help her give voters a reason to vote for her.”
As the Democratic Party convened in Chicago for the DNC there were growing concerns among some activists and delegates that the uncommitted effort had been co-opted, replacing the fight for justice and liberation with symbolic gestures that serve party insiders more than the Palestinian cause.
Boraey and other delegates point to a sit-in the movement leadership organized to pressure Democratic Party leadership to allow a Palestinian speaker as a prime example of this conciliatory approach which failed.
Boraey says Uncommitted leadership refused to let other delegates, including himself, play a public role in the Palestine advocacy at the DNC, and even attempted to downplay the confrontational nature of their protest.
“At first, I tried to convince myself that I had misunderstood,” Boraey recalled, “but it became clear that we weren’t welcome to speak.” He says delegates repeatedly expressed their desire to share their voices and support the cause, only to be silenced.
In addition, Boraey shares that Alawieh repeatedly emphasized that the protest wasn’t a sit-in but merely a “sit-down,” passively waiting for the DNC to engage. “They sat there respectfully, hoping the DNC staff would reach out, but no one came,” he recalls.
Ruba Ayub, a delegate from Washington State supporting the Uncommitted Ceasefire delegates, told Mondoweiss that Alawieh indeed took pains to emphasize that their sit-in was not a protest and that they weren’t there to cause disruptions. “It was done in a way to show we’re the better protesters,” she said, implying their strategy was more about decorum than bold action. Ayub says the goal was to “join the system to make change in the system” rather than fundamentally challenge it.
In a statement to Mondoweiss a spokesperson with the Uncommitted National Movement disputed this characterization of the protest saying it was an unplanned action and it morphed into a sit-in to protest Democratic Party leadership’s approach to Palestinian human rights.
Boraey believes the failure to take bolder action or meaningfully disrupt the DNC ensured Uncommitted had no impact on policy discussions surrounding the Palestinian cause. “I felt this was a very losing, naive strategy that would not result in anything,” he says, his frustration palpable. “It will not add any pressure on the DNC or the campaign, and it will not move the cause an inch forward.”
In the end, Boraey, and fellow DNC delegates Liano Sharon and Nadia Ahmad, a hijabi Muslim woman, unfurled a banner that read “Stop Arming Israel” on the floor of the United Center on the first night of the DNC. The three were physically assaulted by leaders of the LiUNA union, and Ahmad suffered a concussion. The protest was neither endorsed nor supported by the Uncommitted movement leadership.
Boraey says he left the DNC deeply disillusioned by a movement that, in his eyes, had surrendered without a fight.
A Media-Driven Strategy
Boraey’s frustrations were far from isolated. Many organizers who played key roles in shaping Uncommitted and the pro-Palestinian movement within the Democratic party shared his concerns and pointed to internal divisions, exclusionary practices, a reluctance to adopt disruptive tactics, and, most critically, a lack of meaningful organizing, as the reason the movement couldn’t move the needle within the Democratic Party.
Many felt Uncommitted’s influence at the DNC was more symbolic than substantive, and revealed a clear disconnect between its leadership and the grassroots supporters it claimed to represent.
Usman Jazz echoed this sentiment and questioned the movement’s trajectory. “I don’t know what their goal is anymore… It really just felt like they cared about media hits.”
This observation would seem to be confirmed by the public statements of some of Uncommitted’s leadership as well as internal strategy documents obtained by Mondoweiss.
In a now-deleted tweet, Waleed Shahid, one of the leaders of Uncommitted and a Democratic strategist, pointed to the media impact of the movement’s presence at the DNC as a sign of the movement’s success. In it, Shahid claimed coverage of the movement generated the equivalent of 424 primetime ads, valued at $74.1 million in media exposure.
The importance of media coverage generated by the movement, which is sometimes referred to as “earned media,” was highlighted as a key movement strategy in internal strategy documents obtained by Mondoweiss.
“Earned media is one of our primary tactics because it leverages the natural press intrigue in conflict to amplify our message, creating a public pressure cooker that decision-makers cannot ignore,” a document titled “Earned Media” said. “Appearing in the same mainstream media outlets as senior Democratic elected officials causes them to take us more seriously as representing a majority within the party, not just 30 out of 4,000 delegates, forcing recognition and acknowledgment of our influence,” it continued.
Shahid himself also spoke openly about the need to prioritize the media strategy as a primary goal of the Uncommitted campaign. “The reason I wanted to do the Uncommitted campaign was based on my theory that most people understand politics through elections, because the media covers politics through elections,” he told +972 magazine’s Joshua Leifer in an August 20, 2024 interview. “We had to find a way to bring the war in Gaza into a frame that most people would understand, and most journalists would cover,” he said.
But delegates who spoke to Mondoweiss criticized Uncommitted’s leadership decision to prioritize media appearances over the hard work of organizing. Many delegates feel the decision not to prioritize grassroots organizing was a fundamental flaw in Uncommitted’s approach that came back to hurt the movement at the convention. While the movement generated media attention, it failed to mobilize delegates to push for real policy changes. This decision may have doomed the movement long before it even arrived in Chicago.
Missed Opportunities To Organize Delegates
Many sources who spoke to Mondoweiss say it was the disorganized and chaotic summer months leading up to the DNC in Chicago that prevented the Uncommitted movement from translating the movement’s electoral success into more political success.
Kristina Beverlin, an organizer from Washington state, is a longtime Democratic activist with deep involvement in Palestinian rights advocacy, who has long supported pro-Palestinian candidates. While her activism started at the grassroots level it eventually led her to work closely with Democratic Party leaders.
In October 2023, Beverlin and Rami Al-Kabra, the only Palestinian elected official in Washington, were at a pro-Palestinian march in downtown Seattle when they began sharing their frustrations at the absence of Democratic political figures at the rally. To them, this only highlighted the party’s failure to recognize the growing support for Palestine. Months later in February, as activists in Michigan launched a campaign called “Listen to Michigan,” which would later morph into the Uncommitted National Movement, Beverlin and her colleagues in Washington saw an opportunity to use their state’s unique “uncommitted” option on the ballot to follow a similar strategy.
Beverlin’s leadership in uncommitted Washington eventually brought her into close collaboration with Listen to Michigan but she insists the uncommitted movement was not created in Michigan, and was a true grassroots movement. “From the start, uncommitted was never a Michigan-born idea,” Beverlin explains. “It was called ‘Listen to Michigan’ initially, but only adopted the name Uncommitted after other states got involved—states that led much of the organizing. The media hasn’t caught on, but this movement wasn’t theirs to begin with.”
“They’ve claimed ownership of something that can’t be owned,” Beverlin says, reflecting on how the grassroots energy of the uncommitted was co-opted by figures who bent too easily to the Democratic establishment. “It’s disappointing to see those who should have led the movement fall in line.”
In the months leading up to the DNC, Beverlin found herself at the center of the effort to organize “ceasefire delegates,” a broader category of Biden, then Harris, delegates who endorsed the demands of the uncommitted movement. Her frustration with the Uncommitted leadership had been growing for some time. “In April or May, I began consistently messaging the Michigan team, urging them that we needed to start organizing the delegates right away,” she recalls. The urgency was clear. “We had to reach out to other states, identify our allies, and encourage them to sign up as delegates. The goal was to enter the DNC convention with as many allies as possible.”
Beverlin also expressed frustrations over what she identified as a lack of organization and communication from the Uncommitted leadership, which left her and other organizers feeling left to bear the brunt of organization efforts and outreach to other local chapters.
“Texas did well, but they operated entirely on their own,” she notes. California, however, remained the biggest disappointment. “California sends over 500 delegates to the DNC, the largest by far. It was a missed opportunity,” she laments. “California has double the number of delegates as New York, the second-largest delegation. That was a major source of my frustration—the lack of planning.”
Beverlin says there was also a missed opportunity when it came to engaging labor groups. “Many delegates at the DNC represented labor groups, and almost every labor group had called for a ceasefire or expressed strong support for Palestinian rights. It was a glaring missed opportunity to not get those delegates on board to help us,” Beverlin stressed.
The Uncommitted National Movement disputed this characterization of their work. “We’ve been organizing a delegate strategy since the first delegate was earned in February,” a spokesperson for the movement told Mondoweiss. “This culminated in a training on the day before the Convention and over 300 Harris delegates signing a letter for an arms embargo.”
According to Beverlin there was also a lack of communication between state activists and delegates and uncommitted leadership which frustrated many who were not able to get answers they needed. “I got a call from a Progressive Caucus chair who asked about the Uncommitted movement’s organization,” Beverlin recounted. “At that point, the movement was still disorganized, and for some reason, I became the person people approached with those types of questions.”
Asma Mohammed told Mondoweiss that while most of Minnesota’s organizing was independent of Michigan, there was collaboration. “National hosted a training on how to bring in ceasefire delegates—Minnesota helped lead that but national hosted it.” Still, Mohammed characterized the uncommitted organizing in Minnesota as very grassroots. “It was a primary [season] movement. And we brought delegates to the DNC to try to put more pressure on the vice president.”
At the DNC, Minnesota delegates “handled all the logistics to ensure the ceasefire delegates were prepared for the conversations they were having. Minnesota wrote the scripts. National also helped lead some of the conversations. But on the ground, Minnesota led the effort to get ceasefire delegates into as many places as we could.”
She added, “National got us T-shirts.” She further acknowledged that national leadership did a good job with their state party efforts and was effective in organizing press conferences throughout the week at the DNC.
“I know that National is its own thing, but, please know that the organizers on the ground were the most incredible people I have ever worked with. Some of them are just superstars,” Mohammed said, making clear she was referring to all of the Uncommitted and ceasefire delegates. She emphasized that her team was remarkable and did their best, despite the broader limitations within the movement.
At the DNC, many delegates visibly wore pro-Palestine symbols during the convention, but the underlying reality was less impressive. Less than 1% of the 4,000 total delegates were uncommitted, and although over 300 Harris delegates signed the ceasefire pledge, this amounted to fewer than 10% of the attendees. The struggle to organize delegates meant that come Chicago, the Uncommitted movement was not able to translate growing public support into tangible political power.
Conclusion: A Failed Intervention
On September 18, Uncommitted leadership held a press conference to announce they would not be endorsing Kamala Harris for president after she refused to meet any of the movement’s demands.
“For months, we have urged Vice President Harris to shift her Gaza policy so we could mobilize voters in key states to save lives and our democracy,” a statement from the group stated. “Vice President Harris’s unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear campaign statement in support of upholding existing U.S. and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her.”
But the movement also said it was calling on supporters “to register anti-Trump votes and vote up and down the ballot” and “is not recommending a third-party vote in the Presidential election.” It all adds up to an unclear message and led many to believe the Uncommitted movement has prioritized shielding the Democratic Party over forcefully pushing for an end to the Gaza genocide.
Uncommitted, which initially positioned itself as a force for change in the pro-Palestinian struggle, tied itself to politicians and insiders, alienated much of its grassroots base, and ultimately failed to accomplish nearly any of its goals. This has predictably sparked a backlash from critics within the Palestinian and Muslim communities, who argue that Uncommitted’s alignment with the establishment compromised its integrity.
Hudhayfah Ahmad, spokesperson for the Abandon Harris movement (formerly known as Abandon Biden) has closely monitored Uncommitted’s developments with growing concern and has grown to be a vocal critic. He told Mondoweiss that he wasn’t surprised by the Uncommitted movement’s lack of success, as he believed its strategy was doomed from the start. “In my view, the Uncommitted movement overreached by attempting to extend its influence beyond the primary process,” Ahmad says. “Instead of focusing on reshaping the Democratic Party’s agenda during the primaries, they pursued a vague and unfocused initiative that ultimately alienated many Muslim voters.”
Ahmad emphasizes that the Uncommitted movement missed a crucial opportunity to rally constituents around a clear agenda. “We needed decisive action and a strong, unified voice to advocate for our community during an ongoing genocide,” he said. “Instead, we saw our message diluted, and a failure to engage effectively with the political system. As a result, many in our community feel disillusioned and disconnected from the Uncommitted movement.”
He urges Muslim activists and organizations to learn from these missteps. “It’s essential that we adopt a more strategic and impactful approach to political engagement moving forward. Our community deserves leaders who will firmly advocate for our needs and aspirations, rather than getting lost in empty symbolism and ineffective campaigns,” Ahmad told Mondoweiss.
Imran Salha is a prominent Palestinian-American Imam from Detroit and an example of the dynamic Ahmad describes. Salha has become outspoken in his criticism of the Democrats and the Uncommitted movement, which he believes has not done enough to challenge the Biden-Harris administration. He is now urging Muslims and their allies to leverage their political power in swing states to bring about meaningful change. “We need to punish genocide with our votes,” he says.
“And I pray that we are all gathered in a liberated Palestine one day.”
Saleema Gul is a Houston-based activist who has organized for over two decades on social justice and human rights issues.
Notes
* For the purposes of this article “Uncommitted” will be used to refer to the Uncommitted National Movement, whereas the grassroots movement of local movement and activists who worked on regional uncommitted campaigns during the primary season will be referred to as uncommitted, to differentiate between the national organization and the grassroots.