Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan speaks during a vigil organized by Health Workers Alliance for Palestine in Toronto on November 30, 2023.Mert Alper Dervis/Anadolu/Getty
As the Democratic National Convention kicked off its virtual roll-call vote this morning, the Uncommitted movement—an organization that successfully pushed thousands of primary voters to choose no one instead of casting a ballot for President Joe Biden because of US backing of Israel during its war on Gaza—called on the party to let a member of their delegation speak.
The movement would like a five-minute speaking slot for a humanitarian aid worker who has recently returned from Gaza. Abbas Alawieh, an Uncommitted organizer, said at this morning’s press conference that the delegates from his group communicated this request to the DNC via email “maybe a month ago.” They have not yet received a response.
Nationwide, as previously reported in Mother Jones, the Uncommitted movement earned over 700,000 votes—and 30 delegates to the convention. As we wrote:
The movement’s impact was notable, especially in swing states: 13 percent of voters in Michigan, just under 19 percent in Minnesota, and just below 15 percent in North Carolina voted “uncommitted.” In Illinois, a state without an “uncommitted” option on the ballot, voters wrote in “Gaza.”
The 30 Uncommitted delegates selected Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care physician who spent time in Gaza’s hospitals, as their preferred speaker.
“I am not a politician,” Haj-Hassan said. “I’m not even an activist—my life prior to this year has been spent primarily doing clinical work.” But the “complete destruction of human life” she saw in Gaza—and the awareness that the destruction is made possible thanks to US funds and US weapons—has made Haj-Hassan determined to speak.
“People are being killed in a thousand and one ways—every hour, in the emergency department…we would receive mass casualties. We received children, maimed, killed, beheaded, shot…many of these child deaths were deliberate killings,” she said. When Haj-Hassan was able to save a child, she was haunted by the fact that they’d be in danger again the moment they left her care: “I know under the current military strategy that that child has a very small probability of surviving, once he’s discharged from the hospital.”
Speakers who are not politicians are often given airtime at party national conventions. At the 2016 DNC, a fifth-grade teacher, a tech entrepreneur, a 9/11 survivor, and actress Meryl Streep were all among the speakers.
Still, the Uncommitted movement has not received much engagement from Harris or her campaign yet. The vice president is scheduled to be in Michigan, the birthplace of Uncommitted, this coming Wednesday.
“If next Wednesday works for her, we’ll clear our schedules,” Alawieh said. “We need to be able to speak with the Vice President directly, make sure that she hears us and takes the opportunity to turn a new page.” And if Haj-Hassan isn’t given a speaker slot, organizer Layla Elabed said, they’ll find a way for her story to be heard regardless.
“We’ll find a way for her to speak, one way or another, in the tradition of Fannie Lou Hamer, who made moral witness to human suffering at the 1964 DNC,” Elabed said.
