On Tuesday night, Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz made their political debut before a crowd of raucous supporters in Philadelphia. The next day, they hopped to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, for an informal meeting with 12,000 Bon Iver fans before landing in Detroit, where an estimated 15,000 people gathered on the tarmac at the Detroit airport to greet them.
Harris was on stage inside an aircraft hangar shortly afterward, when protesters interrupted her speech — and the positive vibe that has driven her campaign over the past two and a half weeks — to protest the Biden administration’s decision to continue arms shipments to Israel, even as that country’s right-wing government uses those weapons with little regard for the lives of civilians, aid workers and journalists. An estimated 40,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the war began in October.
“Kamala, Kamala, you can't hide. We will not vote for genocide,” the protesters chanted.
That message was delivered in Michigan—where 100,000 people abstained from voting for President Joe Biden in February’s Democratic primary over his administration’s Gaza policy—and it carries some weight. Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic stronghold by just 10,704 votes in 2016; Biden won it back for Democrats in 2020, but by a slim margin of 154,000 votes.
At first, Harris seemed to take the interruption calmly. “I’m here because we believe in democracy,” she said after the first chant. “Everyone’s voice matters, but I’m speaking now.” Then she resumed: “Look, if he’s elected, Donald Trump is going to give tax breaks to billionaires and big corporations, he’s going to cut Social Security and Medicare, he’s going to surrender on our fight against the climate crisis, he’s going to end the Affordable Care Act — ” The chanting continued, and Harris seemed to lose patience. “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, say so. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
The moment was captured and quickly spread across social media, where it was poorly received by potential Harris supporters who had hoped that a change at the top of the Democratic ticket would lead to a meaningful shift in US policy regarding Gaza.
There were subtle signs that Harris would be more inclined than Biden to support such a change, including her calls for a ceasefire that preceded Biden’s, reports that she called for stronger public criticism of Israel’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, her personal outreach to a man who lost dozens of family members in the war, and her selection of Walz as her running mate.
But in the absence of Harris herself articulating a different political vision from the current administration’s, the viral moment seemed to confirm the worst fears of voters who are upset that American taxpayers are funding what United Nations experts have assessed could reasonably be called “genocide.”
Before taking the stage Wednesday, Harris and Walz were introduced to the non-conformist movement’s founders, Leila Alabed and Abbas Alawiya, who say the campaign invited them to Wednesday’s rally. The invitation, which came after months of lobbying for a meeting to discuss the gun ban and speak at the conference, was a brief introduction during a photo op.
“It was just a few minutes in the photo lineup, and I was really emotional,” says Elabed. Rolling Stone“Harris was incredibly compassionate. I felt like her compassion was so genuine… When I asked her, ‘Will you meet us?’ she said, ‘Yes, let’s meet.’” Abed and Alawi say Harris then directed a staff member to set up a meeting with them. They hope that will happen, but no date has been set.
“Clearly we need more than just sympathy… We can’t eat sympathy,” Abed says. “The Palestinians, who are at the forefront of this attack, can’t live on sympathy. We need a real shift in policy. We need real change.”
After the event, the Unaffiliated Movement issued a press release announcing that Harris had agreed to meet with them to discuss a gun ban. The vice president’s national security adviser, Phil Gordon, immediately denied the idea that she would support such a ban. Meanwhile, a campaign spokesman said Harris “emphasized that her campaign will continue to engage with these communities.”
Alawiya and Al-Abed remain optimistic about the prospect. “The vice president seems interested in getting involved,” says Alawiya, who worked with Harris’s team as a legislative director on Capitol Hill. “I know that Vice President Harris’s team is a strong group of people, many of whom are connected to Arab American, Muslim American, and Palestinian American leaders, so it didn’t surprise me that there was certainly a greater response than we were getting from President Biden.”
He added that they realized that Harris' campaign was new and that she and her team were still working on getting it off the ground. At the same time, he said, the Democratic campaign's reset represents “a real opportunity to turn a new page in Gaza politics.”
“I feel that the last 10 months of this administration’s policy toward Gaza have been disastrous, and as we enter the most critical months of this campaign cycle, the hypocritical position of saying ‘ceasefire’ one moment and then continuing to support unconditional arms flows the next moment is not a reasonable policy, and it is not a good campaign strategy,” says Alawiya. “Democratic voters, including over 100,000 here in Michigan, have identified themselves as saying that Gaza is a major political issue for them. So if you are listening to voters, you need to update this policy. And I am optimistic that her team understands that.”
