by Eraldo Souza dos Santos

語言:
English
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0

“Kamala, Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, we won’t vote for genocide!”

WHEN PRO-PALESTINIAN protesters interrupted United States presidential contender Kamala Harris’s speech at a campaign rally in Michigan this month, many undecided voters may have expected her to offer a few words about the country’s diplomatic and financial support for the war on Gaza.

Many may have expected her to clarify her position, as vice president and perhaps soon as president of the United States, about the July 2024 International Court of Justice’s ruling declaring that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories does not comply with international law. Her reaction likely did not fulfil these expectations, however: “If you want Donald Trump to win then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”

“I’m speaking” became a key slogan of the 2020 Biden-Harris campaign when then-Vice President Mike Pence interrupted Harris twice as many times as she interrupted him during a TV debate.

The slogan then resonated among feminist movements that had been denouncing for decades the phenomenon commonly called manterrupting: the “unnecessary,” and typically repetitive, “interruption of a woman by a man” in a conversation or discussion.

A campaign related to International Women’s Day aimed in the aftermath of the debate to help women, following in the steps of Harris, to repeat “these words that will forever go down in history” as a way of “reclaiming” and “recentering” women’s voices.

Disempowering Phrase

BUT WHAT TO SAY about a situation in which words that aim to empower women are used to disempower those who are fighting against what multiple members of the international human rights legal community have identified as a genocide?

What to say about a situation in which these words are being used to condemn the nonviolent struggle of activists faced with the suffering of their own people? What to say when these very same words are used to silence the words of Palestinian women?

An artistic photo montage circulating on social media shows a photo of Gaza destroyed by Israeli bombardments and Harris in the foreground smiling and uttering the slogan: “I’m speaking.” From among the destroyed buildings, voices can be heard in reply: “Stop your bombs, stop your bombs, stop your bombs…”

Palestinians are also speaking. But who is listening?

Certainly not Harris, at least not to pro-Palestinian activists. This refusal to listen could have a significant impact on her campaign at a time when, by choosing Tim Walz as her vice presidential running mate, she has managed to galvanise the interest of the young Democratic electorate to once again go to the polls. An electorate that hopes that choosing Walz shows that the party is now making concessions to more progressive sectors of the American population.

Harris’ reaction to anti-war activism also comes at a delicate time for the Democratic Party – the return to classes at American universities. Despite the criminalisation of anti-war student encampments across the country, as election day draws closer and the prospect of a ceasefire seems increasingly an empty promise, student movements will likely continue to resort to civil disobedience as leverage against the Biden-Harris administration and the Harris-Walz candidacy.

Students Speak Up

SINCE THE BEGINNING of the student movement, Biden and Harris have adopted a rhetoric of law and order – the same used by then-presidential candidate Richard Nixon against students occupying universities like Columbia in 1968 – to condemn pro-Palestinian protests.

Like the Republican Party and its candidate Donald Trump, the current administration has treated peaceful protest as a threat to public order that requires criminal prosecution. Harris, for example, recently condemned activists who burnt an American flag – an act of protest protected by the First Amendment and Supreme Court precedent.

As soon as Harris became a presidential candidate in July, it became clear that a key strategy of her campaign would be to mobilise her past career as a “tough-on-crime” prosecutor against Trump, the first former American president to become a convicted felon. But using that same rhetoric against anti-war activists, many of whom do not intend to go to the polls, will likely backfire.

To not alienate Zionist donors and voters, Harris seems to be mostly focusing on winning in swing states, without taking seriously the possibility that her progressive electorate will not even show up to vote.

It is hence a risky strategy to suggest that activists who condemn her administration’s involvement in the war on Gaza are paving the way for Trump to return to power. This may only contribute to the further alienation of a traditionally pro-Democratic base in blue states, particularly voters in swing states like Michigan, which has the largest Arab and Muslim American populations in the country.

Kamala Harris (left) and her running mate Tim Walz (right). Photo credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0

On August 10, only three days after Harris was interrupted by activists during the rally in Michigan, the US government announced plans to send $3.5 billion to Israel to be spent on weapons and military equipment. On August 11, one day later, an Israeli strike killed more than 100 people sheltering in a school in Gaza City.

One of her first promises as a presidential candidate in late July – that she “will not be silent” on Palestinian suffering and that she told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that “it is time to get this (ceasefire) deal done”–sounds in this context contradictory, to say the least.

Underestimating the political importance and strength of the anti-war camp may cause Harris to lose this election.
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