The Uncommitted Movement (w/ Waleed Shahid & Abbas Alawieh)
Added 2024-09-06 11:00:10 +0000 UTCMatt and Sam interview Waleed Shahid and Abbas Alawieh, two organizers of the Uncommitted Movement, about their experiences in the months following October 7 as well as before, during, and after the Democratic National Convention. As an Arab-American from Michigan and one of the state's two Uncommitted delegates to the DNC, what has Abbas heard from the people in his community, and what has he heard from his party? Why try to work within the Democratic Party to change its approach to Israel-Palestine? What were the Uncommitted Movement's "asks" at the convention, and why were they all refused? How does the Democratic Party, institutionally, need to change to better reflect the broadly pro-ceasefire views of its voters? And is there any hope that a possible Harris administration will be an improvement on the dreadful status quo?
Sources:
Waleed Shahid, “Why the Uncommitted Movement Was a Success at the DNC,” Jacobin, Aug 27, 2024
"'The Uncommitted Movement Is the Floor of What’s Possible:' An Interview with Waleed Shahid," Dissent, Aug 16, 2024
Ben Terris, "A 'Ceasefire Delegate' Finds Lots to Do but Little to Celebrate," Washington Post, Aug 21, 2024
Akbar Shahid Ahmed, "Gaza War Critics Are Inspired By The 1964 DNC — And They're Playing The Long Game," HuffPost, Aug 23, 2024
Noah Lanard, "Why Were Democrats Afraid to Hear a Palestinian?" Mother Jones, Aug 31, 2024
— "Here Is the Speech That the Uncommitted Movement Wants to Give at the DNC," Mother Jones, Aug 23, 2024
Ta-Nehisi Coates, "A Palestinian American’s Place Under the Democrats’ Big Tent?" Vanity Fair, Aug 21, 2024
Comments
Which episode was that? I don't remember it, and I thought I'd listened to them all
Laura
2024-10-01 06:26:48 +0000 UTCWhat are the factors that would invoke the Global Magnitsky Act here?
Chad Bailey
2024-09-15 17:50:49 +0000 UTCI don’t get why there isn’t also legal action being taken via US courts. For example, the State Department is required to identity and try to prevent atrocities: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/22/2656
Chad Bailey
2024-09-15 17:50:04 +0000 UTCThis will be in the pantheon of great episodes. Maybe not above the Gay Vatican Gossip episode, but still a banger.
Ian Derk
2024-09-12 03:16:01 +0000 UTCI was on the fence about listening to this one for many personal reasons, but I’m so glad I listened. Learned a lot, and I’m very grateful to y’all and your guests for handling this topic with such care and empathy.
Eira Tansey
2024-09-10 18:13:07 +0000 UTCIt is now!
Know Your Enemy
2024-09-10 06:39:17 +0000 UTCWe have! Thank you, Sam.
Know Your Enemy
2024-09-10 06:38:33 +0000 UTCI want to deeply thank you for shining a spotlight on this issue. I have been horrified by what has happened in Gaza and the West Bank . Having spent time in the occupied territories, I knew this war would be awful but what has happened is beyond what I imagined. It is a genocide, and the Israeli government is committing war crimes. I am 75 yr old lifelong Dem and still haven’t heard what we need to hear. Many thanks to those working on this, and know that there are many of us standing with them!
Helen Jones
2024-09-09 21:41:32 +0000 UTCI'm sympathetic to this line of thinking but I'm not convinced withholding a vote for Kamala represents a positive outcome for Palestinians. It's just psychologically exhausting that the options are genocide versus more genocide.
Tim Combes
2024-09-09 19:23:58 +0000 UTCPlease release this one to the main feed. Everyone should hear this interview
Sam Richards Davidson
2024-09-09 14:51:22 +0000 UTCWhen you make a threat (e.g. to withhold your vote), you have to be prepared to follow through on it. If you don’t, you lose credibility. Politicians are well aware that AIPAC will follow through on their threats. My hope is that they learn this election that those of us who care about Palestinians are also prepared to exact a price.
Nick
2024-09-08 18:53:27 +0000 UTCExcellent episode. A key moment for me was the discussion of Schlozman's _When Movements Anchor Parties_, which, I think, gets at one of the core problems that face the Uncommitted Movement. In coming years, I hope we're able to form a powerful enough interest group within the Democratic Party to turn back the disastrous alignment of the establishment of at least one of our major parties with Israel's apartheid régime. The aggressive dehumanization of the Palestinian people is one of the grossest contradictions in what the US's major left-of-center party purports to stand for.
Richard Wattenbarger
2024-09-08 18:11:56 +0000 UTCSo excellent. Will this episode be available to share with non Patreon subscribers?
Little Beruit Dweller
2024-09-08 02:40:43 +0000 UTCYou are a very poor listener.
Rick Perlstein
2024-09-07 23:06:00 +0000 UTCSo fucking heartbreaking. We shall overcome...someday?
Rick Perlstein
2024-09-07 23:04:28 +0000 UTCThe last 5 minutes of this pod was especially refreshing to hear from a leader in the pro-Palestinian movement. It is clear as day that a Trump win would be exponentially worse for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza and the pro-Palestinian movement in the US. As flawed as people may find Harris to be on this issue (I’m honestly probably more moderate on this issue than most listeners), the Uncommitted Movement should channel their excellent organizing efforts to drive turnout for Democrats up and down the ballot, including Harris.
Kyle Mitchell
2024-09-07 18:55:27 +0000 UTCIt’s been frustrating to encounter a lot of breathless political coverage from Dem pundits that pushes for Kamala’s win at the cost of overlooking a genocide. The moral clarity these guests have provided through the Uncommitted Movement is something for which the Democratic Party should be grateful, and I am sure that history will recognize their efforts for the good that they are— I just wish they could have the same recognition right now. Thank you for this episode!
Isabella
2024-09-07 17:55:23 +0000 UTCI’m glad that rights for Palestinians was talked about. Cease fire is just the beginning. Israel’s maintenance of demographic control is the ultimate issue to be faced. Even people who are in favor of that demographic control can evade that issue by calling for cease fire.
erik w bjorke
2024-09-07 14:18:59 +0000 UTCI definitely will not vote for the democrats so long as they enact a genocide and become the party of Dick Cheney era neocons. I'm still blown away with how apperent the democrats have ratcheted to the right compared to 2020.
Anna
2024-09-07 02:59:54 +0000 UTCThe right is emboldened by power, the left is frozen by it. I don’t see the policy changing under a Harris administration at all. Reelection campaign starts on day one. Tim Walz says you win power to use it, but Tim Walz won’t be the president. Maybe it would be worse under Trump, more likely it would be exactly the same. Trump talks a lot of bullshit, but he doesn’t care enough about anything to try to influence what Israel does. I guess us good little voters are just supposed to believe that there’s a better chance to end the slaughter under Dems, when there’s absolutely no evidence of that.
DJM
2024-09-07 02:40:49 +0000 UTCThis is just weird. Aside from the fact that both parties are on board with the seemingly permanent denial of basic human rights for the Palestinian people, those who believe that everyone has a right to be free including the Palestinian people don’t like or approve of Hamas, its actions or ideology. Before October 7th there was this belief that the status quo was both tolerable and sustainable. All the chatter was about normalization with Saudi Arabia. We can maintain the apartheid and we can wall up these people and forget about them. That blew up in their face. We have to hold more than one thought in our heads at the same time. Murdering innocent civilians is wrong. Denying millions of people basic human rights indefinitely is wrong. Dehumanizing people is wrong. Dehumanized people will behave in inhumane ways. To be pro-Palestinian freedom is not to be pro-Hamas.
erik w bjorke
2024-09-07 01:11:26 +0000 UTCEach side claims bigotry when things are not going the way they want, and this level of discourse has ensured that more common ground can't form and more nuanced, more inclusive conversations can't happen. As much of a supported of this pod as I have been, I have never felt anywhere close to being this sad about an episode. I think your guests want to convince people they are on that side of the Democratic party but they are not- they have other allegiances that have led them to choose to actively undermine it. Does the party NEED challenging- of course! And I agree with your guest's stated policies - cease fire and arms constraint as leverage for the former. And I want all that in February 2025. But casting disagreement with the tactics of the uncommitted movement automatically as Islamaphobic or supporting genocide is jt the kind of rhetoric that peels off support from their cause.. Like maybe there are aspects of Islamaphobia involved but there can be other reasons too ? None of those reasons are considered by your guests or by yourselves. Many so called progressives took the uncommitted message last winter, and are now opted out. Your guests may say they don't intend to alienate voters from the party but that's exactly what they did. And those people aren't voting this fall or are "voting 3rd party" ie, voting for Trump. And doing that in an election where a hair's breadth of difference can land us under Trump won't warm people to the cause of the the uncommitted movement or the people they claim to uphold. Because we'll frankly then be too preoccupied with dealing with horrors on our own turf to care about much else.. I am in a swing state and did not vote for Biden in the primary. And believe me when I tell you though that people feel very strongly that anyone persuading voters not to support Harris - at this VERY LATE DATE !!!!! - are not doing their cause any help at all. I love you guys but I will have to reconsider my support after this.
Sam D.
2024-09-07 00:20:10 +0000 UTCMe neither. I understand why people would and Trump is worse, but I can’t abide throwing my vote away for a party that spends billions to arm Israel. I’m gonna vote for Cornel West.
Isaac Suárez
2024-09-06 23:12:45 +0000 UTCI'm also not planning on voting for Kamala, I'm considering Jill Stein and it's confusing to hear that uncommitted leaders would still vote for her despite her unwavering commitment to Israel.
Anna
2024-09-06 23:05:43 +0000 UTCI have to say, I'm really unconvinced by the idea that Trump would be worse on Gaza therefore we should vote for Kamala despite her refusal to engage with the uncommitted movement at the DNC, on top of her disgusting pro war track record. Why not vote for Jill Stein when the DNC has so clearly committed itself to send weapons to Israel? It looks to me like the Democratic Party is simply finished. Fully absorbed into the neocon agenda. She doesn't even have policies on her campaign page, I can't understand why I should vote for her, or why the uncommitted movement would vote for her despite everything she has done.
Anna
2024-09-06 23:03:07 +0000 UTCSeconding this (to comment this myself is literally why I logged in). This is an absolutely extraordinary interview. I've got a mostly baseless but maybe not totally wrong worry that a fair number of people (pro-Kamala, pro-ceasefire people even) don't actually understand the degree to which the uncommitted movement positions is ACTIVELY TRYING TO HELP THE DEMOCRATS WIN ELECTIONS, and might be good to really beating down the doors on that one. Like, unfortunately, there seems to be (and the episode bolsters my sense of this) a failure to realize that framing the matter as "we need to tolerate the genocide for the sake of the election" is not only obscene, it's also incoherent.
David
2024-09-06 22:29:45 +0000 UTCI’m sorry but this is an unacceptable take for many particular reasons that others have outlined in the responses but also on the larger grounds of basic decency and humanity. I’m also confused by your comment given you’re listening to a left wing podcast? This is so far off the mark that it doesn’t really warrant an in depth response
Andrew
2024-09-06 22:29:05 +0000 UTCAnd here I was, thinking to myself: at long last, a nice discussion about the effects (or lack there-of) of the US support of a genocide on its internal politics. If you were driven away by the Hamas "animals" from the Democratic party because the Dems are too anti-Israel (for sending arms and money directly implicated in a genocide??), but have felt nothing about the continuous and relentless atrocities committed by the Israeli "animals" for decades prior to and leading up to that (and magnified post Oct 7), then that says a lot about you. Why is it that history always begins on the day your preferred victims suffer?
S P
2024-09-06 21:43:29 +0000 UTCGo back to “The Bulwark” with the rest of the neocon genocide apologists, loser.
Blue Myself
2024-09-06 19:57:19 +0000 UTC“New polling from Data for Progress, in collaboration with Zeteo, finds that a majority of U.S. likely voters continue to support a permanent ceasefire and humanitarian assistance in Gaza, and think that if conflict escalates between Israel and Iran, the U.S. military should have little to no involvement. Narrow pluralities of voters also think Israel is committing genocide, and disapprove of recent congressional funding for Israel and of college campuses limiting students' rights and abilities to protest Israel's military operations. However, voters are more divided on those questions. Seven in 10 likely voters — including majorities of Democrats (83%), Independents (65%), and Republicans (56%) — support the U.S. calling for a permanent ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence in Gaza. This represents a 3-point increase in support for the U.S. calling for a permanent ceasefire since Data for Progress last polled this question in February, and a 9-point increase in support from November.” https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2024/5/8/support-for-a-permanent-ceasefire-in-gaza-increases-across-party-lines
Isaac Suárez
2024-09-06 18:54:02 +0000 UTCBad take. Palestinian women and children (who are murdered every day) are not Hamas. The folks in the West Bank, who do not even live under Hamas rule, are not Hamas. The idea that Hamas’s actions or existence justifies mass annexations or genocide is so obviously made in bad faith, that I have a hard time taking it seriously. God willing, “liberal hegemony” leaves this position in the dust (it will in time, but it may cost the Dems elections and bring MAGA back into power before this happens.)
Isaac Suárez
2024-09-06 18:52:15 +0000 UTCGreat interview. Honestly, I don’t plan to vote for a Democrat at the federal level until this movement is respected and policy changes. I am deeply disillusioned with the clear bigotry of the party leadership and the clear, obvious influence the defense sector and AIPAC have at the highest levels of power. All that being said, I admire the uncommitted movement and their leaders. It is inspiring to see the hard, thankless work these folks put in. I hope they succeed and I support their efforts.
Isaac Suárez
2024-09-06 18:49:54 +0000 UTCDo you really not see the irony of following "please live under Hamas and get back to me" with "I fucking hate MAGA"? Several American states are currently governed by MAGA-style reactionaries - would neighboring states therefore be justified in bombing their schools and hospitals, leveling their homes and infrastructure? If Trump wins the election, would other countries be justified in killing tens of thousands of American civilians across the US? Would people from those countries be justified in dismissing your concern for American civilians with "live under MAGA and get back to me?"
Peter Aidan Byrne
2024-09-06 18:28:27 +0000 UTCIsrael has killed tens of thousands more innocent children and civilians than Hamas. They are deliberately murdering civilians and making life unliveable in Gaza. 95% of all civilian deaths in the conflict since 1948 have been Palestinians killed by Israel. They’re a terrorist state committing war crimes and you can’t abide “anything anti-Israel”? That’s fucking pathetic
Tommy Goulding
2024-09-06 16:11:42 +0000 UTCI'm sure you'll lose some subscribers by giving voice to the pro-Palestinian movement, but in a bleak sea of bad faith anti-Semitism accusations and ongoing support for genocide from both major American parties, it's an appreciated perspective.
Axel Herrera
2024-09-06 15:43:21 +0000 UTCOh for crying out loud. The Democratic party is 100% on board with unconditional aid to Israel; I'm not sure where you've been. As much as I admire the uncommitted movement, they are no real threat to pro-Israeli hegemony in U.S. politics. And I'm not sure what kind of person, when the brutality of Israel is only further revealed as this war progresses, is pushed away from supporting the Gazan people.
Axel Herrera
2024-09-06 15:40:41 +0000 UTCI was unabashedly pro-Gaza but the Hamas animals have driven this life long liberal away from the Democratic Party. I love your discussions in general but cannot stomach the liberal acquiescence to the Hamas attacks and support of anything anti-Israel. Please live under Hamas and get back to me. I fucking hate Maga, but the Democrats are becoming repulsive. Please have the courage to buck the liberal ideological hegemony, you two are very intelligent analysts.
stephen sullivan
2024-09-06 15:37:50 +0000 UTCSecond Mr. Burry.
Drew
2024-09-06 15:28:43 +0000 UTCI heard some bold statements, accepted credulously, regarding the mobilization of the angry uncommitted voters if Harris were to offer or allow some words of acceptable tenor, along with several instances of assumedly purposeful elision of "the majority of Democratic primary voters" for a majority of any other set of voters.
Adam Lewis
2024-09-06 15:21:11 +0000 UTCThis would be a great episode to unlock at some point to get a broader audience.
Matt Burry
2024-09-06 14:56:38 +0000 UTC
