Dearborn, Michigan – Beaming like a lottery winner, Abdualrahman Hamad extended his arm for a selfie with a group of nearly 20 organizers who had volunteered for four hours on a recent Saturday afternoon to run a phone bank.
In the conference room of a Michigan restaurant chain, he shared the photo with his relatives living in Gaza, then sat down at his laptop to start making calls.
“Hello, this is Abdualrahman from rural Michigan. We call for a ceasefire in Gaza. Are you a Michigan voter?
Hamad is a 38-year-old ophthalmologist from the nearby town of Troy. Four months ago, he began volunteering for multiple local efforts to demand an end to Israel’s indiscriminate bombing and blockade of Gaza.
Grassroots organizers in Dearborn and the greater Detroit area have worked for years to increase voter turnout in Arab and Muslim communities, but this presidential election season is different.
As the Palestinian death toll approaches 30,000, many Arab-American voters feel a renewed sense of urgency to demand that U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration end Israel’s siege of Gaza. And nowhere is that more true than here, in this suburb on Detroit’s western border, home to the largest Muslim population per capita in the United States.
Of all the casualties that can be attributed to the events of October 7 – when Hamas launched an attack on southern Israel, killing approximately 1,139 people – and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza, at least one birth can be added to the list: that of the two nascent grassroots political movements, Drop Biden and Listen to Michigan. They are calling on voters in this swing state to refrain from voting in Tuesday’s primary for an incumbent Democratic administration that has so far ignored calls for a ceasefire.
On the penultimate weekend before Michigan’s primary, nearly 1,000 voters pledged to vote “no strings attached,” Mona Mawari, a local pharmacist and community organizer, told Tel Aviv Tribune. Mawari trains phone bank volunteers for Listen to Michigan.
“A no-commitment vote is currently our most powerful tool to achieve a permanent ceasefire,” Mawari told Tel Aviv Tribune. “Michigan is the first swing state to hold a primary and if we get an important uncommitted vote. This is a powerful statement to Biden that we will not consider voting for you until you call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire.”
Look, Michigan can’t deny the nomination to Biden, who is running virtually unopposed to get the party’s endorsement. But a strong performance Tuesday could signal a wave of abstention from liberal and left-leaning Democratic voters in November’s general election, not because they favor Republican front-runner Donald Trump — who polls show will challenge probably Biden in November – but because they just can’t do it. accept the inertia of the White House while Israel massacres Palestinian civilians by the tens of thousands.
Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Rep. Debbie Dingell said she was concerned about voter turnout and indifference heading into what is shaping up to be a tough re-election campaign for Biden.
“I have lived in Dearborn for many years with my husband and there are two campaigns,” she said. “One is a campaign to drop Biden, but the other, the major campaign that made over a hundred thousand calls, we’re going to see how many people vote on Tuesday, they’re trying to make sure the president hears them .”
Acknowledging Biden’s failure to meet with the Arab American community during a recent visit to Michigan, Dingell said:
“This community is pretty angry right now.”
“Absolute red line”
Hamad, the ophthalmologist, said he voted early and had already filled out the uncommitted option on his Democratic ballot. He has relatives who were displaced and killed in Gaza, and others who are still there.
He said he has felt hopeless many times over the past few months, but is keeping busy with activities such as phone banking, urging the Troy City Council to pass a cease and desist resolution. -fire and joining the Drop Biden campaign to help end Israeli attacks on Palestinians in Gaza.
“When a president or elected official in America or anywhere else in the world supports genocide, that is an absolute red line,” Hamad said. “If Biden can’t see the humanity and the children of Gaza who are being killed, he really doesn’t have the morality or the compass to make moral decisions for any of us here. »
He spoke to Tel Aviv Tribune as more than 1.5 million Palestinians – many already displaced – prepare for an Israeli ground operation in the southernmost town of Rafah, on the Egyptian border.
The impending attack drew the harshest rebukes from some Western countries and even Biden warned Netanyahu not to pursue it, according to the White House. Nonetheless, U.S. officials have remained tight-lipped about whether the operation would constitute an elusive “red line” for Washington, which has remained resolute in its support for Israel.
Last week, the United States again vetoed a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution calling for an immediate – and lasting – ceasefire.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib supports ‘no-strings-attached voting’ in Michigan Democratic primary, encourages voters to vote early and make their voices heard pic.twitter.com/Lr4Q3z5RWx
– umichvoter 🏳️🌈 (@umichvoter) February 17, 2024
On February 17, House Representative Rashida Tlaib, who is Palestinian and represents Dearborn in Congress, became the most prominent voice to join the “uncommitted” movement, saying it was “important to create a voting bloc, something that is a megaphone, to say, ‘Enough is enough’.”
Many of the volunteers participating in the Listen to Michigan phone banking event are Arab or from Dearborn, but several are from outside Dearborn and Dearborn Heights and represent left-wing political groups like the Democratic Socialists of America.
Julia Koumbassa, 45, is an early childhood professional who lives in Ypsilanti and has been involved with the Listen to Michigan campaign since it launched earlier this month. She said she supported Palestinian rights, but it was not until October that she joined efforts to defend their lives.
“I’m a lifelong Democrat, I knew they were problematic in many ways, but it’s so obvious now,” Koumbassa said. “The people we thought were pro-justice are actually just funded by Israel. »
Koumbassa, who is white, worries about the safety of her African-American Muslim husband and children.
She pointed out the irony of Israel training law enforcement officers from the United States and the increasing brutality of African Americans by police across the country, as well as how crimes Hatred against Muslims in the United States has increased in recent months.
“Anyone with a brain and an ounce of humanity can see that what is happening is wrong,” she said.
