If You Want the Protests to End, End the Genocide

It is not actually that complicated.

Matthew Hatcher/AFP via Getty Images

The Democratic National Convention kicks off today, and everyone is jazzed. “Kamala Harris’s Campaign Is Bringing Good Vibes Only to the 2024 DNC,” crows Vanity Fair. “Tens of thousands of Democrats are expected to descend on Chicago this week for their party’s convention, bubbling with a feeling few had anticipated: pure, unconfined joy,” writes The Guardian. Wooo!

There’s just one thing getting in the way of the fun, and I bet you can guess what it is.

New York Times

Ack! There goes Gaza, ruining the party again. Protests have already begun as of this writing, and they are set to continue throughout the week. Separately, the Uncommitted movement is trying to bring Gaza into the heart of the convention itself.

“Protests over the war in Gaza, led by Democrats from the party's left, threaten to disrupt the unity message,” says the BBC. Quel dommage.

Here’s the thing. Clearly, tons of people in the Democratic Party would like these protests to go away, and for the issue of Gaza to vanish from the political agenda. The way to make that happen is simple: end the genocide.

You want more party unity? You want bad headlines and tricky news footage to recede? End the genocide.

These protests would not exist if the Democratic Party, including Kamala Harris, had not been abetting a genocide since October. There’s a pretty direct 1-1 relationship between the fact of the genocide and the fact of the protests.

Instead, there is a ton of energy being put into not ending the genocide. (There are reports today that Israel has, yet again, agreed to some vague approximation of a ceasefire, but I’ll believe it when I see it.) Here’s an idea: all that time and effort people are taking to somehow go around the Palestine movement or beat it into submission without ending the genocide? Use it to end the genocide! Do something, anything, to get Kamala Harris and Joe Biden to use the enormous leverage they have over Israel so that the genocide is over. I promise that people will be more inclined to rally around Democrats if the genocide ends. As long as it continues, people are going to keep protesting. Because it’s genocide, and because Democrats are complicit in it. It is not actually that complicated.