Next week, from Aug. 19-22, the much anticipated Democratic National Convention will kick off in Chicago, and protestors from Chicago and around the country are preparing to descend on the DNC in full force. For organizers and the over 200 organizations that comprise the Coalition to March on the DNC, Palestine is at the top of the agenda—and the city of Chicago seems determined to keep protesters from making their dissent known to the nation and the world. For months, march organizers have been locked in a legal battle with the city over protest permits and approved march routes, but Hatem Abudayyeh, a spokesperson for the Coalition to March on the DNC and national chair of the US Palestinian Community Network, says the protests are happening one way or another. What is the current plan for the DNC protests? What should protestors, DNC-goers, and Chicago residents expect during the week of the DNC? The Real News speaks with Abudayyeh to get an insider perspective and the latest updates on the coalition’s plans to march on the DNC.
Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez
Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Welcome everyone to The Real News Network podcast. My name is Maximillian Alvarez. I’m the editor-in-chief here at The Real News.
Mel Buer:
And I’m Mel Buer, staff reporter.
Maximillian Alvarez:
It’s so great to have you all with us. Before we get rolling today, I want to remind y’all that The Real News is an independent viewer and listener-supported grassroots media network. We don’t take corporate cash, we don’t have ads and we never put our reporting behind paywalls. Our team is fiercely dedicated to lifting up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle across the US and around the world. But we cannot continue to do this work without your support. And we need you to become a supporter of The Real News now. Just head over to therealnews.com/donate and donate today. It really makes a difference.
Mel Buer:
We’re recording this episode on Saturday, August 10th. We are now officially less than three months away from the general election and we are just over a week away from the start of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, which is set to take place in Chicago. The Real News is going to be on the ground reporting from the grassroots, showing you the side of the DNC corporate media won’t. One of the many critical stories we’ll be covering are the organized protest demonstrations that will be taking place in Chicago while the DNC is taking place at the United Center. On Monday, August 19th, I’ll be reporting from what is expected to be the largest protest of the week organized by the Coalition to March on the DNC.
Maximillian Alvarez:
As the March on the DNC website states, “The March on the DNC Coalition fights for the rights and liberation of oppressed people and against the exploitation of workers. Beginning on August 19th 2024, we will march on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to bring the people’s agenda to within sight and sound of the Democratic Party leadership. Genocide Joe Biden has stepped down from running for president as the Democratic Party nominee. His decision doesn’t change the policies of Democratic Party leadership, specifically their support of the genocide in Palestine. So our movement must continue to apply pressure. On August 19th, we will March on the DNC for Gaza regardless of who gets nominated for the presidency.”
Mel Buer:
Over the last eight months or so, groups like the Coalition to March on the DNC have been fighting the city over permits for their marches. Ultimately ending up in federal court to settle the permitting issue. Multiple groups have sued the city on First Amendment grounds, saying that the city’s denial of march permits is unconstitutional.
Maximillian Alvarez:
With us today is Hatem Abudayyeh, National Chair of the United States Palestinian Community Network and a spokesperson for the Coalition to March on the DNC. We’re going to discuss with Hatem these upcoming marches on the DNC, the latest updates on the permitting situation and what listeners, protest attendees and Chicago residents can expect from the week of the DNC. Hatem, thank you so much for coming on the show in the midst of your crazy schedule right now. We really appreciate it.
Hatem Abudayyeh:
Yeah. I’m really honored to be here as well. And I want to promote your work to the masses too and I hope people can continue to donate and support the great stuff that you do as well.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Thank you so much, man. That means the world to us. It really does. And yeah, our listeners are eager to know about what they can expect. Many of them are going to be attending. If not, they’re going to be watching closely. And so just to jump right into the conversation, I’d like to take a moment to check in and get the latest update on the permitting battle that you and your fellow march organizers have been embroiled in for months. So I guess the big question is have the permits been granted? Like we mentioned in the intro, this has been a protracted battle over the permits that has been largely focused on the march route. The Coalition has proposed a route that would take marchers within sight and sound of the DNC while the city has been trying to relegate the marches to a shorter route, farther away, out of sight and sound from the United Center. So what’s the latest on the marching permits and the march route?
Hatem Abudayyeh:
So the first thing I’ll say is that organizing works and folks from the movement, progressive social justice activists in this country, for decades and decades have proven that. We have already won a part of this battle. They did, as you mentioned, try to bury us four miles away from the United Center when we first submitted our applications. Of course, we rejected that immediately, described how ridiculous it was that they thought that we would accept something like that. And they knew they were going to lose that on First Amendment and constitutional grounds. So finally, after many months after this lawsuit, they rejected a fourth permit application of one of the lead organizations of the Coalition. But this time when they offered an alternative, they did put us within sight and sound. Now, the challenge that we’re dealing with right now is really a common sense political challenge even for the city.
When we say it’s in the best interest of the city as well as the protesters that we need to extend the march, it’s based on decades and decades of experience. Understand that my organization, the United States Palestinian Community Network, the National Alliance against Racism and Political Repression, Students for a Democratic Society, anti-War Committees across the Midwest, Students for Justice in Palestine, Chicago Coalition for Justice in Palestine, all of these organizations, and now there are over 200 who have joined the Coalition. We have decades of experience organizing these things. We’ve been the lead organizers for RNC and DNC protests since 2008 and we were the lead organizers in the 2012 NATO protests in Chicago. So we’re professionals at this sort of thing. Even if you’re not a professional, it only takes a little bit of common sense to recognize that for tens of thousands of people that we expect to have there on Monday, August 19th, you’re not going to be able to put them on a route that’s only a mile long.
Because what will happen is people from the front of the march are going to get back to Union Park, before thousands have even left Union Park. So even though we are within sight and sound, we’re still not upholding the First Amendment and constitutional rights of everybody because the folks in the back are not going to get within sight and sound. The folks in the back are not going to be able to express their messages, which are first and foremost, end USAID to Israel, stop the genocide, free Palestine and stand with Palestine. That is the center of these protests. But it wasn’t always the center of these protests. The other thing to recognize is that USPCN joined this Coalition in April of 2023. The day after they announced that it was going to be in Chicago, we helped form the Coalition to March on the DNC. Because we’re not a one-issue organization and we’re not a one-issue community. Palestinians and Arabs here who have been fighting for decades for Palestinian self-determination and liberation care about all the other issues that the Coalition to March on the DNC cares-
Hatem Abudayyeh:
Care about all the other issues that the coalition of March on at the NC cares about as well, immigrant rights, police accountability, stopping police crimes, black liberation, women’s rights, reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights. All of these issues are also at the forefront. But when October came around, we recognized that this was a US supported genocide. We saw that thousands and thousands were being killed in these massacres and that the US not only was not saying anything about it, they were openly supporting it unequivocally, diplomatically, politically, militarily, financially. We knew. We knew immediately, and everybody in the coalition knew immediately that we were going to have to center Palestine for the DNC. And ever since we have, and all of the 200 organizations that have signed on to this thing have had to say that they accept that we’re centering Palestine here. And that’s why it’s incredible that it’s this big. It’s incredible that it’s this broad. But nobody who has been watching the United States and the rest of the world in the last 10 months should be surprised that Palestinians have such incredibly broad support within the movement.
Mel Buer:
So they’ve still rejected your permits. Are these hearings still happening in federal court? Have you received a ruling from the judge? Because last I checked, you had had a hearing on the fifth about the permitting situation and about the route.
Hatem Abudayyeh:
Yeah, we expected a ruling on that day or within a couple days of that, but the judge has still not ruled. We have a status hearing coming up on the 13th, which is Tuesday at 2:30 Chicago time, and I can’t imagine that she’s not going to rule on that day.
Now, again, they’ve met the legal burden after real strong political and legal pressure. These city attorneys are the same city attorneys who advised Rahm Emanuel mayor one percent to not show the video and disclose the video of the killing of Laquan McDonald in Chicago a few years back, if you remember that case. They are the ones who recommended that he not release that tape. They said, “You will lose the election if you release this tape.” And the tape did not get released before the election. That’s the kind of city attorneys that we’re dealing with here.
They have not been negotiating in good faith with us. They have blindsided us a number of times after making agreements and promises to us. And so, we’re not surprised that that’s happening from that entity. But we also live in a different Chicago now. In fact, I’ve said this to some people kind of laughingly, which I wish it was Rahm Emanuel that was the mayor, because in a battle against a Zionist pig like him, I know that we knock people over the head. But today’s administration in Chicago is a friendly one. It has friends of ours in it. It has people from the movement in it. It has organizers in it. The mayor himself is a former organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union. And so we are negotiating with the city, but at the same time, we’re dealing with this reactionary backwards elements within the city attorney’s office, what they call corporation council in Chicago. And they’ve blindsided us, like I said, a number of times.
What we’re dealing with now is that they have not budged on the issue of the route. The other thing that they’ve done is they’ve made an argument that we needed to turn onto side streets. Again, same thing. You turn onto side streets, you cause a big logjam with these thousands and tens of thousands of people. A logjam potentially for folks like you all and others who are experienced with these kinds of things is going to have people actually stopped for minutes at a time, 10, 15, 20 minutes. And you know what happens inevitably in that situation. Somebody sees that there’s an open street, they want to try to run to it or walk to it or get some space. And we’ve asked the cops directly, what is going to happen when we’re walking down this thoroughfare, Washington Boulevard, and you force us to turn to make two sharp turns onto narrower streets and folks see that the bigger street that we were just on is open and they want to walk to it. Will they be subject to arrest? We asked repeatedly and finally they answered and they said, yes, they’d be subject to arrest.
So we’re saying, why do you want that? We don’t want that. The city doesn’t want that. So just give us the longer route. Give us the wider streets. And they have not budged. They continue to claim that we don’t know where the Secret Service is putting their fencing, but at what point are we going to know that and at what point are you going to disclose that information so it’s on the public record so that you can make an argument and the world can hear why it is that you’re restricting our rights.
Mel Buer:
Seems to me that the city is deliberately creating a dangerous situation for 20 plus thousand people when you’re on side streets with front yards. First off, it’s a nuisance for the people who live there. You’re not trying to create a nuisance for these folks in these neighborhoods. You don’t want people walking over people’s lawns and potentially creating dangerous conditions if someone has a medical emergency in their house or something like that. But yeah, these smaller streets are, if you’re going to be filling it up with 20,000 plus people, the potential for dangerous situations to come from panics in the crowd or any of that nature should be something that is paid attention to. You would think that the city would be wanting to avoid situations like that.
Hatem Abudayyeh:
Yeah, that’s what we’re saying. Ball’s in their court at this point. And Mel, it actually sounds like you might’ve listened to our Instagram video that we made at the last court hearing because we said just that. This is a community that is mostly Black, it’s the west side of Chicago, the historic west side of Chicago, folks who are already going to be burdened so unimaginably by the DNC already. There’s going to be checkpoints. People are going to have to be searched when they’re trying to leave their homes, trying to get back to their homes after work. There’s going to be street closures everywhere. And now they’re saying let’s also allow tens of thousands of people to march on lawns and step on flower beds and that sort of thing. We don’t want to burden that community.
In fact, we have a number of Black-led organizations, including the main Black-led organization, in our coalition, the National Alliance against Racism and Political Repression, together with the Alliance USPCN and many others have been fliering and door knocking in those communities. And people have been great. They’ve been so gracious in accepting us and recognizing how important this DNC is. This relationship between Black communities and Palestinian communities in Chicago especially, but across the country as well, is a very, very important and special relationship. Like Black-Palestinian Solidarity has the people in power up in arms.
When the movement for Black Lives put out a policy position paper a few years back, the Zionists lost their shit, essentially, and they attacked the movement for Black Lives, ADL, and JUF, the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish United Fund and Jewish Federations all across the country came out and just attacked the Black community and the movement for Black Lives for their support of Palestine for calling Israel an apartheid state.
Hatem Abudayyeh:
…Palestine for calling Israel an apartheid state and calling for the end of occupation and colonization. So that’s who we’re dealing with in terms of the support for Israel in this country among the Zionist organizations. But of course, it’s not just Zionist organizations, it’s the top leadership in Congress and of course the Biden and Harris administration as well. So this thing is going to be huge. It’s going to be historic. It’s going to be the largest mobilization for Palestinian rights in the history of Chicago. And it is going up against the strongest, most powerful empire in the history of the world. We recognize who’s in power. We recognize who the enemy is. People are asking, why are you protesting against the Democrats? Well, if the Republicans were in party and the Republicans had the President, then the event of the season would’ve been the RNC.
It turns out that the folks who are most responsible, who are most complicit for the genocide, for the killing of 40,000 people, for the killing of 100 people at another school that was bombed just yesterday by the Israelis, 70,000 people in Khan Yunis in Gaza have been pushed out of their homes again just yesterday. And the responsibility is on genocide Joe and killer Kamala, so that’s why it doesn’t matter that there’s been a change to the top of the ticket. It doesn’t matter to our coalition. It doesn’t matter to the organizations that are joining and have joined the coalition and that are going to be mobilizing. In fact, Netanyahu was here two weeks ago. He met with Biden directly. He met with Harris directly, and then a day later he bombed Beirut and a day after that he violated the territorial integrity of the sovereign state of Iran and killed a Palestinian leader there. The US itself went and bombed I Iraq and they’re all threatening Yemen as well.
That means Netanyahu got the green light directly from Biden and Harris. He must have. The timing of it means that he met with Biden one day, he bombed Beirut the next, he got the permission. And so Netanyahu for months has wanted to expand this into a regional war and we as an anti-war movement in this country, not just Palestine support and Palestine solidarity, but we need to make sure that we stop an expanded war on Lebanon or on Yemen or on Iran. And that’s incumbent upon us and the listeners of this show and the social justice and anti-war movement in this country as well.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Moving to kind of pick up on that and sort of bring it back down to the street level here because I know we got to let you go here in a couple of minutes. I wanted to just bring us back to week of the DNC itself and what folks listening to this can and should expect. Now, of course, as we said at the top, we’re recording this on Saturday, August 10th. We have on Tuesday another critical hearing. Things may change by the time you guys hear this. But Hatem, I wanted to ask just based on everything that we currently know on the existing plans and on where you see this battle going, what should protest attendees and Chicago residents expect on the week of the DNC? How can folks who are planning to be in Chicago get involved and what should they expect on the days of the marches themselves?
Hatem Abudayyeh:
Yeah, so folks who are coming from outside of Chicago and can stay the entire week, should stay the entire week because the largest of the protests on the first day is going to be Monday the 19th at 12 noon. We’re going to be at Union Park. You should probably get there early because like I said, there’ll be tens of thousands of people in that beautiful historic park. It’s historic because if you remember in 2006 when the Immigrant Rights Movement rose up against the racist Census Burnett Bill, that’s where the first protest in the Immigrant Rights Movement first happened. That’s where 500,000 people gathered to protest against those racist policies. And then later that year, 750,000 were in Chicago and a million were in Los Angeles. And it was incredible, we took back May Day for the Immigrant Rights and the Workers’ Rights Movement in that year.
And so I remember those so vividly, and I remember that park so vividly and that’s where we’re going to be. It’s a few blocks away from the United Center where the convention is happening. Like I said, we’re starting at noon but folks should get there early. We got a really, really powerful program. Jamila Woods is joining us, the wonderful singer-songwriter from Chicago who’s like nationally and internationally renowned now. She’s going to be there singing and protesting with us. And we got a great schedule of speakers as well that we’re going to make public in a couple of days. And then we’re going to march. The other thing I’ll say Mel and Maximilian, is that from day one we said, permit or not, we’re going to be marching. We expect that we will have a permit. We expect that we’re going to win this fight of ours.
But people need to be there because the whole world is watching, and it’s very, very important for us to stop the genocide to be able to protest that week. On Thursday we’re book-ending. First day and the last day on Thursday, the Coalition of March on the DNC will organize at 5:00 PM at Union Park as well, kind of a closing protest. On Wednesday evening at 4:00 PM, the local Chicago Coalition for Justice in Palestine of which USPCN is also a leader, will be leading a protest on Wednesday. So there’s a lot of activities going on, a lot of protests going on, and a lot of opportunities for folks to join in. If you can only come for the first day, and we know that working people can’t take four days off to protest necessarily, if you can only come for the first day and you’re coming from across the Midwest or from the West coast and the East Coast and the South, and we know folks are coming from there as well, make sure you come on Monday at noon.
And if you could stay for Wednesday at 4:00, stay for Thursday at 5:00, join us the whole week and continue to put out the call that says, free Palestine. Stand with Palestine, end USA to Israel and stop the genocide.
Mel Buer:
A bit of a follow-up question, what about the folks who can’t make it to Chicago for the DNC? What is your message to people out there about how they can get involved, why they should, what they can do from their home or from a distance to support the coalition and to support these marches while the DNC is happening?
Hatem Abudayyeh:
I think what we need to continue to do, one of the things that has been really incredible about this movement as well is the escalation. I remember vividly a week or so into the genocide in October, USPCN, I believe was the first organization and working with the Chicago Alliance Against Racism and political Repression to shut down a congressperson’s office, Jan Schakowsky in Chicago. We had seven people arrested on that day. The next week we shut down Sean Casten’s office. He represents a huge number of Palestinians in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. We then shut down the street in front of Schakowsky’s House, the street in front of Casten’s House. We shut down Lake Shore Drive in front of Dick Durbin’s house, and Dick Durbin is the second most seen-
Hatem Abudayyeh:
McDermott is the second most senior Democratic senator in the country, represents a huge Arab Palestinian population, pays lip service to how much he cares about us and our rights, and never, ever has stepped up truly and strongly in support of Palestine and in condemnation of Israel. So I think people in other places should pay really close attention to the Coalition to March on the DNC’s social media. There’s a lot of information there, a beautiful toolkit that folks can use with flyers and action alerts and social media storms and all of that sort of thing. How to contact your congresspeople, how to contact the White House and continue to work together with us in making these demands.
But find out who the people in power are, and even if they’re Democrats, and even if they got a little bit of better policies domestically than the Republicans do, which we also recognize and understand, but hold them to account, escalate, go to their offices, do these advanced actions. I think right now, when we see these massacres continue to happen day after day, when we’re up to 40,000 killed, 90,000 injured, 2 million displaced, we do need to escalate.
I know that a lot of your listeners are also organizers and social justice activists, and they know what it means to escalate. Power concedes nothing without a demand, and we have to escalate because the people in power continue to support Israel unequivocally. It’s unacceptable. It’s unacceptable. It’s unacceptable to hear Kamala Harris say we need humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza. To be honest with you, absolutely we knew that we need that. The US is responsible for those people being killed and displaced, so the US is responsible for providing aid.
But the people of Gaza are a very, very proud people. For decades they’ve lived under siege, for almost 80 years they’ve lived under occupation and colonization. They’re not begging for your rice. They don’t want you to drop bombs one day and then try to drop bags of rice the next day. That’s not what we’re asking for. I don’t care about Kamala. Harris saying that maybe she’s a little bit more empathetic to the Palestinian cause than Biden might’ve been. That means nothing to us. What she needs to do is to stop the genocide. What they need to do is utilize the power of the United States in this situation because we know the relationship between the United States and Israel. The US is the imperialist power that supports Israel unequivocally because Israel secures the US interests in the Middle East and in the Arab world. That’s the relationship.
Biden said it himself. If Israel was not there, we would’ve had to manufacture an Israel. And because Israel is a white settler, colonialist, manufactured state that the United States needs to continue to support to secure its interests. So we have the power. This country, this government has the power to stop it. And if they don’t stop it, that means they support it. That’s exactly what our position is. And that means that Biden supports it, that means that Kamala Harris supports it, that means that Antony Blinken supports it and Durbin and Jeffries and Schumer and Pelosi and all of them.
Maximillian Alvarez:
So that once again is Hatem Abudayyeh, National Chair of the United States Palestinian Community Network and a spokesperson for the Coalition to March on the DNC. Hatem, thank you so much again for coming on The Real News Network and giving us this critical update on the Coalition to March on the DNC. Mel and I are greatly looking forward to being there on the ground, covering this for The Real News Network. And we look forward to seeing you and everyone there in person in just over a week.
Hatem Abudayyeh:
Sounds great. Thank you both, Mel and Maximilian, and the Chicagoans and the Coalition are good hosts too. So hit us up as soon as you get here and looking forward to meeting you in person.
Mel Buer:
It’s going to be great. Thanks so much for coming on.
Hatem Abudayyeh:
Of course.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Hell yeah. And to all of you listening right now, we are going to be on the ground, Mel and I, with our team covering the events of the DNC, covering the protests happening around the DNC, talking to working people in Chicago, Palestinian Americans, immigrant communities and regular folks about what they are feeling and thinking about the state of the country right now, the state of the Democratic Party and what they feel we need to do to move forward as a country, as a class. So stay tuned to The Real News Network, subscribe to our YouTube and podcast channels because we got a lot of great work coming for y’all on the week of the DNC and beyond.
For The Real News Network, this is Maximilian Alvarez.
Mel Buer:
And I’m Mel Buer.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Once again, please head over to therealnews.com/support so we can keep bringing you more important coverage and conversations just like this. Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, solidarity forever.
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