Some 47 Palestinians were murdered in Gaza, most by US-supplied bombs, on the eve of the final day of the Democratic National Convention, culminating in Vice President Kamala Harris accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.
The official death toll from 321 days of Israel’s assault with bombs, missiles, artillery and tank fire has passed 40,000, with more than 90,000 injured. This is likely a great underestimation, as last month the British medical journal The Lancet estimated the real death toll at 186,000—or approximately 8 percent of the Gaza Strip’s pre-genocide population.
Socialist Equality Party presidential candidate Joseph Kishore cited the death toll in Gaza and condemned the Democrats’ endorsement of genocide in a statement posted on X.
Kishore continued:
During the anti-Vietnam War protests, a popular chant was “Hey, Hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” In the case of Biden-Harris and the genocide in Gaza, a definitive answer can be given: 17,000 (total since the genocide began), including 2,100 infants and toddlers. This is according to a report earlier this month by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor—17,000 children. This is equal to more than 50 children every single day, for more than 10 months.
While the fascist Israeli government is directly perpetrating the genocide, its military forces could not function for even a week without supplies and financing from the United States and other imperialist powers, including Britain, France and Germany.
In this context, Kishore wrote, “There is something unfathomably obscene and degrading about the Democratic Party hailing their ‘candidate of joy’ Kamala Harris amidst the carnage in Gaza. It expresses the unbridled ruthlessness of imperialism and its representatives, singing and dancing as Gaza burns.”
The last day of the convention leading up to the speech by Harris was the most pro-war and militarist of the four-day event. Speakers, including Senator Mark Kelly and former Secretary of Defense and CIA Director Leon Panetta, touted Harris’s willingness to escalate the war against Russia in Ukraine and defend the interests of American imperialism.
The WSWS will post further analysis of Harris’ concluding speech and the convention as a whole. However, the most significant statements she made were: “I will always ensure America has the strongest most lethal fighting force in the world” and “I will always ensure that Israel has the ability to defend itself.” The central priority of the Democratic Party is the escalation of war.
The Democrats made every possible effort to block any public display of opposition to the Gaza genocide at the convention.
Nearly 70 demonstrators protesting the mass murder in the streets of Chicago were arrested this week, at the orders of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. An African American former staffer at the Chicago Teachers Union, Johnson’s election was promoted by Bernie Sanders and backed by the pseudo-left groups, which are now hailing the Harris nomination as a historic step forward.
The Harris-Walz campaign rebuffed pleas by some Democrats to allow a Palestinian American to address the convention, concerned that this would be taken as a signal of possible objection to the policies of the fascist Netanyahu government in Israel, which is working closely with the US military to prepare for war against Iran and its allies, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.
There were 30 convention delegates elected as “uncommitted,” mainly in Michigan and Minnesota, in a protest supported by the most prominent Palestinian American Democrat, Representative Rashida Tlaib. These delegates asked for a Palestinian American state legislator, Ruwa Romman of Georgia, to be given a speaking slot to deliver a brief message, barely 100 words, that would include support for Harris and a call for a ceasefire in Gaza.
The so-called “left” in the Democratic Party was represented among the speakers by the inevitable Bernie Sanders, who made no mention of the genocide, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who hailed Harris, portraying her as supporting a ceasefire.
Outside the convention, several dozen delegates staged a sit-in Wednesday night to protest the genocide. They were ignored. Not a single second of the convention was disrupted. One Michigan delegate smuggled in a banner calling for a halt to the arming of Israel, but as soon as he unfurled it, security guards snatched it away and removed him quickly from the floor of the convention, despite his credentials.
The National Lawyers Guild issued a statement following the arrests Tuesday: “In response to protesters rallying and marching, police provoked confrontations, rushed the crowd, indiscriminately arrested people on the sidewalk, and entrapped groups in order to carry out mass arrests. … Assurances that the City would respect people’s First Amendment rights during the convention rings hollow next to this brazenly aggressive approach to free expression.”
Chicago Police Department (CPD) Chief Larry Snelling made a provocative statement attacking demonstrators and journalists at a Wednesday morning press conference: “These officers did one hell of a job tonight keeping the city safe and keeping violent individuals from inflicting violence.” He continued, “This was unpermitted, and therefore we can’t guarantee the safety of people if we don’t know the route, if we don’t know where they’re going.” It is clear that the main threat to non-permitted protests is the CPD.
The Biden administration’s Department of Justice granted more than $75 million to the city of Chicago for policing during the DNC, with the lion’s share going to pay Chicago cops, including hefty overtime premiums. The CPD and the Secret Service are coordinating the efforts of 12 different agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Addressing the politics of the demonstrations, SEP presidential candidate Kishore commented:
The protests outside of the convention have been organized by various middle-class groups that seek to pressure the Democratic Party, including the ANSWER Coalition, Code Pink, the DSA and others. Among their demands is that “elected officials from the Democratic Party follow through on progressive campaign promises.”
As Trotsky remarked, one might as well pray for rain.
Not surprisingly, the protests have been significantly smaller than organizers expected. The entire perspective of pressuring the Democratic Party and the political establishment has proven to be thoroughly bankrupt, and more and more people know it.
Working people and youth opposed to the US-backed genocide in Gaza gain nothing by appealing to the Democrats or the Republicans. They would be pleading with the war criminals to cease their crimes. Rather, the road forward is to mobilize the working class, connecting the fight against the genocide with the fight against imperialist war, and the fight against war with the fight against inequality and the capitalist profit system.