Claudia De la Cruz joins protests against Netanyahu on July 24. Harris’ statement did not acknowledge why masses of people would attend a demonstration in opposition to a war criminal giving an address in the halls of Congress. Picture: via @votesocialist24 / X
By Natalia Marques
Following a demonstration of tens of thousands in the streets of Washington, DC, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party favourite for the presidency, released a statement heavily denouncing the protests. Meanwhile, two left-wing third-party candidates joined demonstrators in the streets.
Harris did not acknowledge why masses of people would attend a demonstration in opposition to a war criminal giving an address in the halls of Congress. Instead, she focused solely on protesters burning a US flag at the tail end of the march. “Yesterday, at Union Station in Washington, DC we saw despicable acts by unpatriotic protesters and dangerous hate-fuelled rhetoric,” her statement read.
“I condemn any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organisation Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate the State of Israel and kill Jews. Pro-Hamas graffiti and rhetoric is abhorrent, and we must not tolerate it in our nation.”
“I condemn the burning of the American flag. That flag is a symbol of our highest ideals as a nation and represents the promise of America. It should never be desecrated in that way,” she continued.
Both mainstream media and leading politicians such as Harris have chosen to fixate on the burning of the US flags and tagging of Union Station with pro-Palestine messaging. But this narrative does not mention the severe police repression that demonstrators experienced in trying to assert their constitutional rights to mobilise.
At the very beginning of the march, police blocked protesters from marching down Constitution Avenue. The crowd defiantly refused to change direction, with Brian Becker, leader of key convening organisation the ANSWER Coalition, telling demonstrators that, “we have the right to go on Constitution Avenue, there’s no rule against it”.
“The permit is called the First Amendment of the Constitution.”
🚨BREAKING — Police brutally attack peaceful demonstrators exercising their first amendment right to protest the speech of genocidal war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. But we will not let them succeed! The march is continuing — Free Palestine! pic.twitter.com/xN1aJhzzx9
— ANSWER Coalition (@answercoalition) July 24, 2024
Claudia De la Cruz, running against Harris in the November presidential elections, not only takes the same anti-Netanyahu position as demonstrators: she was there with the crowd, standing in solidarity with Palestine. In her address to the demonstration, De la Cruz denounced not the protesters, but “Netanyahu’s Congress”.
De la Cruz also celebrated those who, “in the belly of the beast” have become “willing to sacrifice it all for our liberation” in the past ten months of struggle in solidarity with Palestine.
“It is historic to see the student movement, to see the labor unions, to see all types of organisations from the grassroots standing with one cause in mind and in the heart. And that is the freedom, the total liberation of Palestine,” she said.
De la Cruz called out Harris specifically in her speech. “We know that US Congress, that Biden, that Blinken, Kamala Harris, cause we’re not gonna give a pass because she’s Black and she’s a woman, are complicit in terrorism,” she said. “We the people of the United States say that we are committed to liberation.”
Jill Stein, who is also running against Harris on the ticket of the Green Party, made another powerful speech to demonstrators in front of the capitol. “We will stop this genocide together,” she said to the gathered thousands.
“The American people do not want this genocide. The people of the world do not want this genocide. The students on our campuses do not want this genocide. Everybody of the United Nations do not want this genocide.”
After Biden formally dropped out from the presidential race last week and endorsed Kamala Harris, Democrats have cited a new energy around the election process.
As the party attempts to recover from months of putting forward a failed candidate in Joe Biden, it will become increasingly important for voters to analyse if Harris’s concrete policies will differ fundamentally from Biden’s.
A cursory look at her record and her response to these latest protests echoes Biden’s words to wealthy donors back on the 2020 campaign trail: “Nothing would fundamentally change.”
Natalia Marques is a writer at Peoples Dispatch, an organiser, and a graphic designer based in New York City.
This article was first published on Peoples Dispatch