What Democrats Lose in Ignoring the Uncommitted Movement

Protestors confront the National Guard outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago (August 26, 1968) | Warren K. Leffler / Library of Congress

In anticipation of the Uncommitted National Movement’s arrival at this summer’s Democratic National Convention, press and political commentators made frequent reference to the anti-war protests turned police riots of the 1968 convention. It had been more than 50 years since internal discord among Democrats had been organized into an electoral movement even after the primary process, and commentators were nervous.

The similarities between the two movements are apparent enough, albeit superficial—a group of mostly young people, dissatisfied with the United States’ participation in a foreign war, organize at the convention to express discontent with the Democratic Party’s platform and presumptive nominee. Where young people in 1968 protested the party’s support of the war in Vietnam and sought to elevate the anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy over the incumbent vice president Hubert Humphrey, 2024’s Uncommitted movement mobilized disaffected voters unhappy with the party’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza. That both conventions were held in Chicago was a detail too good to ignore.

Rather than backing a different candidate than the presumptive nominee, the Uncommitted movement attempted to push Democratic Party policies and optics towards a platform that would acknowledge the suffering of Gazans under the current Israeli bombardment and end the US supply of offensive weapons to the Israeli military. Like 1968, there were peaceful protests, sit-ins, teach-ins, and efforts to influence Democratic Party politics through a combination of electoral organizing and movement mobilization. Hearts and minds. And as in 1968, the Uncommitted movement left the DNC without securing any material change in the party’s policy.

This August, the Democratic Party denied protestors even a symbolic victory, refusing to give a Palestinian American speaker a single five-minute speaking slot—in a convention that featured 147 speakers, including seven republicans, two former Trump aides, and a whole host of celebrities, professional athletes, and media personalities. After submitting dozens of potential speakers, agreeing to all the typical vetting standards required by the DNC Organizing Committee, enlisting the help of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and other elected democrats, and reducing their ask from two speaking slots to one, the Uncommitted movement was told: “The answer is no.” In 24 hours of DNC programming, the GOP and the Golden State Warriors were better represented than Palestinian Americans and the many Americans concerned about the ongoing war in Gaza.

One crucial difference from 1968: the spectacle of mass protest and violence was nowhere to be seen. In light of this, more thoughtful observers have compared this year’s convention not to 1968 but to the DNC of 1964, in Atlantic City, when Democrats refused to seat Fannie Lou Hamer and the delegates from the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party for fear of losing the support of white voters in the South. In his 1998 memoir, John Lewis would describe this betrayal as a turning point in the civil rights movement: “We had played by the rules, done everything we were supposed to do, had played the game exactly as required, had arrived at the doorstep and found the door slammed in our face.” Today, the Democratic Party and its talking heads continue to cast the Uncommitted movement as selfish and short-sighted potential spoilers for a Democratic victory in November—despite the movement’s commitment to the electoral process and party politics.

For all the similarities and differences between the 1968 and 2024 conventions, one thing remains unchanged: the Democratic Party’s attitude toward movement politics remains nothing short of contemptuous. In preemptively comparing the two conventions before the second had even happened, commentators revealed not only their anxieties surrounding popular movements but their willingness to misremember history in order to fuel these anxieties.

When commentators described their fear of discord and violence and how they might affect the 2024 DNC, what they meant was that they feared the possibility of violent pro-Palestine protests, the optics of disunity, and the prospect that Democrats might lose in 2024, as they did in 1968. What commentators did not acknowledge is that the violence in 1968 was the result of a police riot, with cops killing, beating, and terrorizing peaceful protestors. In bringing up 1968 as a cautionary tale, political pundits unintentionally highlight the striking parallels between the incredibly unpopular and politically toxic war in Vietnam and America’s current support for Israel’s war in Gaza—a war that many politicians describe as excessive but necessary, or too complex to be subject to basic human morality, let alone international law. These commentators seem to have forgotten that Hubert Humphrey lost the 1968 presidential election not because of an insurgency of spoiled leftist college students but because his inaction in the face of police violence against peaceful protestors and his refusal to compromise with the anti-war faction of the party—supported by 80 percent of voters in the primary election in Nebraska, for instance—created enough antipathy among Democratic voters that, despite losing the popular vote to Richard Nixon by less than 1 percent, Humphrey lost the electoral college by more than 100 votes.

In a conversation on Dissent’s Know Your Enemy podcast, Uncommitted movement cofounder Abbas Alawieh emphasized the potential power of the movement and the unnecessary errors on the part of Democrats, saying: “We have built trust for folks for whom Gaza is a top policy issue. They feel deeply betrayed by the Democratic Party … and we’ve said publicly that if we get a policy change then we will not only endorse Vice President Harris but we will mobilize those voters.” He continued, “The Democratic Party is not only saying, ‘No, we don’t want you to mobilize voters,’ they’re also saying, ‘No we’re gonna … deliberately discriminate against a Palestinian American speaker.’” Watching the polls in Dearborn, MSNBC analysts and Democratic Party loyalists are all too ready to lay the blame of a second Trump presidency on the shoulders of voters who were summarily disregarded by the party while their families were murdered by American-made bombs.

For all the historicizing, contextualization, and anxious forecasting the Democrats have been up to, the party seems unable to learn any lessons from the past that might actually increase their chances of winning in November. The party seems more interested in clinging to narratives of joy, vibe shifts, and identity politics than in taking seriously a significant and well-organized constituency representing a popular platform.

On September 19, the leaders of the Uncommitted movement declined to endorse Kamala Harris, who had failed to respond to their requests for a meeting to discuss halting the delivery of arms to Israel and a permanent ceasefire. They wrote, “Vice-President Harris’s unwillingness to shift on unconditional weapons policy or to even make a clear statement in support of upholding existing US and international human rights law has made it impossible for us to endorse her.” As Alawieh had explained on NPR, while he personally will be voting for Harris, the movement leaders have a responsibility to demand more than “thoughts and prayers.”

In the weeks leading up to the 1968 election, Humphrey reversed his position on the Vietnam War and courted the anti-war vote with the promise of peace talks. It wasn’t enough. In early October, Harris met with Arab American leaders in Michigan, where the Uncommitted movement was founded, in an attempt to win support from the voting bloc in a crucial electoral state. She can only hope it isn’t too little, too late.