DNC comes to 'Little Palestine' as Gaza deaths top 40,000

CHICAGO − She sees a country swooning over Vice President Kamala Harris’ breakneck bid for the White House, but Deanna Othman and others in the nation’s largest Palestinian community remain unmoved, grimly confident that Harris, President Joe Biden, and other leaders coming to their backyard for the Democratic National Convention won’t deliver on what matters to them most: A cease-fire in Gaza.

But Othman considers it as a stroke of luck that the Democratic leaders are coming to the Windy City and Cook County, where Palestinian American voices might be the loudest.

“This feels like the culmination of so many of our protests for the past many months because we’ll have the attention of essentially the world,” said Othman, who hails from the Chicago suburb of Oak Lawn. “This is really the opportunity for all of us trying to raise awareness about the genocide to get people to truly understand what is happening.”

The decision to host the DNC in Chicago was made before Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel killed 1,200 and sparked the brutal military campaign in Gaza. Since then, more than 40,000 Palestinians have died − and Chicago was transformed into a hotbed of anti-war activity ahead of Biden and Harris’ arrival.

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The region's anti-war activism, which has included parades of pro-Palestinian truckers in the suburbs and encampments at the city’s top universities, has been led predominantly by local Palestinian Americans.

In addition to calling for a ceasefire, many Chicago Palestinians are also motivated by a fear that Democrats' lackluster opposition to the Gaza war has encouraged the kind of anti-Muslim vitriol that sparked crimes like the murder of 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume in an alleged hate crime in neighboring Will County.

Cook County is home to over 15,000 people of Palestinian descent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, making it by far the most-populous Palestinian community in the country. Los Angeles County is the next biggest, with under 5,000 Palestinians.

Their influence in local life can be seen in everything from Chicago becoming the largest U.S. city to pass a cease-fire resolution and a large protest vote against Biden in the March Democratic primary, to the strip known as Little Palestine in Bridgeview, where the signage is in Arabic.

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Abdelnasser Rashid, a born Chicagoan with roots in the West Bank, represents the south suburban area in the State House and is the first Palestinian elected to the Illinois legislature. 

The 35-year-old lawmaker said he hears every day from constituents, Palestinians nationwide and people in Gaza who reach out to him to get Democrats to forcefully push for a ceasefire and end the supply of U.S. arms that are raining down on the coastal enclave.

“Many people feel betrayed by our leadership in Washington, D.C.,” Rashid said. “The Biden Administration’s approach to Israel’s genocide has been a slap in the face.”

Viewing the war from Little Palestine

Israeli bombs falling halfway across the world strike close to home for many in Cook County.

Othman’s family is from the West Bank and her husband is from Gaza. The family went to visit last year, just months before the Oct. 7 attacks, and their days are now consumed with worries over the friends and family they don’t hear from.

“It’s been very difficult living on edge, not knowing what’s going to happen with them one day to the next. It’s been very difficult emotionally and psychologically,” she said, adding her children are constantly following updates. “It’s not just images they’re seeing on the news or social media, it's places they might have been to, even people they might recognize among the dead.”

Muhammad Baste is the owner of M’daKhan, a halal restaurant in Bridgeview. Located “right in the heart” of Little Palestine, Baste says it’s not uncommon for the street outside to be taken over by people protesting the war.

“I don’t think anybody is really happy about them being in their backyard,” said Baste of Democratic leaders.

The chatter he hears at the tables in his dining room isn’t always focused on the war, he said, but it comes up often, particularly after devastating strikes like the bombing of a school last weekend that killed about 100 people, according to the Hamas-run Gaza government.

“It’s the talk on the tip of everybody’s tongue these days,” Baste said. “They’re thousands of miles away, but we think twice about it with every single thing we do.”

Many feel guilty over their luck at being in the U.S. where they are not worried about being bombed or having enough to eat.

Crushing worry and red-hot activism

The guilt locals feel over their luck at being in the U.S. and not in Gaza is matched by an urgency to exercise their constitutional rights as Americans.

“Our families risked their lives to come here to have that freedom of speech, to have that freedom of religion,” said Reem Odeh, an attorney in a suburb near Little Palestine. Her relatives have participated in several trucker protest caravans. 

Pro-Palestinian advocacy throughout Chicago has been hard to miss. Protesters notoriously ground traffic to a halt on the expressway leading to O’Hare International Airport in April and dyed Chicago’s iconic Buckingham Fountain red in June. 

Student protesters also held major demonstrations and encampments at Northwestern University, DePaul University, the University of Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago, which ended with Chicago police arresting 68 demonstrators and three complaints of excessive force. 

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Residents also organized a Democratic primary protest vote against Biden. Illinois election authorities don’t track uncertified candidates, making it difficult to tally protest votes like in Michigan, where there was a large movement to vote for uncommitted in the Democratic primary, or in Massachusetts where voters cast ballots for no preference. 

But a USA TODAY analysis of Chicago Board of Elections data found that around 50,000 ballots were cast for write-in candidates or left blank − a proxy for protest votes − in the primary, a sizable jump over the 2020 and 2016 primaries, when around 12,000 such votes were cast amid significantly greater turnout.

Odeh is among those who skipped voting for Biden and said her community is still unsure of how to vote come November.

Many feel used by Democrats against their own interests and feel that the party's support for Israel is tacit approval for anti-Muslim hate.

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“Your tax dollars are being used to commit a genocide, killing your family members and if you speak up about it you're acccused of being a terrorist,” Odeh said. “People think they have a green light to go ahead and attack people of Muslim faith or who are Palestinian.”

Three instances of anti-Muslim hate quickly come to mind for her: the murder of 6-year-old Wadea in October; the shooting of three Palestinian students in Vermont November; and the attacks on students at UCLA by counter-protesters in the spring.

For Odeh, the attacks against Palestinians in Gaza and spiking Islamophobia in the U.S. will all be top of mind when protesting outside the convention.

Major protests planned for DNC

The biggest expected convention protest is organized by the Coalition to March on the DNC. 

Hatem Abudayyeh, another Chicagoan with roots in the West Bank, is the spokesperson for the coalition and national chair of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network. He said the group expects tens of thousands to show up for the group’s main protest Monday.

He said the DNC coming to Chicago gives the local pro-Palestinian voices a certain home field advantage. 

“There’s going to be a big turnout from the community during the week and that, in and of itself, tells you that they recognize how important this moment is,” Abudayyeh said. “We’re going to get our voices heard, not inside, but at least we’re going to get our voices heard outside.”

That said, the longtime organizer isn’t holding his breath for any robust policy announcements from Harris on Gaza.

“There’s just no chance,” he said. “We have a saying in Arabic about this: I’ll cut off my arm if something happens.”