The March On The DNC Is A Modern-Day Rainbow Coalition

CHICAGO ― While much of the country braced for the chaos that is the Democratic National Convention this week, Americans from all walks of life who felt disillusioned by the party’s continued support for Israel’s deadly military campaign in Gaza prepared to make their voices heard within sight and sound of the convention.

On Monday morning, organizers, protesters and media began filling Chicago’s Union Park, where the long-awaited March on the DNC was to take place. Organizers and volunteers handed out items like water bottles, snacks and picket signs, while protesters donning keffiyehs ― the patterned fabric symbolizing Palestinian liberation ― arrived either individually, with friends or as part of a more official group.

Before the actual march toward the United Center, where the DNC was holding its evening programming, the organizing coalition held a rally at the park featuring a long list of speakers who hyped up the crowd with chants of freedom and demands that the Democratic Party, the Biden administration and the Kamala Harris and Tim Walz ticket take action to secure a permanent cease-fire in Gaza and a U.S. arms embargo on Israel, among other progressive issues.

“We’re out here today from all across this country to make it clear that we say genocide is not welcome here. We make it clear that we will not be casting any ballots for anybody who oversees the genocide, the indiscriminate murder of Palestinian children, families and futures,” Sarah Mahmoud of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR) told the crowd.

“We know Palestine will be liberated in our lifetime, and it’s because Palestine is a struggle for justice for all people,” she continued. “It’s a struggle that connects