Like Kamala’s mom demanded of her, Gaza protesters will ‘do something’ and keep speaking up
The woman pressed her lips disapprovingly and brushed aside the media lanyard around my neck, before pulling up my collar to keep my black bra strap from being on display to the thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered at Union Park last Wednesday.
Later, as the 73-year-old marched near the United Center alongside others, who held signs that read, “It’s not complicated. It’s a genocide” and “Never again means never again for any of us,” she asked me if I wanted some SkinnyPop popcorn.
My keffiyeh-clad mom then force-fed me some cookies — “Tiger Glucose Biscuits,” to be exact — made by Britannia, a company founded by the British over a century ago in her native India, where she was living in 1968 as her contemporaries here were flooding the streets to protest the Vietnam War.
Back then, my Amee had never heard of the infamous Democratic National Convention or Chicago, where she ended up two years later.
When I asked Amee why she wanted to protest Israel’s nearly year-long bombardment of Gaza as the city hosted the DNC, her answer was simple: She wants the killing of civilians to stop, and for the U.S. to stop supplying weapons that have been used to carry out the deaths and the ensuing human suffering the United Nation’s secretary-general has characterized as a “moral stain on all of us.”
The author’s mother, Jahan Ara Hussain, at a demonstration near the United Center last Wednesday against the war in Gaza.
Rummana Hussain/Sun-Times
“Our politicians are always flapping their lips on about human rights abuses,” but absolve and aid and abet Israel’s war crimes, my mom said in Urdu.
Lily Greenberg Call is among the millions around the world whose views align with my mother’s and mine, even though the only other commonality we share is that she wasn’t around in Chicago in 1968 either.
Born into a Jewish family who escaped antisemitic persecution in Europe, Greenberg Call was working for the Biden administration when Hamas unleashed its attack on Oct. 7.
Greenberg Call has been heartbroken and shattered ever since, not only for the Israeli victims but for the thousands of innocent Palestinians who have been butchered in response. By May, Greenberg Call was so fed up with President Joe Biden’s failure to intervene with the “ethnic cleansing” orchestrated by Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that she walked away from her White House job.
“I reject the premise that one people’s salvation must come at another’s destruction,” Greenberg Call, 26, wrote in her resignation letter.
Greenberg Call had only visited Chicago once before last week when she participated in a cease-fire protest run and joined uncommitted DNC delegates at a sit-in outside the United Center to demand a speaking slot for a Palestinian American onstage.
Lily Greenberg Call (left) with Tamara Erickson, of Washington State, sits outside the United Center with uncommitted delegates last week as they called for a slot for a Palestinian American speaker at the Democratic National Convention.
“This is the best time to hold elected officials accountable, before an election,” she told me, pointing out that Israel’s ongoing offensive continues keeps no one safe.
“Protests can change public sentiment, shift the cultural narrative and show people in power that we are willing to take risks.”
That transformation won’t come until more politicians acknowledge the humanity of so many Muslims, Palestinians and other Arabs here and overseas who are detrimentally affected by our foreign policy in the Middle East.
No chance to speak about Palestinian pain
No one of Palestinian descent was handed the mic at the DNC before red, white and blue balloons showered over the delegates of a party that prides itself on diversity and inclusion.
The erasure was especially glaring to those of us who recognize our Chicago-area turf as home to the largest Palestinian population in the U.S., and where a 6-year-old boy was murdered allegedly for his Palestinian heritage.
Biden “both-sided” the bloodshed in the Middle East, but only the parents of an American taken hostage by Hamas were given the opportunity to speak about their pain.
I can’t imagine the hell Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin are going through. I also can’t fathom the despair of my Palestinian neighbors who have lost 50 to 100 or more relatives. Would it kill the American public to hear about the Palestinian struggle from an actual Palestinian on prime time?
When accepting the Democratic presidential nomination, Vice President Kamala Harris vowed to always stand up for “Israel’s right to defend itself” and touched on the “horror” of a “terrorist organization called Hamas.”
She also mentioned the “scale of suffering” of the Palestinians, but fell short of identifying Israel’s policies and military strategies as their cause.
During her speech, Harris said her mom, also an Indian immigrant like mine, ordered her and her sister, Maya, to “do something” in the face of injustice.
Thousands of Americans of all stripes, who are sickened by the images of dismembered children and the excuses for Israel to keep pounding Gaza with bombs, have been following that same advice.
They too, will “do something,” by continuing to speak up.
Rummana Hussain is a columnist and member of the Sun-Times Editorial Board.
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