The Coalition to March on the DNC held its last press conference on Aug. 22, 2024, at Union Park. During their press conference, Hatem Abudayyeh, spokesperson for the Coalition of March on the DNC and national chair of the United States Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), and two new speakers from the coalition continued to advocate for Palestine rights and end U.S. aid to Israel. The coalition included an emergency physician doctor from Gaza who spoke at the press conference.
The coalition’s spokesperson Abudayyeh said, “We believe we had 20,000 people in the streets with the coalition from the immigrant rights movement, from the black liberation movement, from the movement to stop police crimes, reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, labor rights, all of the different social movements that are part of this coalition and part of, you know, the social sectors of all of us.”
Abudayyeh reiterated that the central issue for the coalition “is Palestine and how we need to stop U.S. aid to Israel. We need to stop the genocide. We need to make demands of those people in that building down the block who are complicit in the genocide and the killing of over 40,000 Palestinians, the injuring of over 100,000 Palestinians and the displacement of over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.”
Dod McColgan, the logistics lead of the Coalition to March on the DNC, reported the coalition worked with over 300 organizations that united with them to march on the DNC.
McColgan said, “While we were doing that, the city law department, the Secret Service, the Counterterrorism Task Force and the Democratic Party were working to repress us. They tried to push us miles from the convention; denied us canopies to keep people safe from the sun; denied us sufficient porta potties; painted us as dangerous and squeezed us onto smaller streets.”
Despite the challenges of repression the coalition faced in preparation for the march, McColgan said, “We burst through their barriers and made our message impossible to miss. Enough is enough. Chicago stands for liberation, not another nickel, not another dime,” referencing the hundreds of volunteers who persisted in the organization of the march.
Gemini Gnull, a member of the Osage Nation, highlighted the parallels between the treatment of Native Americans and Palestinians.
Gnull said, “The U.S.-backed Israeli government is killing the Palestinian people to dispossess them of their land and to get rich. The methods of genocide between the indigenous people of the Americas and the Palestinians may be different, but the goals are the same. The goals are to get money and power for the ruling class at our expense. And this isn’t just speculation. The Osage have 400 years of experience with this.”
According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, the U.S. government forced the Osage to be removed from their lands three times, and they “were murdered for their petroleum wealth.” Gnull emphasized Native American and Palestine solidarity given both groups have been subjected to displacement and violence for the sake of wealth and power.
Dr. Tammy Abudhnais, an emergency physician based in Chicago, detailed the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Abudhanis, who has served as a humanitarian aid twice in the Gaza Strip, said, “I have had a front-row seat to the violence that Israel is enacting upon Palestinian civilians in Gaza. I specifically want to mention the crimes that I have seen, crimes against children, crimes against civilians.”
Dr. Abudhnais recounts her experience in Gaza witnessing the deliberate targeting of civilians including children such as a 19-month-old girl shot by a quadcopter and a pre-teen boy shot through the chest.
Dr. Abudhnais said, “I am an American citizen, and I therefore feel empowered to demand that my government stop supplying Israel with the weapons it is using to kill Palestinians in Gaza. It is beyond disappointing to me that this administration continues its policy of providing unconditional support, even in light of ICJ’s findings of plausible genocide. I am trained to save lives. I could not do my job in Gaza because the United States continues supplying the weapons that are killing my patients, killing healthcare workers, and destroying the infrastructure that would enable us to save their lives. We have a right to demand an end to genocide.”
August 22nd was the last day to join the Coalition to March to the DNC. The march to the DNC took place at 6:30 p.m. It was held at Union Park with a rally scheduled at 5 p.m. involving activists speaking on the stage.
In Abudayyeh’s final remarks to the press before questions, Abudayyeh said, “The whole world is watching. The whole world will continue to watch today. They’re going to continue to watch for three more months, and if the Democrats and Kamala Harris don’t do something or say something different, they’re going to lose, and when they lose that election, they better not come and say that the Palestinians are responsible, or that our mass movement is responsible. The only people responsible are the people who are complicit in the murder of 40,000 Palestinians and maybe 10 or 20,000 others who are under the rubble.”
