A group of fringe radical groups is calling for demonstrations in Chicago this August, during the Democratic National Convention: a “March on the DNC” for Palestine. We study political movements and have participated in more than a few. We share the concerns of many Americans about Israel’s actions in Gaza, the need for an immediate ceasefire and the release of hostages, and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel. But we will not heed the call to protest in Chicago. We hope others will stay away as well.
This is why.
In a democracy, protest movements can play a vital role in reshaping the national debate on important issues, but they must hone their message and choose when and how to make their case. All three Democratic conventions in the 1960s featured large protests. Two of them ended up with the expected results, but one failed.
In 1960, when John F. Kennedy was nominated in Los Angeles, civil rights protesters, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., carefully organized a 5,000-person march and daily pickets at the convention to demand that a strong pro-civil rights provision be included in the Democratic platform. It was the first such convention, and Kennedy cautiously supported it, although it was several more years of protests before he supported the Civil Rights Act, which became law in 1964, a year after his assassination.
When Lyndon B. Johnson was nominated that same year in Atlantic City, civil rights activists, now fighting for voting rights, supported the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party’s integrated delegates instead of the regular, all-white Mississippi delegation. They did not unseat the incumbents, but their impact on delegates and public opinion was undeniable. A year later, with Johnson’s support, Congress passed the landmark Voting Rights Act.
The protests at the 1960 and 1964 conventions followed a sophisticated and pragmatic strategy of working inside and outside the party apparatus. Leaders crafted demands that appealed to the best of the American democratic tradition: equal rights for all. Historic advances were made for African Americans.
In 1968, when Hubert Humphrey was nominated for president in Chicago, it was a different story. Protesters again took to the streets outside the convention, this time to demonstrate their opposition to the Vietnam War. That opposition was justified. The fact that they attacked the convention that year and went on a rampage was not.
Due largely to the brutal tactics employed by the Chicago police, the result was bloody chaos in the streets. Some protest organizers believed that dramatic televised images of the clashes would strengthen their cause and gain public sympathy.
They were wrong. Polls showed that a majority of television viewers (56 percent, according to a Gallup survey) blamed protesters, not “police riots,” for the unrest. Republican Richard Nixon, campaigning on restoring “law and order,” defeated Humphrey that November and prolonged the Vietnam War well into the next decade.
Anti-war protests helped turn public opinion away from U.S. military intervention in Vietnam and gave rise to a new wave of liberal and progressive politicians, but protests at the 1968 Democratic convention set the cause back.
Today, those who want to protest against the war in Gaza must think about how to achieve that goal. Will the demonstrations at this year's Democratic convention in Chicago help or hurt the cause of peace and Palestinian rights?
More than 70 Organizations with mostly few members The key organizers, those who will determine the message this protest will convey with its slogans and actions, are members of the far-left Party for Socialism and Liberation and its front organization, the ANSWER coalition. This is the same group behind the demonstration that burned an American flag and desecrated monuments in a “day of rage” as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress last week.
Notably absent from the list of organizations backing the bill are major politically savvy labor unions, civil and environmental rights organizations, women’s and LGBTQ+ rights groups, and community organizing networks, such as PICO California, MoveOn, or Indivisible.
Do they recognize that the main goal this election season must be to defeat Donald Trump and help Democratic candidates win the House and Senate? Perhaps they do not want to lose voters because of the perception that Democrats are the party of chaos in the streets or rabid anti-Americanism.
Many of the groups behind the Chicago protests are not simply pro-Palestine or anti-Israel. As the website for the “March Against the Democratic National Convention” says, they dismiss the Democratic Party as “a tool of billionaires and corporations.”
Even one of the largest groups supporting the rally, the Democratic Socialists of America, has adopted a politically counterproductive logic for doing so. The Chicago chapter of the DSA recently posted that turning the “DNC into a complete political disaster” – through disruption, confrontation and extremist rhetoric – is just as important as ending all US support for Israel.
In fact, many of these groups do not believe in electoral politics as a vehicle for change. They are enamored of revolutionary fantasies. They seem to believe that Trump’s reelection may hasten the prospects for a fairy-tale ending for capitalism.
Meanwhile, they are indifferent to the threat that a second Trump administration poses to democracy, workers, the environment, immigrants, minorities, the LGBTQ+ community, the poor, respect for science, voting rights, common decency, and yes, even Palestinian rights (Trump is a strong ally of Israel’s most conservative forces).
If this year’s protests in Chicago produce scenes of chaos on the streets and Democratic-leaning voters decide to abstain or elect a doomed third-party candidate, who will benefit? In a remarkable example of political jiu-jitsu, the Republicans, the instigators of the January 6 insurrection, are campaigning as the party of law and order.
Protests can bring about the changes we want to see, but this time it's too risky. Instead of demonstrating against the Democrats, let's campaign and vote for them. You should too.
Peter Dreier teaches politics at Occidental College and is the author of several books, including “We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style.” Maurice Isserman teaches history at Hamilton College; his books include “America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s.”
