A collection of fringe radical groups are calling for demonstrations in Chicago this August at the Democratic National Convention — a “March on the DNC” for Palestine. We study political movements, and we’ve participated in more than a few ourselves. We share the concerns of many Americans about Israel’s actions in Gaza, the need for an immediate cease-fire and the release of hostages and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside the state of Israel. But we’re not going to heed the call to protest in Chicago. We hope others will stay away as well.
Here’s why.
In a democracy, protest movements can play a vital role in reshaping the national debate on important issues. But they have to hone their message and choose when and how to make their case. There were major protests at all three Democratic conventions in the 1960s. Two of them eventually got the results they hoped for. One backfired.
In 1960, when John F. Kennedy was nominated in Los Angeles, civil rights protesters, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., carefully orchestrated a 5,000-person march and daily pickets at the convention demanding a strong pro-civil rights plank in the Democratic platform. It was a first at a convention, and Kennedy was cautiously supportive, though it took several more years of protests before he embraced the Civil Rights Act, which became law in 1964, the year after his assassination.
When Lyndon B. Johnson was nominated that same year in Atlantic City, civil rights activists, now driving for voting rights, supported the integrated Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party delegates in place of the all-white regular Mississippi delegation. They didn’t unseat the regulars, but their impact on delegates and public opinion was undeniable. A year later, with Johnson’s support, Congress passed the watershed Voting Rights Act.
The convention protests of 1960 and 1964 followed a sophisticated and pragmatic strategy of working within and without the party apparatus. The leaders crafted demands that appealed to the best in the American democratic tradition — equal rights for all. They delivered historic gains for African Americans.
In 1968, when Hubert Humphrey was nominated for president in Chicago, it was a different story. Protesters again showed up in the streets outside the convention, this time to demonstrate their opposition to the Vietnam War. That opposition was justified. Targeting that convention that year, and their wild rumpus approach, was not.
Due mostly to the brutal tactics employed by the Chicago police, the result was bloody chaos in the streets. Some protest organizers believed dramatic televised images of confrontations would strengthen their cause, winning the sympathy of the viewing public.
They were wrong. Polling revealed that most television viewers — 56%, according to a Gallup poll — blamed the protesters, not the “police riot,” for the disturbances. Republican Richard Nixon, campaigning to restore “law and order,” defeated Humphrey that November. He prolonged the Vietnam War well into the next decade.
Antiwar protests ultimately helped shift public opinion away from the U.S. military intervention in Vietnam. They produced a new wave of liberal and progressive politicians. But the protests at the 1968 Democratic convention set back the cause.
Today, those who want to protest the war in Gaza need to think about how to further that goal. Will the cause of peace and Palestinian rights be helped or hindered by demonstrations at this year’s Democratic convention in Chicago?
More than 70 mostly small-membership organizations are endorsing the upcoming protests. The key organizers, the ones who will determine the message this protest conveys by its slogans and actions, are members of the ultra-leftist 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 defaced monuments in a “day of rage” as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed Congress last week.
Conspicuously absent from the list of endorsing organizations are the politically savvy major labor unions, civil rights and environmental organizations, women’s rights and LGBTQ+ groups, and community organizing networks, such as PICO California, MoveOn or Indivisible.
Could it be that they recognize that in this election season, the primary goal has to be to defeat Donald Trump, and to help Democratic candidates win in the House and Senate? Perhaps they don’t want to lose voters to a 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 “March on the DNC” website puts it, they dismiss the Democratic Party as “a tool of billionaires and corporations.”
Even one of the larger groups endorsing the demonstration, Democratic Socialists of America, has adopted a politically self-defeating rationale for doing so. DSA’s Chicago chapter recently posted that making the “DNC a complete political disaster” — through disruption, confrontation and extremist rhetoric — is as important as ending all U.S. support for Israel.
In fact, many of these groups don’t believe in electoral politics as a vehicle for change. They are enamored of revolutionary fantasies. They seem to believe that Trump’s reelection can hasten the prospects for a fairy-tale end to capitalism.
In the meantime, they are indifferent to the threat that a second Trump administration poses to democracy, workers, the environment, immigrants, minorities, LGBTQ+ people, the poor, respect for science, voting rights, common decency and, yes, even to Palestinian rights. (Trump is a strong ally of Israel’s most conservative forces.)
If this year’s Chicago protests produce scenes of chaos in the streets and Democratic-leaning voters decide to abstain or choose a doomed third-party candidate — who will benefit? In a remarkable bit of political jujitsu, the Republicans, instigators of the Jan. 6 insurrection, are campaigning as the party of law and order.
Protests may achieve changes we want to see. But this time, it’s too risky. Instead of demonstrating against Democrats, we’re going to 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.”