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"It's clear to us that Vice President Harris can lead our country's Gaza policy to a more humane place," said Layla Elabed and Abbas Alawieh. "We hope she will meet with us so we can move forward to discuss an arms embargo."
Leaders of the Uncommitted National Movement aimed at pushing the U.S. government to end its support for Israel's assault on Gaza called on Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday to commit to a policy change and to follow through with her statement—made to them in a brief meeting Wednesday evening just before her campaign rally in Detroit—that she was open to discussing an arms embargo.
Layla Elabed and Abbas Alawieh, two Michigan voters who co-founded the Uncommitted National Movement earlier this year, spoke with Harris and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, about the deep personal connection many people in the crucial swing state feel to the 2.3 million Palestinians who have been under siege in Gaza since last October.
Elabed broke down in tears as she told Harris that she meets "with community members every day in Michigan who are losing tens and hundreds of family members in Gaza."
"Michigan voters want to support you, but we need a policy that will save lives in Gaza right now," Elabed told the Democratic presidential nominee. "Right now, we need an arms embargo. Will you meet with us to talk about an arms embargo?"
According to a statement released by Uncommitted after the rally, Harris "shared her sympathies and expressed an openness to a meeting with Uncommitted leaders to discuss an arms embargo."
On Thursday morning, however, Harris' national security adviser, Phil Gordon, said on social media that the vice president "does not support an arms embargo on Israel" and "will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups."
Elabed and Alawieh responded to Gordon's remarks by saying they would "continue engaging because people we love are being killed with American bombs."
"When we told Vice President Harris that members of our community in Michigan are losing dozens and hundreds of their family members to Israel's assault in Gaza, she said back: 'It's horrific,'" said the leaders of the movement, which includes 700,000 supporters across the country. "It's clear to us that Vice President Harris can lead our country's Gaza policy to a more humane place. We hope she will meet with us so we can move forward to discuss an arms embargo."
Elabed and Alawieh urged Harris to unite the Democratic Party "by correcting course because our democracy cannot afford to pay the bill for disregarding Palestinian lives should it come due in November."
The leaders engaged with Harris and Walz amid outrage from human rights groups over a leaked video that apparently showed Israel Defense Forces members gang-raping a Palestinian prisoner at the Sde Teiman military base. World Health Organization officials on Wednesday warned that without a cease-fire, polio virus that has been found in wastewater in Gaza could spread widely and cause an epidemic among a population that has suffered mass displacement since October, and United Nations experts said last month that famine has taken hold in the enclave due to Israel's blocking of humanitarian aid—which Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich suggested Monday was "justified and moral."
As several House Democrats told the Biden administration in March, advocates for an arms embargo on Israel are only demanding that the federal government follow U.S. laws, including the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act—Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which states that the U.S. cannot provide military aid to any country that is prohibiting or restricting the delivery of U.S. assistance into an area.
"We want to support you, Vice President Harris, and our voters need to see you turn a new page on Gaza policy that includes embracing an arms embargo to save lives," Alawieh, a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, told Harris on Wednesday evening.
Although the leaders' meeting with the Democratic ticket reportedly left them feeling relatively hopeful about Harris' "openness to engaging with the demands of Uncommitted voters," the vice president's reaction to a group of protesters who chanted, "We won't vote for genocide!" during her rally speech left some advocates calling on Harris to bring the same empathy regarding Gaza that Elabed and Alawieh saw to her public appearances.
Harris first responded to the protesters by saying, "I'm here because we believe in democracy. Everyone's voice matters. But I am speaking now." After the chanting continued, she said, "If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I'm speaking."
Human rights lawyer Qasim Rashid said Harris had missed "a golden opportunity to show empathy to people in deep pain because their family is suffering torture, famine, displacement, and genocide."
"They don't want Trump to win," said Rashid. "They want the suffering to stop. Don't push them away. Invite them in. She should remedy this ASAP."
Hours before the rally and Harris' meeting with Elabed and Alawieh, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) posted on social media a video taken at an event he held in Portland, Maine on July 27, in which an attendee told the senator that there are many uncommitted voters across the country "who are absolutely wanting to see Donald Trump defeated, but the big issue is Gaza."
"What can we do to convince Harris that she must take a different position now?" asked the voter.
The American people do not support Netanyahu’s horrific war.
We must remind the Democratic Party: If they want young people to get involved in the political process, they must change their approach to Gaza. pic.twitter.com/u7IXjXBjs2
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 7, 2024
Sanders approached the issue with support for voters who are unsure they can back a candidate who won't terminate the billions of dollars in military aid the U.S. has provided to Israel since last October, noting that opposition to the current U.S. policy is hardly radical; numerous polls have shown a majority of Americans don't support Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's U.S.-backed actions in Gaza and that conditioning military aid could improve support for the Democratic candidate.
"What we have got to do in a grassroots way is, say to the Democratic Party, is that the policies that you have right now regarding Netanyahu are wrong," said Sanders. "And if you really want to get young people involved in this campaign, the time is now to change those policies.
The Sunrise Movement, a member of the Green New Deal Network, which endorsed Harris days after Biden announced he was stepping aside in the presidential race, called on the vice president to "accept the meeting invitation from the Uncommitted National Movement and turn the page on Biden's unconditional support for Netanyahu."
"Millions of young people are watching what you do next," said the Sunrise Movement. "Don't miss this moment."
"We need to pass my bill to prohibit the use of biometric technologies by federal entities and law enforcement so that people like Porcha aren't wrongly accused."
In response to reporting about an innocent Black woman misidentified as a criminal suspect by facial recognition software and arrested in Michigan, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey on Monday demanded federal legislation he first proposed years ago.
The New York Times detailed Sunday that Porcha Woodruff was eight months pregnant and getting her daughters ready for school in February when members of the Detroit Police Department (DPD) arrested her for alleged robbery and carjacking. The 32-year-old was held at the Detroit Detention Center for 11 hours, after which she required hospital treatment for dehydration. The case against her was dismissed, but on Thursday she filed suit against the city and Detective Officer LaShauntia Oliver in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
"In the warrant affidavit, Detective Oliver omitted the fact that [Woodruff's] facial recognition was eight years old, and [Woodruff's] recent driver's license photo was available," the suit states, according to The Detroit News. "[Oliver] deliberately omitted facts because the magistrate would have possibly denied the warrant. The omitted facts were material in finding probable cause to obtain a warrant affidavit for [Woodruff's] arrest."
Responding on social media, Markey (D-Mass.) said: "Unacceptable. Facial recognition frequently misidentifies vulnerable and marginalized people. We need to pass my bill to prohibit the use of biometric technologies by federal entities and law enforcement so that people like Porcha aren't wrongly accused."
Markey and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) along with Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) first introduced the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act in 2020. In March, they reintroduced the bill with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) as well as Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
"The year is 2023, but we are living through 1984. The continued proliferation of surveillance tools like facial recognition technologies in our society is deeply disturbing," Markey said at the time, referencing George Orwell's dystopian novel. "Biometric data collection poses serious risks of privacy invasion and discrimination, and Americans know they should not have to forgo personal privacy for safety. As we work to make our country more equitable, we cannot ignore the technologies that stand in the way of progress and perpetuate injustice."
According to his office, the bill would:
Experts and rights advocates have long warned about the inaccuracy and biases of facial recognition technology and raised the alarm about its use by all levels of law enforcement.
While some states and municipalities have passed restrictions on such technology, there are no federal regulations—though experiences like that of Woodruff have fueled demands for swift and sweeping action by the divided Congress.
According to the Times:
The ordeal started with an automated facial recognition search, according to an investigator's report from the Detroit Police Department. Ms. Woodruff is the sixth person to report being falsely accused of a crime as a result of facial recognition technology used by police to match an unknown offender's face to a photo in a database. All six people have been Black; Ms. Woodruff is the first woman to report it happening to her.
It is the third case involving the Detroit Police Department, which runs, on average, 125 facial recognition searches a year, almost entirely on Black men, according to weekly reports about the technology's use provided by the police to Detroit's Board of Police Commissioners, a civilian oversight group. Critics of the technology say the cases expose its weaknesses and the dangers posed to innocent people.
In a statement to multiple media outlets, DPD Chief James White said: "I have reviewed the allegations contained in the lawsuit. They are very concerning. We are taking this matter very seriously, but we cannot comment further at this time due to the need for additional investigation. We will provide further information once additional facts are obtained and we have a better understanding of the circumstances."
Another incident involving the city's police landed Robert Williams behind bars in January 2020, after state-owned facial recognition software misidentified the Black Michigander as a shoplifting suspect. He is represented by the national and state ACLU as well as the University of Michigan Law School's Civil Rights Litigation Initiative in an ongoing legal battle.
"It's deeply concerning that the Detroit Police Department knows the devastating consequences of using flawed facial recognition technology as the basis for someone's arrest and continues to rely on it anyway," Phil Mayor, senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Michigan, said in a statement Sunday as news outlets shared Woodruff's story.
"As Ms. Woodruff's horrifying experience illustrates, the department's use of this technology must end," Mayor continued. "Furthermore, the DPD continues to hide its abuses of this technology, forcing people whose rights have been violated to expose its wrongdoing case by case. DPD should not be permitted to avoid transparency and hide its own misconduct from public view at the same time it continues to subject Detroiters to dragnet surveillance."
The ACLU was among the groups that endorsed Markey's legislation in March, with senior policy counsel Chad Marlow saying the senator "understands Congress should not be using federal funds to underwrite the use of technologies that threaten our most sacred civil rights and civil liberties" and applauding all of the bill's sponsors for working to safeguard "our freedoms against the prying eyes of unchecked government surveillance."
Director dream hampton’s new film Freshwater, about flooding in the historically Black neighborhood of Belle Isle, offers room for reflection and melancholy in a summer of extremes.
My limbic system is down for repairs; week after week of record high temperatures around the globe, with fires blazing, reefs bleaching, ice sheets melting. It’s the biggest story on Earth, and I will go on working on it for the rest of my life, but today, for whatever reason, I found myself in need of something… not more cheerful but more meditative, something that engages a different part of my brain.
So I found it useful to spend a day watching and rewatching a short new film by the director dream hampton (she lowercases her name, in part in tribute to the beloved essayist bell hooks) about her home city of Detroit. hampton is a big-time movie-maker; her harrowing account of an abusive R&B star, Surviving R. Kelley, has gotten all kinds of awards. But perhaps her limbic system needed a break too; in any event, this video, made for the Times Op-Docs series (in conjunction with the remarkable folks at the Hip Hop Caucus), is in a very different key. It’s about the way that as the Great Lakes have risen in recent years they’ve begun to flood the Belle Isle section of Detroit, which as she explains in a study guide accompanying the video is a park rich in memories for her and “historically a gathering place for Black Detroiters’ family reunions, celebrations, or just sunny afternoons.”
Whenever I come home, one of the first things I do is go to Belle Isle. I just do a lap around the isle. It doesn’t matter what season it is. It could be the dead of winter, or it could be a crowded summer day. But that’s like a real grounding for me, you know. When I was growing up and when my daddy would come get me on the weekends, we would do a lap around Belle Isle in his ‘98. He always knew somebody in the park.
There’s been flooding in other parts of Detroit in recent years too, as rainstorms have gotten stronger, and much of the film is imagery of people’s basements, where stored memories end up soggy and mildewed. In the film she puts it like this:
The flooding eats your memories. It destroys them. It literally takes your old photographs, your prom dress, your father’s boots. When I think about flooding, I think about how when water is still, flooding is literally like water being trapped and having nowhere to go. Sometimes we don’t even have not just the energy, but the means to deal with flooding. I think about what’s about to happen to this whole region. I think about individuals’ basement, and what it means every spring to have to go down there and bail out your basement every year and try to repair that damage, and have some resilience against the way that it eats your house, the foundation of your house. And so then, what we do consequently with memories and with, just, love thoughts, really, is we store them in a place. And sometimes we pull ‘em out to tend to ‘em, you know.
When I talked with her this week, she said—kindly—”I’m of course thinking about Vermont when I see stories like that,” and indeed we are busy across the Green Mountain State mucking out basements. Someone just sent me this picture of a book of mine about the climate crisis wrecked by the flooding and discarded in a pile outside the Montpelier library.
But of course in Detroit, and in so many other places, the devastation is compounded by specific histories of unfairness. As she wrote me the other day: “Divestment, decades of neoliberal policy—Detroit became the hole in the donut, surrounded by segregated, sometimes but not always wealthy, hostile suburbs. Water was central to the struggle between the city of Detroit, which has rights to some of the best drinking water in the country, and the suburbs, who have tried relentlessly to get it for pennies. A part of the Flint crisis was (then-governor) Snyder trying to avoid paying for Detroit Water.”
We’re used to the idea—adopted as a slogan in the Indigenous-led fight to block the Dakota Access pipeline—that “Mni Winconi—Water is Life.” And it is, of course. But it’s also sometimes other things. We’ve seen videos these past weeks of fast-rushing water devastating cities in Asia and Europe, with cars being swept down roads past buildings and hotels falling into rivers. Sea water off the Florida Keys set a new high-temperature record—101°F, or ‘hot tub’—and is in the process of devastating the coral reefs. Changes in salinity and temperature of that seawater are also threatening to collapse the Gulf Stream. And in places like Detroit, still water, in a rainy spring, can invade a basement, wrecking memories.
So much of what’s important about Detroit is the Blackness of it. You know, and as we lose that, just how much gets buried, whether it’s when freeways are created or when we just necessarily have to move forward, and things just get stored away. Maybe to be looked at some other time, but it could also be that they just end up being eaten up by the water, by the mold, by the neglect. I don’t have anything profound to say about erasure. It’s just this sinking feeling of, like, cities that may or may not have existed, you know, whether it was Atlantis or some city of gold. Will we exist moving forward? And if not, will these memories and these stories persist in 1,000 years?
We’re adults. We need room for fear and anger, and for planning and doing, but we also need room for reflection and melancholy. This film let me find that, and i hope it will do the same for you.