November Options Consequences

The current presidential race has sparked intense debate within the Arab American community. If this were a normal election year, I would be out in the field urging my community to vote Democrat.

I warned Arab Americans that we needed to do everything we could to prevent Donald Trump from returning to the White House. I pointed out the threat he posed to women’s rights, civil rights, civil liberties, and the environment. It would have been, as we say, a “slam dunk.” But this is no ordinary election. My community has been deeply traumatized by what has been happening in Gaza for a year, and the devastating war in Lebanon. They are angry that the Biden administration has refused to enforce U.S. laws that would put a stop to Israel’s unacceptable and illegal actions, and they accuse it of providing cover for Israel to act with impunity. In light of this, there has been a significant drop in Arab American support for Democrats, and a surge in support for the Republican Party, with many saying they want to punish Democrats by voting for a third-party candidate. I too feel this pain and am torn about how to move forward. I wish it were different, but it is not. However, I have some questions for those who hold this “Democratic” administration responsible for Israeli abuses and want to punish the Democratic candidate for president.

When they say they are voting their conscience by supporting a third party, I ask them to explain how sanctioning Vice President Kamala Harris and enabling Donald Trump to become president would end these abuses, especially since we have allies on the progressive side of the Democratic Party who support us and work with us to advance our concerns on foreign and domestic policy and would be with us to pressure a Harris White House? Meanwhile, Trump’s party is dominated by hardline “hawks” who care little about Palestinians or our civil rights. Or how could voting for parties that have been in place for decades and are struggling to get to 1 percent of the vote do anything other than help elect Donald Trump? Or how could ignoring all the groups that have been our allies in the struggle for our civil and political rights and for a just foreign policy lead to “voting our conscience”? This reminds me of a lesson I learned from the late Julian Bond after the 1968 election.

A decade ago, I wrote a reflection on this lesson. Let me ask you to think about it again: It was 1968, and the United States was reeling from the effects of the Vietnam War, urban unrest, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy. In the wake of voter opposition to the war, President Lyndon Johnson had been forced to end his reelection bid in favor of his vice president, Hubert Humphrey. All of this was in the air when the Democrats gathered at their convention to formally nominate Humphrey. On the first night of the convention, a battle erupted over whether to recognize the all-white Georgia delegation or the mixed black-white delegation led by a young Georgia civil rights activist, Julian Bond.

The mixed delegation won a partial victory. On the second night, the convention struggled with an attempt to amend the platform to oppose continuing the war. Bond was a leader in this fight, too, and the amendment was defeated. On the third night, when the convention met to nominate Humphrey’s vice president, the antiwar delegates proposed that Bond run against the party leaders’ chosen candidate, Senator Ed Muskie. Unable to silence the antiwar opposition, the party leaders called in the police, who were shown on television beating delegates who chanted Bond’s name. On the last day of the convention, after Humphrey and Muskie had delivered their acceptance speeches, Julian Bond came on stage and raised the hands of Humphrey and Muskie in a show of unity.

Many of the young activists were shocked. A few years later, I met Julian Bond, asked him why he had done this, and told him how disappointed I was. He told me that there were two types of people. Those who looked at the evils of the world and said, “I’m going to stick to my principles because things have to get worse before they get better.” And those who said, “I have to get down to business and see if I can make things at least a little bit better.” “I’m with the latter,” he said. “Because if I take the former view, I’m going to let a lot of people continue to suffer while I maintain my purity and refuse to do anything to help. At the conference, it wasn’t Julian Bond versus Ed Muskie. It was Hubert Humphrey versus Richard Nixon, and I had to choose who was going to help make life at least a little bit better.”

I have never forgotten this lesson and am challenged daily to apply it. It is the reason I have little patience with ideologues of the right or left. They often overlook the harsh reality in which most of us live and the difficult, often less than perfect, choices we face in the never-ending challenge of making life a little better, whether it is the fight for human rights, improving the quality of life, or providing security for the most vulnerable.

When they say they vote their conscience by supporting a third party, I ask them to explain how punishing Vice President Kamala Harris and enabling Donald Trump to become president would end these abuses.