Stop the Biden White House, but without Biden; with the Capitol next door and, in the background, a pro-Palestinian casserole. Kamala Harris flexed her mobilizing muscles this Tuesday in the Ellipse, the gardens located on the National Mall, between the White House and the Obelisk – the monument to George Washington. Kamala Harris gathered her people – up to 75,000 people, according to her communications team – in Joe Biden’s backyard.
But he did it without Joe Biden, with whom Kamala Harris has been trying to distance herself in recent days. Biden, in any case, did not remain silent: at that time he was doing an interview and adding a little spice to an electoral campaign that is not precisely characterized by the public debate around the national project of Harris or Donald Trump. “The other day,” Biden said, “a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage. Well, let me tell you something. (…) The only trash I see floating around is his supporters. Its demonization is unacceptable and un-American. This is completely contrary to everything we have done.
Shortly after, he tried to qualify his remarks, but Trump’s counterattack had already arrived: “He really doesn’t know what he said. “It’s a terrible, terrible thing, but he doesn’t really know it.”
The big central event at the end of Harris’ campaign was also held just yards from the Capitol, where just under four years ago, Trump supporters staged an assault to protest the election result, encouraged by the outgoing president – on the white side. House – who, even today, has not recognized this electoral defeat. And he did so under the watchful eye of snipers stationed to prevent attempted attacks.
“Tonight, I will talk about the issues in this election,” Harris began, remembering January 6, 2021: “We all know who Donald Trump is. This is the person who stood in this very spot nearly four years ago and sent an armed mob to the United States Capitol to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election they knew have lost. Americans died as a result of this attack. 140 law enforcement officers were injured. And as Donald Trump sat in the White House and watched the violence unfold on television, his aides told him that the mob wanted to kill his own vice president. Donald Trump responded with two words: “So what?
The vice president had several opening speakers, including some former Republican voters who announced their vote for Harris because of the risk of another Trump term even more relaxed than that of 2016. But, as it turns out, is already produced. At the convention, the Democrat who raised her and, at least since then, did not give voice to voters or supporters who demand an arms embargo against Israel to end the genocide committed in Gaza.
Additionally, a few minutes after Harris began her speech, some pro-Palestinian activists began shouting “arms embargo now,” after which they were removed from the venue.
Harris framed the November 5 election as a battle between democracy and authoritarianism, between freedom and a “cheap tyrant.” And he condemned: “[Los patriotas] They didn’t fight, they sacrificed and gave their lives to see us abandon our basic freedoms and submit to the will of another petty tyrant. The United States of America is not a springboard for would-be dictators. The United States of America represents the greatest idea humanity has ever conceived. A nation big enough to encompass all our dreams. Strong enough to withstand any fracture or crack between us. And bold enough to imagine a future full of possibilities. In 7 days, we have the power to turn the page and begin writing the next chapter of the most extraordinary story ever told. »
Summoned an hour and a half before the start of Harris’ intervention – it began around 7:30 p.m. local time – the pro-Palestinian demonstrators did not stop banging their speakers, frying pans, drums and pots for more than two hours. . the various interventions, including the American anthem.
The hundreds of people gathered around the Obelisk in front of a giant screen managed to silence Harris’ intervention in this area with chants demanding the freedom of Palestine and against the massacres and genocide of Israel, as well as against the Democratic Party, Harris and Biden for continuing to sell the weapons that Benajmin Netanyahu is using to kill civilians in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.
And, once Harris was done, they turned up the noise and continued the march past the venue where the vice president and Democratic nominee had held the event.
Sara Suliman, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Youth Movement, one of the groups that organized the rally, explained: “This has been a year of genocide, a year of protests in the streets in which we have been witnesses to the most unimaginable war crimes. And we are here, in Kamala’s closing speech, to demand an immediate arms embargo. Most Americans want an arms embargo, a cease-fire. If Kamala truly wanted to listen to the will of the people, she and the Biden administration would have signed the arms embargo into law. The fact that it’s not even on their show is very telling. If the Democratic Party loses these elections, it will only have itself to blame, because it did not listen to the people and those who vote for it, because we would have voted for it.
With pro-Palestinian protests, next to the site of the attempted coup by Trump supporters almost four years ago… and in Biden’s backyard, but without Biden. Kamala Harris held a central event in which she showed her strength, a week before the closest election in recent times in the United States.
