In front of the Biden White House, but without Biden; with the Capitol next to it and, in the background noise, a pro-Palestinian casserole. Kamala Harris displayed her mobilizing muscle this Tuesday in the Ellipse, the gardens that are on the National Mall, between the White House and the Obelisk – the monument of George Washington. Kamala Harris has gathered her people – up to 75,000 people, according to her communications team – in Joe Biden’s backyard.
But he has done it without Joe Biden, with whom Kamala Harris is trying to distance himself in recent days. Biden, in any case, has not remained 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 Harris’ country project or Donald Trump. “Just 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 followers. His demonization is unconscionable and un-American. It is totally contrary to everything we have done.”
Shortly afterward he tried to qualify his words, 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 great central event at the end of Harris’ campaign was also held a few meters from the Capitol, where a little less than four years ago Trump’s followers organized an assault in protest of the election result, encouraged by the outgoing president – from the White House – that even today has not recognized that electoral defeat. And he did so under the watchful eye of snipers stationed to prevent attack attempts.
“Tonight I will talk about what is at stake in these elections,” Harris began, remembering that January 6, 2021: “We all know who Donald Trump is. This is the person who stood on this very spot almost 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 that he knew he had lost. Americans died as a result of that attack. 140 law enforcement officers were injured. And as Donald Trump sat in the White House watching the violence unfold on television, his staff told him that the mob wanted to kill his own vice president. Donald Trump responded with two words: ‘So what?’
The vice president has had several speakers as opening acts, among them a couple of former Republican voters who have announced their vote for Harris due to the risk of another term of a Trump even more relaxed than the one in 2016. But, as already happened at the convention Democrat who elevated her and in all events since then, has not given the floor to voters or supporters who demand an arms embargo on Israel to stop the genocide being committed in Gaza.
What’s more, a few minutes after Harris began his speech, a couple of pro-Palestinian activists began shouting “weapons embargo, now,” after which they were expelled from the premises.
Harris has presented the elections on November 5 as a battle between democracy and authoritarianism, between freedom and a “cheap tyrant.” And he has sentenced: “[Los patriotas] They did not fight, they sacrificed and gave their lives only to see us give up our fundamental 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 is the greatest idea humanity has ever conceived. A nation big enough to encompass all our dreams. Strong enough to withstand any fracture or fissure 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.”
Convened an hour and a half before the start of Harris’ intervention – it started around 7:30 p.m. local time – the pro-Palestinian protesters did not stop banging their loudspeakers, frying pans, drums and pots during the more than two hours that lasted. the different interventions, including the US anthem.
The hundreds of people who gathered around the Obelisk in front of a giant screen managed to silence Harris’ intervention in that area with songs 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 uses to kill civilians in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.
And, once Harris had finished, they raised the noise and moved to continue the march along the venue where the vice president and Democratic candidate had held the event.
Sara Suliman, spokesperson for the Youth Palestinian Movement, one of the groups that organized the rally, explained: “It has been a year of genocide, a year of protests in the streets in which we have witnessed the most unimaginable war crimes. And we are here at Kamala’s closing speech to demand an immediate arms embargo. Most Americans want an arms embargo, a ceasefire. If Kamala really wanted to listen to the will of the people, she and the Biden administration would have enacted the arms embargo. The fact that it’s not even on their show is very telling. If the Democratic Party loses these elections, they will only have themselves to blame for not listening to the people and the people who vote for them, because we would have voted for them.”
With pro-Palestinian protest, next to the site of the coup attempt by Trump supporters almost four years ago… and in Biden’s backyard, but without Biden. Kamala Harris held a central event in which she demonstrated strength one week before the closest elections in recent times in the United States.
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