‘If I’m not being heard, what chance does anyone else have?’ Ruwa Romman on the aftermath of the DNC

Ruwa Romman wants to make clear she has no splashy political ambitions, and yet, in just a matter of weeks, Georgia’s sole Palestinian state official has become somewhat of a household name.

While in Chicago last month for a panel the same week as the 2024 Democratic National Convention, Romman’s name was added to a shortlist of suggested speakers on behalf of Uncommitted, a growing national movement trying to pressure Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to broker an end to the war in Gaza.

Though not an official delegate, Romman felt things looked promising at the convention — a packed, historic panel on Palestinian human rights earlier; pro-Palestine t-shirts, keffiyehs, and ceasefire pins around each corner. Uncommitted delegates were also told the absence of an outright “no” from the DNC regarding their request for a speaker was a good sign, and so Romman and the group persisted.

But despite growing pressure, the DNC ultimately denied Romman — or any Palestinian American for that matter — the same stage granted to families of Israeli hostages. The blatant rejection unveiled seismic anti-Palestinian racism within party leadership and only amplified the movement’s cause tenfold.

Footage of a tearful Romman outside Chicago’s United Center delivering the speech she would have given onstage had the DNC welcomed her made the rounds online. The speech, which began with a personal anecdote about her grandfather and included a demand for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, ultimately ended with an endorsement for Harris.

Romman, who still has family in the occupied West Bank, has acknowledged the diluted speech and Harris endorsement was a strategic move on her part, a symbolic gesture to show pro-Palestinian voters they still had a place in the Democratic Party. 

It’s now been weeks since the convention, and Romman has yet to hear from DNC leadership or the Harris campaign. The Harris campaign, however, has doubled down on its support for Israel.

The silence from the Harris campaign and its failure to engage with the Uncommitted movement or figures like Romman has only further intensified ongoing debates within the pro-Palestine movement and Muslim and Arab-American communities over the upcoming elections, and whether the Democratic Party deserves their votes, or even care enough to try and hear their demands. 

In a statement Thursday, the Uncommitted National Movement announced that it would not endorse Kamala Harris for president, a decision made after the VP failed to respond to a request for her to meet with Palestinian American families who have lost loved ones in Gaza, and meet to discuss the group’s demands for an arms embargo. The group, however, urged supporters to “vote against” former President Donald Trump and “avoid” third-party candidates.

“People often ask me if I, an elected official, a Democrat with a 10-year track record of turning out Democratic voters in the swing state of Georgia, who is part of the reason the state flipped blue… If I’m not being heard, what chance does anyone else have?” Romman said. “And I just don’t have a good answer.”

When asked if her endorsement for Harris still stands, Romman told Mondoweiss, “The question is, do they even want my endorsement? I don’t think they do.”

The answer isn’t exactly clarifying nor reassuring for many Arab- and Muslim-American voters who’ve been eager for Romman to reject the Democrats, not to mention the countless allies who have been at the front lines of the country’s growing anti-genocide movement this past year. In addition, critics are especially frustrated with the Georgia representative’s vocal disdain for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who’s been gaining momentum among pro-Palestine voters.

“You’re saying we’re being pushed to a binary choice, but you’re pushing us to a binary choice,” Palestinian American human rights advocate Rania Masri told Romman in a heated confrontation at last week’s Arab Con, organized by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. “If you want to hold on to the genocider, please at least do not attack those of us who refuse to bow down to the Democratic presidential candidate.”

In our interview, Romman admitted she used to be ambivalent about third parties but understands the appeal.

“There are people who are being very strategic and tactical about how they build power,” she said, referring to the Working Families Party and its growing influence in New York’s primaries as an example. Romman was among the dozens of WFP state legislators elected in 2022.

“I think that’s how you do it. You do it state-by-state. You build it out from the bottom up. You don’t show up 11 months before the election and say you’re going to try to win,” she said, this time signaling frustration over Stein, who Romman and others have repeatedly argued is capitalizing off of the pain of Palestinians.

“When Stein approached Palestinians to be her vice presidential pick, all of them said no,” Romman said. “Why? Because she refused to stop campaigning if the Democratic Party acquiesced to their demands.”

In August, Palestinian American activist Noura Erakat, floated as the potential Stein VP pick, tweeted about her offer to join the Stein ticket to leverage the Green Party’s margin in swing states and compel the Democratic Party toward a permanent ceasefire and arms embargo.

“The Green Party rejected this as they are accountable to their broader base and the health of their Party,” Erakat wrote. “I understand that but my priority in this moment is doing everything we can to end genocide by using all the leverage we have.”

In an interview with Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan soon after, Stein referred to Erakat as “new to the political process, bless her heart.”

Despite the accusations of opportunism against Stein, polls suggest she leads Harris among Muslim-American voters in key swing states, including Michigan, Arizona, and Wisconsin. 

Romman remains hopeful the nascent down-ballot Democratic support for Palestine — which already includes members of Working Families and Democratic Socialists of America — will eventually grow so strong that national-level Democrats will have no choice but to listen.

“The reality is that more Democrats than ever before are voting against sending weapons to Israel. I don’t remember that ever happening in my life,” Romman said. “Are these breadcrumbs? Yes. But if we are gaining momentum in a way that’s never happened before, on a policy that’s existed for 80 years, why would I give up on that? Why would I say it’s not worth it?”

Under Harris, Romman feels there is absolutely nothing stopping the broader coalition from building out a plan to spend the lame duck session pressuring senators, members of Congress, and the Harris team.

“The fire hose that a second Trump presidency will bring on those of us down ballot, from basic hours and minutes in the day and the requirements of my job — I will literally not be able to spend time on Palestine,” she said. “Advocating for Palestine should not be antithetical to advocating for ourselves, but under Trump, people are going to, understandably, be so focused on their own self-preservation, they’re not going to be able to think about Palestinians and what’s happening overseas.”

But as we wait for November to come and go, the bombs continue to fall. Just last week, Israeli strikes left massive 30-foot craters in the designated safe zone of al-Mawasi. At least 40 were killed in the strike, tents disintegrated, and Palestinian families were buried under sand. On the Presidential Debate stage, neither Trump nor Harris backpedaled on their support for the Zionist state.

“I get it,” Romman said when asked what she could potentially say to sway constituents who can’t stomach a vote for a party candidate responsible for the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. “I’m furious. We should all be furious.”

“But electoral politics are not the only method for change. This is just the lane that I inhabit,” she said. 

Pro-Palestine organizers have long called on the public to spend their energy on more concrete actions to cut ties with the Zionist state, such as targeted divestment campaigns against companies complicit in the production and supply of arms to Israel. 

“My ask of other people is to please understand the constraints of this lane, but also understand that what they do, the pressure they create, determines how big my lane is,” Romman said. “I would be useless, nothing more than a token, if people didn’t do the organizing they do.”

The Georgia representative is currently up for reelection against pro-life candidate Michael Corbin, who has criticized her affiliation with the Council on American-Islamic Relations as “a domestic front for Hamas” among other Islamophobic attacks.

Growing up in Forsyth County, a county with a tumultuous, racist history about an hour’s drive north of Atlanta, the freshman Democrat has grown accustomed to not taking things personally. 

“But it’s different when it’s your own,” she said. “I feel responsible for what’s at stake for my 60,000 constituents if Trump wins, but there’s no guidelines or best practices on how to be an elected Palestinian. I feel stuck.”