How to Listen to Michigan at the DNC in Chicago

In Michigan, the birthplace of the Uncommitted movement and the state with the highest density of Arab Americans, the prospect for a Democratic victory is particularly intertwined with Gaza. Organizers on the ground say they’re entering the final stretch of election season with a strong multi-racial, working-class progressive coalition. While their communities are eager to defeat Trump, they are wary of Democrats’ continued unconditional support for Israel.

Earlier this summer, I wrote an article for the special Midwest issue of In These Times that explored the substantial progressive changes that have been underway in Michigan for many years, and how the Uncommitted movement emerged from the innovative and deeply relational and multiracial grassroots organizing that has been happening there for many years.

That organizing in Michigan says a lot about how the Uncommitted movement is approaching the DNC and pushing for changes to the Democratic Party’s platforms.

Among Benton Harbor’s struggles, the city got confirmation in 2018 that it, like Flint, had disturbingly high levels of lead in its water. In 2019, the state threatened to close its high schools and push the district’s 1,800 students — 90% of whom are Black — to seek education elsewhere.

Instead, working people pushed back — and won. A 2023 campaign by Michigan Education Justice Coalition eradicated $114 million in school debt held by five majority Black school districts— including Benton Harbor.

This was major in a city that had been battling uphill for decades. It is also emblematic of accelerating, larger shifts taking shape in Michigan since at least 2018. A state once known for deindustrialization, regressive policies, economic depression and racial strife has been seeing a surge of progressive gains that signal possibilities not just for Michigan, but the Midwest and the nation — in November and beyond.

Art Reyes III, executive director of the grassroots organization We the People Michigan, which helped organize the campaign for eradicating school debt, said the win was only possible because ordinary citizens in Benton Harbor organized their friends and neighbors.

Simmering beneath Michigan’s status as a presidential swing state, he says, is a strong and growing progressive movement scoring material wins.

“The reality is that multiracial, working-class communities, for the last handful of years, have been making gains,” Reyes says. ​“We have been really, really focused on ​‘what does it look like for our communities to flex our political power?’”

We the People Michigan is a statewide group that organizes multiracial, working-class communities and came together in 2017, right around the time Michigan was seen as part of the crumbling blue wall that facilitated President Donald Trump’s election in 2016. (Trump won by a razor-thin 0.2%.)

“An avalanche of some really powerful progressive wins” began in 2018, says Bartosz Kumor, an electoral strategist in Michigan. These wins, including the election of Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and several key Democratic seats in state government, also built around initiatives that would impact redistricting and expand voting rights. They were the result of ​“decades of deep organizing that maybe went uncredited or unnoticed nationally until we had the breakthroughs that happened in 2018 and onwards,” Kumor said.

Those 2018 gains led to an explosion four years later, in 2022, when Democrats won a trifecta in state government thanks in part to turnout reacting to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. ​“It was incredible to see,” Yousef Rabhi, who had been floor leader for the Democrats around that time, told The Guardian. ​“But it was a multi-election process that never would have been possible prior to passing those laws in 2018.”

The election marked Michigan’s first Democratic trifecta in 40 years. According to Reyes, voters like migrant farmworkers helped seal the win: ​“These are folks that are often treated as invisible, who in 2022 flexed their political muscle [and] were organizing in migrant camps and trailer parks in rural communities.”

The trifecta meant swift and rapid change to conservative policies in Michigan as it became the first state in the nation in six decades to repeal rabidly anti-union right-to-work laws. Within the first 100 days, Democrats also expanded the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to be queer-inclusive, repealed the state’s retirement tax and expanded the earned income tax credit, among others.

Behind the electoral wins and policy changes is the organizing and coalition work done by groups like We the People Michigan. For Reyes, residents and organizers across the state are fighting for no less than a future Michigan they want to live in.

“We’re used to being cast aside and treated as if [we’re] invisible in our political system,” Reyes added, explaining why the electoral successes are meaningful not just because of the election, but because of the work being done to build the power of working people. ​“Elections are about setting the arena in which we’re fighting to make real material gains for our families, for our people,” Reyes says.

And nowhere has this been more pronounced, Reyes said, as with the emergence of Listen to Michigan and the ​“Uncommitted” movement.

“It was remarkable. And it gave people a hopeful action to take in a moment of incredible despair.”

Listen to Michigan urged voters to rebuke Biden’s unwavering support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza by choosing ​“Uncommitted” in the presidential primary. With just three weeks of organizing, Uncommitted won more than 100,000 votes, becoming the model for similar efforts in states like Minnesota and Wisconsin. The Michigan Uncommitted vote also earned national headlines — that 100,000 represented more than 13% of Democratic primary voters, signaling real problems for the challenge of winning key Midwestern swing states in the general election.

Rai LaNier, co-executive director of Michigan Liberation, an organization led by formerly incarcerated Michiganders, says the Uncommitted movement would not have succeeded without decades of bridge-building between Arab and Black communities. Since October 2023, support for Biden had been dipping among Black voters and had plummeted among Arab and Muslim voters.

“About four years ago, we caught our stride,” LaNier says. ​“I think that people are fools if they don’t pay attention to Michigan. They need to be looking at Black and brown votes, because the party assuming that they have us on lock is wrong. And it shows that they’re not listening to their base.”

Abbas Alawieh, a political strategist who co-founded the Uncommitted campaign, notes that the movement was multifaith, multiracial and multigenerational. ​“We earned over 10% of the vote for Uncommitted, for peace, against the war, in 75 out of 85 counties in Michigan,” Alawieh says. ​“So it wasn’t just the Muslim American communities.”

In an unprecedented show of both grassroots and electoral pushback, more than 30 public officials from various Michigan geographies announced public support for Uncommitted ahead of the primary.

“Michigan kind of came out of nowhere,” says Alawieh, one of Michigan’s two Uncommitted delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. ​“Nobody expected a showing as large as the one that we had.”

Since Biden dropped out of the presidential race, Uncommitted organizers have been working on a new campaign, Not Another Bomb, to pressure Vice President Kamala Harris to unite the Democratic Party in her bid for The White House by promising a ceasefire and a weapons embargo. They’ve also requested a meeting with the Harris campaign, though at press time, nothing had been scheduled.

Before Biden dropped out, Alawieh said the incumbent’s reelection strategy was to ignore the Uncommitted movement. Kamau Jawara, Southeast Michigan lead organizer for We the People, echoes that sentiment, saying the Democratic Party appeared to disengage from disappointed voters. ​“I think this is something that will cost them,” Jawara cautions.

Many of the Michigan organizers interviewed for this article said Biden’s big fundamental mistake was in not listening to the working people and communities of color throughout the state. And the stakes are the highest they could be. ​“We are battling, vote for vote, with Donald Trump,” LaNier says.

Alawieh also says that in addition to the Not Another Bomb campaign, there was another Uncommitted effort underway, which is to build a block of ​“Ceasefire” delegates at the upcoming Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

“There are hundreds of Harris delegates who have endorsed her campaign but also want to see her turn the page from Biden’s policy on Gaza by ending weapons transfers to Israel’s war and occupation,” Alawieh says. ​“We encourage all those Harris delegates to reach out to the Uncommitted National Movement through our website to organize with us all summer as a united Ceasefire Delegation.”

“There’s a lot of energy coming from the labor movement,” Snyder says. ​“I think the UAW is a little bit revitalized. Coming out of this strike, there’s a lot of energy and momentum to take lefty positions. There’s a real rekindling of the energy and the fire of labor here in Michigan.”

Reyes also said there’s a tricky balance to strike in this moment, making sure progressive changes in Michigan last while there’s energy and efforts to continue tackling ongoing issues across the state.

“We cannot sacrifice the long term for the short term,” Reyes says. ​“It requires us to operate with clarity around power. What we are fighting for is for our communities to be able to have the power to drive a governing agenda. Long haul, there’s going to be a lot of ebbs and flows, [and] we have to be really very strategic on that. We’re very, very clear about the dangers that are in front of us.”

And that means Trump.

Snyder says there is no ​“one” mood so far among Michigan voters looking toward November.

“You talk to somebody like my grandma, who is a line cook at the casinos and a UNITE HERE member,” Snyder says. ​“She and her friends are very much clear that Trump can’t be our next president.” Older Black folks like his grandmother, he says, see Trump’s rhetoric as racism that harkens back to the Jim Crow South. 

Within the large Yemeni and Arab communities in places like Hamtramck and Dearborn — two communities where Detroit Action has a presence — Snyder says frustration over the ​“terrors of the genocide” are foremost. 

For many Latinx folks, Snyder says, the frustration has been Biden’s stance on immigration, coupled with fear over Trump’s calls for mass deportation. Michigan is a border state with the second-highest rate of arrests in the nation made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Snyder adds that young people, who had been abandoning Biden before he stepped aside, are still angry Biden has not meaningfully delivered on campaign promises of student debt relief. ​“It’s still super expensive to go to school here in the United States,” Snyder said. “[Students are] essentially mortgaging their futures for the promise of this American dream.”

Despite the anger, Michigan organizers don’t see voters staying home; coming from a place of new but substantial progressive power, they’re afraid of losing the gains they’ve made so far, should Trump be reelected.

Snyder, a veteran organizer, says organizing during the Trump presidency was like a game of Whac-AMole. ​“A lot of activists may not be realizing that a lot of the things that we won in 2020 and 2021 are actually up for grabs with a Trump administration,” he said.

For Julie Campbell-Bode, board chair of the Michigan organization Fems for Democracy, turning out voters in November is about reminding residents of how far they’ve come, which means building on the push for reproductive justice.

“We had over a thousand volunteers back in 2022, collecting signatures to protect reproductive rights here in Michigan,” Campbell-Bode says, ​“and we’ve worked with over 105,000 signatures for the various different ballot petitions. What I do know is that the house is on fire and, unfortunately, we don’t have a choice at the moment. … So our job is to help. From my perspective, it is to make sure that Trump does not get reelected.”

November is also about local elections. LaNier, of Michigan Liberation, cites flipping prosecutor and state judge seats among the group’s most important wins. Reyes and Jawara, of We the People, emphasize that their election education work is primarily about down-ballot candidates. ​“There’s a real interest in us thinking about what that co-governing structure looks like long term,” Jawara says.

“There’s also the protection of lawmakers that have been outspoken on the issue [of Gaza]. So thinking about how do we support their ability to hold those seats, and how do we talk about lawmakers that are publicly taking stances and express that gratitude.” Reyes says he and other organizers see the November election as just one part of the broader project of building working-class power, a project that includes Listen to Michigan — and listening to Michigan.

“I think we’re seeing that all over the place, especially when it comes to folks who have a sharp analysis on ​‘this is what’s important to my community right now, this is how we’re going to fight on it,’”

Reyes says, referring to the Uncommitted movement. ​“This is how we use the election to advance the set of issues that we care about building in the long term — in our community, state and country — that is deserving of our people.”