President Joe Biden just received a loud and clear message from Michigan's Arab American community over his handling of Israel’s war in Gaza. In Tuesday's presidential primary in Michigan, more than 100,000 registered Democrats voted "uncommitted,” according to the Associated Press. Though Biden and Donald Trump won their respective primaries outright, leaders with the Listen to Michigan initiative said in a memo this week that organizing a protest vote, “ignited a vital conversation about the values we hold dear as Democrats, Americans, and people of conscience across faith and backgrounds.”
“This is a grassroots effort. We built a coalition that is multigenerational, so it includes a lot of our young community leaders, community activists, and young people who are frustrated and discontent[ed], you know, have a feeling of discontent and betrayal with the current Biden administration's lack of action around Israel's aggression against Palestinians in Gaza,” Listen to Michigan’s campaign manager Layla Elabed, 34, told Teen Vogue.
An estimated 29,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. In the US and abroad, young Americans in particular have put mounting pressure on the Biden administration to demand a ceasefire, organizing protests and sending letters against his position on the war. A New York Times/Siena poll in December found that 72% of registered voters between the ages of 18 and 29 disapproved of Biden’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We've had a lot of young volunteers on college campuses that have either helped us host rallies and get student organizations involved or who have kind of picked up the Listen to Michigan uncommitted campaign themselves and ran their own initiatives on their own college campuses to get their student bodies to go uncommitted in today's presidential primary,” Elabed said.
According to the Listen to Michigan campaign, “Student organizers are leading efforts to spread Listen to Michigan's message on campuses including the University of Michigan, Michigan State, Wayne State, Kzoo College, Western, and Eastern.”
Michigan is home to a large number of Arab and Muslim Americans. US Census Bureau data from 2020 shows that people of Middle Eastern or North African ancestry account for the majority of people (54.5%) in the city of Dearborn. According to a report from Emgage, which works to turn out Muslim voters nationwide, 145,620 Muslim voters in Michigan cast ballots in the 2020 general election. Biden won Michigan by 154,188 votes in 2020.
The Listen to Michigan campaign was based on the premise that if enough Democratic voters abstained from voting for Biden in Tuesday’s primary, it would signal that the president should reconsider his support for Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza.
In a Monday memo, Elabed said the group was hoping that at least 10,000 Michigan Democrats would vote uncommitted. “Ten thousand votes is about the same as Donald Trump’s margin over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Biden must support a lasting ceasefire and stop funding Israel’s war in Gaza. This is not a messaging problem, it is a bombs problem,” she wrote.
“One of our main objectives was to use the terrain of the election to force the political class to not just talk about the horse race of Red vs Blue, but about real issues impacting families from Michigan to Gaza. In that sense, we’ve already been victorious,” Elabed wrote in the memo. Elabed is the younger sister of Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian American member of Congress and a proponent of the Listen to Michigan campaign. The campaign was also backed by former Michigan Rep. Andy Levin; the mayor of Dearborn, Abdullah Hammound; and other elected officials in the state.
Hammound, 33, who is Dearborn’s first Arab American and Muslim mayor, wrote in a New York Times op-ed last week that the “entire city is haunted by the images, videos, and stories streaming out of Gaza.” He worries that Biden’s stance on Israel will impact the president’s electoral viability and legacy. “My greatest fear is that Mr. Biden will not be remembered as the president who saved American democracy in 2020, but rather as the president who sacrificed it for [Israeli prime minister] Benjamin Netanyahu in 2024,” Hammound wrote.
In a video posted to Instagram on Tuesday, Rep. Tlaib said she “was proud… to walk in and pull a Democratic ballot and vote uncommitted.”
“We must make sure that our government is about us. About the people,” Tlaib said. “This is the way we can use our democracy to say, Listen. Listen to Michigan. Listen to the families right now that have been directly impacted.”
As for students, Alec Hughes, the 20-year-old co-chair of College Democrats at the University of Michigan, told Teen Vogue he has “seen and heard about the uncommitted movement here on campus. I know Andy Levin came a few days ago to give a speech and there have been a few smaller events here and there.”
“The atmosphere on campus has definitely been pretty tense, with students having personal ties to both sides of the conflict. I can’t speak for the specific views of students, but I know people want to see a quick and peaceful end to the conflict, including humanitarian aid to the civilians that have faced damage to their homes and their livelihoods,” Hughes said.
“I know many students that I have talked to recognize that while Biden may not be completely perfect, he has been able to get a lot done, such as the [Inflation Reduction Act] and gun safety legislation, and that in all reality, it is either him or a Trump presidency. And no one I know here on campus wants [another] Trump presidency,” he added.
Earlier this month, Biden told reporters that he believes Israel’s response in Gaza has been “over the top.”
"I'm pushing very hard now to deal with this hostage ceasefire," Biden said on February 8. "There are a lot of innocent people who are starving, a lot of innocent people who are in trouble and dying, and it's gotta stop." On Monday, the president said he’s hopeful there could be a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas by next week, conditioned on a release of hostages held by Hamas since October 7.
This isn’t the first time Democratic voters in Michigan, particularly young voters and voters of color, have used the uncommitted option to express their concerns about the Democratic frontrunner. Though then senator Barack Obama wasn’t on the Michigan primary ballot in 2008, young voters and Black voters in Michigan opted for uncommitted instead of backing Hillary Clinton.
In response to critics who argue that voting uncommitted may help bolster a second term for Trump, the Listen to Michigan campaign writes on its website: “This is a primary where Democrats are trying to get their voice heard by the man who claims to lead our party. We are well aware that Trump is not our friend. There is a long time between now and November for Biden to change his policies and earn support from Democratic voters.”
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