Portrait of a protester: Outside the Democratic convention, a young man talks of passion and plans

CHICAGO– With his beard and glasses, YM Masood has a quiet demeanor that suggests he is older than 20. He is studying for the LSAT, the law school entrance exam, and is studying for a degree in political science in December, well ahead of schedule.

He also fulfills another common role: that of demonstrator.

Masood, a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has taken to the streets in recent months for pro-Palestinian demonstrations, often weekly and once twice in the same day.

“Palestine is absolutely No. 1 right now,” says Masood, who also traveled by train last spring to support pro-Palestinian camps at the University of Chicago and Northwestern and DePaul universities.

That set the tone for this week’s Democratic National Convention, where thousands gathered to make their voices heard on issues ranging from the Middle East conflict to abortion and immigrant rights. Though cameras were often focused on clashes with police, the vast majority marched peacefully.

Masood was there often, volunteering as a marshal to help organizers of these larger protests keep things under control. The overarching messages to the Democratic Party and its candidate, Kamala Harris, were clear: Stop the war. Stop sending aid to Israel.

For Masood and other students, the war has become a sore point for their generation, just as the Vietnam War was in the 1960s and the apartheid system in South Africa in the 1980s.

Masood says: “We are not going to stand by and watch all these people suffer.”

The death toll in Gaza recently passed 40,000About 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, and officials there say more than 100 Israeli hostagesincluding two small children, are still in Gaza.

The national Harvard Youth Poll conducted last spring found that 60% of students and 64% of those with college degrees supported a permanent ceasefire in the Middle East. Of those surveyed, aged 18-29, just over half said they sympathized with both the Palestinian people (56%) and Israelis (52%) — though they had less support for either government and Hamas.

However, these protests still target the Palestinian people, as the war has destroyed huge numbers of homes and wiped out people. whole families.

“Before I got into activism, I was a lot more shy. … But for me, this is personal,” says Masood, a Muslim of Indian descent. His father, an IT specialist, was born in Chicago. His mother, a religious education teacher, came to the country from India in the 1990s. Like his father, Masood was born in Chicago but grew up in a Detroit suburb until his family moved back.

On campus, he is known as the man who drapes a red or black keffiyeh scarf around his shoulders. The Middle Eastern scarves have become an increasingly displayed symbol of solidarity with the Palestinian people. His own keffiyehs belonged to his father and his late uncle, who also protested in support of the Palestinians when they were young.

“I have a duty to continue… what (my uncle) stood for and give it a new meaning,” says Masood, joking that he wears the scarves so often that people wonder if he washes them.

Occasionally, he says, his parents see him on TV at protests with groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Students for a Democratic Society. Mostly, they don’t want him to do something “reckless” that would jeopardize his future. He promises them he won’t, and walks a fine line between his activism and that future — law school and a job, for example. It’s a legitimate concern, given that some students who have gone public with their views on the Hamas-Israel war have lost their jobs or being harassed online.

“My parents … they’re a little bit worried about me,” Masood says. “But I feel like at this point they realize that I have a duty as well. And they’re not completely against it.”

If he were arrested, that would probably change, he admits.

On a windy summer day, just before the DNC, Masood sat with a small group on the grass in a park on Chicago’s South Side, painting protest signs.

One recent college graduate complained about her parents’ “weird liberal logic.” When Democratic friends came over, she said, they asked her to take down a painted sheet she’d hung from her bedroom window denouncing what she and many others call genocide in Gaza. “They didn’t want it to be a topic of conversation,” she sighed. During the DNC, she rehashed the pro-Palestinian message with a “Harris-Walz” sign in another window.

Next to her, a man in his early 30s said he planned to incite police officers guarding the DNC, his sentiments seeming to echo the anti-Vietnam riots at the DNC in Chicago in 1968. He painted his hands red and printed them on a poster board, with the words, “America has covered its hands in blood.”

There were a few renegade groups at the DNC. One briefly breached an outer security wall, leading to 13 arrests. Dozens of others were arrested the second night outside the Israeli consulate.

As a volunteer marshal at the larger March on DNC protests, Masood’s role was the opposite of an agitator. As trained by organizers, marshals work to minimize conflict with police and counterprotesters.

“We don’t normally organize disruptions,” says Masood.

Why were protesters so focused on Democrats as the Biden administration continues to push for a ceasefire in the Middle East? At the DNC protests, the answer was clear: Many protesters feel the president hasn’t done enough to help the Palestinians, and they fear Harris will continue funding Israel.

“I feel like the Democratic and Republican parties are two of the same party that just say things differently,” Masood says. “They’re controlled by corporate interests and they’re not going to benefit the average person.”

This is the first presidential election he’s old enough to vote in, but he’s not excited. He plans to vote for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein. While ending the war in Gaza is his top issue, he mentions other important issues, including abortion rights, immigration and climate change.

But he says his generation feels overburdened.

“We would like to live in a world where we only had to worry about ourselves, our families, and our education,” he says. “But that’s not the world we live in right now.”

On Middle East peace, Rania Batrice, a Democratic political strategist who served as Bernie Sanders’ deputy campaign manager during his 2016 presidential campaign — and who is Palestinian-American — said she is “cautiously optimistic” about Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee.

“We now have someone at the top of the ticket who has at least used empathetic language,” Batrice says. “She was the first person in the administration to say the words ‘ceasefire.’” The shift in rhetoric, Batrice says, “is a very, very welcome change. It’s also not enough.”

For that reason, Batrice, who came to Chicago for the DNC, strongly supported the March on DNC events that Masood participated in.

“I think peaceful protest is not only a longstanding tradition in this country,” she says. “It’s also how we’ve seen policy change happen over and over again.”

At the mass protest on the first day of the DNC, Masood was among the first to arrive to help set up, hours before the march began. The scene transformed into a melting pot of humanity as pro-Palestinian protesters from across the country and journalists from around the world poured into Union Park.

At one point, a group appeared with Israeli flags, circling the park as protest marshals in fluorescent vests rushed to create a human barrier to deflect potential conflict. Nearby, a man with a guitar sang Christian music for hours, including “Amazing Grace.”

Across the street, another man with a message full of fire and brimstone used a loudspeaker to taunt the much larger group in the park. “You’re all terrorists!” he shouted, also saying he supported Donald Trump.

Masood paid little attention to it. His own faith, he says, revolves around love and compassion. “Eventually, you just learn to ignore them. If you shout back when they shout at you, you’re only putting yourself and others in danger.”

As the sea of ​​thousands of people marched along a 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) route to another park and back, people banged drums and waved signs. Masood and his colleagues used hand signals to spread themselves out on either side of the protest route. Police marched alongside, using bicycles to create rolling barriers to keep things contained.

Masood felt the message was heard. He called himself “energetic.” He realizes that Stein and the Green Party are not considered candidates for the presidency. But his first presidential election is also a protest.

Whoever wins, Masood says, “We will be here in the streets, as we were today, regardless of whether it is Democrat or Republican. We will always protest for the people.”

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Martha Irvine, an AP national writer and visual journalist, can be reached at mirvine@ap.org or at http://twitter.com/irvineap.