It was the unavoidable elephant in the room at the Democratic National Convention, which opened on Monday, August 19, in Chicago, Illinois: the intrusion of the war in Gaza into the debates. A vast pro-Palestinian coalition called for a demonstration at noon on the same day, a stone's throw from the United Center, which hosts the delegates summoned to this grand mass.

On the lawns of Union Park were the usual demonstrators with their keffiyehs and masks while a speaker repeated over and over at the podium: "Free Palestine, from the river to the sea," a controversial slogan used since the 1960s in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. However, after two hours, it was clear that dozens of surplus banners were still piled up, while the attendance was, at most, a few thousand people, a far cry from the tens of thousands announced.

In the great city of Illinois, where Barack Obama came to fame and Martin Luther King campaigned in 1966 to extend his fight for civil rights to social justice, African Americans were virtually absent. "It's not our fight. We face our own injustices, Blacks are the most segregated people in the world," lamented A.G. Jefferson, a Chicagoan aged 38. In the red city, the home of anarchists who fled Europe in the wake of the failed revolutions of 1848, the very left-leaning Chicago Teachers Union was barely visible on Monday. A union retiree explained that today was the start of the new school year.

In reality, the demonstration was made up primarily of young activists, who had often traveled to the event. Kamil Khan, a 32-year-old social worker of Pakistani origin, flew in from Portland, a progressive stronghold in Oregon; Ann Ghazi, an American who converted to Islam in the 1980s and is married to an Egyptian, came from Cleveland, Ohio: "By bus. And we're leaving again tonight, tomorrow we have work." Matt Stevens, 20, drove his car from Nebraska, after demonstrating on Saturday, August 17 against Tim Walz, Kamala Harris's running mate and governor of Minnesota. "I'm a professional protester," he joked.

All denounced genocide in Gaza and demanded a halt to arms deliveries to Israel. Among them were young pro-Palestinian Jews in red t-shirts: "The state of Israel doesn't represent me, and what it does, doesn't correspond to my values," explained 23-year-old Mollie Hartenstein.

But the tension and mobilization are nothing like those of 1968, when the Democratic convention in Chicago was accompanied by riots and violence. "The police went crazy," recalled Mardi Klevs, 72, and her husband, Joe Feinglass, 73. The Jewish activist couple came to denounce the war in Gaza. They were teenagers in 1968 and saw nothing comparable today.

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