Third-party voters in Durham gathered at CCB Plaza Wednesday for a “Rally for Gaza,” where attendees spoke against the two-party system and called for a “Free Palestine.”
The event was set to occur regardless of which candidate won the 2024 presidential election. The rally's message, “whoever wins, we lose,” advocated against the notion of having to “choos[e] the lesser of two evils.”
Many people brought signs to the event that they placed around the plaza, including statements like “No one rules if no one obeys,” and “Stop killing kids in Gaza.”
While the gathering was scheduled to begin at 6 p.m., only a few attendees had arrived by that time. Mary Heronemus, one of the first protesters to arrive, expressed surprise at how few people had shown up.
“We assumed this was going to be a great day for mobilization right after the election, but there's not enough people here, so we're getting confused,” Heronemus said.
But by 6:30 p.m., the crowd had grown to about 50 people. The largely informal event featured attendees gathering and talking, with occasional coordinated chants of “Free Palestine.”
Allie Jackson, a Durhamite who arrived early to the protest with her partner and child, brought a sign emblazoned with “Blue MAGA can suck my d*ck.”
Jackson defined “Blue MAGA” as a word for Democratic leadership, noting that “[the Democratic Party is] adopting so many MAGA things.”
“They chant ‘USA’ at the [Democratic National Convention] and at rallies now,” Jackson said. “Kamala [Harris] basically tells people worried about genocide to shut up [and] offers no solutions, and it's disgusting.”
Many attendees cited the ongoing Israel-Hamas war as a pivotal issue that determined their vote in the 2024 presidential election. Several shared that they chose not to vote for either major party candidate, either voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein or not voting at all.
Jackson explained that although she “wanted to be able to vote for Kamala really badly,” she ended up voting for Stein because “it was just beyond a moral red line.”
“No matter who the candidate is or what the alternative is, … I can’t cast a vote for somebody in the administration that’s continuing to ignore us and do this unpopular thing,” Jackson said. “I figured it would lose her the election, and I think it did.”
Nathaniel, another attendee, did not vote in the presidential election because he felt doing so would require “compromising [his] beliefs.”
“It's more important to demonstrate that people care about Palestine and are willing to exert that electorally,” he said.
Heronemus talked about how she felt “terrible” voting for a candidate that was “supporting and enacting a genocide.” However, she said that she ended up voting for Harris, noting that “the alternative is putting hundreds of thousands of marginalized people potentially in danger under a Trump presidency.”
While several attendees acknowledged that a second Trump term could pose dangers to the issues they cared about, many also asserted that the results of the election only motivated them to continue their activism with renewed passion.
“Ultimately, nothing much has changed for me or [for] other people in my community because we've been fighting all along. We've been organizing outside of the ballot box, and we're going to continue doing that,” Nathaniel said. “A Trump presidency may change what that looks like, but it's not going to change what we're doing. So having that community, having that kind of plan, has helped me a lot with coping.”
Britt, a member of Socialist Alternative, expressed similar thoughts, also emphasizing the importance of remaining hopeful.
“People should not be demoralized in this time,” they said. “… We see that these progressive policies are popular even in red states … and I think it’s going to take bringing back the militant roots of how we won these rights in the first place.”
Editor's note: A previous version of this article said that The Pinhook organized the rally. The Chronicle regrets the error.
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Sarah Diaz is a Trinity first-year and a staff reporter for the news department.