Alex Gallegos, a Crete-Monee Community Unit School District 201-U Board member, attended the DNC in Chicago as a Ceasefire Delegate. [Provided]

Alex Gallegos, a Crete-Monee Community Unit School District 201-U Board member, gained local attention two weeks ago for being the only Illinois delegate to the Democratic National Convention (DNC) to vote “present” during the roll call to nominate Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the party ticket over the administration’s continued support for arming Israel in its military campaign in the Gaza Strip, which has killed thousands of civilians.

In the virtual roll call to nominate Harris held in early August, 52 delegates from 18 states voted present, according to the Associated Press. 

Gallegos, elected as a Biden delegate to the convention, admittedly waffled with the idea of being a delegate at all as he vehemently opposed President Joe Biden’s policy toward Israel, he told The Daily Line. Last month, he attended the convention as a part of a pro-Palestinian “Ceasefire Delegation.”

Gallegos isn’t ethnically Palestinian himself, telling The Daily Line his connection to the issue comes from nothing more than his own humanity.

“I never in my wildest dreams would have thought that a president would greenlight this much destruction over there [in Gaza],” Gallegos said. 

Following Hamas’ attack on Israel last October, which killed 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and led to the taking of 251 hostages by Hamas, Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip to eliminate Hamas and free the hostages has killed at least 40,000 people, including thousands of civilians, and led to mass displacement. More than 5,900 women and more than 10,600 children have been killed in Gaza as of Sept. 4, according to data compiled by the United Nations. 

The United States has continued to sell weapons to Israel while attempting to broker a ceasefire deal between the two sides. 

Ultimately, Gallegos said he ran based on the notion that if elected to be a delegate, he’d have a say over a potential replacement if Biden declined to run again, but that thought seemed far-fetched as he collected signatures to get on the March ballot.  

When Gallegos was elected to be a delegate to the DNC, he was selected as a pledged district-level delegate for Biden in Congressional District 2. Gallegos said he was asked by Congresswoman Robin Kelly’s team to be a delegate. When the president announced the end of his reelection bid on July 21, Biden delegates were freed from their commitment to Biden and not obligated to vote for Harris. 

Unlike other delegates, Gallegos did not quickly shift his support to Harris, adding he wanted an open convention that involved policy debates and a “democratic” selection process. He said he wanted to see if Harris would propose policies different from Biden on the Middle East and in other policy areas.

“I couldn’t just blindly say, ‘Yeah, okay, you’re the one,’” Gallegos said. “I wanted to see more from her. I wanted to have a debate. I wanted to get some policies. I wanted to get some concrete stuff.” 

The Uncommitted National Movement, stemming from a successful campaign in Michigan, urged voters in Democratic primaries with ballots that included “uncommitted,” “none of these candidates,” “no preference” or a similar option in the presidential nomination race to select that as a protest vote against Biden’s support for arming Israel, a protest vote that was also aimed at convincing the president and party to change its policy toward Israel. 

The campaign supports the United States imposing an arms embargo on Israel, a permanent ceasefire in Palestine and an end to the “long-term siege” on Gaza. 

The Uncommitted campaign was able to secure 700,000 votes across 19 primaries and earned 30 delegates to the convention. In the run-up to the convention, the Uncommitted campaign also began to recruit former pledged Biden delegates, some of them newly pledged Harris delegates, to join their delegation as “Ceasefire Delegates” regardless of their commitment to a candidate. 

Not all states gave an uncommitted option on their Democratic Party primary election ballots. In Illinois for instance, voters were encouraged by advocates to write in “Gaza” or something similar or to leave the presidential race blank as the ballot only included Biden’s name and lesser-known candidates such as Marianne Williamson and Dean Phillips.

While Illinois election officials don’t count and report the tallies themselves, a WBEZ analysis found that in Cook County, 12 percent of Democratic primary voters, or 68,000 people, left the presidential race blank or wrote something in. That concentration in Cook County was much higher in areas with heavy Palestinian American populations. 

When Biden dropped out and Harris began to campaign, Gallegos said he felt not hope but rather “desperation” that the presumptive nominee swap would lead to a shift away from Biden’s “atrocious” policy toward Israel. 

By the time of the virtual roll call vote, Gallegos said he voted present because “she had not proven to me that she was going to change course on Gaza. I guess you can call me a single-issue voter because the lives of other human beings is what’s most important to me.”

Harris has largely stuck to Biden’s position when it comes to the war, stressing that she and the president have been working tirelessly to achieve a ceasefire deal that allows for the release of hostages still held by Hamas. In her nomination acceptance speech at the DNC, Harris condemned Hamas and reiterated her support for Israel while also calling for Palestinian self-determination and empathizing with the suffering in Gaza. She does not support an arms embargo on Israel.

After Biden dropped out, Gallegos joined the Ceasefire Delegation in the lead up to the DNC, participating in media training and trying to get his fellow district delegates to sign on to a ceasefire and arms embargo support letter.

Joining the delegation and meeting fellow Ceasefire Delegates made Gallegos feel less isolated on the issue of Gaza than he did in Crete, where he said pro-Israel sentiment is the dominant view. And among the Illinois delegation, Gallegos also said he didn’t feel welcome. 

The Uncommitted Movement had pressed the DNC for at least a month to allow a Palestinian voice to speak on one of the convention’s four nights. When word came that the request had been denied on the third evening of the convention, uncommitted and Ceasefire Delegates staged a nearly 24-hour sit-in outside the United Center to call on the party to change course. Gallegos joined the sit-in the morning after it began. 

Ultimately, the party declined to allow a Palestinian speaker on stage, though the request gained support from progressive lawmakers nationwide, the leader of the United Auto Workers and Illinois lawmakers including Mayor Brandon Johnson. 

Gallegos called the party’s decision an “unforced error” that is sure to make it more difficult for voters that care most about Gaza to decide if they’ll vote for Harris this fall. 

As someone who’s been in elected office for just over a year, Gallegos said he didn’t aim to put himself in the spotlight as an influential voice on Palestine, adding that doesn’t even have that much experience with press interviews in general. 

“At our school board meetings, you have an option to speak,” Gallegos said. “But no one’s waiting for me with a microphone in my face.”  

Rather, he told The Daily Line that his actions and advocacy are based on living his own values and expressed that his view shouldn’t be seen as unusual but the common sense one. But he’s not telling anyone how they should vote this November, saying that he doesn’t see a problem with someone who still feels comfortable voting for Harris despite her Israel stance. 

“If people want to listen to my voice, then for sure, I’m not going to tell them not to,” Gallegos said. “But I’m just a dude with a heart, who sees babies being blown to bits, and I’m going to be against that.” 

After the party failed to allow a Palestinian voice to speak at the DNC, the Uncommitted Movement has asked for a meeting with the vice president on their demands by Sept. 15.

As for Gallegos himself, despite all that has happened, he said he’d easily vote for Harris if she embraced a tougher stance on Israel.

“Hell yeah, I’m a gettable vote,” Gallegos said. “Show me that you’re going to stop arming Israel, and I will vote for you every day of the week.”