“I was in this state of not being able to move for a few days,” he said. “After processing the initial shock and writing about it and talking to my therapist—shout-out to my therapist—I decided to jump back in.” That started by working with former colleagues, including Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and her staff, to put together a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire. “Being on the ground, the level of hurt, pain, and despair among people who are in Arab American, Palestinian American, and Muslim American communities, specifically, is so high,” Alawieh said. “I have cousins who’ve known I’m in politics for years who would never initiate a political conversation with me. Now their entire obsession is, ‘Why is our president funding a genocide of the people that we love?’”
Layla Elabed, Listen to Michigan’s campaign director, was having a similar experience during community organizing meetings in Dearborn. Back in December, she started having conversations about the election with people she was working with on campaigns fighting book bans and challenging the state’s for-profit electric utility, DTE. “I wasn’t even thinking about the primary, to be honest,” she said, explaining that her focus at that point had been on the general election. “A lot of people I talked to said, ‘I’m not going to vote,’” Elabed recalled, explaining their despair at the possibility of a Trump presidency and sense of “deep betrayal” by Biden. Her tentative plan had been to try to get people to turn out for down-ballot races. “If you feel strongly that you can’t put your support behind Biden or Trump, then skip the top of the ticket,” she relayed.