Voting for Kamala Harris With My Eyes Wide Open

I’ve crossed paths with Vice President Harris multiple times over the last decade at various phases in her political career. In 2014, I attended a luncheon in Los Angeles featuring then-Attorney General Harris sponsored by Junior State of America, the largest high school student-led organization in the United States, where I served as Southern California State Speaker of the Assembly. In 2019, I saw then-Senator Harris campaign for President in Iowa, where I served as a Field Organizer on the Bernie 2020 presidential campaign in rural areas outside of Iowa City. In 2023, as Climate Campaign Manager at the West Coast-based environmental nonprofit Pacific Environment, I was invited to greet Vice President Harris at LAX following my successful advocacy for the Biden-Harris Administration’s approval of an air quality regulation for California.

Fast forward to the presidential election season of fall 2024, and Kamala Harris is the Democratic Nominee for President going against Republican Nominee Donald Trump. Trump is running on a white Christian nationalist Project 2025 agenda of restructuring the contours of U.S. democratic government to dramatically increase the powers of the executive branch to limit abortion access nationwide, discriminate against transgender people, deport immigrants in mass, surveil Americans’ data without warrants, unleash undue force on First Amendment protestors, and censor critical theory in classrooms.

I am voting for Harris-Walz for the best realistically-possible political conditions for pro-Palestine organizing—and other forms of progressive organizing—in the United States for the next four years.

Harris is the Vice President of an Administration that spent $22.76 billion in arms transfers to Israel between October 7, 2023—September 30, 2024 as Israel’s religious extremist, apartheid government has conducted a full-blown ethnic cleansing campaign of the vulnerable Palestinian refugee population that Israel mass incarcerates within the 160 square mile Gaza Strip. The Biden-Harris Administration has enabled Israel’s Jewish supremacist government to weaponize Israeli suffering caused by Hamas’s October 7 attacks to carry out a systematic genocide of Palestinian non-citizens intergenerationally mass incarcerated in the Gaza Strip and under the control of the Israeli state. The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) has attacked Gaza with the equivalent force of several nuclear bombs, killing over 40,000 Palestinians and destroying 80% of schools in Gaza, 60% of buildings overall, and 57% of agricultural land. Recently, the American-armed IDF has attacked Lebanon with the stated goal of targeting Hezbollah, leading to mass civilian casualties including the killings of over 1,640 people.

Meanwhile, during this election, I’m a first-year Ph.D. student in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley focusing my research on post-World War II U.S.-Israel-Palestine-Iran relations. I’m an Iranian American transgender woman with relatives who live in Iran, including Tehran, where the Israeli military just attacked with the blessing of the Biden-Harris Administration. I’ve also been a volunteer Palestine solidarity activist since 2017 with Students for Justice in Palestine at Yale University, the Democratic Socialists of America’s BDS and Palestine Solidarity Working Group, and other organizations. How do I vote and advance my political interests in and beyond this election?

Some Americans in my position who care about Palestinian, Lebanese, and Iranian dignity, freedom, human rights, and peace and want to make their interests known in this election are opting to vote for third party candidates. They seek a candidate who does not have a track-record of financing Israel’s 76-year-long, Jewish-supremacist military occupation and systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. They seek a candidate that can be trusted with protecting human life during this moment of global crisis that the Biden-Harris Administration’s reckless decision-making has worsened.

I’m highly sympathetic to these Americans and I even voted third party in the presidential primaries. That said, for the presidential general election, I respectfully disagree with voting third party most especially in swing states. I will be voting for Harris-Walz, even though it’s quite hard to stomach given how Harris has positioned herself in relation to Israel-Palestine and Iran over the course of her career, in her Vice Presidency, and in this election. I am voting this way not out of an overabundance of enthusiasm for Harris, but due to a realpolitik calculation of what is necessary to defeat Trump and prevent our global crisis from getting even worse.

The reality is that most Americans think of politics through the lens of the two-party system. This, I believe is a flaw in our democracy that prohibits creativity, but it is a current reality. The project of strengthening additional parties to be able to compete in presidential elections is noble, but it is going to more time than we have available before November 5, 2024. Third party presidential candidates are not realistically going to win enough electoral college votes to secure the presidency. This means our two realistic choices for our next President are Harris and Trump. A pro-Palestine voter’s vote for a third party candidate in a swing state may thus inadvertently help Trump win that state and ultimately the Presidency.

I am voting this way not out of an overabundance of enthusiasm for Harris, but due to a realpolitik calculation of what is necessary to defeat Trump and prevent our global crisis from getting even worse.

While the Biden-Harris Administration’s management of this moment of global crisis has been nothing short of abhorrent, a Trump-Vance Administration would be materially worse. In addition to campaigning on cracking down on rights of transgender people and women domestically, denying climate change and opposing climate action, and revoking the visas of pro-Palestine international students at U.S. universities, Trump believes in an unqualified Israeli offensive on Palestine, Lebanon, and Iran. He told Netanyahu in response to Iran’s missile attack on Israel an unrestricted “do what you have to do,” and has explicitly stated that Biden has gotten in the way of Israel’s war. Meanwhile, while the Biden-Harris Administration has armed Israel in its war, it has recently threatened to stop the flow of arms to Israel, openly criticized Netanyahu’s tactics in the war, and pressured Israel into narrowing its attack on Iran to targeted non-nuclear military sites. As an Iranian American with family in Iran, I worry for the possibilities that could arise with someone as unstable as Donald Trump as Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces during this moment of global crisis. Trump should be nowhere near in charge of American nuclear weaponry in a time as fragile as this.

That said, my political action is not confined to my vote. Just as important as voting is organizing. I am voting for Harris-Walz for the best realistically-possible political conditions for pro-Palestine organizing—and other forms of progressive organizing—in the United States for the next four years. I see my vote as a prayer for the possibility of a shift toward a U.S.-policy of peace, justice, reparations, democracy, freedom, and equality in the Middle East against the current status quo of institutionalized supremacy and political violence—possible only with good political conditions and good organizing. Trump, an open white nationalist and warmonger with a wide religious fundamentalist following, as President would foreclose many possibilities for peace in Israel-Palestine. Harris at least represents more of a multiracial coalition and speaks the language of pluralism. Between these options, there is more political room under a potential Harris presidency to organize for advancing a pro-Palestinian, pro-human political agenda.

While my emotions have been high surrounding the election and the genocide in Gaza, I am finding it important to take a step back and rationally assess my choices on November 5 in the context of this moment of global crisis. It’s clear—even if hard to stomach —that Harris-Walz is the best realistic choice.