Many of the folks who began pouring into this city’s Union Park ahead of Monday’s major protest against U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza traveled great distances, like the bus convoy that left Minneapolis and drove all night straight to the park, or a man I met who’d come from California … by train. Some were protest veterans like the Code Pink posse, on the march since George W. Bush’s Iraq War, and some were even boomers who’d marched against the Vietnam War.

But Nick Lopez, 23, who graduated from college a year ago and still hasn’t found a job, and who lives here in Chicago, decided to pop on down to the March on the DNC, on the first day of the Democratic National Convention, all by himself. Before he left, he penned his protest message on both sides of a large sign, complaining about both his sizable student debt and the continued backing of leading Democrats for sending weapons to Israel, arguing in his scrawl that the “DNC is unfair.”

“I want to show my solidarity with the Palestinians, and call on the Democratic Party, who say they’re fighting for democracy, to enact an arms embargo,” he told me, expressing moral outrage over the killing in Gaza, but also questioning America’s priorities.

“We could just house the homeless with that much money; that could go to people who are here who need it, instead of bombing children.”

“Bro, I’ve been unemployed since graduation, I have $21,000 in unpaid student loans, and the Democratic Party thinks it can maneuver the money to Israel to buy bombs, but I can’t get a student loan bailout? We can’t get a public works project like before?… They want to put on this grand show, but there’s going to be a vast majority of constituents telling you to do this.”

I spent most of Monday in Union Park, soaking up the August sun and breathing the windswept dirt from the softball infield at a rally with a cheerful vibe that felt more like a Lollapalooza concert than an angry mob, except for the lack of a beach ball to bat around and the Palestinian music that warmed up the crowd.

I listened to speeches and walked with marchers past the endless thin blue line of bike cops. But mainly, I came to meet some of the estimated 5,000 to 6,000 marchers—a good crowd, but far short of the 20,000 some organizers hoped for—and to listen. That’s because ever since this war began with the unconscionable Hamas assault of October 7, demonstrators on college campuses and elsewhere have been portrayed by TV pundits mostly as cartoon characters, mysteriously propelled by nothing more than their alleged antisemitism.

Here’s the deal. The harsh views of many marchers toward Israel and its current leaders as well as the concept of Zionism that led to Israel’s origin in 1948, and the Democrats and their nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris—dubbed “Killer Kamala” on Monday by some chanting protesters—would offend and trouble many voters who don’t agree with them. At the same time, I never saw or heard anything offensive toward Jewish people, or even the words Jew or Jewish mentioned over five hours. Except when several of the attendees told me they were Jewish.

“I’m a Jewish person, and have been anti-Zionist my whole life—as soon as I found out what it was,” said Ly Baumgardt, a 23-year-old activist from Minneapolis who is active in the Democratic Socialists of America. Like nearly every protester I spoke to, Baumgardt has a very specific grievance: that Israel’s months of assaults on Gaza have killed thousands of women and children, that the U.S. is paying for a lot of this with foreign aid and arms deals, including a new $20 billion multiyear sale supported by President Joe Biden, and that Biden and Harris need to listen to the millions of Americans morally outraged by this. “We could just house the homeless with that much money; that could go to people who are here who need it, instead of bombing children,” they said.

Officials in Gaza say that more than 40,000 have been killed there since........

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