Who Is the Best Candidate to Support Our Democracy and Constitutional Right to Protest?

Fifty-seven years ago, my father issued a prophetic denunciation of the war in Vietnam. His speech at the Riverside Church in New York City, delivered one year to the day before he was assassinated, ruptured his relationship with the Lyndon Baines Johnson administration and received criticism from other civil rights leaders.

“Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war,” he said. “If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be—are—are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.”

Today, I join in protest and dissent from war by opposing Benjamin Netanyahu’s amoral actions toward the Palestinian people, while also mourning the loss of Israeli, Jewish, and Palestinian lives. The devastation and death must end. I plead with the Biden administration to do everything in our power to end this war. We must embrace what my father called in his speech against the war in Vietnam “a genuine revolution of values,” meaning that our final analysis must be ecumenical rather than sectional. We need a vision and a plan for peace and security for both Israelis and Palestinians.

I’m grateful for those—especially young Americans—who protest nonviolently in the tradition of my father for true peace, which encompasses justice and a humane pathway forward. As we continue to protest, we must ask ourselves which of the two candidates for president will listen to our protests.

The gains we made during the civil rights movement would not have been obtainable in the absence of our democracy and our Constitution, and those two are being threatened this election. The right to protest, as one of the fundamental tenets of our Constitution, is what gave my father and those who worked with him the power to challenge and change de jure (by law) segregation in this nation.

Change will not happen without the power and force of the people through nonviolent social change. What is happening in Gaza under the hawkish leadership of Netanyahu should and must be protested and nonviolently resisted. To ensure that that right is preserved so that we can continue to pressure our government to stand on the side of right, we will need presidential leadership that will listen to our protests and heed our demands and not seek to criminalize our constitutional right to protest.

I believe that Kamala Harris is listening and that we can continue to pressure her to use all levers of American influence on the Netanyahu government to end the war. The other option for president, Donald Trump, is an immediate and persistent threat to our right to protest.

Donald Trump has spoken of turning the US military against domestic enemies. Donald Trump has in no way expressed concern for the humanity of Palestinian people.

The path to peace in the Middle East does not run through Donald Trump in the White House again. One reason we can be sure of that is that Project 2025 makes it clear that a second Trump administration would be more authoritarian than the first. The Supreme Court has given him a green light for that in the recent presidential immunity case.

A second Trump administration would weaponize the Justice Department to punish any dissent. My father experienced the weaponization of the Justice Department personally, having the FBI monitor him and attempt to discredit him. The long march to make the promise of democracy more real for all Americans will take a sharp turn backward if Donald Trump is elected president again. We cannot go back. And we certainly cannot afford to go forward with an administration that does not respect and value a government of, for, and by the people.