The Florida delegate who unfurled a protest banner during President Joe Biden’s speech that read “Stop Arming Israel” told NOTUS that she wasn’t allowed on the convention floor the next night for the roll call vote, delegates’ most important event of the week.
Nadia Ahmad, a delegate from Florida who cast a present ballot, was hit on the head with one of the hundreds of long ‘We Love Joe’ signs by a man behind her, a video of the convention floor shows.
The next morning, when Ahmad, a Muslim woman who wears a hijab, went to pick up her access passes to the convention floor – as delegates are required to daily – there was no floor badge available to her, she told NOTUS. She was relegated to a separate section away from the Florida delegation for guests without floor access, Ahmad said.
“I can’t be on my floor for my floor delegation, it’s just basically like, OK go to the back of the bus, go to the top of the stadium – you’re not welcome here,” Ahmad told NOTUS Wednesday. She was one of three protesting delegates to hold the banner, but the only one not able to access the floor Tuesday, she said. Her access was reinstated the following day.
A DNC official said the convention did not revoke her credential this week. Florida’s Democratic Party leaders, who Ahmad believes made the decision, did not respond to NOTUS’ request for comment.
In one of the videos of the incident, people in the row behind the demonstrators tear the sign away from the protesters. One of the demonstrators told NOTUS that people behind them were cursing at them and, in a video posted on Facebook, another demonstrator, Michigan delegate Liano Sharon, alleged it was a member of the LiUNA union that ripped the sign down.
When NOTUS contacted LiUNA president Brent Booker – who also gave a speech on the DNC main stage Monday – by phone Wednesday, he said was not aware of someone from LiUNA hitting Ahmad with a sign and said that he had “no comment.” The union did not respond to an emailed request for comment about the incident.
Ahmad filed a police report in Chicago Wednesday, and said she intends to press charges against the person who hit her. The Council for Islamic-American Relations has also called on police to charge the man who hit her. Ahmad is also requesting the DNC revoke the credentials of the person who hit her.
Other Muslims and Arab-American attendees echoed feeling ostracized at the convention, a sentiment punctuated by a DNC decision Wednesday to not have a Palestinian-American speaker on the DNC main stage.
“The three people who are holding the banner are a Jew, a hijabi woman and an immigrant. If the Democratic Convention is not our place, where is our place?” Connecticut delegate Esam Boraey told NOTUS. “It seemed like it was so united, the sentiment of everybody around us, ‘Get out of here, this is not your place, you don’t belong here.’”
The three delegates holding the banner Monday described a hostile environment all around them, both from surrounding Florida delegates and those seated above them.
“If Democrats will punish you for your opinion, who are we?” Boraey said.
Their demonstration was not affiliated with the Uncommitted National Movement, but the delegates had formed a smaller group to organize a protest at the DNC called Delegates Against Genocide.
In a statement, the DNC indicated that peaceful protest was allowed at the convention.
“The right to peacefully protest is fundamental to American democracy and a core belief of the Democratic Party. We expect all of our delegates and guests to treat each other with respect,” DNC spokesperson Emily Soong said in a statement.
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Claire Heddles is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.