This week in Philadel­phia, activists and del­e­gates at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Con­ven­tion (DNC) are demon­strat­ing their sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple. Sport­ing yel­low but­tons and signs that read ​“I sup­port Pales­tin­ian human rights” and ​“Pales­tini­ans should be free,” the hun­dreds of activists out­side in the streets and del­e­gates on the con­ven­tion floor demon­strate a real shift in U.S. opin­ion on Israel/​Palestine.

For many social movements, the Democratic Party of today is as much an obstacle to progressive change as it was in 1964. While some have hailed this year’s platform as “the most progressive in history,” there is little sign of that in the planks on Palestine.

Yet the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty plat­form fails to reflect this shift. The plat­form draft­ing com­mit­tee reject­ed amend­ments nam­ing Israel’s near­ly 50-year-old mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion of Pales­tin­ian lands and ille­gal set­tle­ment enter­prise as obsta­cles to peace, and call­ing for the rebuild­ing of Gaza. As the plat­form went to a vote on Mon­day, Flori­da del­e­gates Ali Kur­naz and Ahmed Bedi­er raised a Pales­tin­ian flag on the con­ven­tion floor in protest.

Kur­naz, a Bernie Sanders del­e­gate from Flori­da, tells In These Times, ​“I found the courage to stand on my chair and raise the Pales­tin­ian flag as high as I could hold it, despite Clin­ton del­e­gates try­ing to pry it from my hands. My protest was direct­ed towards the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty plat­form, which inten­tion­al­ly left out the Sanders amend­ments that would have acknowl­edged the Israeli occu­pa­tion of Pales­tine and the impend­ing unin­hab­it­abil­i­ty of the Gaza Strip … Why can’t ​“the most pro­gres­sive plat­form in the his­to­ry of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty [admit that reality]?”

The platform’s dis­re­gard for Pales­tin­ian desire for free­dom and dig­ni­ty puts the Demo­c­ra­t­ic estab­lish­ment on the wrong side of his­to­ry, and out of step with the views of a large major­i­ty of the party’s base — not for the first time. The DNC has often been a site of con­tes­ta­tion between par­ty elites and grass­roots orga­niz­ers over move­ments for equal­i­ty and justice.

In 1964, civ­il rights activists found­ed the Mis­sis­sip­pi Free­dom Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (MFDP) to chal­lenge seg­re­ga­tion and advo­cate for vot­ing rights. They had faced harsh back­lash and vio­lence for their efforts to reg­is­ter black vot­ers, and want­ed an alter­na­tive to the racism of the state’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic lead­er­ship. The MFDP elect­ed 68 del­e­gates and sent them to the DNC, demand­ing to replace the seg­re­gat­ed del­e­ga­tion of Missouri’s reg­u­lar Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, which they argued was ille­gal­ly and unde­mo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elected.

The advo­cates drew nation­wide atten­tion with pick­et lines out­side the con­ven­tion, but the nation­al Par­ty resist­ed their demands. In an effort to quell protests, Pres­i­dent Lyn­don John­son had the FBI and Secret Ser­vice cor­ral the MFDP del­e­gates and called a news con­fer­ence to dis­tract media out­lets while MFDP co-founder Fan­ny Lou Hamer spoke on the con­ven­tion floor. After nego­ti­a­tions, the MFDP reject­ed a poor com­pro­mise mea­sure to seat just two del­e­gates, and left the con­ven­tion. But their cam­paign had forced the Par­ty, and the pub­lic, to choose sides in a moral dilem­ma that struck at the heart of its pro­fessed values.

While the MFDP left the con­ven­tion with­out win­ning their demands, their efforts high­light­ed the unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic and vio­lent nature of the sys­tem of seg­re­ga­tion that dis­en­fran­chised Black vot­ers and main­tained white dom­i­nance in the South. The demands of the civ­il rights advo­cates were clear: full equal­i­ty, jus­tice and polit­i­cal self-determination.

With hind­sight, we see the MFDP’s action at the 1964 DNC as a his­toric moment high­light­ing the urgent need to end seg­re­ga­tion. The MFDP is wide­ly cred­it­ed with help­ing to lay the ground­work to shift poli­cies, lead­ing to Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­dent Lyn­don B. John­son sign­ing the Vot­ing Rights Act in 1965. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, by reject­ing the MDFP, stood on the wrong side of his­to­ry, and the tens of thou­sands of civ­il rights activists and their boy­cotts, sit-ins, march­es, and oth­er direct actions became a paragon exam­ple of a non­vi­o­lent social jus­tice move­ment. For me, as a descen­dant of white South­ern Jews who were large­ly silent as civ­il rights advo­cates agi­tat­ed in their town of Merid­i­an, Mis­sis­sip­pi, in the 1960s, it is clear that such dis­rup­tive tac­tics were and remain nec­es­sary to bring about change.

Today, many of those same tac­tics are being used by the move­ment for Black lives, by strug­gles for immi­grant jus­tice, by the cli­mate jus­tice move­ment and by the Pales­tine sol­i­dar­i­ty move­ment. These non­vi­o­lent tools are how social jus­tice move­ments work: They shift pub­lic opin­ion by high­light­ing the injus­tices of the sta­tus quo in order to force short and long-term pol­i­cy change.

For many of these move­ments, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty of today is as much an obsta­cle to pro­gres­sive change as it was in 1964. While some have hailed this year’s plat­form as ​“the most pro­gres­sive in his­to­ry,” there is lit­tle sign of that in the planks on Pales­tine. The par­ty estab­lish­ment refus­es to call out Israel’s occu­pa­tion and set­tle­ments in its plat­form, and instead includes a con­dem­na­tion of ​“any effort to dele­git­imize Israel, includ­ing at the Unit­ed Nations or through the Boy­cott, Divest­ment, and Sanc­tions [BDS] Move­ment,” a non­vi­o­lent, grass­roots cam­paign for Pales­tin­ian rights. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee for the pres­i­den­cy has gone out of her way to run what Glenn Green­wald called ​“one of the most anti-Pales­tin­ian, pro-Israeli-aggres­sion pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns in mod­ern history.”

Like the rejec­tion of MFDP del­e­gates, the party’s present ten­sion with the activist base is a piv­otal moment that under­lines the efforts of par­ty lead­ers to delay pro­gres­sive polit­i­cal change. The high-pro­file fight over Pales­tine on the plat­form draft­ing com­mit­tee shows the inabil­i­ty of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty lead­er­ship to admit the real­i­ty: that Israel’s mil­i­tary rule over Pales­tini­ans, which just entered its fifti­eth year, is a vio­lent, unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic, insti­tu­tion­al­ized sys­tem of seg­re­ga­tion and dis­crim­i­na­tion. That demands of Pales­tini­ans don’t dif­fer much from those of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Demo­c­ra­t­ic Free­dom Par­ty: full equal­i­ty, jus­tice and polit­i­cal self-deter­mi­na­tion. And that, once again, the sup­pos­ed­ly pro­gres­sive par­ty is behind the times.

Over the last sev­er­al years U.S. pub­lic opin­ion on Israel/​Palestine has been chang­ing, with key Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­stituen­cies becom­ing more crit­i­cal of Israel’s actions and more sym­pa­thet­ic to Pales­tin­ian demands for free­dom and equal­i­ty. A recent Pew Poll found that, for the first time, more lib­er­al Democ­rats sym­pa­thize with Pales­tini­ans (40%) than Israel (33%). This shift is in part a result of Israel’s increas­ing state vio­lence and racism against Pales­tini­ans, as well as the efforts of the grow­ing BDS movement.

As the Pales­tine sol­i­dar­i­ty move­ment has accel­er­at­ed, so too have efforts to quell it, with state gov­ern­ments across the coun­try seek­ing to under­mine their con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed use of non­vi­o­lent tac­tics and demo­nize BDS. Over 20 states have intro­duced leg­is­la­tion seek­ing to sup­press the grow­ing BDS cam­paign. On June 5, New York Gov­er­nor Andrew Cuo­mo issued an exec­u­tive order that would cre­ate a black­list of com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions that abide by boy­cotts relat­ed to Israeli human rights abus­es. And now the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has entered the fray, join­ing the Repub­li­cans in using their plat­forms to specif­i­cal­ly con­demn BDS.

Mil­len­ni­als like myself care about Pales­tin­ian rights for the same rea­sons we care about racial jus­tice, eco­nom­ic jus­tice and cli­mate jus­tice both here in the U.S. and across the globe. The world that we are inher­it­ing is bro­ken in innu­mer­able ways, and we rec­og­nize that, for the sake of our col­lec­tive future, unjust sys­tems that per­pet­u­ate inequal­i­ty must be dis­man­tled. As Israel’s biggest mil­i­tary, finan­cial, and diplo­mat­ic backer, the U.S. has a moral respon­si­bil­i­ty to use its lever­age to pres­sure Israel to end its ille­gal and abu­sive poli­cies towards the Pales­tini­ans. The first step in that direc­tion is rec­og­niz­ing that the cur­rent sta­tus quo must end.

The sort of change we’re look­ing for won’t just hap­pen from with­in the polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment; it requires grass­roots cam­paigns that inspire the pub­lic with a vision for jus­tice and equal­i­ty, and that chal­lenge polit­i­cal lead­ers to act on that vision. 2016 can, and must, be anoth­er piv­otal moment where the rejec­tion of a social move­ment at the DNC back­fires against the sta­tus quo, and helps orga­niz­ers build the ener­gy and pow­er nec­es­sary to take on fear­mon­ger­ing, big­otry and racist state vio­lence in the U.S. and in Pales­tine. All of our futures depend on it.