Washington, D.C. | www.mpac.org | November 16, 2023 — During our Convention this past weekend, we played videos that were sent in from two of the candidates for Senate in California. Later in the evening, Congresswoman Barbara Lee, the only Senate candidate who has called for a ceasefire, spoke from the podium to our community.
MPAC wants to make clear that it does not endorse the stance of Congresswoman Katie Porter regarding the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. As a non-profit organization, MPAC does not endorse political candidates. To ensure compliance with this requirement, we invited to the Convention all three members of Congress running for the open Senate seat. To ensure we could provide a platform for Congresswoman Lee to share her support for a ceasefire, we had to share the video from Congresswoman Porter.
During her introductory remarks for Congresswoman Lee, Mayor Farrah Khan described her interaction with Congresswoman Porter when she canceled a meeting with the community saying, “I’ve seen the face of our Congress folks. In my very own district, I’ve seen the face of a Congresswoman that does not respond. That shuts her door. That basically makes us invisible.”
Many people from our community notified us of these developments with Congresswoman Porter, and if we had known that before the Convention, we would have asked her to change her position or we would have not shown the video. We apologize for our mistake and express our continued commitment to ending the occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
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