GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Less than a hundred miles from the Michigan border, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago has begun.
Following weeks of uncertainty for the party following President Joe Biden's June debate performance and subsequent exit from the race, leaders in the party are now hoping to project unity around their new presumptive nominee: Vice President Kamala Harris.
"I think [Harris] represents a powerful contrast with what we have on the other side of the ticket," Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told 13 ON YOUR SIDE, speaking in a personal capacity as a Harris supporter. "And I don't just mean the fact that Donald Trump is a convicted criminal and she's a prosecutor - although I do think that experience is relevant - but I think it's more than that. It's what she has done to help shape some of the most important improvements and achievements of the last few years."
Across the water in Michigan, some of the state's top Democrats have also been quick to rally behind Harris.
"We're going to be able to speak to these things very concretely, very specifically, and draw a very direct contrast between what we are working toward with communities to what Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are doing, which is being completely selfish, focused on themselves and these super rich people who are disconnected from the realities of lives of Michigan families, and who are disinterested in the lives of Michigan families," Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist (D-Mich.) said.
As former President Trump prepares to travel to Michigan on Wednesday, some amongst the GOP are seeking to eclipse the DNC.
In response to this week's planned Democratic events, Michigan U.S. Senate candidate and former Congressman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) took aim at the Biden administration's policies relating to the national border, electric vehicles and government spending he characterized as "massive."
"None of that helped Michigan, but Kamala Harris and [Elissa] Slotkin supported every single part of this disaster for the last four years," Rogers said in a statement.
Aside from the parties' back and forth, some community members in West Michigan have said they're making the trip to Chicago as well.
"We're bringing a bus of 56 people from Grand Rapids, there's another bus coming from Detroit, there are carpools leaving from Kalamazoo and Holland," Palestine Solidarity Grand Rapids Chair Emerson Wolfe told 13 ON YOUR SIDE on Friday. "People are very excited to be involved in this historic moment."
But it's not for the celebratory or ceremonial purposes some may think.
Wolfe said she and other organizers with the group are part of a larger coalition set to march on the DNC.
"Folks are still maintaining firm on the need to call out the Democratic Party, because it doesn't matter if, you know, they swap candidates if the policies are the same," fellow group organizer Danny Celaya said. "And that's what voters want to see. They want to see a change in policies that pivots away from billions of our tax dollars from going to war for years and instead direct that funding towards the needs of our community and towards justice, peace and equality."
But the Midwest's largest city is no stranger to what a Democratic National Convention looks like amid tumultuous times.
Such was the case for Chicago's 1968 DNC amid protests over the Vietnam War.
"With the war against Vietnam, there was a very large anti-war movement that happened," Wolfe said. "But we didn't actually have a very large Vietnamese population in the United States, yet at that point; it started as an anti-war movement."
In that sense, with large Arab American populations in places like Michigan, Wolfe argues this time is different.
"It's not just an anti-war movement," Wolfe said. "People are seeing their families harmed in real-time, and nobody is doing anything about it. So, it is very different at this point."
Amidst the march coinciding with the DNC, Buttigieg saw the situation as a "part of democracy."
"This is another really important difference is what you're going to see from us is outreach, engagement, respect for where people are coming from, even as they exercise their right to speak out and demonstrate," Buttigieg said.
"This is the difference between living in a country that walks the walk of democracy, even if it means challenging conversations and uncomfortable moments, or one that walks down the path of authoritarianism," he later continued. "This is one of the very real choices that's in front of the American people in November."