October 28/November 4, 2019 | 23
J
ust a few days after president donald trump incited his fans to
chant “Send her back” at a rally in July, Representative Ilhan Omar
and her staff fanned out down Lake Street in the heart of South Min-
neapolis. The road was closed off for a neighborhood festival, with
sidewalks lined with informational booths, musicians, and people
selling fruity drinks and local beers. People smiled and drew close to the then-
36-year-old congresswoman. A trio of a cappella singers improvised songs
about her. She played soccer with a few kids, skillfully nutmegging one of them.
I’ve seen politicians work crowds before, and Omar moves with a different
energy. Instead of drawing the attention toward herself and her agenda, she
expands the spotlight to those around her. At her core, she’s still a communi-
ty organizer, building networks across the micro communities that make up
Minneapolis. As I walked with her team, I turned to her and said, “You seem
to know everybody.” She replied simply, “It’s home.”
As one of the first two Muslim congresswomen in the US, she’s a focal
point of Trumpian racist fantasies about creeping Sharia. She’s also one of
a handful of progressive and newly elected officials pushing the Democratic
Party to the left. It seems her every public statement generates intense scru-Her political ascent required the ability to connect across
diverse communities.
Omar grew up in a Somali neighborhood in Minne-
apolis, but it’s a mistake to see her as someone whose
political activity has been as a representative of just that
community. She went around the traditional pathways
into politics. “There isn’t really a Somali person who will
say they see me as an organizer within the Somali com-
munity. That thought has been really laughable to many
Somalis,” she told me.
After graduating from North Dakota State University
in 2011, she worked as the child nutrition outreach coor-
dinator for the Minnesota Department of Education. In
2013, she also served as the campaign manager for Andrew
Johnson, a young engineer running for the Minneapolis
City Council. When he won, she became his policy aide,
seemingly placing her in line to run for office herself.
Her rise, however, wasn’t smooth. She encountered
hostility and, in one case, violence. In 2014, at a local
Democratic Party caucus where she was organizing in
support of a Somali politician running against an incum-
bent Minnesota House member, multiple assailants, their
identities never revealed, held Omar down and beat her,
sending her to the hospital with a concussion. Afterward,
she wrote an op-ed for The Star Tribune arguing that she
was assaulted because “my opinions are contrary to those
of a few male political leaders in our community” and in
service to others who wanted to keep additional Somalis
out of local politics.
It was clear then that Omar couldn’t be easily silenced,
but she remained a reluctant candidate. She once told an
audience she had to be asked 14 times before she agreed to
run for office. She credits her decision to try for the Min-
nesota House of Representatives in 2016 in part to joining
Women Organizing Women, a group led by another local
Somali leader, Habon Abdulle. Since being elected, Omar
has proved a natural politician. She authored 38 bills in
the Minnesota legislature, and in the US Congress she has
refused to back down in the face of the president’s cruelty.O
n the day omar flew home in july, a crowd
of over 150 supporters, including Abdulle,
greeted her at the airport, assembling on short
notice as Facebook invites shot through Min-
nesota’s progressive networks. She entered the
baggage claim area to cheers, grabbed a bullhorn, and
delivered remarks that shifted quickly from radiant to se-
rious. She said Trump turns his hate on her because he “is
threatened [that] we are inspiring people to dream about
a country that recognizes our dignity and our humanity.”
That was the last time over the weekend that she
allowed Trump’s insults to dominate the conversation. I
followed her that evening to a town hall at the Sabathani
Community Center in a historically black neighborhood
in South Minneapolis.
Here’s what happens at Omar’s events. She arrives to
thunderous applause. She speaks briefly. If Trump has
tweeted about her recently, she acknowledges it but then
immediately turns to the issue at hand. That July night,
for example, she invited Representative Pramila Jayapal
to speak on a Medicare for All panel with Erin Murphy, aOmar once
told an
audience
she had
to be
asked
14 timesbefore she
agreed to
run for
office.David M. Perry
is a journalist and
historian.is bringing an organizer’s
mind-set to Congress.tiny from both the right and the center.
But to fixate on the national discourse obscures
how Omar rose to prominence and how she operates
in communities that have elected her by overwhelming
margins. Since February, I’ve attended every public
appearance of hers that I could, got to know her staff in
Minneapolis and in DC, and sat down with her to talk
about her political philosophy. Here’s what I learned:
She likes to listen. She asks questions. She spends more
time passing the microphone than speaking into it. She
cares about the details of policy, especially the ways they
might affect vulnerable communities. She is a product of
inclusive Midwestern politics, not the result of a local-
ized identity politics.
When I moved to Minnesota from the East Coast in
1997, I was fully infected by Lake Wobegon stereotypes.
I thought the food would be bland. I thought everyone
would be white. I thought I was surrendering diversity
for pastoral homogeneity. We see that false vision mani-
fest every four years in the buildup to the Iowa caucuses,
when the heartland gets equated to a minority of rural
white communities. Such stereotypes fuel anti-black and
anti-Islamic bigotries and posit Omar as an outsider in the
“real” Midwest.
Yet according to the 2010 census, more than three-
quarters of Midwesterners live in urban centers, not rural
communities or towns. Even rural spaces aren’t as white as
the media commonly portrays. For decades, Hmong fam-
ilies have been farming in Minnesota, and now increasing
numbers of Somalis are doing likewise. Minneapolis,
however, remains over 63 percent white, and Omar’s Fifth
Congressional District is more than 67 percent white.DAVID M. PERRY
Representative