56
IO: It’s fascinating, and a little high
schoolish. For us, we like to laugh at
it. But there are a lot of people who
take it seriously, who’ve tried to get
their own little cliques. It’s just
weird, because we’re adults who
were each voted into office by hun-
dreds of thousands of people. The
idea that you would, in a serious and
deliberative way, think about what
your clique’s name should be? And
that it’ll automatically give you a
space to inspire? It says a lot about
this need to try to duplicate anything
that is noticed.
We don’t have the influence we have
because we’re called the Squad. We
don’t raise the amount of political
campaign funds we do because we’re
called the Squad. And people know
our name not just because we’re the
Squad. Some of the public and the
media pundits have decided that we
must have somehow deliberately put
this together. No. We are a group of
female legislators who happen to have
an agenda that is for the people, and
it’s about boldly pushing for that. And
it’s nothing more than that. To think
that copying the model you think the
Squad has will make you resonate is
quite pathetic. See, I have strong feel-
ings about those.... If they were a
group of millennials, I would be like,
“That’s cute.”IO: I have not transformed. I’m still
the kind of person that goes home
after the day is finished, that hangs
out with the people I normally would
if I didn’t have this particular life. My
friends, my associations, my inter-
ests—none of those things have really
shifted. We joke about how a lot of
people know my name and think they
actually know who I am.IO: I’ve always been very different
than what people would imagine me
to be. I came to the United States at a
young age as a black Muslim refugee.
There were a lot of stereotypes and
expectations that people had and that
were not aligned with who I was.
You know, constituents are sur-
prised that when we’re in our home
districts, we don’t walk around with
the kind of support that we have in
D. C. People are often shocked that I
am at the grocery store, or I’m drop-
ping my kids off at school, because
they expect my life to mimic the
image they have of the life I’m lead-
ing. The more your notoriety grows,
the more that people think of you as
something bigger than you actually
are. When they meet you, people will
actually express what they thought
before and how you’re different. The
size of my voice doesn’t really match
the very tiny person I am, so the first
thing somebody will say is “Oh my
God, you’re so small.” PRECEDING PAGE: SHARPNER/SHUTTERSTOCK. ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX.