24 The Nation. October 28/November 4, 2019
DAVID M. PERRY
I
n august i made my way to the warehouse dis-
trict just north of downtown Minneapolis to inter-
view Omar. Her office is on the second floor, with
a narrow reception area that opens up to a well-lit
open space. She settled down on a couch and
pulled a gray blanket over her lap. I asked her about her
panel events, observing that I had never seen a politician
talk so little. She told me, “It is an organizer’s philosophy.
You set the table, and you allow for people to not only be
seen but be heard.”
She traced this habit to her family, saying, “There was
no hierarchy in my home, there was no one really smart-
er than the next person. We could just interject as kids,
and whatever adult was in that space would pause and
say, ‘You have something to say? Finish your sentence.’
I think it allowed us to grow and feel internal libera-
tion. And it allowed whoever was the leader, the adult
in that room, to feel more secure in whatever decision
or thought process they were going through, because it
wasn’t solely their own.”
She said this childhood experience still informs her
philosophy of cogovernance—and not just when plan-
ning town halls. “If you think about the fundamentals of
a representative government, you hear everyone so that
you can represent their voice. That’s kind of how I think
about my position as a leader,” she said.
I asked her if there is something especially Minneso-
tan about that, and she answered, “There’s something
human about that,” but then elaborated, “I think that
is why so many of us feel alive in Minnesota politics,
because there is something about building consensus.
There’s something about having joy in politics, knowing
that everything is local, the decisions that you’re going
to make are impacting your friends, your neighbors,
your colleagues.”
Omar’s desire to bring new voices into politics has
led her to sometimes avoid the traditional community
spokespeople who crop up in diverse cities. “I have a
complete disdain for gatekeepers, and I try to keep them
at a distance,” she said, adding that she has developed “a
complete disregard” for “talking to the sub communities
as a voting bloc.”
I pressed her, asking, “But don’t different groups have
different needs sometimes?” She replied, “Not in the way
that I see it. I don’t have particular needs as a Muslim
refugee immigrant that aren’t really similar to anyone
else wanting proper health care and full education and a
world that’s safe from persecution.” While she acknowl-
edged that different groups encounter distinct barriers and
threats, she insisted that “our core needs as humans” are
universal and that universality should govern our politics.
Although attacks on identity politics often come from
the right, Omar offered a cogent reframing from the left.
She said she never wants to assume, “because [people]
have a particular identity, that they must be very different
in the kind of world that they want.” She looks for ties
based on common values instead of asking, “Who are the
black leaders I’m connected to, so that I can do black or-
ganizing? What Somali leaders do I work with so I can do
Somali organizing? What Jewish leaders am I connected
to? That framework,” she added, “has not been part of
my organizing work.”
This disregard for convention, though, may have also
contributed to Omar’s early stumbles, when her criti-
cisms of Israel invoked anti-Semitic tropes. These are
the kind of unforced errors that she might have avoided
had she spent more time cultivating those designated
leaders who are skilled at navigating the rhetorical pit-
falls of their communities.
She seems to be learning. Her office said that after
she apologized for tweeting that political support for
Israel was “all about the Benjamins baby,” she and her
team reached out to local Jewish groups. She organized a
call that included Jewish Community Action, the Jewish
Community Relations Council, and several rabbis in
her district to make sure her rebukes of Israel would not
unintentionally divide allies.
She knows that controversy will follow her. As I
wrote this piece, she tweeted a death threat that she had
received. The wife of a DC political consultant alleged
in a divorce filing that her husband was having an affair
with Omar (who denies it). The Alabama GOP voted to
expel her from Congress. And she shared an anodyne
political cartoon about being barred from Israel—but
the cartoonist, it turned out, had placed second in a 2006
Holocaust cartoon contest in Iran.
She said she’s handling the pressure easily enough.
Being Somali, she explained, has given her a thick
skin because of her community’s habit of good-natured
mockery. “I also grew up in a Somali culture, where we
are extremely direct and are trained to not take much
offense. I mean, 90 percent of our nicknames are based
on our abilities or defects that we might have as humans.
Somalis call me ‘half-life’ because I’m so tiny. The nat-
ural thing for a Somali person when they see me [is] to
say, ‘What is happening to you? Why are you dying?’”
What does worry her, though, is that people who
identify with her will feel the blow. “I know that if they say
something about Muslims or immigrants or refugees, that
there is a refugee or an immigrant or a Muslim person who
sees themselves in me and who will take it personally.”
Meanwhile, Omar and her team keep working to find
new audiences to educate and experts to elevate. She’s
always the “optimist in the room,” she said. “I am the
kind of person that really isn’t challenged by any circum-
stances. I will see an opportunity.” Q
nurse and former Minnesota House majority leader; Melisa Franzen, a state
senator; Rose Roach, a nurse and labor activist; and Dave Dvorak, an emer-
gency room doctor. All the panelists spoke, then Omar asked them questions.
She weighed in from time to time but mostly encouraged others to mobilize
and educate the crowd. The same thing happened in a May panel on global
warming and in August panels on maternal health for women of color and on
immigration reform. She convenes and presides.
Omar is strengthening and expanding the networks that she is going to
need to change the country’s direction. Her model of politics as an exten-
sion of community organizing helps make people feel empowered to seek
transformative change themselves. At the end of the Medicare for All panel,
attendees buzzed happily as they dispersed, no longer angry about Trump’s
tweets but focused on taking the small steps required to build a more just
health care system. Her brand of politics sends the message that we’re all in
this together.
“I don’t have
particular
needs as
a Muslim
refugee
immigrant
that aren’t
really similar
to anyone
else wanting
a world
safe from
persecution.”
— Rep. Ilhan Omar
