DEARBORN, Michigan — Rima Mohammad knew going in that running for a seat on the Ann Arbor Public Schools Board of Education would be challenging.
As a Palestinian American, a Muslim, a person with the last name of Mohammad, a woman, and a parent to four children, the first-time candidate knew she would face more scrutiny than her competitors. She was still surprised by some of her neighbors’ reactions as she went door to door.
“The stereotypes are real,” said Mohammad, who dresses modestly and chooses not to cover her hair with hijab. Some people would not open their doors. Some people were openly dubious. Others were confused by her appearance.
“It’s just very disheartening because you’re like, ‘Why? Did you expect me to come in my burqa?’” she said.
Rima Mohammad talks with a voter while campaigning for Michigan House of Representatives in 2024. Photo courtesy of Rima Mohammad
Mohammad campaigned with two other people on a shared platform, but she said she was the only one of the three accused of being a hidden Republican, a secret conservative, and a book banner, which she could only figure came from stereotypes of Muslims and Arab Americans.
“That was really upsetting because I feel like I’m a true progressive. I’m a liberal. I love everyone in the community,” she said.
Now, Mohammad is running for the Michigan House of Representatives to represent a district of 90,000 residents after the incumbent for her district decided not to run for reelection. This time, she took a leadership training conducted by New American Leaders to learn how to run for office and to develop how to tell her story. She had previously secured an endorsement from its sister organization, New American Leaders Action Fund, when she ran for school board.
READ MORE: Michigan lawmakers are considering a state-level MENA category. Here’s what that would mean
New American Leaders is a national nonprofit nonpartisan organization dedicated to training immigrants, refugees, and second generation Americans to run for office and manage campaigns. It provides the necessary resources so they can step into their own political power, NAL CEO and president Ghida Dagher said. The first thing that NAL does is ask participants to embrace their immigrant heritage as part of their new American background, rather than shy away from it.
To date, New American Leaders has trained more than 1,700 people across the country, and of those, at least 500 are in the organization’s Elected Officials Network, its diverse alumni base.
“Traditional political wisdom is that you have to look a certain way, you have to come from a certain kind of background, have access to a certain kind of network,” she said. “And so we have helped them redefine what [the] political system looks like.”
Reimagining the political candidate
Sayu Bhojwani, the first commissioner of immigrant affairs for New York City, founded New American Leaders about 13 years ago after she noticed the disparity in representation in elected offices, from city hall to the White House. “When our democracy includes people from all walks of life, it is much stronger, it’s healthier, and it serves the people better,” said Dagher, who has been with the organization since 2015 as a participant, trainer, and coach.
“Our programs offer training for folks who may have a clear idea of what they might want to run for, or they might just say, ‘Hey, this might be of interest to me, and I don’t know how to navigate it,’” she said.
This involves teaching potential leaders the nuts and bolts of a campaign, such as how to build a team, fundraise and engage around endorsements.
“We teach them how to message around [their immigrant heritage], how to tell their own story, how to speak about their values, how to put that in the framework of our democracy,” Dagher said.
Ghida Dagher, President and CEO of New American Leaders shares a moment of joy with a participant at New American Leaders’ 2023 Ready to Lead® Midwest training. Photo courtesy of New American Leaders
In 2022, the average participant age was 30 years old, according to the organization’s own tally. Seventy-two percent of participants were women, 31 percent were LGBTQ+, and close to 30 percent were AAPI. They came from 21 states and the District of Columbia, representing different racial, ethnic, religious, political, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
Immigrants, among other underserved communities, are vastly underrepresented in state legislatures around the country.
In its 2022 review of state legislatures across the country, NAL found that new Americans — immigrants, refugees, and the children of immigrants and refugees from a variety of backgrounds — held about 4 percent of the seats.
“Some states have zero new American representation at all, while others are doing much better,” Dagher said, adding that states like New York, California, Michigan had higher gains in representation overall.
But, overall, new Americans remain “significantly and severely underrepresented in all states,” she said.
READ MORE: Decades after ‘the Arab problem,’ Muslim and Arab Americans are leading political change in Metro Detroit
The organization found that not one state has Asian American, Pacific Islander, or Latino representation in proportion to its population. To address this, the organization created a training specifically for Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander women. The program is conducted by AANHPI women, and the case studies are about AANHPI women.
NAL also found that unlike white state legislators, where men greatly outnumber women, new American state legislators have near gender parity, and Latina and Black new American women state legislators actually outnumber their male counterparts.
Barriers to running for office
Some concerns participants in NAL programs have about running for public office include family support, work-life balance, revealing family immigration history, financial hurdles and the absence of strong networks.
The biggest hurdles NAL has heard from trainees, Dagher said, is the “polarized political lay of the land that we are all experiencing,” whether it is racism, Islamophobia, or anti-LGBTQ sentiment.
“When we are all trying to build a more inclusive democracy, how do we show up in our own authentic way that helps people connect to us and fight these ‘-isms’ at the same time?” Dagher said. “Immigrants, refugees, new Americans bring a really rich and vibrant perspective that is needed in our policymaking.”
READ MORE: What ‘uncommitted’ voters in Michigan want
This does not just mean heritage and culture, she said. It means a range of issues involving immigrants in American society, like blue collar jobs, family, medical and health issues.
“All of these things,” she said. “New American issues are American issues.”
Michigan Sen. Darrin Camilleri is a trainer for New American Leaders and helped teach the “Ready to Lead” Midwest training in Detroit last year. He believes “running for office is a central part of how we can create systemic change across our communities.”
Camilleri is the son of an immigrant from Malta and a Latina from Michigan. He understands how immigrant families can struggle as they find their way in the U.S. Before entering politics, he was a teacher in southwest Detroit.
“I didn’t have enough resources for my students or for myself as an educator, and it really inspired me to go further and create the change that I thought we needed,” he said. “I ran for office with the hope of lifting up the voices of my students, of my family, and knowing that we can do better at the state Capitol.”
New American Leaders has trained more than 1,700 immigrants, refugees, and second generation Americans across the country. Graduates of the New American Leaders 2023 Ready to Lead® Midwest training in Detroit. Photo by Frances Kai-Hwa Wang/PBS NewsHour
Camilleri said people of all backgrounds are needed when making decisions about a community’s future, and that Michigan has done a much better job recently of electing immigrants and people of color at the local and state levels.
“We know that when we are in the room, we’re making decisions that are reflective of all people’s voices, whether we’re talking about English language access, or Arabic or Spanish access on some materials,” he said. “Those types of decisions would never have been brought up unless people who come from communities like ours are in those spaces in the first place.”
“Our democracy is for everybody, and it’s important that everyone participates in whatever ways that they can,” Camilleri said.
Voting is the first step, he added, but it is more than just that.
READ MORE: Why Arabic ballots are now being offered in Michigan and what this means for voter access in the U.S.
Anyone interested in civic life can participate by showing up, going to meetings, getting appointed to local boards or commissions, or running for office, Camilleri said. When ready to seek public office, people should then seek out mentorship from others, whether at the local level or higher, he added.
Without this kind of active participation by people from all different groups, “we’re not going to have the government that serves us,” Camilleri said.
New American Leaders research found that new American candidates have to be asked many times to run for office before they decide to actually run. Many more Asian American women and Latinas said that they “never thought of running until someone else suggested it” than Asian American or Latino men and white respondents.
Representation and the American Dream
America Ali Yahya is a young Muslim and Yemeni American woman from southwest Detroit who attended a New American Leaders training in Detroit last year. She has been a community organizer and activist since middle school. “I learned from my sister,” Yahya said.
Yahya and her sister attended a small charter school that did not have a lot of resources. Upon realizing that there were resources and opportunities available that were not being given to their school, “that really enraged me and that ignited a fire in me to move forward and ask more questions,” Yahya said.
“Why aren’t we given the things that we deserve?” she said.
America Ali Yahya practices her stump speech with other participants at New American Leaders 2023 Ready to Lead® Midwest training. Photo by Frances Kai-Hwa Wang/PBS NewsHour
She is interested in running for public office one day to help others fight for equity, fairness, justice, and the American Dream, “because we don’t see enough of us in these types of positions,” Yahya said. “I don’t see my people, specifically, Yemeni women and Yemeni Muslim women as well, out there being active and creating an impact and also creating spaces for people who are like me and have experienced things like me.”
Her big role model since she was in middle school is U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian American woman to serve in Congress. Yahya said she shares similar values, background, and work ethic with Tlaib.
“Rashida has my heart, she has my full heart. The way that she pulls herself and fights for everybody, has always been something that I looked forward to, and I’ve always wanted to become that type of person,” Yahya said.
“Now being actually able to work with her and work alongside her and fight alongside her in these types of battles, it’s inspiring,” said Yahya, who was a U.S. House of Representatives legislative caseworker for Rep. Rashida’s district.
“I also feel like I’m getting the necessary training to hopefully be able to be like her one day,” she added.
READ MORE: What’s in Michigan’s push to expand voting rights
Another important role model is Yahya’s mother, who grew up illiterate and pushed all nine children to excel in school and to work hard for what they wanted.
“I want to put them all on the map. Really. As a Yemeni Muslim American, but specifically Yemeni woman. We are always looked down upon. We are always second guessed,” Yahya said. “That happens in almost every culture and community. But for me, [it is] one thing that I want to take responsibility for, because I can, and my mother couldn’t.”
Bringing values and lived experience
A friend once advised Mohammad to lean on her identity, her values, and especially her lived experiences. “‘That’s the one thing people cannot take away from you,’” Mohammad recalled.
While Mohammad had held elected office before, she still found NAL’s training powerful and inspiring, especially the exercise of crafting a stump speech. While writing and rewriting her speech, she found that she kept wanting to focus on what she has done and wants to do. The trainers pulled her back to her lived experience.
Palestinian American refugee Rima Mohammad as a child with the Statue of Liberty in New York City. Photo courtesy of Rima Mohammad
She remembered coming to America as a refugee. On her first day of school in a conservative, all-white school in Ohio, everyone stared at her and made fun of her hair and clothes. She was 5 years old.
She ran to the bathroom, locked herself in and cried.
“It was really hard because I knew it was very different,” Mohammad said. “But then my mom picked me up, and after that experience, I was like, ‘I got to just be strong. Stay resilient. Keep focused.’ And I was able to get through that year.”
READ MORE: For Detroit’s Japanese Americans, oral histories key to preservation of history, future solidarity
Through that training, Mohammad realized that there are connections between this childhood story and how persistent and determined she is today.
Listening to everyone else’s stories was heartbreaking at times, but also helped explain why all the women in the group were so strong, she added. She was also impressed with how many people decided to run for office after taking the training.
“What drives me to run is when I see these marginalized, vulnerable communities that keep suffering. That is my drive to help them because their voices need to be heard,” Mohammad said.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that Mohammad’s endorsement for school board came from the New American Leaders Action Fund.
