Rise ABOVE

“I have to REMIND myself why I’m here, why it’s IMPORTANT to CONTINUE to be a VOICE for every single PERSON who has put their HOPES and DREAMS in my REPRESENTATION.”

- ARIANA MARSH

In February, the GOP voted congresswoman ILHAN OMAR off the FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE. But, as she explains, her VOICE will NEVER be SILENCED.

I'd been an organizer for years and worked on many campaigns, but I never actually saw myself as an elected official. I eventually decided to run for the Minnesota House of Representatives in 2016 because so many people in my community were urging me to do so, and I realized that I could continue to look for that perfect candidate or I could run myself. At the time, there was an incumbent who held the seat I ran for who was there for 44 years.

I expected the relentless criticism-and much more-that I've received as a Somali American Muslim woman in American government. The backdrop to my running for office was Trump's candidacy. To have a front-runner talk about the need to ban Muslims from entering this country was really inciting a lot of anger and hate. The last two years of his presidency, I was a target for his attacks in a way that was obsessive and frightening, emboldening his supporters to the point that I had a full [security] detail to provide me 24-hour protection for nearly six months.

In 2019, I joined the Foreign Affairs Committee, which has direct oversight of the State Department and all of our aid and humanitarian policies. It's a committee that has had both a positive and negative impact on the very policies that brought me, a war refugee, to this country. At that point, there had never been an African-born congressperson on the Foreign Affairs Committee. In fact, I am the first African-born representative ever elected to Congress. I served on the Subcommittee on Africa, and our work revolved around advancing human rights, disaster assistance, holding government officials accountable for past harms, and advancing a more just and peaceful foreign policy.