The congresswoman from Minnesota is one of the first two Muslim women to be elected to the House of Representatives, but that’s the last thing on her mind.
, Omar grilled President Donald Trump’s new special envoy to Venezuela, a career State Department official named Elliott Abrams, about his past involvement in human rights violations in El Salvador . As Omar puts it to the Oscar-nominated filmmaker Ava DuVernay, she is simply making “good trouble.” —NATHAN TAYLOR PEMBERTONDUVERNAY: I read that you caught 11 fish at the Minnesota Governor’s Fishing Opener? Now, listen. I’m from Compton.
OMAR: I have a complicated relationship with it, internally and externally. There are people who don’t celebrate it in good faith and just want to have that be the box you’re in—like a qualifier for your success. There isn’t really much discussion about your character or your qualifications and the worth and perspective that you bring to the work. You get to feel like you’re drowning in it, because you don’t want to mess this first thing up for everyone you want to hold the door open for.
DUVERNAY: One thing that doesn’t have anything to do with your faith or your gender is the fact that you won your seat by the largest margin of any woman in history. How does that happen?DUVERNAY: It’s the one thing that’s a direct product of your work, your labor, your strategy, your platform, your words, your passion. The other things are happenstance, really. You didn’t dictate being the first. It could have been someone two years before or ten years after.
OMAR: Social media has been a part of our normal day-to-day lives. I remember watching some of these candidates like Rashida Tlaib and sharing her stuff on social media. Before I met Alexandria, my daughter and husband mentioned this young woman who was running and challenging an incumbent, so I followed her on Twitter. Then she followed me back. I inboxed her and I was like, “You’ve got this. It’s worth working for everything that’s worth having and keep your head up.
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