‘I relate to that feeling some Somalis
have, that elected officials don’t care about us. That was my experience
for years. But it’s changing. Slowly.’
Ismail Mohamed is, by his own admission, an unusual emerging
voice in Ohio politics and in the Somali community of Columbus. First,
there is his age. The 26-year-old, Somalia-born Mohamed graduated from
Ohio State University Law School last year and often hears pushback from
Somalis in Columbus that he is not ready for politics. According to
Mohamed, electoral politics is usually the domain of older people among
Somalis, something he says has to do with the fact that the minimum age
to be president of Somalia is 40.
But the other, more
unlikely reason for Mohamed’s political rise is that he just lost an
election. In May, Mohamed ran in the Democratic primary against the
incumbent, Rep. Bernadine Kennedy Kent, to represent the 25th district
in the Ohio Statehouse. It was his first time contesting an election,
and many expected him to be soundly defeated, given his lack of
experience and name recognition. To the surprise of many, including
himself, he ended up losing only by 658 votes to the incumbent, who
received 45.71 percent of the vote compared with Mohamed’s 39.68
percent. If he had won, Mohamed would have been the first Somali elected
official in Ohio.
As a result of his strong
showing in the polls, Mohamed was made an official consultant to the
Democratic Party of Columbus, helping Democrats reach out to immigrants
who have recently acquired U.S. citizenship. It’s a huge shift from a
year ago, when Mohamed could not convince anyone in the Democratic Party
to take him seriously, let alone return his phone calls.
He
achieved this, Mohamed believes, because he employed an electoral
strategy that no one thought possible: by mobilizing voters, and funds,
entirely from the Somali community. Mohamed estimates that he raised
about $35,000 for his campaign, all of it from the Somali community in
Columbus. Somali-owned businesses made up the bulk of his donations,
with contributions around $500 or $1,000. He spent most of the money on
mailers and advertisements, some in English, others in Somali.
“My campaign and the way I ran it got a lot of Democrats to
wake up and say, ‘We need to take this Somali community seriously,’”
Mohamed said. “I mean, it’s not like we are a small community.”
It’s hard to find exact, or reliable, figures on the number of
Somalis in Columbus. Mohamed estimates the community to be around 40,000
to 50,000 members, making this city the second-most-populous home for
Somalis in the U.S. (Minnesota, in contrast, has around 100,000 Somalis,
mostly in Minneapolis.)
Likewise, no data really
exists for the number of registered Somali voters in Columbus, but
Mohamed says that there are “at least 10,000 Somali voters, and around
60 percent of them vote, maybe even higher during a presidential year.”
Of those registered Somali-American voters, he noted that “all vote
Democratic, except for a super tiny number of Republican Somali voters.”
Voter turnout is a challenge for any group,
especially during a midterm year. In the last midterms in 2014, only 37
percent of eligible voters cast their ballots, the lowest number since
1942. In comparison, the 60 percent voter turnout among registered
Somali American is actually quite high. But for Mohamed, it’s still too
low, and he has now made it his mission to change this fact.
“You
can reach some Somalis in the mosques or at the coffee shops, but a lot
of people want you to sit in their living room, speak to them in
Somali, and explain why their vote counts,” Mohamed said.
It
can be a difficult sell, though, as there are widespread misperceptions
within the community about just who can vote. In fact, Mohamed has
heard many excuses for not voting, including one registered
Somali-American voter who told him he cannot vote because he has bad
credit.
″‘Bro,’ I told him,” Mohamed said. ”‘Nah, people died for this right to vote. We can’t take it for granted.’”
For
Mohamed, getting Somalis to vote is not about passing out forms. It is
about making a case for why — and how — Somalis can benefit from the
U.S. political system. In order to do this, he often has to challenge
what he calls “outdated ideas” in the Somali community. For example,
when Mohamed went door knocking for Hillary Clinton’s presidential
campaign in 2016, a few Somalis — both males and females — told him they
did not feel comfortable voting for a female candidate.
Other
reasons he has heard about not voting include: I can’t take time off
work; I don’t know how to vote or reach the polling station; I am not
sure if it is Islamically permissible to vote; I don’t think any of the
candidates actually care about us.
“Some of the
reasons why Somalis don’t vote are frustrating,” Mohamed said. “But I
need to be patient and not condescending. I am proud to be Somali. We
are all learning and growing together. Besides, I relate to that feeling
some Somalis have, that elected officials don’t care about us. That was
my experience for years. But it’s changing. Slowly.”
***
Mohamed
was born in the southern portion of Somalia in 1992, a year after the
civil war broke out that resulted in the deaths of 350,000 and the
displacement of around 1 million Somalis. In 1997, the civil war spread
to the south of Somalia, forcing Mohamed and his family to flee as
refugees, first to Ethiopia and later to Kenya.
While in Kenya, Mohamed and his family briefly stayed in a
refugee camp before moving into an apartment building in the capital
city of Nairobi. They were able to settle into a decent life, Mohamed
believes, because his family was not poor.
In the
early 1990s, Mohamed’s father began working in the trucking business in
the United Arab Emirates and then in the U.S., which enabled him to send
money back to his family. During the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Mohamed’s
father spent two years stationed with U.S. armed forces working as an
Arabic translator.
As a result of his service to
U.S. troops, Mohamed’s father was granted American citizenship. In 2005,
he sponsored Mohamed, Mohamed’s mother, and Mohamed’s six siblings to
settle in Columbus, where he was living at the time, on a refugee visa.
But the transition to life in Ohio was difficult for Mohamed, who was 13
when he arrived in Columbus.
“I had some rough
times,” Mohamed said, taking a long pause to collect his thoughts. “I
mean, it was the first time I realized, ‘OK, I am not like the others.’
In Kenya, we were all black, so we never really noticed or talked about
skin color. Here, I was told I am black almost right away. But I didn’t
really know the history, or the meaning, of that word, or have an
appreciation for it.”
What complicated matters,
Mohamed said, was that elders in the Somali community kept telling him,
“No, Ismail, you are not black. You are Somali.” At school, Mohamed was
also teased about his “funny sounding name.” Things were, he added,
“infinitely worse” for his sisters, all of whom wear the Islamic
headscarf known as the hijab.
“As a guy, I have it
much easier than my sisters. I am decent looking. I can speak English. I
can sort of blend in. But I don’t know a single Muslim woman in
Columbus who wears the hijab who hasn’t faced harassment,” Mohamed said.
A few years later, at the age of 16, Mohamed
volunteered for the Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign. He credits
his mother for instilling in him a passion for politics, as well as for
encouraging him to improve conditions for Somalis in Columbus.
While an undergraduate and law student, Mohamed was active in
the Somali students’ association at Ohio State and was instrumental in
helping Somali students cope with the backlash some experienced after a
knife attack by a Somali student on campus in 2016. According to
Mohamed, the OSU administration was supportive of Somali students in the
wake of the attack, and he realized he could play a role connecting
university officials with the Somali community.
It
was also around this time, in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s
presidential win, that Mohamed set his eyes on a career in politics. But
given his unmistakably Muslim name, Mohamed assumed his role would have
to be off to the side, away from the spotlight. That changed, though,
when he began noticing Somali-Americans making waves in Minnesota
politics.
In 2010, Hussein Samatar became the first
Somali-American ever elected to office when he joined the Minneapolis
school board. In 2013, Abdi Warsame was the first Somali-American
elected to the Minneapolis City Council. This August, Ilhan Omar — a
Somali-American woman who wears the hijab — won the Congressional
Democratic primary in Minneapolis, which will, in all likelihood, make
her the first Somali-American to serve in the U.S. Congress.
Last
year, Mohamed decided to visit Minneapolis to understand why Somalis
were politically succeeding there but not so much in Columbus. He
returned with two sobering conclusions: The first is that Somalis have
been absorbed and embraced by the Democratic Party of Minnesota in ways
they haven’t been by the Democratic Party in Columbus; and the second is
that Minneapolis has the ward system for electing candidates, compared
with Columbus’ at-large electoral system, which tends to disfavor
communities of color.
“That’s the biggest challenge, if I am being honest,” Mohamed said. “The way we elect candidates here.”
*** Stefanie
Chambers is an associate professor of political science at Trinity
College in Hartford, Connecticut, and author of the book Somalis in the Twin Cities and Columbus.
She completed her doctoral work at Ohio State and believes that
affordable housing, low-skilled warehouse jobs, as well as a tradition
of welcoming refugees, is partly to explain why Somalis settled in
Minneapolis and Columbus in such large numbers in the 1990s.
She
pointed out that, according to the latest U.S. Census numbers, there
are 12,227 Somalis in Columbus, compared with the actual total of around
45,000. She attributes the discrepancy to “general U.S.
Census undercounts, secondary migration, and reluctance among some
Somalis to respond to requests for household information.”
She also concurs with Mohamed that structural barriers make it difficult
for Somalis, and other communities of color, to excel in Columbus
politics.
“If you have somebody who’s Somali-American running for office,
they have to convince the entire city to vote for them, which is costly
and challenging, compared to in Minneapolis where a ward with a heavy
Somali population can elect a Somali-American from that ward to
represent them,” Chambers said.
There are other
factors, she added. In Minneapolis, there are more foundations that
support Somalis, as well as powerful labor unions where Somalis can meet
and organize, such as the taxi driver associations. It also helps that
the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, as the Democratic Party is known in
Minnesota, has taken an interest in mentoring Somalis, something the
Democratic Party has not really done in Ohio. And then, of course, there
is the obvious fact that Minnesota is a blue-ish state whereas Ohio
tends to lean red.
And yet, while Minneapolis has a
sizable number of Somali-American elected officials, Chambers noted that
the Somali community there suffers from the same problems as the one in
Columbus: high unemployment, lack of literacy, school dropout, fears of
Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments, as well as an alarming rise
in Somali-on-Somali gang violence.
Chambers, who
is now working on a documentary film called “Dreaming in Somali,” says
it is “almost unbearable” to think of what many Somalis endure in the
U.S. right now.
“They are black, they are refugees,
and they are Muslim,” she said. “It’s hard enough to be one of those
things, let alone all three.”
In June 2017, a brawl broke out in Columbus between a white couple and at least two Somali-American Muslims, BuzzFeed reported. One of the women, Rahma
Warsame, who wears the Islamic headscarf, was beaten so badly that she
lost four teeth and suffered facial fractures. The Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) believes the incident was a hate crime
because it said the woman who was beaten was taunted by racist language
from the white male assailant. Columbus police said there was no
evidence of a hate crime occurring.
According to
CAIR, hate crimes against Muslims in the U.S. occurred on average almost
one per day in 2017, up 15 percent from the previous year. In
comparison, there were 93 attacks in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist
attacks, according to the Pew Research Center.
On top of this, Somalis are often tied to extremist Muslim groups abroad. Chambers noted that ”since
9/11, Somalis have also faced accusations that they are terrorists and
have experienced hostility stemming from suspicions about their ties to
al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda, and ISIS.”
For the 500 or so
Somali-owned businesses in the Columbus area, as well as countless other
Somalis here, that means being extra cautious when sending money to
their loved ones in Somalia, something that has created a culture of
secrecy within the Somali community here.
Indeed,
Chambers’ experience of interviewing Somalis in Columbus mirrored my
own: Most Somalis did not want to speak with her, even anonymously on
background. However, after she published her book and they knew their
quotes would not be used in it, some came forward with “heartbreaking
stories of how fearful they are,” Chambers said.
This
past June, I began visiting a predominantly Somali mosque in Columbus, a
massive place about the size of a Best Buy. It was the height of the
World Cup tournament, and most of my conversations with the Somali men
gathered in the parking lot after Friday prayers were about soccer, even
though I tried, after a few trips to the mosque, to steer the
conversation to current events. Finally, one young Somali man, who asked
that I do not mention his name, told me that since I am also a Muslim,
he would be “straight up honest” with me.
“Just don’t write about Somalis in Columbus,” he said. “Attention on us has always caused us harm.”
It’s
an eerie comment that reveals a sentiment all too common in the Somali
community: That they are a community who is welcome in America so long
as they do not make themselves, or their concerns, known.
Mohamed
does not share this view. For him, greater exposure, as well as an
awareness of what Somalis experience, is key to helping Somalis advance.
In fact, for the past 10 years, he has tried on numerous occasions to
reach out to elected officials, both Republican and Democrat, so that
they can learn about the conditions of Somalis in Columbus. Almost all
refused.
Chambers is not surprised by this tepid response.
“The
electoral system is sort of set up in Columbus where entire communities
can be ignored,” she said. “It’s why I am so excited that Ismail almost
won. Elected officials need to be informed about the Somali community
because, let’s face it, unless Ismail or someone like him is in office,
they won’t really reach out on their own.”
*** When
Mohamed and I first met in early July, his mood was a bit somber. It
was soon after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s travel
ban, which targets seven mostly Muslim majority nations, including
Somalia. Mohamed’s second cousin, who lives in the U.S., was struggling
to figure out how, or if, she could ever see her husband again, given
that he lives in Somalia.
Mohamed’s legal
specialization is actually in personal injury law, not immigration, and
he was scrambling to figure out how to help. He was also struggling to
keep up with the flood of requests from Somalis across Ohio asking him
for advice about Trump’s travel ban.
Although he
can’t really prove this fact, he figures he is the only Somali bar
certified lawyer in Ohio, or at least the only Somali speaking lawyer in
the state. Herein might be his biggest challenge: figuring out what to
take on and what to decline. He hates that he has to make this choice,
but he realizes this is the responsibility of being, in his words, “the
first Somali this or that.”
In early October,
Mohamed and I spoke again and the shift in his mood was palpable. These
days, he exudes a giddy, infectious optimism. He sounds, at times, like a
cross between a hype-man for the Democratic Party and a commercial on
the importance of voting.
At the moment, he is
helping Democratic candidate Rich Cordray’s gubernatorial campaign.
Cordray recently attended an event put on for him in Columbus by the
Somali community in which Cordray name-dropped Mohamed in his speech.
Mohamed has also been contacted by federal, state and city candidates
who all want his help in the upcoming midterm elections. On Oct. 12, he
organized a meet-and-greet event for U.S. Senator Cory Booker of New
Jersey with the Somali community of Columbus at a Somali-owned cafe.
“I am really pleased,” Mohamed said. “Democrats are really stepping up their outreach to Somalis.”
I
asked Mohamed if Republicans were making similar overtures to the
Somali community and Mohamed said he was “not aware of anything.”
He
would not be opposed to it, though, as Mohamed’s game is not so much
ideological as it is about getting Somalis in the room and seen and
heard by elected officials.
So far, his efforts are
already paying dividends. Much to his delight, some of Mohamed’s Somali
friends in Columbus have decided to run for office, perhaps as early as
2020. He also recently learned that there is a Somali-American college
student in Cleveland who might be starting law school soon.
What, I asked him, would he tell this Somali-American student, if he could find her?
“Do it,” he said. “We need your voice. And also, I don’t want to be the only one.”
Zahir Janmohamed is pursuing an MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan. He lived in Columbus from 2017 to 2018.