Arab American candidates gain significant victories..
Americans just turned out in historic numbers to participate in the mid-term election. The Arab American Civic Council would like to congratulate the Arab American candidates who won in Tuesday’s Congressional and local elections. In Michigan, Rashida Tlaib made history becoming the first Palestinian American woman to be elected to Congress. Ilhan Omar, who came to the U.S. as a refugee, is the first Somali-American Congresswoman. Other Arab American winners include Florida’s Donna Shalala and Michigan’s Justin Amash who was re-elected, as reported by the AAI here. Locally, Syrian-American film producer Ahmad Zahra has won a seat on the Fullerton City Council to represent Fullerton’s 5th district. He’s one of dozens of Arab Americans who ran for local office this year.
Here’s what we’ve been up to..
Over the past two months, our team here at the Arab American Civic Council has been hard at work to get out the Arab vote for this historic Midterm Elections. We were able to contact more than 3,450 Arab American households in the Orange County area through nonpartisan phone banking and canvassing. We also registered more than 200 new voters and collected 478 pledge-to-vote cards at 33 community events.
Our fight, however, is not over yet. Last Tuesday we voted, but today we continue our fight for a fair immigrationsystem, repealing the travel ban (sign this petition), protecting our free speech rights, and many other issues that directly impact our community.
Together, and with your support, we will tackle all these issues.
Watch Aljazeera‘s coverage of our voter outreach campaign..
