I don’t want to see my families scared of its own government. I don’t want my families worried about what’s going to happen after they drop their chi… - Rashida Tlaib Al-Harbi

I think American Muslims and Muslims around the world needed a sense of, you know, some light, some feeling that, yes, this is exactly why people need to run and speak up and fight back, because of this possibility, the fact that now two Muslim American women are going to be able to walk onto the House floor of Congress. What an incredible moment in our country. Celebrate it. It is something that speaks volumes, because we can do press conferences, we can do marches, we can do protests—and those are so important—but running for office, getting elected in a predominantly non-Muslim community—my sister Ilhan Omar is going to represent a 70 percent white community. And people believed in us. They have faith in us. That is the America I know and love. And I just can’t wait to see the faces of so many people saying this actually really did happen.

I was at the airport on my way to D.C., and I said, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to, you know, not be there, kind of in his face, like I’m not going anywhere, you’re going somewhere.” And for me, at that moment, I said to her, “But also, I don’t know about wearing white, because, I mean, the suffrage movement didn’t always — it didn’t include the brown, black women.” And so, it was hard for me. So, I remember, Ilhan is like, “Well, wear something else.” I was like, “Ooh, I’m going to wear a Palestinian thobe”...I couldn’t sit through some of it, and we ended up leaving, especially when they just went just full-out applause when they put that medal around Rush. And then — I know. I know. Do you know there was a 97-year-old man who was a guest of another colleague, who has been working really hard to try to get the Medal of Freedom for this man, who survived Nazi Germany? And he invented something to do with solar, profound accomplishments, profound strength, things that we need to be celebrating in our country. And he watched in the gallery to see somebody like that get the Medal of Freedom, when he’s sitting there, asking — you know, when he’s sitting there, just like, “I’ve done all these things in my life. I’ve survived all this.” And he did it from — you know, in this beautiful, gracious way, even after all that he’s been through.

We don’t want a country that supports war and bombs and destruction. We want to support life. We want to stand up for every single life killed in Gaza ... This is the way you can raise our voices. Don’t make us even more invisible. Right now, we feel completely neglected and just unseen by our government. If you want us to be louder, then come here and vote uncommitted [rather than in support of Biden].