Education is your clearest path to a better life.
Both my parents only had a high school education, and I always saw them struggle when a bill came in the mail. But growing up, I would say I was unknowingly poor, and we were always surrounded by friends and family. In the summer, my brothers and I would take coolers and fill them up with water — that was our pool — and wait for the ice cream man, and we thought we were on top of the world. Us four boys all slept in the same two twin-size beds pushed together, and I thought it was just the coolest thing that I got to sleep with my brothers. So you don’t always know what you don’t have. My parents taught me from a young age that education would be the pathway to success. It wasn’t about the pursuit of money. It was about never having to stress over a phone call from a collector or the bank that’s foreclosing on your home. I lived in 12 homes by the age of 14. Their dream was that I wouldn’t have to struggle like that, and school was the ticket.
Failure isn’t defeat.
I got into politics almost as a result of continuous failure. I applied three years in a row to about 300 medical schools in all and was denied by just about every one of them, except a few that were abroad, and I didn’t want to go abroad. Instead, I received my master’s in public health, and my new dream was to work my way up the administration of a hospital or health system. But in 2015, my older brother unexpectedly passed away. He was only 27. In the days that followed, I received a 50-page packet in the mail from my brother’s coworkers talking about how he impacted their lives. I took a step back and decided that I wanted to be for my community what my brother was for the people in his life. So I decided to run for an open seat in the Michigan House of Representatives. It was a crazy idea, but it also felt like the right thing to do.
Politicians and elected officials are people, too — there’s not necessarily anything special about them.
When I got to Lansing, I learned a few lessons really fast. One: It’s not the brightest and best from across the state who end up there, it’s people who won an election. Two: You go to Lansing and nobody cares about your story. They care about whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican. And then, even within your own caucus, they want to know if you’re a blue-collar Democrat, a moderate or a progressive, etc. So I quickly realized people didn’t talk to one another because it was the labels that matter and the labels came quickly. As the only Muslim when I first arrived, I had that extra barrier to overcome. I was the first Muslim that many legislators had ever met, and even some Democratic members didn’t have a great opinion of Muslims and Arabs. The other thing I’d say about that is when you’re the only Arab or Muslim, you end up representing all Arabs and Muslims, whether you want to or not. I remember when the Muslim ban was first announced, my caucus turned to me and asked, “Abdullah, what should we do?” My thought was to remind everyone that the point of the caucus is to advocate for justice, regardless of background.
Being a mayor is more difficult than you would think.
When you’re a legislator, if you have a budget crisis, you just see numbers on paper. When you’re a mayor, you’re dealing directly with the employees, the programs and the union negotiations. In Dearborn right now, the deficit we have to address is $28 million annually, and everything I do to try to make the numbers work means I’m impacting someone’s employment or benefits or a service that 110,000 residents depend on. The burden is there. It’s a burden I asked for because I voluntarily ran for office. I’m still learning how to carry that.
Being the first is about not being the last.
People inevitably want to talk about me being the first Arab American or Muslim mayor of Dearborn, and I get why people want to focus on that. When you talk to the elders in my parents’ generation, they talk about how something that was once a dream is now a reality. I mean, the day after 9/11, I was walking home and had a gun pulled on me by a guy threatening to shoot “you Muslim kids,” and now I’m the mayor of that city. I get why that’s significant. But I didn’t run to be the first. I ran to be the best. I want to demonstrate that somebody with a different sounding last name or who prays a little differently can do as good or better a job. Then, when the next person comes along and runs, people will say I can vote for a Fatima, a Mariam or a Mohammed because Abdullah did a good job, and it doesn’t matter what you are as long as you’re able to lead.
