The Real Trouble with Ilhan Omar

lhan Omar has spent most of her adult life making trouble--good trouble, as her colleague John Lewis, with whom she's just introduced a resolution supporting Americans' right to participate in boycott movements, likes to say. So it's perhaps understandable that she maintains an impressive cool under the repeated onslaught of criticism, threats, and rage thrown her way, from the right as well as well as from the Democratic leadership.

It's not, of course, an accident that the rightwing imagination obsesses over the woman who, as I've written elsewhere, embodies much of what Barack Obama was accused of being by the "birthers"--including Donald Trump, now Birther-In-Chief. She's Muslim. She was born in Somalia and spent years in a refugee camp before coming to Minnesota. She has strong left politics and is unequivocal about her desire to make America's sclerotic political system more equitable.

It's that last bit that is getting lost, however, in the fuss. The Congresswoman's roots in Minneapolis's strong, diverse progressive organizing community have received far less attention than her ethnicity, or her membership in "The Squad" of young, leftist, female legislators. Omar's past work organizing in her hometown, from supporting Black Lives Matter to pushing for a ban on "conversion therapy" for LGBT youth, as well as her current policy initiatives, have received far less attention than a few obsessed-over tweets.

The Congresswoman's roots in Minneapolis's strong, diverse progressive organizing community have received far less attention than her ethnicity.

Omar was the lead on the recently introduced bill to abolish all student debt. Yet, even as the organizers from that movement credit her for making the issue a priority, most headlines cited Bernie Sanders (indeed a cosponsor), rather than her.

Flanked by the mother of former school cafeteria worker Philando Castile, who was killed by a Minnesota police officer, Omar introduced a bill to ensure all students got school lunch. Her faceoff with Elliott Abrams, Trump's special envoy to Venezuela during what appeared to be the lead-up to a U.S. invasion, was the bluntest confrontation I've seen of American imperial power--and she did it with a tiny, confident smile on her face, shutting down Abrams's bluster with a simple "That was not a question."

Abrams was pardoned for his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair after pleading guilty; he also, as Omar noted, testified that American policy in El Salvador, which included massacres of civilians, children, and other atrocities, was "a fabulous achievement." Given all that, she asked, "Would you support an armed faction within Venezuela that engages in war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide, if you believe they were serving U.S. interest, as you did in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua?"

While Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, stalwart on economic issues, have sometimes waffled on questions of imperial power and foreign relations, Omar has remained stalwart as she faces the (predictable) consequences of touching American politics' long-standing third rails. Accused of anti-Semitism over her tweets criticizing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee by not only Trumpists but by Chelsea Clinton--whose pious "as an American" pearl-clutching handed ammunition to the right--Omar has not backed down.

Omar's introduction of a resolution, alongside Lewis and Squad member Rashida Tlaib, supporting the right to boycott comes in the face of a bipartisan push to ban the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement targeting Israel over its occupation of Palestinian lands.