 Assalamu alaikum everyone thank you for coming out even with the air out tonight so just reminding everyone to stay safe and today with me are these amazing women that I hope to grow up to be so thank you so much for being here with us tonight. Before I started out talking about today's election I kind of wanted to start start talking about a couple years ago when we all felt hopeless and I wanted to talk about it through a young Muslim's perspective as there are many young Muslims out in the crowd today personally my own story I remember this was a couple years ago I mean we all remember this the San Bernardino attacks so when a San Bernardino attacks happened I was a sophomore in high school and I remember seeing all the development on news coming on my phone and I was sitting in my English class and when the shooting happened I remember my stomach dropping and I was praying to God I was praying to Allah saying you know please please don't let me it's someone who's Muslim someone who or claims to be Muslim I was praying I was praying and then when when the the shooter's identity came out I just broke down crying and around that same time I know most of you are familiar with the Rahmah Foundation here which is a great program for girls I was a part of the Halaka program as well and my the girls in my Halaka group started messaging on their group chat saying I'm scared to I'm scared to walk home I'm scared I'm scared to go outside I don't know what to do and that's that's where in the first time in my life I mean we've all experienced this as Muslim-Americans where we've all felt oppressed and felt scared to go out but that for me was the first time that I felt like someone was going to go out and attack me for being Muslim and I walked out of my high school crying unable to look at anyone in the eye and when the election happened I also cried this there was this constant sense of hopelessness this even even when we see small wins I still felt hopeless and well fast forward on a couple of years and now we have all these historic women winning these elections and I feel I feel optimistic and I to be honest I didn't see this coming but at the same time in my heart I knew something was going to change so I'm really glad that we had this amazing election and most of all what I'm glad is seeing women stand up for themselves seeing minority women for the first time stand up and say I'm not taking any of this I'm going to win without any support and that's what I applaud Sylvia and Aisha just for doing doing all this without any support without any backing so to start off tonight I have one question for you guys kind of like going off my story I guess when did you realize that you wanted to run what like what moment in your life say you know I have to do this good evening and thank you for having me and you know thank you for sharing your story because I know it's not easy to share a personal story and your personal feelings so thank you um you know honestly I have always historically been involved in community work um you might my parents have always even at your ages right um I was told that this is part of our culture and I'm a very proud afghan-american um one of the things is that you you help where you can doesn't matter where you come from you always always help where you can whether you know I remember Hurricane Katrina happened um and I just wanted to help and I wasn't exactly sure what I could do um and when you see people without shelter in the streets you know you you try to do the most you can for them um so being being very much involved in that side we we specifically have ingrained both my sister and I uh to work in the community so I ended up working for volunteering a lot and it's very very important to volunteer you are exposed to so much that you could be doing um both career-wise and so forth um and eventually getting more involved in certain nonprofits I cared about um you know getting more involved in community as I mentioned and eventually learning that all the community work that you do is based on a policy so for example I worked with a lot of women in uh shelters um because of domestic violence and you realize what are the policies to help these women find housing what are the policies to protect these women to make sure that their children have a roof over their head to make sure that they they know their rights as a human being um these were certain policies that that I was concerned about and I realized that it's policy makers that we need to inform so for example when we um after 9 11 even happened um and being an afghan american one of the biggest things is that whatever they were depicting on television is not my community it's not how I was raised it's not how it's a small fragment of what they glorify on television and being more involved with policy makers your local congress members your local city council your local um different community leaders if you will you realize that it's your job 100 it is your job to inform these policy makers about you and your community your needs so when somebody says something completely incorrect about the community whether it's the afghan community whether it's the muslim community whether being a woman uh whether being a millennial you correct them and you say I'm so sorry I think you're misinformed this is the reality of my community this is the needs of my community and I ended up doing that more and more and more uh and representing more communities and eventually I said you know I think that it's time for us to become policy makers and really talk about some of the issues affecting the local city of hayward now um I think that president donald trump plays a big part of that because of the the hateful rhetoric that he spews very openly and um you know I think that I had enough is enough um you know that's not in my community and specifically I was told by electives in this bay area one of the most liberal areas to think of not to say you are muslim not to say you are afghan and my last name is wahab my first name is aisha okay and they said that it's a it's a very religious name you know she must be a wahabiist right um and the thing is that they don't even understand what that means um you know they they talked about do you want to live by sharia law if you are elected and some of the emails that we received were very shocking they and some people even posted on our facebook page a vote for aisha is a vote for sharia law and female general mutilation those were some of the things we battled and the reality is we never stopped talking about the fact that this is not what I believe in I am an american just as much as you born and raised and I want to do good for my entire community so that that is really kind of what you know some of the things that we went through and why we decided to be honest because we feel that we have an opinion that really matters so our voice matters that was really powerful aisha and I thank you for sharing that and thank you everybody for coming tonight um my story is a little bit different as to why I decided to run so I'm a first generation immigrant I did not grow up here I grew up in Pakistan but I grew up in a family which was very very involved in public service I grew up watching my father very much involved and then I moved you know in in my late teens early 20s I moved to the US so had a very typical life but married I went to college had my kids started a job kind of you know life continued and then I got I met actually I met congressman Eric Swalwell when he was first running and I decided to volunteer for his campaign and when I volunteered for his campaign what I felt was a sense of belonging again which which I had been missing for me for a long time and and I realized that I lived here long enough where it was very important for me to get involved in my community to serve my community and I just you know I was working in technology I had you know really no plans of running for office but I'm like yeah someday I'll get involved with my community I'd always been I'd always served on boats I'd always been the PTA mom I'd always volunteered at events always helped with fundraisers breast cancer walks all those things but I really never had thought about running and then I just started talking about it and before I knew it one thing led to another and I started getting more and more involved in the community and the more I started getting involved in the community and this was right around the time when I moved to San Ramon and it was about half the city it is so what you see San Ramon 10 years later today it's a very diverse community so it wasn't like that and slowly I started you know kind of seeing a migration of people that look that were more diverse in San Ramon and yet when I saw the city council it in nowhere represented anybody that lived in San Ramon and I as I got more involved in you know serving on city committees got involved in leadership and things like that in San Ramon what I realized was that it was just made of a group of a hundred or so people that were plugged in that were bringing their own people every time they you know they wanted somebody to be you know in office or our commissions and our committees and the entire city was kind of everybody else who was moving to the city with silo didn't know what was going on and then when I talked started talking about running I'm like I would like to serve on the council because I think this community needs representation of people who somehow look like them as well and first generation immigrants and like I said I belong and I am as much of an American as anybody else who's lived here three generations four generations or ten generations and I started getting a pushback saying it's not your turn right now you have to wait we're going to tell you when you should run for council and that did not sit well with me and I'm like so I have to seek permission now to run for council and I started talking to you know something which is common with both myself and I shall we went through this program called Emerge California which really empowers women to run for office and I remember one of the first things they say you're going to be told by you know it's not your turn yet and you don't listen to that so I ran in 2016 you know I decided I decided and my family decides when it's my turn I ran in 2016 I got a lot of pushback from the establishment they made sure that they told everybody to vote against me they actually set up somebody it was going to be two men and myself and then they set up somebody last minute to run against me a woman who just to kind of take away the votes so they did pretty much everything to make sure I didn't win that election and I lost that election but I won quite a significant number of votes and I said I'm not going to sit back and rest it was also the same around the same time that you know it was 2016 it was a sad day for a lot of us we were just I was more in shock of what had happened to a country than what you know happened in my election and after 2016 things kind of turned around and changed and what I saw between 2016 and 2018 there were Muslims became active Muslims woke up women woke up there were so many grassroots groups that decided enough is enough and this entire movement started where we said we're not going to sit back we're not going to you know be a quiet voice on in there we're going to go and do something and take on and I think Trump was a blessing in disguise for a lot of a lot of people who did not care before who did not engage before and this election turned out to be tremendously different than 2016 because we saw almost a 50% voter turnout in San Ramon where historically you've only had 20% people come and vote in an off year election so for me even in this election since I didn't listen the first time around there was a lot of opposition from the establishment there was opposition from the person who's you know he was supporting somebody else and I really went to the voters and I went to the people and I canvassed and worked hard and people believed in it and the best thing you know so I like to quote my biggest supporter was a former mayor you know as typical as you can get a white haired tall white guy who said I would like to see a Muslim Pakistani in office because he he came to the mosque he was respected so much and that to me was a win when somebody like that can say I would like to see a Muslim Pakistani and that's not my only identity but it is a source of pride for me that I got that kind of support from the community and they saw Muslims as partners not as somebody that Trump was making them out to be thank you so much for sharing that another question that I have for you guys is I know you during during your campaign you've talked about all the I'm sure you've talked about all the things that you hope to do and how you hope to represent this community but for tonight's sake I would like you guys to kind of like a talk about that again and now that you see yourself in that place how how you feel after that win and also what you hope to do in the next couple of years so my campaign had a very cool platform something that most people don't typically talk about and attack and people I just want to say that our campaign team consisted of mostly women very young people no consultants no expert this was just literally us sitting at a table and saying what does the community need so my campaign managers Nargis Izata who's sitting right here put up your hand right she is a mental health therapist she has no background in politics nothing and many people on our team were first time volunteers first time you know involved in a campaign or just motivated because of the the hateful rhetoric out there and the thing that we talked about the most in the city of Hayward is housing we know that if you have a roof over your head you can focus on your family you can focus on your business you can focus on your education and you can focus on your future but we know that housing has become more and more unattainable for many many people specifically in Hayward when we talked about housing it was something that people said stay away from it's very very difficult to talk about housing a lot of people feel differently about housing and we had specific goals that we wanted to push through now being now an elected individual it's different on on this side of things what you're really able to do what you're able to push forward and you are one vote of many others you have to get the rest of the city council members to agree with you to definitely make sure things pass now I just had coffee with one of my opponents who is also my colleague Sarah Laminen who's sitting in the back and Sarah and I actually discussed some of the the goals that you know we want to work together on so one of the things is definitely in campaign mode you you have to basically win to get anything done and now that we've won now the goal is how can we work together it's a very it's a politics is filled with a lot of awkward moments okay just being able to talk to each other and say we're gonna move past this particular chapter of our lives right because we don't know who's gonna win right at the time so you really just try to avoid people and you know try to stay focused now I believe that we can definitely make a significant impact in Hayward regarding housing and people like Sarah who's on the council as well as myself we will definitely bring that issue up to the forefront and make it a priority a priority in my sense being part of our campaign was making housing affordable to all at all income levels people deserve a roof over their head regardless of how small it is they deserve a roof that's a human right in my opinion and that was something that we truly truly believe in it's something that we will definitely work hard for and I do believe we can make it happen so that's my number one issue that we talked about so San Ramon I think one of the most important things for me and San Ramon and coming from a background in technology is that how are we helping people are giving them back the three hours that they spend on the road right now and how are we working in partnership with larger Bay Area with the larger Bay Area where people who live in San Ramon who live in the Tri Valley and commute all the way to Palo Alto or San Mateo or San Francisco I've lived that pain I've done that and I know how much it affects my quality of life and how much I was not even able to give back to my community let alone my children so for us for the larger Bay Area that's the problem I see is something we really need to start solving by building partnerships by talking to other businesses and trying to see how do we bring technology jobs to the Tri Valley how do we partner with businesses and say like people work from home or work from remote locations satellite offices in the Tri Valley because that is going to solve the larger issue one the quality of life like getting those three hours there is no substitute for getting those three hours back in your life and being with your family and kids and being able to spend that you'll build community that is going to give get people more involved in your city and that's going to build better family rights as well plus what we're going to also without what that's going to help with is easing traffic on 680 both going up and down the corridor whether you go north or south so for me solving that traffic problem and using technology as a way to solve those problems would be very very important I am very invested in a smart city initiative it is a long-term initiative it is something that's going to take five to ten years to really implement but for me that is that is an important one the other important thing for me is San Ramon has been the city council has been a very close council people don't know what's going on people have been frustrated that they have no way to communicate with the citizens people have been frustrated that you know decisions get made on some council so opening up that communication and finding ways to go and engage with the community is a really important issue for me again that how do how am I present in the community and I'm getting feedback and I am not born in yet but every single day I've been getting emails from people and I've been replying to them and I've I've been talking to the city manager so I already see that communication channel has opened up which wasn't there with with the other city council members thank you so much for sharing housing and traveling traveling is very I think I think there is something that hit home for a lot of us I guess because even in pleasant to live a more Dublin housing is very difficult to find that's something that's affordable for a lot of our residents here and commuting we all see all the residents here we all see that and my next question would be I think in the past couple of years we've seen that it's really hard we've faced as a community we face a lot of difficulty in building bridges I mean we have many successes of course to interfaith um through events like this today um but in order to have such a story wins like yours you must have had a lot of support back when you left and what my question is that how did how were you able to build those bridges in this first place because for a lot of us it seems kind of like you know it seems hard um so we like to ask for your tips and how you were able to combat that you know I just want to have very clearly state that we are no different from anybody that sits next to us there is literally no difference you know I think because we are in a place of worship that I can easily say that um any religious teachings teaches you that God has made us all equal we know that um with that being said I I just want to say that we have a lot of assumptions about people you know we and it's every single person has a bias against something whether you have an accent whether you have a different skin complexion whether you have a funny name you know we like to say that we're different in this sense but deep down for the most part we have the same core desires we want to raise our families in a safe place we want to pursue education we want a future we want grandchildren we want all the same things we want a roof over our heads those are the things that we need to focus on as to what makes us the same and um you know I will say that we we've had historic wins for specifically the Muslim community um I can 100% say that I am the first Afghan American ever elected to the United States public office including another young woman named Safia Wazir who uh won in New Hampshire and these are historic wins for my personal community now I didn't think that it was a big deal early on you know I said okay good we have a win but as I've met more and more older folks from my community that have said to me that you've literally cracked the ceiling and you have allowed us to hold our head high after 40 years of being in this particular country we've had a win and I'm very very proud to say that I was a part of that but I also want to say that our team was made up of a lot of different ethnicities we had volunteers that were white we had volunteers that were black we had volunteers that were um um Hispanic as well as you know of different religious backgrounds and things like that none of that matters in America when you really talk about the issues and community as a whole there is no other country in the world that a young Afghan girl can be raised and mind you I grew up in foster care I grew up in a very different background than most people I should be seen as very much as less than but in this country every single one of us has a voice that's considered equal as long as we use our voice so I will say that we've had other individuals within the Muslim community that um do wear the hijab that ran for office and did not win and again we are in one of the most liberal areas in the United States and I truly believe that some of those things were because of how they're perceived there's still a lot of prejudice out there and my goal is definitely to talk about it talk about it in a very bold way you know I'm not going to shy away from the fact that um we come from a different ethnicity we speak a different language our parents have an accent there's nothing to be ashamed of be proud of who you are and as long as you can say yeah so I'm still going to do it that is kind of the big thing that you need to do to even start to build those bridges once you accept yourself other people are forced to accept you that is one of the biggest things that I do want to share for me building bridges is opening up your house and stepping up and stepping out of your comfort zone and making that first move to embrace people for me when I talk San Ramon is a very very diverse community we have 135 languages that are just spoken at our high school so if you think of it we're the entire united nations in a small in a small city and we have so many different cultures and how do we celebrate those cultures and how do we embrace them but how does somebody else know who we are so for me the most important thing is when I'm celebrating something when I'm celebrating eat I go and give a packet of chocolates to every single neighbor who lives in my neighborhood and when I talk to the mosque in San Ramon that's what I tell them I'm like when we are celebrating something let's make sure that all of our neighbors know that we're celebrating and celebrate with them just like that when it's their holiday let's celebrate with them and let's celebrate other people's cultures and embrace that because that's what really breaks the barriers that's what really opens up people and people embrace you because you're celebrating their culture and they're celebrating yours have coffee with with them ask your colleagues ask somebody if you feel somebody's hesitant somebody's curious sit down with them talk to them let them know what's important because in the end it's all about people's relationships people once they build that relationships they don't see you as white black brown yellow muslim hindu christian or any of that I once got a call during the election somebody called me and said I just want to know whether you are a hindu muslim or a christian and I said to him I'm like when you need that powerful fix is that going to ask you for your religion and he laughed about it and he's like okay you've earned my vote because that's exactly what I wanted you to say that you care about me as a citizen of San Ramon and it's not going to matter to me and it's not going to matter to me anymore what religion you are so we really have to talk about and understand what's important to everybody we have the we have all the common issues we know all the common things that matter to us so engage with you know we need to engage with each other at a human level and that's when you really break the boundaries so thank you for all your insight and I feel like it's very important that that we have this today and I'm really glad that you guys were able to come out today and talk to the residents and I hope that after that we all get to talk about how we can all support you and how we can work with you to make our make sure that our voices are heard and thank you again for all these amazing insurgents for all the youth that are out there I know that we're all feeling really inspired so inshallah in the next like couple of years we'll be all running we'll be following your footsteps inshallah and today so we have to celebrate your wins as a whole community we have some amazing cakes that we bought and we would like all of all of us to come together celebrate