Meet the 23-year-old Indian American who flipped a Republican Illinois district [View all]
Nabeela Syed, 23, came of age during the Trump administration. An Indian Muslim American who wears a hijab, she remembers the former president’s 2016 Election Day with perfect clarity. She was a a senior at her high school in Palatine, Illinois, and the racist, Islamophobic rhetoric being parroted around her sealed her first political memory.
“The day Trump got elected, I remember I cried in every single one of my classes,” she told NBC News. “I felt like this country was not for us. I was like, ‘I don’t know if I belong here.’ This is the only home I’ve ever known, and I was questioning whether or not I belonged here.”
Six years later, in November 2022, another election has come to mean something entirely different for Syed.
This year, her name was on the ballot as a representative for the Illinois General Assembly, and she won. In doing so, Syed flipped the Republican-held 51st District, in which she was born and raised. In January, she will become the youngest member of the assembly.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/meet-23-year-old-indian-american-flipped-republican-illinois-district-rcna56669
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