Written by Yusuf Haque
Mamoo means maternal uncle in Urdu. Today, I am so excited to interview someone really special—my Mamoo, Usamah Andrabi. Not only is he part of my family, but he is also involved in politics and works hard to make a difference. I’ve always looked up to him and loved hearing his ideas about how to help people and improve our communities. He currently is the Director of Communications for Justice Democrats. Now, I get to ask him questions and learn even more about what he does and why he loves it. I can’t wait to share his story with you!
Career Path and Education
Q: How did you get interested in working in politics?
A: I got interested in working in politics because I had always been interested in history since I was a kid. It was my favorite subject in school. I was always particularly interested in political history, events that have happened in our government and the world years and years ago. I also find it interesting how often history repeats itself and how we can stop that so we don’t repeat the same mistakes. I became very interested in the decisions of our government on different policies, particularly opposing the Iraq war and the war in Afghanistan which were happening while I was growing up.
Q: What kind of schooling or training did you need for your job?
A: I went to college, but I didn’t need to go to college to be able to do my job well. The best training I could have ever received is to just practice the type of work I did. I specifically do communications. So prior to the job I’m in right now, I worked in a few different jobs doing political communications, practicing my writing, talking to reporters, and generally working on campaigns in political organizations. Anyone can do this work with a little bit of training and practice.
Q: What’s one skill you think is really important for working in politics?
A: I think empathy and patience are two important skills that are really important for working in politics. Empathy is important because we should always be thinking about how we can help other people through politics. The end goal should be how to make our government work better for each other. Patience is important because you have to lose a lot in order to win. You have to go through a lot of losses and a lot of bad times in order to eventually get to the results you want in this life. So, it takes a lot of waiting and repeating the work you’re doing even when you lose.
Q: Are there other jobs in politics besides running for office or working for a group like Justice Democrats?
A: Yeah, there are hundreds of other jobs that you can do in politics that don’t involve running for office and working for a campaign organization like I do. Before I did this, I worked for a member of Congress. Before that, I worked for a political communications agency helping different nonprofits and social justice organizations on their communications. There are so many other opportunities in political jobs, such as running a campaign to advising and creating policies and so many things in between. There are a hundred different departments within any particular campaign and there are thousands of different types of jobs you could do working within the government, and all those jobs are inherently political and all serve important roles.
Daily Work and Role
Q: What does a typical day look like for you at Justice Democrats?
A: It really depends on what time of year it is. A typical day last month after the election results came in, for me looked like the following: I woke up and read as much news as I could read, both in newspapers and on social media. Then, I reached out to a lot of different reporters and news outlets to see if they wanted to talk about Justice Democrats’ perspective about the election results. I also sent a lot of reporters and journalists the statement that I wrote on behalf of Justice Democrats in response to the election results. There is a lot of that that happens every single day and when we’re actively working on campaigns. I’ve been in a lot of different meetings for a lot of different campaigns, on a weekly basis. Since last year into this year, I was very involved in the campaigns of Summer Lee, Cori Bush, Jamaal Bowman, and Ilhan Omar. This meant I was in meetings for each of those campaigns to talk about different things such as the status of the campaign, the specific communication work that we needed, or any other things that needed to happen that week. There are lots of cross-department collaborations that happen to ensure we are all on the same page.
Q: What’s your favorite part of your job?
A: My favorite part of the job is writing. I have always loved writing. In my job with a progressive leftist organization, I get to write a lot of messaging about how I think we should be talking about the current state of politics and our elections and what I think is the most effective messaging to be saying to voters, at all times. I really like shaping what that message looks like depending on what’s going on at that point, be it responding to genocide in Gaza or what needs to be said to win an election or campaign. I also love taking on “the bad guys.” I like knowing I’m on the right side of history.
Q: What is the hardest part of your job?
A: The hardest part of my job is probably working with multiple candidates and members of Congress at once while trying to correctly do what they need for their campaigns while also trying to make sure all of the candidates and campaigns are on the same page and fighting for the same values, all while still tailoring those new messages to individual candidates, campaigns, and congressional districts.
Q: What kinds of issues do you work on the most?
A: I work on campaigns broadly and so almost every issue people care about the government doing something about is an issue I inevitably work on the part of the campaign. Over the last year I’ve particularly done a lot of work focusing ourand focused and efforts on demanding that the U.S. government end its financial support for a genocide in Gaza. And working against lobbies like AIPAC and the Cryptocurrency lobby that are working against members of Congress who are standing up for Palestinian lives and rights. Something that has been a big focus from last year’s campaign season just as much has been working to have leaders that are talking about taking on corporations and billionaires who are the biggest enemies to all of us. And they’re the reason why we don’t have things like universal healthcare or policies that fight climate change or taxes on billionaires or more union jobs for people across this country. It all can be traced back to a handful of billionaires and corporations who are preventing us from having these policies by paying off and buying off members of Congress.
Q: Who do you usually work with? Is it people from different places and backgrounds?
A: At Justice Democrats, we don’t have an office, so we all work remotely. This way, we can work with a lot of different people from a lot of different races, religions, identities, and backgrounds. We have people that are from California, Connecticut, New York, Arizona, Washington D.C., Pennsylvania, as well as candidates who live in districts from St. Louis to Pittsburgh to New York to Laredo,Texas. This is especially important for our candidates from diverse working class backgrounds which look very different than what the majority of Congress looks like. I work in a lot of coalitions with people from different religious, racial classes and different backgrounds as well. For example, for our work for Palestine, we have really important Jewish members of our coalition that have been fighting for Palestinian freedom. We have really important pro democracy members. We have members who care about socialism. We have members who care about labor rights and worker rights. It’s a broad coalition of people and that’s the only way we’re going to advance the work we want to see in this world, by building those bridges and coalitions across different backgrounds.
Involvement and Impact
Q: How does Justice Democrats help make a difference?
A: I think the number one thing we are trying to do is elect more working class members to Congress so that there are more diverse members of Congress. We should have a Congress that looks like and is more representative of the community it is elected to represent and has those communities in mind. We believe congress does not need more millionaires, billionaires, career politicians. And people who are beholden to corporations and right wing super PACs in Congress. We should elect people who have lived the realities that everyday people face and people who are willing to fight for the realities that everyday people face. This often looks different then what the Democratic Party is always fighting for and always looks different than what the Republican Party is fighting for. What we are trying to do is elect enough members of Congress so that we can fight for and cast an agenda that actually serves everyday people and the priorities of everyday people; whether that looks like members of Congress who will stand up for a ceasefire and an arms embargo in Israel or members of Congress that are also standing up for medicare for all or a green new deal or raising taxes on billionaires or a just and fair immigration system. All of these things are things that we should be fighting for and we should have a Congress that actually fights for them but instead we have a Congress that doesn’t look like the majority of the American people and doesn’t fight for the majority of the American people. So, we are trying to make a difference by moving our party in that direction.
Q: What’s one example of a change that Justice Democrats have helped to make?
A: We are very proud of every member of Congress we’ve elected. And almost every single Congressmen we elected took on and defeated a corporate rightwing Democrat. Instead, we elected working-class members of color who actually represent their community’s needs.
Through them we were able to introduce really popular legislation that voters and members can organize around. Bills like the green new deal were never introduced until we elected members of Congress that are willing to fight against fossil fuel corporations and stand up for environmental justice. Our elected congresswomen like Cori Bush or Rashida Talib have introduced a bill for a ceasefire in Gaza, that millions of people marched and organized for, to demand that members of Congress sign on to it. We haven’t gotten a ceasefire yet in Gaza, but without this work we would not have anything at all. The millions of everyday people in the streets that want to see a change in our government would not have something to organize around if these members had not introduced this piece of legislation. Through that, through electing leaders who are more regular and foremost with addressing working-class people’s values and needs, we have also moved and convinced voters across the country that a different way is possible. You can elect leaders that fight for the policies that you care about, and not just the needs of a handful of billionaires. Hopefully this will give hope to the people.
Q: Why is it important for regular people, not just politicians, to be involved in making change?
A: Because there are a lot of more regular people than politicians and so I believe that it shouldn’t be politicians that are dictating politics but rather it should be regular people. We should be electing leaders that understand that. This is why we want to elect more regular people to Congress. We don’t want more politicians that have been in power for thirty, forty, or fifty years, who have done the same failures year after year. No one knows what you’re going through other than you. No one understands the problems you face every day better than you do. Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley often says this and I believe it wholeheartedly, “The people closest to the pain should be the people closest to the power.”
Advice for the Future
Q: What advice would you give to kids who want to work in politics when they grow up?
A: I would say don’t let anyone older than you make you feel like you can’t make the change that you want to see in our politics. No matter how big that change is, it has to start somewhere and you have to choose where it starts. Your voice and young people’s collective strength are more powerful than you think. So never let anyone older or bigger than you or more powerful than you make you feel like you can’t make the change you want to see in this country because it has always been young people who have driven these ideas forward. Our country is moving forward towards progress while career politicians who have been in power for centuries refuse to do so. Our progressive movement is powered by young people, like you.
Q: What’s a good way to start learning about important issues or causes?
A: Read your local news, read your national news, read different sources of news and understand what’s going on in the country and the world. From there, start forming your own opinions about what you believe is right and what you believe you want to see. Then, you can look for organizations or groups of people who believe similar things, who agree with you and who also want to see the same changes. Join those groups and organizations. If there’s not an organization pushing for what you care the most about, then start that organization and ask other people to join and tell people why you think it’s so important. You know, the first thing is to educate yourself about what is going on in this country and to understand that. There’s a lot of people that want to lie to you and they’re often the people in power. It’s most important to listen to the people without power like everyday people. Listen to your neighbors, to your family, to your friends to understand what they’re going through to understand what we should be doing.
Q: What are ways we can get our friends and family to talk about things that matter to us, like what is going on in the Middle East and Palestine?
A: You start that conversation. Be the person who brings it up. You know, there’s a lot of people who don’t want to talk about politics or global news because they’re scared of people having different opinions on different issues and people getting mad. But, the cornerstone of what our country should be is an ability to have different opinions and debate those different opinions. No one should ever silence your voice and your opinion no matter what it is. So if you care about something and if that’s Gaza, then you know, it starts with you bringing that issue up in places where it’s not already being brought up. You know, so much of the work I do and we do is exactly that, bringing to the forefront issues that our politicians want to put on the backburner.
So whether that’s Gaza, whether that’s climate change, whether that’s economic justice, whatever that work is. We often see that people in power don’t want us to talk about those things. And so that’s what our work is, which is to bring those topics to the center of the conversation rather than the back. We can’t do it alone.
Like I said, that work starts with the youngest people who are willing to have those conversations.The only reason we have a climate movement the way we do is because young people refuse to be quiet about what we’re going to have to deal with after enough adults told them to be quiet. So we’re not going to stay quiet. We’re going to yell. We’re going to scream until you hear us. That’s in the history of this country, especially in the history of this country’s anti war movement in the last hundred years. Looking back to the Vietnam war, it was young people on college campuses and across the country who were the first to be in the streets demanding peace in Vietnam and demanding civil rights in America. The truth is that so often older generations are just accustomed to a world that they think has to be the way it is because it’s been that way for so long. The most important thing young people can do is to challenge those assumptions. I think that is what all young people are asking themselves at all times. Does this actually have to be the way this is? Do people actually have to suffer like this? Do we actually not have to have universal healthcare? Do we actually need millions and billions of dollars for oil companies in Houston? These are questions that young people have been leading on asking because adults don’t want to ask hard questions. So that is all of you guys’ jobs and you know, it just starts with asking the question, asking the question yourself and then asking the question of everyone else.
Fun and Personal
Q: When you were our age, did you think you’d be working in politics?
A: I very distinctly remember the first time I wanted to work in politics was when I was 12 years old. I had watched a movie based on a true story of two journalists who uncovered the fact that Richard Nixon, the former president of the United States, and his administration was possibly behind the break-in at the DNC, as well as a lot of other cover ups and corruption within the Nixon administration. That led to the eventual resignation of Richard Nixon as president. Then I read a little more, and I was always interested in history. I just felt like I saw something in the government that I thought was bad and terrible and it made me want to do something that wasn’t bad and terrible in the government.
I had already grown up for a few years before that under the George W. Bush administration, while watching the “war on terror” unfold. I increasingly saw a government that I felt like wasn’t doing anything I believed in, wasn’t doing anything I liked or supported and I hated it. I wanted to figure out what I thought the government should be doing and what the world should look like and eventually got into politics. But…I also wasn’t sure, and at the same time a fun fact about me is that at that age, what I wanted to be more than anything was a movie director!
Q: Do you have a favorite politician, past or present?
A: I think one of my favorite politicians in Congress right now is a Justice Democrat, Rashida Tlaib. She’s the only Palestinian American woman in Congress. She’s Muslim and she has gone through so much as a Palestinian member of Congress working for a government that’s committing atrocities against her people. She has been one of a very small group of people who have fought against it. And her resilience…I don’t think there’s anyone in Congress who matches it. She does it all while being the most warm, kind and welcoming person, even though she does not have to. If there is anything that gives me hope, it’s leaders like her.
Q: What’s one thing about your job that might surprise people?
A: I think one thing that might surprise people is that despite the fact that we have the word “Democrats” in our name, it doesn’t mean that we support anyone who is a Democrat. In fact, we think there’s too many bad Democrats. Our candidates are fighting against their own Party more than anyone is, because we are trying to build an entirely new version of the Democratic Party. We’re willing to take on the worst members of that party and force them out of office to do so.They don’t like that, but people in power never like when their power is taken.
Q: If you could change one thing in the world right now, what would it be?
A: That’s really hard because I want to change a million things right now. There are so many terrible crises that’s happening in this world right now. I think if I could change one thing in our political system right now, it would be to take big money out of all of it. If we want to solve any of these crises, be it by ending the genocide by Israel, be it by fighting climate change, be it by passing universal health care, be it by ensuring that every single person in this country has a house or be it that we don’t want to continue arming others and creating war across the world…All that is obstructed by lobbies and super PACs who take unlimited amounts of dark money to influence our politicians and buy our elections. Whether that’s AIPAC, crypto, Wall Street, Big Pharma or the fossil fuel industry…They all want the same things which is to profit off of exploiting the rest of us. Be it the murder of Palestinians, be it the prevention of unionizing of workers or be it the destruction of our climate.
Talking with my uncle today gave me a whole new perspective on what it means to be involved in politics. His passion for helping others and his dedication to making a difference are truly inspiring. I learned so much about the hard work, challenges, and rewards that come with serving a community. I’m so proud of what he’s doing, and I hope his story encourages others to care about the world around them and find ways to make a positive impact.
My Maamoo and I. (Photo Credit: Sara Andrabi for the Houston Crescent.)