John, good morning!
You may know me as a New York City Council member, a community organizer, and as New York City’s Democratic Nominee for Comptroller — but what you may not know is that I’m also the number one cheerleader for NY-12’s future Congresswoman, Rana Abdelhamid. I’ve been on her team since day 1! (I’ve even got a picture speaking during her live-streamed campaign launch as proof)
I want to share the story of how I met her, but first I have a request: Rana is running in an extremely competitive race and she could use your help. John, it would mean the world to me if you could chip in anything, even just $5, to split between our campaign and Rana’s.
So here’s the story of how I met Rana: Shortly after Donald Trump was elected, a group of Muslim young women in my district brought forward a powerful idea. With Islamophobia and xenophobia on the rise in the district, they wanted to organize self-defense classes that would not only teach them skills to protect themselves, but to de-escalate potentially violent situations, and to promote broader healing and empowerment. As Muslim young women, they felt that organizing this kind of training could help them take their place in this democracy and in this neighborhood, without fear and with full courage.
That was the beginning of our partnership with Malikah, a grassroots, nonprofit, self-defense and education organization that Rana founded. Rana worked together with these young women, designing a series of self-defense, healing, personal and financial empowerment trainings and implementing them over the course of the next year.
I got to go to the very first session (Rana and her team put on an amazing class, but I’m grateful there are no videos of me trying to keep up!), and to attend the graduation several months later -- and the transformation was really remarkable.
Through the program, these young women were able to demand justice and equity, fight against injustice, racism, and sexism, and take their full place in building an inclusive, multiracial democracy.
John, this is why, when I heard that Rana Abdelhamid was running for Congress, I wanted to be on the team from day one. Rana’s commitment to building safety and power for all of us, to making sure we have a just recovery out of this pandemic, to winning the inclusive multi-racial democracy that we all deserve — it’s going to change New York, and our country, for the better.
Now you can join her team, too! Every dollar makes a real impact. It would mean the world to me if you could chip in today, and help get Rana to Congress.
Thanks for taking the time to meet Rana!
Brad Lander
