Aisha Yaqoob Mahmood: Contesting for Progressive Governing Power
Pronouns: she/her
Age: 29
Location: Rome, GA
Organization: AAAF — Asian American Advocacy Fund
Dedicated to: Immigrants & refugees
Finds joy in: Cats
Inspired by: Black women organizers
Frequently used emojis: 😅 💕 😬
Social Media Handles: @yaqooberz
Self Introduction:
My name is Aisha, I use she/her pronouns. I’m the Executive Director of the Asian American Advocacy Fund. I grew up in the Metro Atlanta area but now live in rural northwest Georgia. I am Pakistani American. I’ve been doing organizing work in Georgia for the last seven years. I developed a strong passion for immigrant rights and civic engagement and founded the Georgia Muslim Voter Project and worked as the Policy Director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice — Atlanta. These experiences have strengthened my desire to fight for justice for all marginalized people, including Muslims, immigrants, and refugees.
Aisha, in conversation with the Asian American Advocacy Fund. This Q&A was edited for grammar and clarity. Photographs are from Aisha’s personal collection.
Can you share your first memory of organizing?
I was organizing before I knew it was organizing. When I was in A.P. government in high school, we were learning about the basics of getting involved in local government, like signing petitions and contacting elected officials. I had just started driving the year before, and there was a traffic light by the school that we would wait for 15–20 minutes to change, and it would take me so long to get back to my neighborhood. A lot of my friends also had problems with that traffic light, and we had the idea of asking the City of Suwanee for a left turn signal light in front of the school. We did all the research and put in a request with the City, and we were told we had to contact the County. The County responded by doing a traffic study, and they eventually said there wasn’t enough traffic in the area to warrant a left turn signal. We were so upset, and I remember being so passionate about this one thing that impacted my life so much. Now, when I drive by my high school, there is a left turn signal there! It was my first glimpse about what is possible when you have a group of people who want something to happen and you follow the steps and try to make it happen.
How did you come to form your political views and your sense of justice?
A lot of my views around justice and equality come from my faith. I grew up as a Muslim and went to Islamic classes at Sunday school. I learned about the Golden Rule of treating people the way you want to be treated and caring for your community and especially the elderly and children. That was instilled in us that that’s what you do. It was very different from the individualistic views that a lot of other American families grow up with. Even if you’re comfortable, if other people are suffering in your community, it’s your responsibility to be part of solutions. My family was involved in the community and always giving back. This developed into a justice mindset and has shifted into advocacy because I know the root causes of a lot of these problems can’t be fixed with just money and volunteering every weekend at a shelter. There’s more that needs to happen to stop some of these harms from occurring. That was intertwined with my schooling. I did a Masters in Public Policy to try to learn more deeply about how day to day policy making impacts our communities. I learned that immigrant rights, racial justice, and voting rights was the slice of the puzzle where I wanted to devote my energy.
Which communities are you connected to, and what are some of the needs and desires of those communities?
I grew up in Gwinnett County, and my in-laws are from Cobb County, so I spend time in both communities. I am part of the South Asian Muslim community. There are community members who are struggling and living paycheck to paycheck; and there are community members who are undocumented. A well-known community member’s dad was deported three years ago, but no one talks about that kind of stuff. There’s also a lot of issues around domestic violence that have come up recently, when a community member was killed a few months ago. There are a lot of underlying issues that everyone is aware of but don’t get talked about enough, especially about issues working class communities are going through.
Tell us about your work and evolution with AAAF and doing electoral advocacy.
Over the last four years, the biggest shift in our work has become figuring out what it means to do political work in our community. We need to be engaged with the community year-round and not just during elections. We are learning how to contest for governing power and hold elected officials accountable, especially when our communities helped elect them in the first place. Our community has been the margin of victory for congressional seats and are learning about flexing the muscle for our electoral power. This will be an important part of our work moving forward.
What’s at stake for our communities now?
Every day we’re hearing from people that they are worried about gun violence, they’re worried about school safety, they’re worried about reproductive health, they’re worried about inflation and student debt. We’ve been able to make some progress on at least student loans, but there’s still so much more that people need. As we approach a recession, I think it’s only going to get worse unless we have people in governing power locally and at the state level that can support the most vulnerable communities.
What are your hopes for the future?
We’ve been fighting against so many things. Now we want the opportunity to fight for something. We are trying to build positive, forward-facing policies that our community can get excited about–providing access to so much that is still out of reach for people, like more funding for public education, accessible college tuition rates, drivers licenses for undocumented people, humane immigration reform, and helping people returning home from prison become more integrated in their communities. We may have the opportunity to move that forward by electing Stacey Abrams as our Governor and with more progressive local leadership. We’ve made some strides but there’s a lot more that can happen.
Why is this year’s election important?
We’re excited about supporting a group of really exciting down-ballot (state and local) candidates. We are so excited about Stacey Abrams for Governor, but we also know that she needs other progressive elected leaders to help her push our policy agenda forward. It’s so exciting because we have lots of Asian Americans running for these seats, and it paints a picture of what’s possible when we have people in power in the Governor role and also in the State Legislature. Even winning a couple more seats will put us in a better place to negotiate on legislation moving forward.
Representation matters! If we make some progress in electing folks like Ruwa Roman to the State House District 97, she’d be the first Palestinian person elected in the state of Georgia, which is incredibly motivating and would encourage more Palestinian Americans to get active and engaged. If we can elect Long Tran to the State Legislature, we would have another progressive Vietnamese American in state leadership. We are building a bench of people who both represent our communities and stand up for our progressive values about caring for our most vulnerable community members.
The Asian American Advocacy Fund is a grassroots 501(c)4 social welfare organization dedicated to building a politically-conscious, engaged, and progressive Asian American base in Georgia.
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