"The people closest to the pain are the ones who need political education the most"
With so many things affecting our country, and especially our communities, the lack of political education has unfortunately become a normal occurrence. Many have not understood the power of voting or even knowing what rights they do have a citizen to create change. This is where Basheemah comes in.
Residing in Philadelphia for over a decade, Basheemah serves as the outreach coordinator at POWER Interfaith. She credits her early experiences with the social justice to when she joined a student walk-out at her high school when there were job cut threatened to educators that were cherished by the black and brown students. The sentiments of justice carried on into her work today. “I’m a lover and a fighter, and I get to do both at POWER.”
Basheemah credits God in directing her to move according to her purpose and help break toxic cycles in the black and brown communities she’s grown up in. Calling this work “vital to our existence,” political education has become the vehicle used to empower her community. The key to encouraging civic engagement is by seeing the self-interest of congregants and community members. If you can’t understand their pain and what they’re suffering from, you won’t be able to provide solutions that stick with them. “All self-interest eventually leads back to voting and who gets placed in office to do what we want them to do in our communities.” We have to make our politicians work for us, and those politicians must share in our self-interest. “How can someone who never experienced any hurt or struggle know what we are going through?”
For us to even get there, we must look inward; identify what hurts us, and share those same pain points with our neighbors as we look towards solutions. “Once we find what hurts us, we can find what can heal us.”
