It’s official: We won our primary! And it’s all thanks to you. Since I was first elected, the status quo has tried to silence our movement with the help of Republican super PACs and billionaires. But we’ve come together once again to prove that organized people beat organized money. Our conservative primary opponent may have outraised us and gotten a boost from right-wing super PACs. But the bad-faith attacks and last-minute TV ad buys we faced this time around were no match for the strength of our people-powered movement. Our movement won because here in MN-05 and across the country, we refuse to accept the status quo that holds so many people back from achieving their dreams. We believe that a better, brighter future is possible. A future where the working class is given what they’re owed and corporations pay their fair share. A future where we put the health of our communities and our families over the profits of fossil fuel companies. A future where the highest court in the land doesn’t take away our individual freedoms, including the right to reproductive healthcare, or curb the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to combat climate change. A future where our public safety systems are rooted in compassion and justice and our foreign policy is centered on human rights. And a future where policies like Medicare for All, universal school meals, student debt cancellation, and a Green New Deal are recognized as the necessities they are. This kind of future isn’t far out of reach — as long as we’re willing to fight for it. There’s no telling what kind of attacks we’ll be up against in the coming months. Republicans spent upwards of $20 million to unseat me in 2020. We officially have a far-right Republican challenger who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars against us last quarter. And Donald Trump is back on the rally circuit and could decide to come to Minnesota at any time to try to undermine our movement. But I know we can overcome anything as long as we do it together. Thank you again for your support. I mean it when I say our campaign couldn’t have done this without you. In solidarity, Ilhan Omar
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ILHAN OMAR ENDURED LIES, ATTACK ADS, AND AIPAC FUNDING A FAKE CANDIDATE AND PREVAILED.
THIS IS JUST SOME OF THE INFORMATION:
Targeted By AIPAC Ads Over Support for Palestinian Rights, Omar Vows 'No Level of Harassment Will Silence Me'
"The rights of Palestinians and all people yearning for freedom and self-determination will not be ignored."
Meet the Fake Progressive Opposing Ilhan Omar
Ilhan Omar speaking with supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders at a canvass launch in Las Vegas, Nevada, on February 9, 2020. (photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)Congresswoman Ilhan Omar on Wednesday vowed not to be deterred from fighting for Palestinian rights after the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC began running ads this week linking the Minnesota Democrat with Hamas, spots that Omar's office condemned as both inaccurate and dangerous.
"Given the number of threats of death and violence the congresswoman receives on a near-daily basis, it's not just irresponsible—it's incitement," Isi Baehr-Breen, Omar's deputy communications director, told The Nation.
On Monday, AIPAC began running a Facebook ad showing Omar's face next to a barrage of rockets. "When Israel targets Hamas," the ad reads, "Rep. Omar calls it an 'act of terrorism.'"
The ad appears to be referencing a tweet last week in which Omar—who has denounced Israel's killing of Palestinians and Hamas rocket attacks—described Israeli airstrikes on civilians in the occupied Gaza Strip as "an act of terrorism" and said that "Palestinians deserve protection."
"This is desperate and deeply offensive," Omar said of AIPAC's ad on Wednesday. "The rights of Palestinians and all people yearning for freedom and self-determination will not be ignored and no level of harassment will silence me or the millions of people demanding peace and justice."
The influential pro-Israel lobbying group has also launched ads in recent days targeting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the first Palestinian-American woman ever elected to Congress.
"Israel is under attack," reads a Facebook ad featuring Omar and the four other progressive lawmakers, all of whom have criticized the Israeli government's ongoing, devastating assault on Gaza, an air and artillery campaign that has killed more than 220 Palestinians, wounded many more, and displaced nearly 60,000 in just over a week.
The ads targeting progressive critics of Israel are so egregious that they're drawing rebukes from fervently pro-Israel top Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.).
"I disagree with the statements made by the members, but attacking them in ads does not advance the goal of increasing support for Israel," said Hoyer, a regular speaker at AIPAC's annual conference.
Pelosi, for her part, called the ads attacking Omar "deeply cynical and inflammatory."
"As we always respect Israel's right to defend herself," said Pelosi, "there must be a serious effort on the part of both parties in the conflict to end the violence and respect the rights of both the Israeli and Palestinian people."
As The Nation's Aída Chávez reported Wednesday, "Omar's office is calling on Facebook to immediately remove the ads, which 'blatantly peddle both anti-Muslim hate speech and disinformation,' and on AIPAC to apologize."
Chávez noted that the lobbying organization's latest campaign is "consistent with AIPAC's broader rhetoric; in 2019, the pro-Israel group was forced to apologize and remove at least four Facebook ads saying that Omar, Tlaib, and Representative Betty McCollum, one of the few congressional critics of Israel's treatment of Palestinians, pose a threat 'maybe more sinister' than ISIS."
In a tweet on Wednesday, Tlaib wrote that "to launch such a blatantly Islamophobic attack on Ilhan Omar right now is reprehensible."
"I stand with her to oppose the violence Israel's apartheid government is perpetrating," Tlaib added. "You will not silence those who stand for human rights."
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Meet the Fake Progressive Opposing Ilhan Omar
Liza FeatherstoneJacobinIlhan Omar speaking with supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders at a canvass launch in Las Vegas, Nevada, on February 9, 2020. (photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)Ilhan Omar, one of the most left-wing members of Congress, faces a primary challenger, Don Samuels, backed by an unsavory circle of right-wing billionaires and cops. Despite being an enemy of public schools, he’s calling himself a progressive.
His Twitter account emphasizes his liberalism: gun control, protecting abortion rights, public school advocacy, and green jobs. He also wants to strengthen voting rights and make health care more affordable. But if he’s that progressive, why is he challenging Ilhan Omar at all? As usual, following the money provides an answer: Samuels and his campaign are supported by reactionary billionaires who want to get rid of Omar.
When Samuels first ran for Minneapolis School Board in 2014, he was backed by a coalition of billionaires — Michael Bloomberg, Arthur Rock, and Jonathan Sackler — supporting charter schools. In an effort to deceive voters who might otherwise oppose their school privatization schemes, these moguls called their PAC the Minnesota Progressive Education Fund and poured what In These Times magazine called an “unprecedented” amount of money (some $290,000) into two school board candidates. One of these was Samuels.
In the current race, Samuels is backed by even worse interests, including several Republican super PACs funded by the same billionaires that support Marjorie Taylor Greene, Josh Hawley, Laura Loomer, and Kelly Loeffler.
He’s also backed by the same police PACs that support Senator Tom Cotton and Lee Zeldin (the far-right zealot seeking to unseat New York governor Kathy Hochul). (These groups also donated to candidates trying to unseat Omar’s Squad-mates AOC, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley.)
It’s not hard to see why. Samuels has been a staunch opponent of local campaigns to shift funding from the police into other priorities, efforts Omar has supported. Indeed, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis cops, when millions of Americans were pouring into the streets to protest racist police violence, Samuels and his wife were suing the city of Minneapolis to demand that the city hire one hundred additional police officers. (That lawsuit is ongoing.)
Right-wing donors have been hosting fundraisers for Samuels. These include Andy Brehm (a prominent critic of progressive attorney general Keith Ellison), Steve Cramer of the Minneapolis Downtown Council (a prominent opponent of police accountability), and several of Minneapolis’s worst landlords — including one family of billionaires who faced state investigation in 2020 for creating an atmosphere of racial discrimination, harassment, and hostility for their tenants, who were Somali women with children.
The conservative National Review magazine published a fawning profile of Samuels on Thursday, noting that even though he is a Democrat, “there are reasons for conservatives and others on the right to wish him well on Tuesday.” In addition to Samuels’s die-hard police fandom, the National Review writer appreciated his support for charter schools and vouchers and, “most importantly,” emphasized that Samuels had, of any opponent, the best chance of defeating Omar.
The teachers’ union has not fallen for Samuels’s claims to the progressive mantle. (The United Steelworkers and a couple of building trades unions unfortunately are backing him, though Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and other unions are behind Omar.) Greta Callahan, president of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Education Support Professionals, in an op-ed for the Star Tribune, pointed to Omar’s support for public school teachers and students — from pushing for universal free school lunch during the pandemic, cancellation of school lunch debt, and a permanent end to punitive school lunch policies to standing with striking Minneapolis teachers on the picket line in the freezing winter. (The strike, which called for caps on class sizes and increased mental health support for students, as well as higher teacher pay, was successful.)
In her op-ed, Callahan contrasted the congresswoman’s allegiances with those of her opponent: Samuels not only failed to support the striking teachers but has said he would never send his children to public school and memorably called for burning down one of Minneapolis’s high schools.
Since her election to Congress in 2018, Omar has been an effective fighter not only on education but also on climate, health care, affordable housing, food justice, and greater accountability for the military and military contractors. Among elected officials serving at the federal level, she has also been one of the few outspoken opponents of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
For all these reasons and many more (including, of course, the fact that Omar is Muslim), she has received countless death threats and been singled out for violent harassment by Donald Trump’s followers. She has been the target of knuckle-draggingly ignorant bigotry from her own colleagues, with Representative Lauren Boebert calling her a member of the “jihad Squad.”
Omar’s last primary challenge was animated by Islamophobic elements of this kind. That’s not where Samuels is coming from, but the ruling class and organized cops supporting him are equally dangerous and deserving of defeat.
Given Omar’s courageous positions, it’s easy to understand why right-wing billionaires would want to stop her. But the Democratic voters of Minneapolis should not be fooled by their faux-progressive campaign.
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