Skokie Candidate Chosen Among 'College Women Of The Year'

SKOKIE, IL — Bushra Amiwala of Skokie was announced among Glamor Magazine College Women of the Year earlier this month. The 20-year-old Niles North graduate and DePaul University student earlier this year ran against incumbent Larry Suffredin for his seat on the Cook County Board of Commissioners. Amiwala said was the youngest person to ever run to represent the 13th District, which extends from Evanston to Skokie and north to Glencoe.

In her essay for Glamour, Amiwala remembers getting a call from a "man active in area politics" who asked her to come to his office. She wrote she was excited and headed over to the meeting looking forward to what he would say.

"Don’t run for this position. I say you drop out," he said, stunning her, according to her essay. Amiwala told Patch she was not comfortable disclosing the man's identity.

Amiwala received 25 percent of votes to Suffredin's 59 percent, losing the March 20 Democratic primary but gaining national prominence in the process.

For instance, she was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in January for a piece about a record number of women running for office, was named by MuslimGirl.com as one of the 18 Muslim Women to Watch in 2018 and received the HWPL Publicity Ambassador Award, sponsored by the United Nation's Department of Public Information.

Throughout her campaign, Amiwala said questions about her ethnicity and religion identity "distracted the message" of her campaign, as people focused more on her appearance and identity than her policy ideas.

Those ideas included heightening awareness of county programs, decriminalizing marijuana and increasing the minimum wage. (Although her opponent Suffredin was lead sponsor on the county ordinance gradually raising minimum wage to $15 an hour.)

Amiwala registered thousands of people from marginalized groups to vote for the first time during the campaign, she wrote. She organized a voter registration drive for the South Asian community and spoke to all the high schools in the district, often leaving with thousands of email addresses.

From the beginning of my campaign, I sought the support of the marginalized: mobilizing hundreds of first-time voters—young people, people of color, and people from immigrant communities.

“Why bother engaging groups of people who do not matter?” political experts said to me. “Those people will not vote for you, and they won’t vote against you—they won’t donate a single dollar to your campaign.”

Well guess what? They did show up. Over 400 of “those people” came out to my second fund-raising dinner where I was able to out-fund-raise the incumbent by three times the amount.

Glamor Assistant Editor Jessica Militare, who runs the College Women of the Year competition, said the program has been active for more than 60 years and receives hundreds of applications annually. She told Pioneer Press Amiwala epitomizes the goal of the showcase.

“She’s a trailblazer with no fear. I admire that she wanted to shake up the status quo in local politics and make herself seen and heard,” Militare told the Skokie Review. “Even though she didn’t win her election, the impact her campaign had is major. She mobilized first-time voters, uplifted communities that are traditionally ignored, and her visibility as a young Muslim woman in politics will continue to inspire others to run.”

Amiwala, who recently completed her freshman year at DePaul, wrote that many men at her local mosque didn't take her seriously, but women were some of her most important allies in her challenge to the establishment.

Read Bushra Amiwala's complete essay in Glamour magazine's College Women of the Year issue.