We are celebrating the historic victories of candidates that OneAmerica Votes endorsed like Toshiko Hasegawa and Hamdi Mohamed, the first Women of Color to serve on the Port Commission. Hamdi is also the first Somali woman to be elected in Washington State.
But this was not an easy election season. We have our work cut out for us to continue to flip more districts, city councils and school boards across the state to create a representative democracy.
Get out the vote efforts right before elections aren’t enough. We need to organize year round to invest in leaders from our communities to run for office and build an immigrant electorate. We need leaders, who have lived experiences, to have seats at the table and authentically represent our communities.