There’s another Gen Z candidate running in the 9th Congressional District to replace retiring Representative Jan Schakowsky. Last month, we brought you the story of Kat Abughazaleh, the 26-year-old right-wing-baiting internet influencer who moved to Chicago last year and is already running for Congress in a district she doesn’t even live in yet. This month, meet Bushra Amiwala, a 27-year-old who has spent her entire life in Rogers Park and Skokie, and is trying to get to Washington from a seat on her local school board. 

I met Amiwala in a coffee shop on Oakton Avenue, where she was not the only customer wearing a hijab. Skokie has changed a lot in the 21st Century. There are six mosques in town now, which is one reason Amiwala thinks a young Muslim can win a congressional seat that has been held by a Jewish politician for all but two years since 1949.

Amiwala has been running for office almost since she was old enough to vote. Her parents, who are from Pakistan, never discussed American politics, so she knew nothing about it until taking an AP government class as a senior at Niles North High School. This was the year Donald Trump was running his first campaign for president. Repelled by Trump’s “anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant, anti-human rhetoric,” Amiwala resolved to learn more about the Republican Party. She signed up as a field intern for Senator Mark Kirk, going door to door interviewing Republican voters. Impressed with Amiwala’s work, the head field coordinator told her, “You should run for public office.” So in 2018, while a 19-year-old student at DePaul University, she did, challenging incumbent county board member Larry Suffredin in the Democratic primary. 

“I knew nothing at the time,” Amiwala recalled. “Who should I call? The guy who owes me $10 from high school?”

Amiwala lost, but she raised $80,000 and got 14,000 votes, even winning her hometown Niles Township. The day after the election, Suffredin called and encouraged her to run for office again — as long as it wasn’t against him. The next year, she was elected to the Skokie School District 73.5 board, a seat she still holds. Suffredin wrote the first check for that campaign. Amiwala  still lives with her parents, supporting them with a job as a consultant for Google, where she was recently forced to stop teaching a Muslim allyship course because the company holds federal contracts. 

“Donald Trump was president the first time I ran for office. The fact that he’s president right now pains me,” she says. Running for Congress, she believes, is “a natural step in progression” from the school board, even though she’ll be facing more experienced politicians in next year’s primary: Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss and state Senator Laura Fine. (Hey, Lyndon Johnson was only 28 when he won his first race for Congress, and he did all right for himself in politics.)

“The Venn diagram of their support is the same,” Amiwala said of Biss and Fine, forming a circle with her hands. “They’re the same person. I think I have a lane.”

Amiwala doesn’t like comparisons with Abughazaleh. In some ways, the two are completely different: Abughazaleh is a national figure trying to go local, while Amiwala is a local figure trying to go national. But they’re likely to compete for the same pool of young, left-wing voters. As a member of Congress, Amiwala would petition for membership in The Squad, the mini-caucus of progressive women of color that was founded by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and includes Muslim Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Like Abughazaleh, Amiwala is opposed to continuing military aid to Israel, a big issue in a district that is still 11 percent Jewish, much higher than the national average.

“We need to push for an immediate, permanent cease fire” in Gaza, Amiwala said. “To have so much of our taxpayer dollars funding a humanitarian crisis in Palestine is not okay. And I don’t think we need to spend any more money on this. We need to leverage the money we’ve already given Israel to force them to sit at the table and come to a cease fire.”

In Congress, Amiwala also wants to regulate artificial intelligence and protect workers who lose their jobs as a result of the new automation.

“As a young person, I’m scared every day that AI will take my job,” she said. “I mean, my job is how I get my health insurance, and if I lost my job overnight, what are government protections in place for a working person like me?”

I gave Amiwala the same local knowledge quiz I gave Abughazaleh. What landmark is at 1060 West Addison Street? (Wrigley Field) What hot dog stand is known for posting provocative messages on its sign? (The Wiener’s Circle) What was the first city in the U.S. to grant its Black residents reparations? (Evanston) What Wilmette landmark looks like an orange juicer? (The Baha’i Temple) What small town has a name like the country in Black Panther? (Wauconda) She got 4 out of 5 right, missing only the question about the Wiener’s Circle, because, as a Muslim, “I don’t eat hot dogs.” That was better than Abughazaleh’s 2 out of 5, but she let me know she thought it was a silly exercise.

“I don’t see how this qualifies in any way,” she said.

You don’t get to Congress in your 20s without a no-nonsense attitude like that.