Rashida Tlaib on Congress’ Working Class Problem

Tlaib listens to a House Financial Services Committee hearing, July 17, 2019 [Reuters/Joshua Roberts]

By Samantha Grasso and Tony Karon

In U.S. politics, social class matters. Inequality is rampant in America, and class determines who eats and who goes hungry, who has a home and who fears eviction, whose kids get a quality education and whose are neglected, who gets top quality health care and who has to choose between groceries and meds, whose neighborhoods are leafy green and whose smell like toxic waste, and so much more.

Earlier this month, AJ+ senior presenter Dena Takruri spoke with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the Palestinian American legislator elected to represent a working-class Detroit neighborhood, about her surprise at learning how many of her Capitol Hill colleagues are millionaires. That “awakening” came during her congressional orientation, she recalled, when she found herself having to explain to colleagues why so many federal employees were standing in line at food banks — their well-heeled backgrounds had shielded them from understanding the economic reality that so many working-class Americans face.

Democrats are disconnected

The disconnect between many Democrats and the lives of millions of BIPOC working-class voters who won the party the presidency last November worries Tlaib, she said. “I know absolutely [that] my colleagues, well-intended or not, don't fully understand” what it’s like to ask the people in her district to wait for change. It’s those voters who carry the painful, often fatal burden of COVID failures, of the broken health care system and of an economy that puts the profits of corporations above the wellbeing of ordinary people. That’s why she advocates for recruiting candidates to make the Democratic Party more representative — not only by measure of race and gender, but also of social class. “It is very evident to me that it's not only about making sure that Congress looks like America,” she said, “but it also talks and feels like what the American experience is like right now.”

Her constituents come first

Tlaib believes it's important to represent the urgent needs of her constituents — even when that means putting pressure on the leadership of her own party. She related how she told President Biden that though they may share the same goals, her constituents can’t wait for the far-reaching change they need right now. That’s why she has little patience for fellow Democrats who criticize her advocating policies such as defunding the police. “When they try to silence me or … reduce what I'm trying to do [in terms of] combating poverty or systematic racism, you're silencing my residents. You're telling Black and brown folks, ‘Be quiet, it's not your turn.’ But then you come around and then you ask them to vote for you … for President Biden and others,” Tlaib said.

Tlaib isn’t alone

Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), another member of The Squad, has also talked about how her experiences as a working-class single mother and organizer in the Black Lives Matter movement has shaped her policy views. Bush told MSNBC after winning election to the House of Representatives, “I’ve slept in my car. I know what it’s like to try to move the car around the St. Louis area, hoping that the police won’t stop me and take my kids from me. I know what that’s like.” Those experiences, Bush said, were the reason she would use her position in Congress to push for “radical change.” She understood the urgency of raising the federal minimum wage through her own experience of hunger, for example. “It’s one thing to know I can’t eat today, but I’m making sure my children eat,” Bush said. “It’s another thing — it does something to your mind — when you know not only am I not eating today, I don't know how I’m going to eat next week.”

To watch more of the conversation with Tlaib, watch Takruri’s interview:

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