Maryam Abolfazli- Running for Change
Vote and get others to vote- we can flip the >>> out of Tennessee
Questions? Concerns? Suggestions? flynnconsult@gmail.com
Friends, I had the pleasure of interviewing Maryam Abolfazli, the only Democrat in this year’s race for the United States 5th Congressional District. The seat is currently held by incumbent Republican Andy Ogles (do I hear boos from the crowd?), whose August 1 primary challenger is Republican Courtney Johnson, currently District 26 Metro Council member.
Please take the time to listen to Maryam’s responses to my questions. She is painting a portrait of possibility and hope for our state. Once you hear her message, I hope you will donate to her campaign (it takes a lot of money to run for a Congressional seat) and volunteer to help her WIN on November 5th. It is possible if we believe and engage.
You can also follow Maryam on Instagram and Facebook.
Spring is the season of hope. May it sustain you through the months leading up to November. We ARE in this together. Michele
Question 1: What do you want people to know about you?
Of primary importance to Maryam’s identity is being the daughter of parents who emigrated to the US from Iran in 1978 because the country was becoming a theocracy (my word) and stripping women of their freedoms. Her parents valued sacrificing for the greater good- of their family, but also the wider community- which underpins Maryam’s desire to serve others as an elected official. Authenticity, hard work, and strong family connections are important to Maryam. She and her sister were born in the US and attended Hume Fogg High School.
Question 2: Talk about your international economic and political development work.
From a young age, Maryam saw herself as a bridge builder between people and communities. She was curious about the world and wanted to help people communicate and better each other. Early on she realized it was impossible to talk about international relations without integrating economic policy. She studied briefly at the London School of Economics, traveled in Spain, and was hired by the United Nations to help rehabilitation efforts in Afghanistan in 2003-04, after years of war and Taliban rule. Much of her work was about affirming people’s dignity, particularly by offering them the opportunity to work and rebuild their country. Maryam secured a graduate degree from Columbia University’s School of International Public Affairs and went to work for The World Bank. She then helped to develop international online schools, for groups such as women entrepreneurs wanting to start a business and teachers interested in offering civic education.
Question 3: Tell us about your trajectory, from early international work to founding Rise and Shine Tennessee. And why did you move back to Tennessee?
Maryam believes her work has been fueled by wanting to make the world a better place, through policy and civic engagement. When she moved back to Nashville in 2018, Maryam became engaged with the Metro Human Relations Commission, of which she is currently the Chair. She also worked on state legislative policy issues through AWAKE, focusing on women’s reproductive freedom and domestic violence issues. Reflecting on the connections between her international, statewide, and local work, Maryam suggested that the underlying question facing all of us is, “…how do we engage to maintain our freedoms as a civil society? “
Maryam moved back to Nashville because she wanted to raise her son where she had been brought up, saying “It was just the best childhood and I wanted it for him.” She concluded that Tennessee is a great place for community, something she found lacking in other areas.
Question 4: I discovered you are an author, something I didn’t know about you.
Maryam said she began writing as a child to process what she observed, especially injustices in the world and locally.
Question 5: Talk about Rise and Shine Tennessee.
Rise and Shine grew out of the Covenant School tragedy, Maryam’s previous policy and civic engagement work, and a desire for people to gather together to express their frustration and share their grief communally. Three days after the shooting, Maryam helped to organize a rally where people cried, shouted, and sang together. Afterward, in response to requests to continue this work, Rise and Shine was formed to focus on opportunity, freedom, and safety for all Tennesseans. Grassroots women came to the legislature daily to express concerns about issues impacting their lives, particularly their children. As Maryam began to shift away from her daily work at Rise and Shine to run for election to the US District 5 seat, the organization has continued under the leadership of a strong group of volunteers.
Question 6: What were the key issues Rise and Shine focused on at the Legislature and what were your biggest take-aways?
The three main areas for Rise and Shine are opportunity, safety, and freedom. Opportunity is about passing legislation that ensures the middle class can thrive. Safety is about gun responsibility and passing safe gun laws, instead of loosening the few gun laws currently in place and passing the “arming teachers bill,” which school districts have rejected. Freedom is about stopping Pride flag bans, criminalizing youth, and curtailing reproductive freedoms. Maryam noted that“…Tennesseans are responsible gun owners, they want their children to be safe and are fine with laws that curtail danger in the state.”
Another issue Rise and Shine worked on was stopping Vouchers. Maryam said, “Public education is incredible and really important. It creates diversity and acceptance in people, ensures our futures are diverse, and that we can all work together and empathize with each other. That is very much needed in a pluralistic democracy.” Maryam concluded, “I’m really proud of all Tennesseans for the work they did (to stop Vouchers) because that agenda was coming from outside of our state. .. It showed the lawmakers that you cannot pull the wool over our eyes.”
Question 7: Regarding the article, The Rhetoric and the Reality of the New Southern Strategy, I am curious about your thoughts regarding the co-governance model they discussed.
Maryam said that civic engagement means we are all part of the process of democracy. She continued, we may hear Republican policymakers in Tennessee “refer to ‘the Republic’ and not ‘democracy’ … to carve out the concept of co-governance or collaboration or responsiveness to a polity.” Since US Representative Jim Cooper left office, there has not been a constituent office in Nashville, an example of the lack of co-governance, of people distanced from their federal representatives. In contrast, Maryam said that in all of her program and policy work, she sought input from the public. “When we were writing grants for a new program I would get on the phone with regular folks and say, ‘Tell me what you are struggling with, precisely…’” Maryam expects to continue this approach if elected by District 5 constituents, to ask and listen, “So whatever I am proposing or co-sponsoring actually is relevant to our challenges.”
Question 8: What are the greatest challenges in the US today, given you are running for a US congressional seat from Tennessee?
Maryam immediately responded, “Keeping our freedoms and democracy intact.” She commented on the effort to create an oligarchy in this country. The Right has written about their effort to create this playbook in the US (such as Project 2025). “They don’t trust that governing of the people, for the people, by the people is really important or necessary.” She provided a long list of freedoms that could be lost under this vision and said, “The US as we know it today would not be existing.” Maryam concluded, “…there would be a stratification of the society based on your wealth and your means and your privilege and probably on your race and ethnicity. It’s a dangerous world and it’s not one that we ought to go back to and it’s one that I’m willing to fight to stop.”
Question 9: Your reaction to Charles Taylor’s (Mississippi NAACP) quote in the article, The Rhetoric and the Reality of the New Southern Strategy, in the Southern Cultures Journal: “Playing by the house rules, the house always wins.”
Maryam began her response by reflecting, “Despite a relative prosperity at this time in our lives and decreasing crime and violence, we are a very anxious people, and our politicians play off that anxiety and created an extremely divisive world… and they try to rile us up... The House floor, whether in DC or Tennessee, is not a civil place.” Her preference is to engage in a civil discourse that works toward common legislative goals but when there is injustice, an imbalance of power, or a rule being applied unequally, she will call it out as effectively as possible. “It is my duty and my integrity…” She concluded that she will, “…continue talking to the voters about what’s going on in DC and I hope and I plan to maintain that communication….”
Question 10: Another quote Maryam responded to: “Politics is the expression of economic interests.”
Maryam noted that she went from international relations to economic policy because she saw that those who with money get to call the shots. She reframed the question, “Who are we doling out the interest to?” and that the budget is a moral document, showing what is important to our country. Maryam referenced the inequity of the middle class paying “30% of the tax load,” when corporations, who now have rights as individuals along with a “ton of power… a lot of times pay 0.” She stated that this is not fair or okay and not what the US is about. She then circled back to the theme of sacrifice, saying, “I don’t need to make more at the cost of someone making significantly less, mostly because we don’t need to be suffering… but“a lot of people are suffering, living check to check… It’s not how it should be. I think we can lift all of us together.”
Question 11: Another quote Maryam responded to: How do we make sure that people who want to hurt us are never elected to office?
Maryam began by saying that when she was growing up, running for office was about public service. She then directly addressed Tennessee registered voters: “We are 51st in the nation” in voter turnout. While she understands why, and lists several reasons, she asked folks to use their vote. “If we vote we actually have the chance to bring change. In District 5, we have the votes to vote me in, despite all of the gerrymandering. It is possible, up and down the ballot.” She concluded that the only way to keep people out of office who are not there to serve the interests of the majority of residents is to, “Vote, and take 10 of your friends to vote and take it seriously like it’s your job.” She concluded, “But we can’t be hopeless about it.”
Question 12: The final quote was: “The light is being turned on as we emerge into a true democracy.”
Maryam posited that when you have true diversity (and she lists exactly what she means by this) “…then you come into a vision of a true democracy.” She reminds us that when you shine a light you see what’s wrong, “like a magnifying glass.” The light is “the opportunity for all of us to be uncomfortable, to question ourselves…” but “one of the hardest things… is the light that is shined on you.” She concluded by asking all of us to, “…let people make mistakes… to get it wrong and to try to get it right… No one is perfect but if we’re trying to get it right it should be pretty good for everybody.”
Question 13: Is there anything else that you’d like to say to your future constituents?
Maryam began by saying, “Tennesseans should believe in themselves, get to believe in themselves, get to believe in the feeling that they have in their gut that things may or may not be right, that it might be a moment for a change and to act on that.”
She concluded, “We can do this together but we can’t do this alone… Have those conversations that you’re scared to have… I think more of us want change… It’s a good moment to make that happen.”