Ruwa Romman never planned to run for office. She had been working as a field organizer in Georgia for a decade when her community urged her to throw her hat into the ring. “I want to put public service back into politics,” she said. “That’s why I agreed to run.”
Romman won the race to represent Georgia’s 97th District, becoming the first Muslim woman elected to the state assembly and the first Palestinian American to hold elected office in the state. Her victory marked a generational shift: many Muslim and Arab families had responded to the post-9/11 rise in hate crimes and bigotry by teaching their children to keep their heads down. Romman belongs to the generation that refused.
She has an electric ability to connect with voters. She regularly livestreams on TikTok, posting thoughtful videos on what building political power looks like. Core to her campaigns is her identity as an immigrant and an American. She came to the United States from Jordan when she was 8 years old. Her grandparents were Palestinian refugees; Suba, her grandfather’s village, no longer exists.
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While running for office, Romman’s opponent used blatantly racist rhetoric in campaign attack ads. That abuse ratcheted up after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. Romman pushed through it, using her perch and power to challenge who gets to belong in American politics by insisting that Muslim, Arab, Palestinian and immigrant communities deserve more than symbolic inclusion.
In 2024, Romman became a vocal supporter of the Uncommitted Movement, a campaign to pressure the Democratic presidential nominee to support a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The group put her name forward for a speaker’s slot at the Democratic National Convention — a meaningful opportunity to include, on the party’s biggest stage, a Palestinian American calling for an end to the war in Gaza. Though she was not invited, she stood outside the convention center in Chicago, reading her drafted speech, in which she called for a ceasefire and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.
Romman is now running for the Georgia state senate. Her pitch to voters is rooted in representation and inclusion: “I want us to be so powerful, people have no choice but to listen.”
This profile is apart of The 19th’s Revolutionary series. Subscribe to The Amendment, our biweekly newsletter, to receive project updates and political analysis focused on gender, race and power.
our past coverage of Ruwa Romman
· October 31, 2024
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