My cover story in The Nation magazine

I’ve been following the Manhattan District Attorney race closely (and, if you’re interested in reforming our legal system, you should be, too). One of the most exciting elements of the race is the candidacy of progressive civil right lawyer Tahanie Aboushi for the office. I profiled her for The Nation, which put the story on its cover for the May 31 /June 7 issue.

T

o hear Tahanie Aboushi tell it, a courtroom can be a strange place for a Muslim woman lawyer.

“I’ve had judges call me Tahini. I once had a judge, in open court, look at my name and say, ‘Farsi? Egypt? Pakistan?’ I said, ‘Tahanie Aboushi?’” She laughed, shaking her head.

It was late March, and I was in Lower Manhattan with Aboushi and a few of her colleagues. We had just been among the thousands at a rally in Columbus Park protesting the disturbing rise in anti-Asian violence across the country. Afterwards, we walked to Canal Street and sat, Covid-style, outside a Chinatown eatery. The sidewalk thrummed with energy. As what felt like the world walked by our table, Aboushi, in her characteristic deadpan, continued describing her experiences as a lawyer.

“In the first couple of years of my practice, when I would sit down in the front row, a court officer would come by and say, ‘Excuse me, ma’am. This row is reserved for attorneys.’” She paused to punctuate the moment. “I would say, ‘Good thing that I’m an attorney.’”

We all laughed, shaking our heads.

If the unconscious aim of these comments had been to make her feel like she didn’t belong in jurisprudence, then it doesn’t seem to have worked. Shortly after graduating from law school over a decade ago, Aboushi opened her own practice focused on civil rights litigation, and over the years she has scored some key victories. She has sued the New York City Department of Education on multiple occasions for failing to protect vulnerable children, winning significant settlements for her clients. Through litigation, she has challenged and changed discriminatory practices in the city’s police and fire departments.

Now the 35-year-old Palestinian American has stepped onto the crowded dance floor that is the Manhattan district attorney’s race and is racking up endorsement after endorsement and winning all kinds of support across the city and the nation. If she prevails, she will assume the post of one of the most powerful district attorneys in the land, becoming the first woman and person of color to hold that office. She’s also running one of the most progressive campaigns in the race, promising to reduce incarceration and fundamentally change the direction of the office.

“She’s the most left-leaning,” said former gubernatorial candidate and actress Cynthia Nixon, who endorsed Aboushi early in the race. Nixon said she was particularly impressed by Aboushi’s platform, which she described as the most detailed and deeply considered of the candidates. “People understand how her lived experience makes her the candidate who will transform the legal system, and the people who really care about that understand that she’s their candidate.”

Aboushi’s campaign would have seemed impossible just a few years ago, when the city’s Muslims were battling NYPD policies that put them under blanket suspicion and subjected them to warrantless surveillance. Now Aboushi—like Rana Abdelhamid, who is challenging US Representative Carolyn Maloney in the 2022 Democratic primary—is one of a rising number of Muslims running for public office, mostly on progressive platforms of institutional reform and resource redistribution. If this six-foot-tall, hijab-wearing Muslim woman who has never held public office wins, people will undoubtedly state that Tahanie Aboushi has made history. But it may be more accurate to say that history has made Tahanie Aboushi…

Read the rest here.