On a Wednesday evening at Mapps Café in the Cedar Riverside neighborhood, Ilhan Omar appears a smiling, genuine member of the community who seems to know and greet almost everyone who walks in.

The hard-working politician, the down-to-earth mother of three, and justice-seeking activist embodies a premier example of a candidate who wants to truly represent their community. Though she’s currently seeking a seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives for district 60B, Omar’s background is a mix of student and youth organizing, food and economic justice, racial justice, city council campaigns, and more.

Her work in policy was largely derived from Omar’s innate interest, rather than a familial tradition or influence. “My fascination with politics began at the age of 14. It began with helping my grandfather as his language and cultural translator. We come from Somalia, and he only participated in an election I think once in his lifetime,” said Omar. The country was later taken over through dictatorship, which left Omar’s grandfather “yearning for participation and having a voice in all of that,” said Omar.

Wasting no time to begin justice work, Omar played an instrumental role in organizing retreats for her peers, teachers, and principals––as a high school freshman. “We would organize retreats and listening sessions for our teachers, for our principal and each other. It was interesting to have these conversations about things that their [the teachers’] parents and ancestors talked about and went through––but it was a real thing for us. We had just fled war. So that was kind of good to connect on humanity and our stories of compassion and to have a space where we could all grow together,” Omar said.

Through youth organizing, Omar got involved with food and economic justice. However, there were many obstacles in trying to mobilize people on nutrition issues when so many of them were barely making ends meet as it was: “I got lured into doing policy work because it was really hard to have a conversation with people who were just arriving in the country who were struggling with finding employment, finding housing, finding stability in their day to day,” Omar said.

For Omar, many of the lessons she learned through meeting with people from marginalized, predominantly immigrant communities, related back to her grandfather’s example of the power of democracy. “I recognize that I had access to influencing who was in positions of power, and getting people in positions of power that understood our struggles and that weren’t only keen on getting our votes – people who really wanted to make an impact,” Omar said.

All these experiences have led Omar to the decision to run against democratic, 42-year incumbent Phyllis Kahn. Kahn’s tenure alone is something that has stopped potential challengers from the seat in the past, and her collective educational background from Cornell, Yale, Princeton and Harvard doesn’t propose much more ease.

But intimidation doesn’t seem to appear a component at all in Omar’s campaign. Rather, she approaches the election with positivity and genuine appreciation for democracy: “I think I carry a particular optimism as a person whose parents didn’t have access to the ability to make change through policy. So I have optimism in knowing that we have an opportunity to truly do things here [in 60B]. I come from a line of educators, so making this really daunting experiencing of caucusing and getting involved in party politics can be scary and time-consuming. But I want to explain to [my constituents] that this is for all of us. This isn’t just for certain ages or races. It’s up to us to show up, to take our seats, and participate,” Omar said.

In fact, intimidation has never been a part of Omar’s agenda, neither personally nor professionally. On February 4, 2014, at the caucus for Mohamed Noor against Phyllis Kahn, Omar was physically beaten so badly that she ended up with a concussion. Although caucuses are designed to foster democratic values amongst party members alike, the 2014 caucus was anything but. Although some details remain unclear, the incident was spread widely and quickly.