YALLA VOTE ‘08 Our Voice. Our Future.

Last weekend I had the pleasure of taking a state-wide tour to meet with volunteers, activists, NPC, and ALC members. The trip actually began on Thursday, when Maram Abdelhamid met with the Ramallah Club in Jacksonville.

Friday morning, I headed up to Jacksonville, where we met with Dierdre Connor from the Florida Times Union, who was interviewing Yalla Vote for a diversity piece. That piece was featured in the paper on Tuesday. James Bajalia also met us at the newspaper. After lunch, we met up with Robin Rukab-Azzam and Edna Saffy for tea and some discussion. We also met with Adrian Soud, an Arab American running for judge in Jacksonville. From these meetings, we began planning a candidate night for Jacksonville.

In Orlando, we met with Janan Alawar-Smither and attorney Mark NeJame.

And then it was off to Miami! Unfortunately there were no Will Smith videos being shot, but I think I drove everyone nuts saying “Bienvenido a Miami.” We met with Elizabeth Ayoub in Miami Beach. Then we headed up to Broward County to meet with Ammal Elhaddad and Farooq Mitha from the Center for Voter Advocacy. We also met with Darlene Corey and Toufic Zakharia from MEAPA and talked about voter registration strategies. We are also planning a candidate night in Miami.

Florida is chock-full of Arab Americans running for office, in high positions, and activists ready to make a change.

That being said, make sure you’ve signed the National Declaration, and that we have your contact information to find out about the latest with our candidate nights… And keep an eye out at your local Masjid or Church for Yalla Vote voter registration drives. If you are interested in holding a voter registration drive at your local Masjid, Church, or even Arabic grocery store, send me an e-mail at aai-florida@yallavote.org and we’ll work out the details.

So until next time, I’ll be trying to eat all the oranges I bought driving around the state… There’s nothing like a Florida orange!

-Mia