Racist trolls targeted a Somali refugee’s Maine campaign. She still pulled off a historic victory.
She had spent the past six months knocking on hundreds of doors in Lewiston, Maine, the city where she arrived as a refugee more than a decade earlier, and where she hoped to be the first Somali-American to win a seat on the city council. Suddenly, online trolls from as far away as Alabama and Mississippi were hurling vile abuse at her, telling her that Muslims had no place in American government and she should go back to where she came from.
“I just couldn’t take it,” Khalid told The Washington Post on Tuesday night. “I was crying so bad, my eyes were completely red.”
Khalid, a Democrat, was unsettled by the fact that someone had posted her address on social media. But she was also worried that the hate-fueled attacks would become a distraction. So she deleted her Facebook account, asked friends to look out for worrisome comments, and went back to pounding the streets with her leaflets and her clipboard.
On Tuesday night, she won her race by a significant margin. The victory, she told supporters, showed that “community organizers beat Internet trolls.”
