Zulfat Suara
The vitriolic reactions to Zulfat Suara’s candidacy for Metro Council were swift and unsurprising.
“You will never, ever be on Metro Nashville Council,” one local caller told her in a voicemail. “I am on a personal mission to stop it and make sure it does not happen. … I will make sure of it. I’ve got your picture. I’ve got your face, and everyone is going to know to not vote for you.”
“Just like Christian’s [sic] in your home country, Muslims are not welcome here,” another local wrote her in a Facebook message. Suara’s home country, Nigeria, is in fact home to the largest Christian population in Africa. “You should be eliminated.”
Fringe websites and Facebook posts “alerting” MAGA types to Suara’s candidacy have garnered thousands of shares, mostly from outside Nashville. Other Facebook comments on stories about her campaign were simple enough: “get rid of them” and “I see a few good targets.” Suara has noticed her campaign signs going missing, and the sandbags securing one of her large wooden signs were cut open and the sign flipped over, though that might be chalked up to political chicanery.
The vaguely threatening messages, including those promising to do “whatever it takes” to stop her candidacy, left Suara concerned enough to alert law enforcement, but she says she considered giving up on her run for a countywide seat on the Metro Council for only a “split second.”
“It is discouraging — questioning whether you're American enough, questioning your loyalty to your country,” Suara says. “Everything I'm doing, I'm doing because of my love for the country and for the city. And for everything that Nashville has done for me, for somebody to now question all of that in a sinister way, it’s very sad.”
Stephanie Teatro, who co-directs the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition and its political arm — TIRRC Votes, which recently endorsed Suara — says that Muslims, immigrants and black women face a backlash when they decide to step up and run for public office.
“Zulfat happens to be all three,” she says.
And so, Teatro says, it’s no surprise that Suara is facing outsized harassment as she seeks one of five at-large Metro Council seats.
"The only way we're going to get to the other side of this political moment where people feel emboldened to be so hateful is to have effective and capable leaders like Zulfat,” Teatro says. “The most powerful rebuke to any of these xenophobic activists is for her to win a countywide election.”
Fabian Bedne is neither black, a woman nor Muslim, but he is an immigrant — from Argentina, in his case. He’s currently finishing his second term representing Metro Council District 31, and like Suara, he’s seeking a countywide seat on the council. He too was endorsed by TIRRC Votes.
Bedne says he has been discouraged by people questioning his commitment to the community during his time in public office and is not surprised to see the treatment of his fellow candidate. Still, he condemns it.
“I don't think that it’s good for Nashville when people are afraid to participate because they represent a unique part of the population,” Bedne says. “We want everybody to get involved and to participate. We should encourage people to do it instead of pushing them out. It's pretty upsetting to me.”
Despite the hostility, Suara is attempting to focus on the positive aspects of the campaign, which she says has introduced her to “wonderful” people.
“For every bad comment, there's 1,000 positive comments,” she says. “For every nasty encounter — someone looking at me funny — there's 100 more that have embraced me.”
“I truly want to give back to this city, and I believe I have the means to do that. Nashville has been very welcoming. I hope that those that have never met me will not let a few people make them unwelcoming. I hope people will stand up and say, ‘This is not our Nashville.’ ”
