Farheen Hakeem knew she was doing something right when local Democrats came calling.

In 2006, on the heels of a failed run as a Green Party candidate for mayor of Minneapolis, Hakeem ran for commissioner of Minnesota’s Hennepin County board. Although she lost to long-time Democratic-machine candidate Peter McLaughlin, she earned 33 percent of the vote.

Democrats took notice. Hakeem received e-mails and phone calls from local Democratic Party activists who were impressed with her skills as a grassroots campaigner. And when Minnesota state Rep. Neva Walker announced she would not be seeking re-election this year, local Democrats urged Hakeem to run for the seat as one of them.

Hakeem declined, deciding instead to enter the race as a Green.

“[The Greens] may be disorganized, but at least I’m not held accountable to any corporate party,” she says. “They’re not going to be asking me to do something I’m not interested in doing.”

She says Democrats on the county board bowed to party pressure in 2006 by approving a new sales tax and hundreds of millions of dollars to fund a Major League Baseball stadium – without the referendum required by law.

Hakeem, an activist and community organizer who works with the Girl Scouts of America organizing young Muslim girls, wears the traditional Islamic headscarf – or hijab – and is wary of letting the Democratic Party capitalize on her likeness.

“Currently, our United States government is bombing people [who] look like me,” she says. “I don’t want them using my image   [and then] say, ‘Get out of Iraq!’ but continue to fund it.”

Full Story: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3846/