Q&A with progressive candidate for US House Nida Allam

PHOTO CREDIT: LUCIA HARRINGTON

Nida Allam speaks to a full audience at the Durham Convention Center as a special guest at Bernie Sanders’ Fighting Oligarchy event, part of a nationwide tour. Met with standing ovations, Allam tells the story of how she got into politics and what she stands for. 

That's what taught me that if we don't start showing up and taking up space and demanding a seat at the table, other people are going to write our stories for us. And that's the same thing for me and organizing and being in public service. It's one thing to be on the dais and be able to take votes and bring those voices to the table through there, but it’s also showing up in the streets because some moments demand action. They demand protest. They demand us putting our bodies on the line. They demand us standing shoulder to shoulder with our most vulnerable, impacted community members.

LH: In your campaign, you are making a point of reaching out to young people. Why? 

NA: I realized at [21], ‘wow, there are so many ways that politics is impacting my life, whether I want it to or not’. ...I want young people to see and feel the value and power that they hold in this moment. Oftentimes elected officials will just be like, ‘young people don't vote, they don't care, so we don't have to target them, we don't have to reach out to them’. And I'm like, the decisions we make today, y'all are the ones who are gonna have to deal with the repercussions for the longest period. My kids, my three-year-old and one and a half year old, they're gonna have to be dealing with the decisions of our members of Congress for the next, hopefully, 50, 60 years. 

We need more young people to be engaged, to have their voices be heard… Now when we have authoritarianism threatening every part of our lives, when our planet is dying and being destroyed by our decisions, we need young people's voices to have a seat at the table to bring moral clarity to us. Because I also believe that young people are not corrupted by capitalism and the cynicism of the world, that we need that moral clarity and humanity that young people bring to the table. 

LH: What do you have to say to students who may feel like their votes or their voices don't matter? 

NA: The reason people want you to believe [your vote doesn’t matter] is because they're just trying to hold on to power… If you look at local city council, county commission races, those are races decided by like 100, 200 votes. And it's not just about you as individuals going out and voting, but it's also about if you volunteer and phone bank, if you talk to your parents or your aunts and uncles who may be eligible voters and tell them why, for your future, it's important for them to vote a certain way.

[Foushee] has been in office since I was four years old. I thank her for her years of service and she did blaze a trail for many young women like myself to be able to run for office. But it comes down to the urgency of this moment: is my daughter going to have control over her own body when she grows up? Are my children going to have a right to vote? Are they going to have a planet that's livable? Are they gonna be able to dream about going to college or a career without having to go into crippling student debt? 

LH: What is your vision for public education in North Carolina and in general? How does that come about? 

NA: I believe everyone should be able to dream about going to college or university, and also understand that not everyone has to go to public college and university. There's many, many jobs where you can just get a certification or a license from your local technical college and be able to earn $70, $80,000 a year. But the option should be open, because especially here in Durham, there's so many students who don't even apply themselves because they're already told from the get-go that it isn't an option for them because there's a cost hindrance. And to squash a child's dream even before it starts, that is un-American. …It also starts way earlier than that. We need to invest in universal child care, because that zero to three period, or even prenatal to three years old, a child's path to success is honestly determined in that period. And every dollar you invest in early childcare education increases that child's earning potential later in life by $7. Daycare is so expensive… it was more than our mortgage to put two kids at daycare. And I love them a ton, but nothing makes them more special and more worthy of that daycare education than a child of a parent who works at a fast food restaurant or is a bus driver. It's just about access to resources. And I look at my daughter, like Alia, who is three years old. She knows how to count. She knows her colors. She's able to start writing letters. And so she's already like going to be able to go into pre-K ready to do those things. If a child doesn't have that, they're going to be going into pre-K already behind. And so we need to make sure that every child has an equal opportunity for success. 

LH: What is your stance on the building of data centers? 

NA: I have been very vocal about the fact that I would support Senator Bernie Sanders’ call for a national moratorium on AI data centers. We have one right now being debated in this district at Apex. And we already see that Duke Energy is in renegotiations of their energy prices with the town of Apex, and they're already hiking up the prices of residents’ electricity bills, saying that, ‘this data center is going to be built, so we need to be able to afford the infrastructure needs’. Why is that bill being passed down to the residents and not to the builders of this data center? And these data centers consume millions of gallons of water every single day to run… We don't have unlimited supplies of water and when those taps start to go dry, like we're seeing in other communities across the country where data centers are being built in their backyards, residents are the ones who are going to suffer, and they're going to be the ones left with the bill. And when you have these diesel backup generators that are there to keep these data centers going, whose airway are they going to be polluting? It's the families and the children who live in the neighborhoods that they surround, so we need to have a moratorium to actually put in place proper regulations to protect our environment, to protect our residents, and to not be passing on this cost burden to them. 

LH: You mentioned that you support a Green New Deal. Could you elaborate a little on that and why that's important for the future of our planet? 

NA: We need a Green New Deal because we have like five years to stop irreversible damage to our planet. We're not acting with urgency, because if you look at our elected leaders in Congress, they're not the ones who are going to have to be dealing with the ramifications 40, 50 years from now. It's your generation. It's my kids, even me… We watch all these dystopian movies about how people have to wear masks to be able to go outside, and we are pushing ourselves closer and closer to that reality because we're not taking action now to protect our planet. We need to invest in renewable energy, because we cannot continue to destroy our planet with fracking and oil when there's much cheaper and more sustainable ways to produce energy through solar and wind power. They also consume a lot less space and a lot less manufacturing costs. …Again, it comes down to these corporate interests because they profit off the oil industry. They profit off war. So many of the wars that the United States have gone into have been about oil. What the United States is doing in Venezuela, it's about oil. 

LH: Do you have anything else you want to add? 

NA: I would like to reemphasize that if students are 17 and going to be 18 by November, they can register and vote in the primary. And if they're not, talk to your parents, your relatives, and your friends who are eligible to vote and tell them why this election is so important. It's not just going to have ramifications and implications for NC-4. We're the first primary of the cycle for 2026 across the country, us and Texas. And there are many more primary challengers and young progressive candidates running, with Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York, Cori Bush in St. Louis, Missouri to retake her seat that was bought out from her by AIPAC, Kat Abughazaleh in Illinois. If we are able to show the establishment on March 3rd that young people are ready for change, that progressives are organized, it's going to boost the momentum to help other progressives win across the country.