VCC Summer-Fall 2021

V irginia C apitol C onnections , S ummer /F all 2021 23 of knowledge, it is a great return on investment. CTE certainly pays off for students as they prepare for tomorrow’s workforce and they make better career choices without diluting their time and talent. Q: What is your background? How did you get interested in CTE? BL: My background has always been in education. I worked with the Virginia Cooperative Extension Service prior to teaching. I taught Family and Consumer Sciences (formerly Teen Living and Home Economics) before becoming a Career and Technical Education administrator. I have worked in Buchanan County, Tazewell County, and Stafford County and grew up in the “Great Southwestern” part of the state in Dickenson County. My home economics teacher in high school helped me realize I had potential to do anything I decided I wanted to do! After graduating from Virginia Tech, my career expanded 48 years and working with talented students, teachers, policymakers, and colleagues has been a highlight. Through the years, CTE wasn’t seen as a “viable” option for students and I yearned to dispel that myth! Sometimes that got me in hot water with my colleagues or administration. But CTE has so much to offer to ALL students regardless of their abilities, career goals, and it is part of our public education system. We need parents to understand the opportunities their children have with CTE in middle and high school which help them collaborate on career discussions and career decisions. As I’ve stated before, every parent’s dream is for their child to be employed! CTE is an avenue to reach that dream regardless of the entry point to the workforce—one-year certificate program, two-year associate degree, apprenticeship, four-year degree—CTE is Readiness for All Careers! I want to show my appreciation to my colleagues, house staff, and my dear constituents. I have learned so much by way of kindness and empathy, but also by way of learning through challenging the Virginia Way that many, here, unknowingly and knowingly ascribe to. I see no better way to show my gratitude than to share some wisdom from what I learned having gone down this rare and treacherous path of making it better for everyday Virginians. Last Thursday, in showing appreciation Delegate Watts spoke of me being on the opposing side of the Virginia Way, to which some misunderstood it as not being full of respect to the institution of government in Virginia. What was being referenced was how I saw things needed to change in the Virginia Way for the betterment of everyday Virginians, having walked in my own shoes my whole life. The Virginia Way, as I see it, gets in the way of many good things happening for many good people. Yes, I represent a district that has much wealth and privilege, but in the midst of it all are everyday people struggling to get by. Those struggles are struggles I experienced throughout my life. Those are the experiences that made me who I am today: a passionate fighter for justice for all. My identity is quite complex: I grew up Afro-Arab on the South side of Chicago, from which my family and I moved to the suburbs of. My grandparents all originated from within the old city walls of Jerusalem. My grandfather, who I am named after, was Black, my other grandparents were of lighter brown complexion. They all refuged away from their homes following the racist and xenophobic war of 1947 in the holy lands that was meant to displace Palestinians. My grandfather, Ibrahim, had a profound impact on me having experienced immense difficulties living as an orphan that never completed high school while never having a father in his life. Although, what he was left with was a rich cultural and religious tradition that he was able to pass onto my father and, by extension, my siblings and I. He grew up Muslim in the land Jesus had walked last, the same land empires fought over for thousands of years. It was a land that my family was just from, never having anything to do with the many external occupiers that passed. All he ever wanted was life to go well for his extended family. I myself had studied hard abroad, away from my country, the U.S., the one I loved the most, but was denied the ability to live in it due to discrimination my father faced for registering people that looked like him to vote. But people that looked like my father weren’t supposed to vote and be part of the political process, and so the Bush administration, upon my father’s return from visiting my sick grandmother, was not allowed re-entry into the US and that started a whole new chapter of separation and refuging away from home, yet again, in my family. I had to work many times harder than any other American I knew just to get a normal American life. With these unique life problems came more common but not any less important problems in my family: severe healthcare problems, family deaths on the road, housing affordability issues, many years of schooling with hundreds of thousands in student loan debt. It is difficult to go through any of these experiences and not be compassionate. Yes, one can be cold and bitter about them all, but one can also flip those experiences and recognize the power of government to make peoples’ lives better, every single day. That was exactly what I tried to do. My experiences guided me to appreciate empathy and equity more than authority and obedience. They guided my successful work on creating mental, maternal and child health protections, as well as my burning passion to make healthcare guaranteed at no cost for every Virginian, just as every industrialized nation does for its own. They made me fight for a Virginian Green New Deal that saves our planet from climate change, with a special focus on the intertwined affordable housing crisis. They pushed me to seek to make the government more representative by getting corporations to not be treated as people in their campaign giving. They got me to push for a tuition raise freeze for our students in state universities. These are issues I am passionate about because of my own and my family’s experiences, and nothing but. However, the Virginia Way got in the way of progress on them all. The Virginia Way was made for the wealthy and privileged, built on the backs of slaves, Black people, the indigenous, and yes it has taken many twists and turns but we are all here, now, still trying to change it for the better. The fight for my family, my extended family of constituents, and everyone here today, as well as the poor, Black, white, brown, and everyone in between, continues. The experiences I share will be carried by me and hopefully you, not to be forgotten. As is popularly said, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger." For the experiences of having gone through the VirginiaWay, I am grateful to all of you. I look forward to doing much more work in the future. Ibraheem S. Samirah is an American dentist and politician serving as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. In February 2019, he was elected in a special election for the 86th district. Samirah was re-elected to a full term on November 5, 2019. My Experience in the General Assembly and Navigating the Virginia Way By IBRAHEEM S. SAMIRAH Continued from previous page V V