Last month I interviewed Deedra Abboud, who is running as a Democrat against sitting Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona. I have known Deedra for several years online, introduced by a Palestinian man I met at a Muslim/Jewish Peace Walk here in Tucson. I was surprised when she announced that she is running for the Senate, and finally met her in person earlier this summer at a meet and greet at a Tucson coffee shop. When I had the idea of interviewing her, she was very gracious. We arranged to talk by phone. Even with my acquaintance with her, I was impressed with her answers. So were the man who transcribed the recording for me and his girlfriend, who edits the Planned Parenthood blog I write for.
Deedra is from Arkansas and speaks with a slight drawl. When she gives a speech, dressed in bright colors and a hijab, she often jokes that her listeners were probably expecting a different accent. She has pledged not to accept corporate contributions.
In the first part of the interview I asked about her background, especially the advocacy work she did for years before opening her law practice in 2012. Then I had made a list of unrelated subjects to ask her to comment on. She had not received the questions in advance, and her answers showed a familiarity with many issues and their significance.
I present the interview with a minimum of editing.
Rachel Port: First of all, tell me something about yourself and your life.
Deedra Abboud: Anything in particular?
RP: Well, I know you're from Arkansas, originally, and that you're married. Do you have kids?
DA: No. No, we've been married for eighteen years. Kids never happened and we're good with that.
RP: Where did you go to law school?
DA: I went to Phoenix School of Law, which is now Summit Law.
RP: And you've been practicing in Phoenix?
[1:04] DA: Since 2012.
RP: And you practiced human rights law, largely?
DA: No I did immigration and estate planning. I was a civil rights and social justice advocate before for about fifteen years.
RP: Oh, I see. How did you decide to run for the Senate?
[1:40] DA: I looked around and saw last year that it didn't matter who won, the damage was done. The rhetoric that threw communities under the bus, trampled on communities for political expediency, really dividing, intentionally dividing the country for political gain. Even elected leaders who were not engaging in this, also were not standing up to their colleagues and saying this is not appropriate. We represent these people. So I looked at it and I said this is really bad. This is not just about politics is dirty. This is about human beings not being... not feeling safe to go to the grocery store, because they're afraid of the racist and hateful rants that they might hear based on some characteristic that they have. So I said what am I going to do? What can I do to affect this? So, in October of last year I closed my law firm and my consulting firm and started looking around. What should I do? Should I go back into non-profit? Should I do something with media, social media? What can I do that I haven't already done? Because we're in a really critical situation.
People had asked me for years to run for political office because of all the work that I had done bringing different communities together and advocating for betterment for everyone. I had a reputation that I've never thrown another community under the bus for my own gain, or for any gain. I always thought that wasn't really for me. I'm the one that holds politicians accountable. And then I started thinking, you know, why not? I've always told people within communities when I'm speaking that if you don't like how Hollywood is portraying your community, go join Hollywood. ... If you don't like the way law enforcement is treating your community, go join law enforcement. We can only change things from within. I decided to take that advice back to myself and say I've been an advocate, I've held politicians accountable, but maybe the reason why politics have gotten so bad is because the good and ethical people avoid it, because it's dirty. Maybe we should be the ones that start standing up and standing for our values and changing it from the inside.
RP: So it's been quite a process.
DA: Yeah. Yeah and I figured no matter what I ran for I had the same issues, but I could have greater conversations and I could show leadership and I could show that we could still keep our ethics and values and go into politics. By going for this larger office, I could be an inspiration to all kinds of people who maybe thought that politics wasn't for them either. Or maybe thought that they should give up, because we absolutely have to engage. Because even if we don't like politics, we can't avoid it because politics is in our everyday lives.
[5:50] RP: Yeah, especially if you're in one of those groups.
[5:53] DA: Being a woman is enough.
[5:57] RP: Being a woman is enough and wearing a hijab is enough. If you were elected, what would you most like to accomplish as a Senator?
[6:23] DA: I think that we need to definitely hold the White House accountable, that is part of the Senator's job. This is not about criticizing, this is not about politics, and this is not about parties. This is about, our country has certain values, and one of those values is that we have a checks and balances system. We have three branches of government that are supposed to hold each other accountable and our elected leaders are not supposed to use their political office--especially the White House--for personal financial gain.
If nothing else, all the other things, investigations, all of these things, yes, that's part of the job. But the bottom line is: Things that we thought were true, things that we thought were the law, such as, the President does not get to [politically gain, or] financially gain from his political office, the President does not get to appoint all of his family members for high offices. We thought this was what the United States was all about. We thought this was the law. And President Trump came forward and said I don't think this is the law. Prove me wrong. That was quite a shock. And our senators just said okay.
But it goes way beyond the President. I am tired of religion being used as a basis to pass laws. We have a separation of church and state in this country that is being eroded. And it needs to be solidified. It is fine for us as a society to decide what we think is ethical or moral or okay or not okay. But when the only ground you have to stand on is: A religious text says. That doesn't belong in the U.S. Government.
[8:36] RP: I certainly agree with that. That comes up in a number of issues. Most notably lately in the issue of abortion and birth control and women's health in general. And in education.
[9:01] DA: And in marriage equality.
RP: And in marriage equality. It's a big one in education with Betsy DeVos.
DA: Yes.
[9:17] RP: And in Arizona now with the voucher expansion bill.
[9:22] DA: Right, the vouchers are clearly not about choice. They are about taking public money and giving it to private schools. Almost all private schools are religious schools. So that is literally taking public money and supporting religion. That alone is against separation of church and state.
RP: Absolutely, I couldn't agree more. Can you tell me something about the advocacy work you did?
[10:05] DA: So many years! So many things! We worked on, I was in coalitions about dealing with the meth problem in Arizona. We dealt with discrimination in schools. I dealt with discrimination complaints against law enforcement and the FBI. I did a lot of trying to work out: This person says... and also employment discrimination complaints... I did a lot of trying to... so this person says this happened... How can we make this better? Let's not worry about whether or not we've broke the law yet. Let's worry about how we can make this better. How can this be a win-win?
And I worked with marriage equality, actually on the second marriage equality []. I worked in the LGBTQ community with voter registration and education. And trying to get the LGBTQ community engaged in marriage equality. Because they had already lost once. So there was a lot of cynicism about whether or not this could happen. I worked with when they were trying to do civil unions if we couldn't get marriage equality. I tried to bridge the gap and let people understand that civil unions wasn't just an LGBTQ issue. That a lot of, especially young, heterosexuals weren't that interested in being married either. They were living together and co-mingling funds, and what did that mean for them? Civil unions might be something that could help them too. Just trying to bridge the gap of someone else's issue, not my issue.
A lot of interfaith issues, Native American issues. We used to meet with them about a lot of the oppression and non-inclusion that the Native Americans have experienced, especially here in Arizona. I remember one time I was talking to a principal at a school were a child had been discriminated against and so were talking about can we have some sensitivity training or something. And she basically said we can't go around teaching everybody about everybody's culture, do you want us to do it with the Native American culture too? And I said well considering that Arizona is more than 50% Native American land, that's probably a good idea anyway.
[13:00] RP: And what did she say?
DA: She basically said that she wasn't going to do anything. This particular one was a Muslim problem. She just said that Muslims needed to get a thicker skin in this day and age.
DA: I worked with Human Relations Commissions on different things and different city councils all the way down to Tucson. I won the MLK award in Phoenix and Tempe for my work in diversity and bringing people together. Yeah, a lot [of different things].
RP: Yeah. It is. So, well good. I'm glad I asked that. I feel like I know you better.
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[14:00] RP: I would like to run some issues by you now. We have... It's hard to be quick about healthcare and this bill that's in Congress now. Any quick thoughts?
[14:11] DA: This bill is literally a death sentence for a lot of people even with insurance. The United States has a huge number of people who file bankruptcy based on medical bills alone. This bill will increase that. Which will also kill our economy, because not only will we have all of this debt not getting paid, that will end up costing hospitals and other medical fields money and cause them potentially to have to lay people off, so that hurts those jobs. But also an unhealthy society is an unproductive society. If we're too sick to go to work, work doesn't get done. That also hurts the economy. That also makes people homeless. Because a lot of people are one paycheck away from being homeless. This bill is the most heartless thing that we've put out there lately, and we've put out some pretty heartless things. Taking money away from Meals on Wheels, which is basically old and disabled people who are homebound. Pretty heartless. Taking away food programs from children who don't have enough food to eat and maybe the only meal they get is what they get at school. That's heartless. The current healthcare bill is heartless to a new extreme. This affects everybody.
RP: Yeah, it affects people who don't think they're affected by it.
DA: Right. Even if you're healthy, even if you can afford to pay all your medical expenses out of pocket, and even if you can do it for your entire immediate family, what about your Mom? What about your Dad? What about your brothers and your sisters and your nieces and your nephews? We are becoming a GoFundMe healthcare system.
[16:34] RP: Yes we have. I wasn't expecting you to be quick on that, because I could go on for hours myself on that particular issue. Let's go into some quicker things maybe. What do you think about the Saudi arms deal, and the war with Yemen and our support for it?
[17:07] DA: Yemen is worse than Syria, but people don't know that. The human toll, the starvation, the death and the disease, that's happening in Yemen makes Syria look not so bad. And most people know Syria is bad. Yemen looks like the pictures from Ethiopia with the starving children that are skeletons mixed in with the bombing of Syria and the destruction of the cities and the death. That's what Yemen is. We have a President who wants to ban Muslims, wants to ban people coming from certain countries that are supposedly linked to terrorism. But then is cozy with Saudi, which is the only country on Earth who has ever been connected with 9/11. And we want to sell them weapons. And then on top of that, while we're there, we sow seeds of mischief and try to get the Sunnis and the Shia to fight, Saudi being Sunni, Iran being Shia. Ramp up that fight, trying to get another war in the Middle East based on two religious sects. Throw Qatar into the mix because they have Al Jazeera and we need to get rid of Al Jazeera.
RP: You know, I hadn't put that one together...
DA: And then, after we accuse Qatar, and put them in the mix of supporting terrorism, then we sell them weapons too. We have an Iran/Contra situation back on our hands and the only people winning are the people selling the arms deals.
[19:09] RP: Always. Energy and the Environment and especially the withdrawal from the Paris agreement and the cutting back of the things that got passed here, [pitiful] as they were.
[19:45] DA: All of this is just political playing. That's all it is. It's just trying to roll back anything that Obama did. And how do we know that's what it is? Because we're fighting over how bad, what percentage points, of how bad, it is to pollute our environment. When any rational person, even a person who has barely any education or brains, knows that having polluted air, water, and food will kill us.
It's all political rhetoric. All we need to do is regulate so we can have more money. If you're killing us by having polluted air, water and food, there's no one left to buy your products. So deregulation will not help you. And as for alternative energy, the very idea that alternative energy doesn't make sense, doesn't make sense.
RP: You can talk about Jeff Flake on that one.
DA: Because even if the technology has not advanced at a pace for let's say solar, for us to store it for long periods of time--which is what Flake was actually talking about--that is true, technology has not advanced for that. Couple of things, number one, we often move forward on technology that has not advanced to the point we would love it to be. Number two, Germany has also experienced this problem. They have solar panels, even in the countryside, they have them on barns and on shacks. Everywhere you go in Germany, they have solar panels. They have created so much solar energy, and they cannot store it for long periods of time. Then in the summer they have decided to give all of their citizens free energy for the summer since they can't save it anyway.
[21:42] RP: Immigration? My particular interest is the militarization of the border and of our police.
[22:17] DA: It is concerning that our borders are... everything has become enforcement. We're really losing our humanity. It's not just the rhetoric, it's as though we really do want to look like the Berlin Wall. Which is not a good look. My mom was in law enforcement, when I grew up, policemen were your friends. Policemen had a job to do. There was a mutual respect. They were authority figures, you respected them as that, but then they also really did want to do their job. And I'm not saying that they were perfect back then by any means. They didn't enforce domestic violence, for example, because they still had the mentality that if you were a good wife then your husband wouldn't beat you. In general, there was a community police force. Your parents told you if you were ever in trouble or lost, look for a police officer. We lost that.
RP: If you were white.
DA: If you were in certain neighborhoods and you had a community police officer, then we had that too. But I agree that there were definitely exceptions in larger ones. But we definitely have lost that even in the white community. One of the things that I notice with policing is officers who just do their job and go home tend to have a very skewed idea of people. And tend to have more prejudice. And tend to act more on their prejudice. As opposed to officers who go to work and then they also do the extra details, at the baseball games, at the protests, and the rallies and different things. They seem to have a more rounded idea of people and tend to have less racism and reactionary methods. I definitely have seen that over the years, and have noticed that maybe if we, if officers--because you know, police only see ten percent of the population, the bad ten percent. The ninety percent they forget about because they never interact with them while at work. Which is why I think that it makes such a difference when they volunteer for these extra rally shifts and stuff.
We've also gotten away within law enforcement, and I'm actually glad to see Phoenix has started to try and bring some of it back, but that's probably because we got a really cool new chief, but we've gotten away from the de-escalation training and the diversity training, and it's become very militaristic. That it's a conflict and you're there to suppress that conflict as opposed to do your job as law enforcement as a community law enforcement.
For immigration, as an immigration attorney, I saw just how broken the system was. And it truly, truly is broken. You are at the mercy of the agent that you're working with. And that agent has huge amounts of discretion. We do need common sense immigration reform. The reality is that we do have eleven million people who are living underneath the larger society. Not only do we have the security problem of seriously not knowing who is here, that is a concern. But more importantly, it hurts the economy. Because though they're feeding into the economy, and they are, [there are] other things like, in Arizona, unlike California, if they're undocumented, they can't have a driver's license. And if they can't have a driver's license, they can't have insurance. So, they're having to drive, uninsured, and they don't really want to do that, but we're forcing them to do that. Then the rest of us have to have the uninsured motorist coverage. Because even if they want to follow the rules, they can't follow the rules. Studies have shown that it will cost way more to deport eleven million people than it would be to process them in somehow.
Then on the other side there's all these connections they have. They own businesses. They own property. They have family members who are U.S. citizens. They have children. They're putting into the economy, but they're also part of the community. And if … we just waste all that money to deport eleven million people, we would actually end up with more of a black market on human beings than we've ever had, because we wouldn't be able to find them. They would have to hide more than they are now. That's a completely black market. In other countries that don't allow people to have some kind of status, that's what they've found. They found they end up with a black market of human beings.
[28:34] RP: The open internet, or net neutrality.
[28:48] DA: So, basically, net neutrality... the whole close up the net thing. It's being touted as pay to play, basically. So, like your cable. So how you have your cable where you have basic cable and then you have a little bit better than basic cable and then you have a little bit better than that and then you have everything you can buy. There are so many problems with that. Number one being that now you have placed, you've decided who can get information based on their economic status. So if someone can't afford to get all the information they only get part of it. Because that's what the internet is, it's not just entertainment, it's information. That's a problem. Number two, it's a problem because now you've created a system to know what everybody's getting so ... if the government wanted to be sinister, if we wanted to go all "1984," the government now knows exactly who is getting what. Because, literally, you could know. It also makes it easier for the government to flip a switch and decide what can be on the internet. Because if you're paying to play, then they know what you're playing with. They know what websites you're going to. Because they've given you access to it. And if they've given you access, they can take away the access.
The other side of that coin, though is the Internet privacy, the FCC and the FTC. So, they're touting, what's the difference? Amazon and Facebook and everybody else already is buying or selling your interest information so that marketers can market to you. But the difference with the internet privacy which was going to under the FTC, instead of the FCC, was that this is your email providers, this is your cellphone providers, these are the people who not only know who you're talking to, but they know where you're talking to them. And they know what you're talking about. Because as much as it was touted at the town hall that people don't understand how this works and it's not complicated and they don't know what's in your emails and text messages is absolutely false. Boeing already sold the technology to the Egyptian government to open your cellphone and find out what your text messages are and to open your email and find out what your email says and locate you, once they've opened that information. Boeing sold that to the Egyptian government before 2010. So they've had it a long time.
Vodaphone is a European cell phone company. Vodaphone sold the Arab Spring participants cell phone information to the Egyptian Government and then they used the Boeing technology to locate all those dissidents.
[32:06] RP: Yes, I know that.
DA: And Yahoo sold dissident information to the Chinese government in 2007 and those people are still in jail. This is why it was under the FTC instead of the FCC. Because it was totally dealing with something other than marketing. Because if you think about it, how valuable is your freedom on the open market? That's what Internet privacy is about.
[33:02] RP: Would you have pardoned Edward Snowden?
[33:04] DA: I think that that's a difficult question. I think that's very Monday morning quarterbacking. I think that it was a very interesting case and seeing all the information would have been interesting. But definitely in this day and age we have to really look deeper than just labels. You have whistle blowers. You have leakers. We have to look deeper than these labels. We have to look and see what did they share? Why did they share it? And separate whether or not they broke the law with whether or not someone else broke the law and this person is bringing it to light.
RP: Exactly. I was hoping Obama would pardon him before leaving office.
[34:10] DA: But he did pardon Chelsea Manning. And part of the argument could be that Chelsea Manning did turn herself in, and she was actually in physical custody of the U.S., whereas Snowden is being protected by a foreign government. So that could have played a part.
RP: Education? We just barely touched on that.
[35:04] DA: Arizona has been a leader for awhile in really bad ideas going national. You know we had the 1070 and now we have the SR 4 or something in Texas, and we've had a couple of other ones, but the voucher program is the leader right now. Our public education system has been deliberately dismantled over and over. It's been deliberately defunded. And just like the ACA, when it comes to education, what is being said is let's steal all the--and social security too--Let's steal all the funds and then say see how it's falling apart? That's exactly what's going on. With our education system, an uneducated society is an unproductive society. We have textbooks full of societies that have fallen or risen according to their educational system. Our educational system is one of the things that made the United States rise as a world leader. Our current process of defunding and dismantling our public education system, creating a system of vouchers which is a false promise that normal people would be able to go to private school, because vouchers are not going to cover the expense of private school. Basically, what you are doing is giving rich people a discount. That's what you're doing. Because everybody else? The voucher is not going to be enough for them to actually go. So by doing this we're creating a caste system. We're trying to make it where only the rich are educated, only the rich get the benefits, only the rich get the contracts, only the rich get the jobs. Where does that leave the rest of us? That leaves the rest of us struggling at the bottom. While the rich people seem to think that this might be a good idea, it really comes back again to if we can't afford your products, you cannot make money.
[37:24] RP: That hasn't caught on yet.
DA: Well, consumers are the drivers of the job market. When consumers purchase, then employers create new jobs. It is absolutely not the case that we provide the infrastructure, roads, bridges, mail service, so that corporations can make profits and then we want to give them, on top of that, incentives, and tax breaks, so that they might be so kind as to create jobs for us. Whereas, if we stopped stealing from the middle class, if we set the middle class up with education and tax breaks for small businesses, and they can create more products and consumers can buy more products and that's going to create more jobs. That is the only thing that has ever created jobs. People don't create jobs out of the goodness of their heart. They're not going to go into debt, they're not going to lose all their profit, they're not going to not have a second home, in order to give some people jobs.
[38:41] RP: I just keep thinking of more things to ask you, but I want to close and let you go. How would you deal, as our Senator from Arizona, … with contact with your constituents?
[39:11] DA: You know I am just astounded by how much our elected leaders don't have contact with the public. We've come down to completely ignored or form letters. And I understand that there are a lot of people, right? And it is very hard for one person to have intimate contact with a lot of people. But, yes we can do it. You've got to have town halls even when they're uncomfortable. The reason why we're so stuck now is people feel unheard. One of the worst things you can do to any human is ignoring and making them feel unheard. That doesn't matter if you're dealing with a spousal situation or a kid situation or a neighbor situation or even a political situation. People feeling unheard is the most hopeless and most upsetting and angering thing that you can do to a human being. And that's what we're doing. So there has to be a certain number of town halls and it can't just be pay-to-play. That's the other thing, we don't do town halls, but then we do pay-to-play, which is when you come to town, you have some kind of a coffee or other setting and people are invited to come, constituents are invited to come, but it costs them fifty dollars to do it. That's a pay-to-play. That is not meeting with your constituents. That's actually fundraising. So you should just call it that. It's not a meet and greet. It's not a meet your representative today.
And I also think that what most elected leaders do well is they usually have a good staff. I will give them that. And you really need to have that. You need to have a staff that can show compassion for your constituents, who can listen to them, and give to you what they said. But there has to be more access, because as busy as politicians may be, they always have time to meet with their donors, they always have time to meet with the special interests. They always have time to meet with people who want to give them money. But that's not who elected you. That may have helped you get elected, but that's not who elected you. Even the people who never gave you a dime and even the people who voted against you, that's your constituents.
[41:52] RP: Gabby Giffords was shot at one of her constituent events. But she did those all over the district, and this was a large district. You know, there’s a difference between smaller local meetings, going somewhere where you could meet with your representative, and a town hall.
I didn't ask about guns, speaking of Gabby. I won't. I'll let you go on that one. But I do thank you so much for doing this.
DA: You're welcome. Since you didn't ask me, there is one topic I do want to bring up. That's Planned Parenthood. I'm a supporter of Planned Parenthood, because number one: Abortion is legal in this country. People need to be reminded of that. Number two: Planned Parenthood does way more, and actually very little providing of abortions. And this is just a dog whistle. The whole idea of Planned Parenthood being an anti-abortion movement, this is a dog whistle. And the reason why we know it's a dog whistle is because they are going after Planned Parenthood who does so much more, and so little abortions, but we're not going after organizations who actually only give money for abortions and abortion is in their name. Nobody is going after those organizations. So that means it is not about abortion, it's about controlling women. And the reason why it's about controlling women is it's based on religion. The whole idea that women should not have access to information or control or freedom of their bodies. We know that, because of the Hobby Lobby lawsuit. Hobby Lobby was about an employer's right to use their religion to deny a woman to have access to birth control from her insurance. That is purely religious based. That is purely an attack on women.
45:01] RP: Exactly and there are religious exemptions. We did touch on this but not ...
[45:02] DA: Not on this interview. I do walk around with my Planned Parenthood T-shirt. I go places in my Planned Parenthood T-shirt. One, this brings up conversation, and the number one conversation I like to have is that if this was really about abortion, why are you not after the abortion clinics? Why are you not after the organizations that pay for abortions? You are being used. You are being used.
RP: They've been against Planned Parenthood since it was the Birth Control League.
DA: Right. It's always been about birth control. Because my God, if women were sexually free, what would we do?
RP: Exactly. There was a judge in Margaret Sanger’s trial in 1917 who said that women did not have “the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception.”
DA: Wow.
RP: So yes. That's what it's really about.
[46:23] DA: Yes, that's exactly what it's about. So I stand proudly with Planned Parenthood. One, because I'm against the dog whistle. And two, because I believe it's nobody's business what I'm doing in my bedroom.
RP: Yeah. Small government.
DA: Yeah. Small government. So small they can fit in my bedroom.
RP: Right. They want to know who you're sleeping with and how.
DA: But let's not regulate whether or not the food you eat while you're in your bedroom is not poisoned.
RP: Of course, because that's business. Businesses don't have bedrooms. Thank you so much for doing this.
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You can learn more about Deedra at her website:
deedra2018.com