INTERVIEW BY OLIVIA WISBEY
Holding her prized Dari-English dictionary, Representative Wazir stands in front of a building at Concord High School.
Photographed by Olivia Wisbey
SAFIYA WAZIR, NEW HAMPSHIRE HOUSE REPRESENTATIVE DISTRICT 17
On her place of special meaning - I was born in Afghanistan, and when I came to the United States from Uzbekistan, it took us a long time, about 11 years wait period that we had before settling in New Hampshire - Concord, New Hampshire, which is now my home. Immediately, I was able to come to Concord and pursue my education. It has a lot of meaning to me that I got my education here; I participated in yearbook, clubs, I ran track here, I had a little bit of athlete in me here, and the first time I ran for office back in 2018, I came back here to do my political candidate form. So it's a small world that we are coming to as a full circle, coming back here. And also, I'm very inspired by this place, because it has taught me so much and I'm connected with a lot of my teachers, just to name a few: my biology teacher, my math teacher, my ESL teachers, and some of my English teachers…This connection that I have with Concord High School, it's so important to me, and I carry it with me.
“I have education very close to my heart because without education, I don’t know what I would be. ”
On her first political act - My first act as a political person was becoming a US citizen. Becoming a US citizen is special to a person who becomes a US citizen through naturalization. You are taught about all the activism and all the responsibilities, but I took it deeper. I took it deeper by participating in democracy, being a voter, by searching issues that were relevant to me, and helping out organizations. Those didn’t just happen right after I became a citizen, it took some time, but it was just magical: I was eight months pregnant and became a US citizen. I knew immediately what I had to do with my certificate...now here I am, the New Hampshire House of Representatives, based on friends and families encouraging me to run, and when I did the research of who was representing me and how the dynamics worked and saw that, I immediately signed up.
“I wanted to set a tone that regardless of me being pregnant [and] mom of two, I can represent my constituents, I can multitask. And I proved that.”
On creating opportunities to get younger people into politics - For younger moms, we luckily passed legislation that would allow campaign funds towards childcare. That's a big success for younger moms and dads who want to pursue political careers. And I encourage a lot of young people, I have conversations with many, many young adults or moms or dads that can do this. Because if we don't hear from them, and if there's no voice of young moms or young dads in the statehouse, things will not be changing. The average age at the moment in the state house is 66. We need to change that dynamic. We need to have more young people representing. If more people represent the younger generation, we'll have more sustainability, we will have more laws that affect us day to day, rather than having older generations representing. And I know that this job is voluntary and it does take a lot of time out of us, but we are doing something good. We are passing legislation and helping the hard working families of New Hampshire.
“I’m proud of the organizations that are helping teach our younger generation about diversity and about the multicultural events that happen throughout the state.”