Ruwa Romman’s grandfather was born in the Palestinian village of Suba, just outside of Jerusalem. It no longer exists.

Her grandmother hails from a nearby village, al-Walaja, home to a 5,000-year-old olive tree — the second oldest in the world. It too has suffered destruction and land loss.

“They were violently exiled from their homes,” Romman said, describing her grandparents’ experience during the founding of Israel in 1948, an event known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands were forced to leave their homes. “It’s a story of displacement and this sort of continued search for belonging.”

Romman, a 31-year-old Palestinian American, planned to share her family’s story on stage at the Democratic National Convention in mid-August. She never got the chance to do so.

But her experience there catapulted her into the national spotlight.

Through her advocacy outside the convention, Romman has become a face for the uncomfortable balance many Arab-American voters are trying to strike this election season: between support for the Democratic Party and criticism of its largely pro-Israel platform.

Romman, an elected official from the swing state of Georgia, was nominated to represent the Uncommitted National Movement, a protest effort that hopes to pressure Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris into pulling her support for Israel’s war in Gaza.

Romman was one of three speakers that the movement suggested should represent the Palestinian experience on the convention stage.

Had she been given the opportunity to address the convention, she told Al Jazeera, her speech would have been an endorsement for Harris.

She would have also shared “her grandfather’s story”: the tale of a lovingly mischievous bodega owner who’d slip her $20 bills with a wink and a smile.

It would have been an opportunity to offer a human face to the suffering of Palestinians, more than 41,250 of whom have been killed in the present-day war.

Now Romman says she has no plans to make an endorsement.

Instead, the history-making politician is focusing on her re-election campaign and using her popular TikTok account to encourage civic engagement.

She wants more people to vote, especially in down-ballot races. And she wants voters to never, ever stop fighting for what they believe in.

“Even if you live in a district that is represented by a Republican, you should still be engaging with them,” she said in a recent social media video. “You should be talking to every single one of your representatives, whether they listen to you or not. You should never stop.”

Born in Jordan, Romman began making history in 2022, when she became the first Muslim woman elected to the Georgia State House of Representatives.

The Democrat was among a record number of Muslim-American candidates elected to office during the midterm races that year. A total of 153 won.

But Romman credits her roots with launching her into politics and community service.

“When we came to this country,” said Bilal, Romman’s father, “we felt we had a message we had to deliver.”

Romman is the oldest of four siblings: She has two brothers and a sister. Her family moved from Amman, Jordan, to the southern state of Georgia when she was only seven years old.

Growing up in the largely conservative town of Cumming, Romman explained, she faced anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate. But it was only later that Bilal learned the full extent of the harassment his children endured.

“We used to see a lot of pain on their faces,” said Bilal, “but they wouldn’t tell us why.”

He and his wife Sana came to learn that Romman’s classmates called her a “terrorist”. Once, as Romman’s school bus pulled away from her home, she saw kids point at her house and say, “This is where they make the bombs.”

“Imagine you have a child in middle school, and they’re hearing this about their family,” Bilal told Al Jazeera. But pride brims in his low, deep voice as he talks about how his daughter confronted the bullying.

“That built more enthusiasm in her, and she has to work harder and harder to change the story,” he said.

Romman started wearing a headscarf at a young age, and she tried to teach her classmates about the Islamic values of justice, peace and caring for others.

One of the friends she made was a young Reverend Rob Lee, a Protestant minister from North Carolina who is the same age as Romman.

The two met at Emory University’s Youth Theological Institute, a programme for high school students that Lee calls “theology camp for nerds”.

Lee explained that he immediately felt a “deep friendship with her”, which was solidified when Romman invited him and other students to evening prayer.

“It was a beautiful experience for this Christian kid interested in ministry,” Lee said. “There were other people in the group that were a little sceptical, but there was a connection (with Romman) that made it feel safe.”

When it came time for college, Romman enrolled at Georgia’s Oglethorpe University. Bilal and Sana had dreams of her entering engineering or medicine. But Romman had other plans.

“I’ll never forget: It was my last semester of undergrad, and I was about to graduate with a degree in politics,” Romman recalled. “My dad was like, ‘Are you sure you can’t just apply to medical school? Just give it a try?’ I was like, ‘Do you know what goes into med school?’”

She later earned a master’s degree in public policy from Georgetown University and worked in government affairs for the consulting firm Deloitte.

But it was her volunteer work that paved the way for her unexpected run for office.

Romman remembers throwing herself into advocacy around the time that Republican Donald Trump entered the White House.

It was a tense moment in history for Muslim and Arab Americans. A week after becoming president, in January 2017, Trump signed an executive order that came to be known as the “Muslim ban”.

It barred entry into the US for citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, including Syria, Sudan and Yemen. The order took effect within hours of being signed, and immigrants from those countries suddenly found themselves stranded at US airports.

Romman used her Arabic translation skills to help travellers stuck in Georgia plan their next moves.

She also worked for the Georgia Muslim Voter Project and helped restart her state’s chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. But her growing visibility as an advocate attracted unwanted attention.

“It was a time of heightened hatred, particularly against Muslims,” she told the website State Affairs in 2023. “We were getting death threats. I was assigned a GBI (Georgia Bureau of Investigation) agent.”

But Romman refused to retreat from the causes she championed, including civil rights.

Reverend Lee, her childhood friend, remembers they travelled together to Richmond, Virginia, in 2021, when a statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee was being removed.

A man near the statue was carrying “large guns”, Lee said, and when he noticed the two friends, he began walking towards them.

That’s when Lee remembers Romman stepping in front of him, as if to defend him.

“She was not going to be deterred in protecting our friendship just because the odds were against her,” Lee said. “She just wants things to be just and equitable. When things aren’t that way, she kicks it into high gear.”

Despite her strong ideals, Romman insists a career in politics was “never part of the plan”.

Toward the end of 2021, the Georgia Muslim Voter Project asked Romman to join a Zoom call for people interested in running for office. Romman agreed to join and give advice.

But then she struck up a fateful conversation with a reporter on the call from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC). That conversation turned into a story with the opening lines, “Ruwa Romman is entertaining the idea of running for office.”

There was only one problem: She wasn’t.

But the prospect of her running for office set her local community ablaze with excitement. Calls started pouring in, and 15 days later, she announced her bid as a Democrat for Georgia’s House of Representatives.

Britney Whaley is the southeast regional director for the Working Families Party, a progressive political party that sometimes endorses Democrats. Her organisation was among those who endorsed Romman, largely in response to her advocacy work.

“She came to us with a reputation,” Whaley told Al Jazeera. “Anytime you see people who have done work in the ecosystem, you know members are going to be excited. You know it’s going to be someone who represents working-class communities.”

In 2022, Romman was ultimately elected to the state House by less than three thousand votes. She represents House District 97, an area with around 60,000 residents northeast of Atlanta.

The social media platform TikTok has been central to her voter outreach efforts. She has more than 21,000 followers on TikTok, and many of her videos have thousands of views.

Often, she uses her platform to denounce what she sees as creeping cynicism among voters.

As she canvassed in her district in early August, ahead of her reelection bid this November, she told Al Jazeera she noticed a sense of disenfranchisement.

“One thing we heard is how there’s no point in voting. Nothing’s going to change and both sides are the same,” Romman said. “It’s the same thing you hear online, but it does have real-world impact.”

Her reaction? “I might as well get online and address some of these things, so that way we can actually do what we need to do in real life.”

Her advocacy to end the war in Gaza is only part of her overall platform. Most voters, she said, want to talk about education, healthcare and reproductive rights. (“At least, what little of them we have in Georgia,” she quipped.)

But her stance on the Gaza war has been increasingly part of her national profile. In her videos, she is vocal that the US should end its “blank-cheque” support for Israel, a close ally in the Middle East.

She also takes on critics who argue Democrats like President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris should be excused for their pro-Israel stance on the merits of their domestic policy. Harris is set to take on Trump in November’s presidential election.

“Do you hear yourself?” Romman asked one commenter in a video. “You are literally saying, ‘Yes, both presidential candidates will kill the people that you love, but on the bright side, one of them is not gonna do it here.’”

“The only appropriate position is that we need to keep pressuring the president to end this genocide that we are enabling. Period. End of story.”

That outspoken advocacy landed her in front of national news cameras on August 22, the last day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Romman hadn’t planned to be there at all. She had not even applied for credentials for the convention. “I came to Chicago for a panel with the Arab American Institute,” she told the news media at the time.

But the Uncommitted National Movement had been pushing for a speaking slot on the convention’s main stage, to represent the tens of thousands of voters concerned about the Gaza war.

It asked Romman if she would be willing to speak. She had been using social media to chronicle the demonstrations outside the United Center, where the convention was being held.

As the four days of the convention ticked by, Romman held onto the hope that Democratic leaders would allow her to speak. She repeatedly delayed her flight home. She estimates she only got 10 hours of sleep during the entire four-day span.

“We really thought that we were making some progress,” Romman said. She thought, “What we do here could save lives and prevent more death.”

She was with Abbas Alawieh, one of the co-founders of Uncommitted National Movement, when he finally got the call from convention organisers. “And it was a no,” she said.

Romman ultimately delivered her speech on the pavement outside the United Center instead of on its stage, surrounded by microphones and video cameras. She broke down in tears.

Who did and did not speak at the Democratic National Convention was telling, Romman later told Al Jazeera. She pointed out that Republican Geoff Duncan, a former lieutenant governor in Georgia, was invited, despite his efforts to restrict abortion access, a Democratic priority.

“It’s clear they’re trying to go for the white Republican vote that never turns out for us,” she said. “And good luck to them, because they are going to lose if they go down that route.”

Romman also noted that Harris herself avoided mentioning key anti-war demands during the convention, including preventing US weapons from being used in human rights abuses in Gaza.

“She didn’t have to say the words ‘arms embargo’. She could’ve just said, ‘I commit to enforcing our laws on friends and foe alike,’” Romman said.

Other recipients of US military aid, like Ukraine, are limited as to how they can use US-supplied arms, she argued.

“Ukraine cannot target certain targets. It doesn’t matter who is in those targets; it doesn’t matter where they are. They cannot use US weapons for those targets. The ask is we just do the same here.”

The Harris campaign did not return a request for comment.

Back home in Georgia, Romman has returned to her family — and to campaigning for her second term. As she spoke to Al Jazeera via Zoom, a tuft of cat hair floated into the air beside her.

Her two pets — Olive and Itsy — were in the midst of a literal cat fight, clawing playfully at each other. She paused to break them apart.

She remarked that her life in Georgia and her growing visibility in the national anti-war movement have been hard to reconcile.

“When I go campaign, it’s almost like living a double life in real time,” she said.

She still identifies as a Democrat, despite her rejection at the convention. She’s no fan of alternative options like Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

“I am now openly in opposition to that woman,” Romman said.

She feels Stein is leveraging the war in Gaza to gain an advantage politically. Stein has campaigned heavily in Muslim-American strongholds like Michigan and openly calls Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide” — something many Republicans and Democrats refuse to do.

“To be clear, I am furious with Jill Stein,” Romman clarified. “She is leveraging our very real pain and desperation to once again launch herself back into any sort of prominence.”

In her eyes, the Green Party candidate — who is attempting to peel away voters from the Harris campaign — is not “doing the work” necessary to affect real change.

Stein has responded to similar accusations by saying that there is little difference between the Democrats and the Republicans, making a third party a necessity.

“If you’re serious about building a third party, you do it down ballot,” Romman said.

But rather than focus on the presidential horse race, Romman hopes to concentrate on her own campaign. She wants to improve healthcare options for Georgians and tackle gun control — two issues she knows will be uphill battles.

And as opposed to her last election, Romman says she has more people she can call for volunteer support or donations. Her imposter syndrome has also subsided.

“I’m a little more confident,” she said. “When I go to events, I don’t have to wonder if I belong there.”

When she arrives at Georgia’s legislative chamber, for instance, she now feels on equal footing.

“I look around me, and I realise we all have expertise on some things and absolutely no knowledge on others.

“Everyone else,” she said, “is just like me.”