Meet Jahmiel

Why I'm running

I spent most of my early childhood in West Philadelphia, raised by my mother alongside my two sisters. Our fathers weren’t in our lives; mine was killed by gun violence when I was just two years old. My mother immigrated from Jamaica in the 1990s. She never graduated from high school, but when she became a mother at the age of 17 in America, she was determined to give her children a better life than the one she had. She worked sixty hours a week, cooking dinner before dawn so we wouldn’t go to bed hungry. But in a city where wages are low and rent is high, no matter how hard she worked, it never seemed like enough.

When I was in third grade, I came home from school to find an eviction notice taped to our door. Within weeks, we were living out of bags, staying wherever someone would take us. We were homeless a total of three times over seven years. I saw what the 2008 recession did to working families — people like my mother who did everything right but still lost everything.

I was often abused by strangers we stayed with, and I kept quiet because we had nowhere else to go. That’s a sacrifice you make when you’re the man of the house. The women in my family needed to see strength in me, so through prayer, I learned to carry it — even when I was breaking inside. But I also carried something else — a promise to myself that I would build a life where my family and others like us would never have to live that way. again.

From a young age, I knew education would be my way out. However, my inner-city school was cutting our gifted program. I was being taught at the pace of the most disruptive person in class, and my dreams for success couldn’t be realized there. I reached out to the prestigious Haverford School on my own—twice—until they finally gave me a chance. It was unheard of for a student from West Philly to ask for that kind of opportunity, but I refused to accept the limits placed on me. That opportunity changed my life. It showed me what was possible when someone believes in your potential instead of your circumstances. But I had to leave my neighborhood to find that opportunity.

From there, I studied at MIT, and then I became the first person in my entire family to receive a bachelor’s degree, after being awarded a full scholarship to the University of Chicago, where I graduated this year. But no matter how far I’ve come, I’ve never forgotten where I started.

I’m running for Congress because I know that change doesn’t come from politicians who’ve never lived it; it comes from those of us who have, and who refuse to stop fighting for security and dignity for all our families.

My campaign isn’t about waiting, and it’s not about excuses. It’s about fighting for an economy that rewards work, for housing that strengthens neighborhoods,  and for a democracy that finally listens to the people it’s supposed to serve.