New Film Highlights Delaware’s First Female Muslim Legislator in Her Fight for Gaza Ceasefire
Lauren Abunassar
When Medford, New Jersey-based documentary filmmaker Zainab Sultan was considering what new film projects to pursue, Delaware State Representative Madinah Wilson-Anton emerged as an immediate source of fascination. The first female Muslim legislator in Delaware, Wilson-Anton is young, candid, a steadfast community advocate, and a stand-up comedian. “As a filmmaker, as a storyteller, I just knew this was a great combination. I would never imagine someone in politics also doing stand-up comedy,” Sultan told Al-Bustan News. Beyond this, she was struck by how much Wilson-Anton managed to accomplish by the time she was elected at just 26-years-old. Not to mention Wilson-Anton’s efforts to shed light on and advocate for Palestine.
Twenty-six-year-old Delaware State Representative Madinah Wilson-Anton, pictured above, is the first female Muslim legislator in Delaware, an advocate for Palestine and the subject of a new short film, Stand up for Madinah: the U.S. Politician Pushing for Peace in Gaza, made by local filmmaker Zainab Sultan. Photo courtesy: Zainab Sultan.
Sultan managed to leverage her fascination into a short film, Stand up for Madinah: the U.S. Politician Pushing for Peace in Gaza, which debuted on Al Jazeera English’s flagship documentary program Witness earlier this month. The film earned support from two landmark Philadelphia institutions — winning grants from Scribe Video Center and Independence Public Media Foundation.
Ultimately, according to Sultan, the film is a testament to the hope we find in activists who critique the U.S. government for continuing to arm Israel as it kills civilians in Gaza. Indeed, Stand Up for Madinah is a compelling and empathetic portrait of Wilson-Anton’s unwavering efforts — as a Black Muslim woman — to challenge the Biden administration’s stance on Israel-Palestine.
When Sultan initially reached out to Wilson-Anton to pitch the film project, Wilson-Anton thought it might be a joke. The 31-year-old legislator, who still lives in the Newark, Delaware community where she grew up, figured nothing much would come of the documentary. As Sultan gained more support for the project, however, Wilson-Anton realized it was legitimate. And, at the end of the day, she recognized that her story might matter to people needing to witness someone with the courage to stand up for justice. “It’s easy as a spectator of politics to think, ‘Oh everyone you see in politics supports the genocide or isn’t saying anything,’” Wilson-Anton told Al-Bustan News. “It’s also easy in a role like this to sit back and think, ‘Why am I doing this? Nothing I’m doing matters. Nothing is changing.’”
Standing in the photo above, Delaware State Representative Madinah Wilson-Anton addressed her colleagues in the state legislature on the floor of the Delaware House earlier this year. Photo courtesy: Delaware Legislative Assembly.
Early on in her career, to counter feelings of despair, Wilson-Anton followed the advice of a coworker and made a folder in her inbox for “happy emails.” It’s the place where she saves thank you notes, messages from supporters, and notes of encouragement. “I don’t even have to look in the folder. Just having it is a reminder that as much pain and suffering as there is that I’m not able to change for people, there is a lot I am able to do,” Wilson-Anton said.
While Stand up for Madinah documents some of Wilson-Anton’s momentous victories in her fight for justice, including her work leading the first annual Muslim Capitol Day in Delaware, the film does not shy away from portraying the intense isolation and abuse Wilson-Anton has faced in response to her activism.
She describes the early days of her activism as catalyzed by the sheer brutality of images coming out of Gaza. “It felt like I was losing my mind,” Wilson-Anton said. “I knew a lot of people felt that way. And still do.”
Wilson-Anton was horrifically doxxed by staunch Israel loyalists angered by her public and frequent calls for ceasefire. In an early scene of the documentary, she is shown reading some of the hateful messages she received. Some messages are filled with bomb emojis. Others encourage her to wear a suicide belt. Some tell her to “go pick cotton in Louisiana.” In the face of such hate speech, Wilson-Anton persists. The world of comedy has helped her escape from the vitriol.
Delaware State Representative Madinah Wilson-Anton, at center above, is a Democrat who represents the 26th district in Delaware, where she grew up. Photo courtesy: Delaware Legislative Assembly.
First introduced to comedy through a comedian uncle, Wilson-Anton enrolled in a class at Philadelphia’s Helium Comedy Club in 2022 and soon began performing at shows, open mics, and festivals. In late 2023, in the early days of the genocide in Gaza, she struggled to find anything funny. “Sometimes I’m the person who feels like giving up. Sometimes I’m encouraging the person who feels like giving up. We all go through stages of grief at different paces,” Wilson-Anton said. “It’s important to have moments where you can recharge so you come back to work renewed. I’m grateful I have comedy for that.”
When she first began researching her film, Sultan was struck by Wilson-Anton's humor in the face of darkness. Sultan, an Indian Muslim who grew up in Saudi Arabia and attended college in Qatar, came to the U.S. in 2016, just before former president Donald Trump was first elected. In response to Trump’s anti-immigrant political discourse, his proposed Muslim bans, and the media’s vilification of Black and Brown people, Sultan gravitated towards creating media that uplifted Muslim American voices.
Sultan first became acquainted with Wilson-Anton on a Zoom call about Muslim women in politics. Wilson-Anton was one of the featured speakers on the call. Sultan was intrigued and found herself keeping tabs on Wilson-Anton for months after the meeting. She followed her work and got to know her stand-up routines.
Stand up for Madinah debuted on Al Jazeera’s Witness earlier this month. Pictured above, its subject, Delaware State Representative Madinah Wilson-Anton, participates in a Palestine solidarity march in Philadelphia. Photo Credit: Mike Arrison.
With lifelong connections to Palestine and the Arab world, and as a mother of two young children, Sultan eventually found herself reflecting on the horrors of the unfolding genocide in Gaza. “I felt that there’s something in my power as a storyteller that I could do to shape the narrative about what is happening,” Sultan said. “Because at that point, even condemning the killings seemed controversial.” Around this time, she came across a viral video of Wilson-Anton attending Vice President Kamala Harris’s December 2023 holiday party. In the video, Wilson-Anton publicly calls out Harris in a face-to-face confrontation, and demands that the Vice President push for a ceasefire in Gaza and account for the Biden administration’s ongoing support for Israel throughout the unfolding genocide.
“As scary as [confronting Harris] was, it didn’t feel like I had a choice. It was just what I was supposed to do,” Wilson-Anton said.
Sultan recalled the moment she first saw the video, months after that initial Zoom meeting. “I was blown away by her courage. The risk of being censured. The risk of standing up against her own party, of saying what’s right and what’s needed at that time.”
So, in December 2023, Sultan began filming. Initially, she planned on filming Wilson-Anton for a few years. It’s typical of the way Sultan immerses herself in a film subject’s life. Early on in the process, however, she fielded interest from Al Jazeera and agreed that the best time to release the film would be around this year’s election cycle. As a result, her filming timeline was compressed into approximately seven months.
Delaware State Representative Madinah Wilson-Anton, pictured above, condemned Israel’s bombing of Gaza when she addressed participants at the Not Another Bomb: Solidarity Action with Gaza in Philadelphia in August. Photo credit: Mike Arrison.
“Another big reason I wanted to make a film on Madinah is because I think she breaks a lot of narrative stereotypes that people might have of Muslim women,” Sultan said. “She is someone who has had full support of her family growing up. She is now married and her husband is one of her biggest cheerleaders… Besides everything that was happening in Gaza and her actions demanding a ceasefire, I also saw all of these other layers that she had that would be critical to bring back to our community.”
Today, Sultan is considering adapting Wilson-Anton’s story into a feature-length documentary. She is also developing an impact campaign for Stand up for Madinah and is currently in talks with several nonprofits who want to use the film to recruit young people with political aspirations. “I think for people who belong to [marginalized] communities, and for someone like me, we understand the importance of getting these stories told. And we also understand how to tell them in a way that gives a full picture where we are not just caricatures.”
Since the film’s release, Wilson-Anton has received messages from all over the world that have found their way into her “happy emails” folder. Viewers have thanked her for standing as a role model of courageous resistance. “I know a lot of people felt validated in seeing my experience,” she said.
Reaching people, changing lives, is what keeps Wilson-Anton motivated. And it drives the work she does on a daily basis. "Part of what has drawn me to both politics and comedy,” Wilson-Anton said, “is that I get to help people find the brightness in dark times."
Watch Stand up for Madinah here.
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Lauren Abunassar is a Palestinian American writer and journalist. A Media Fellow at Al-Bustan News, she holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and an MA in journalism from NYU. Her first book Coriolis was published as winner of the 2023 Etel Adnan Poetry Prize.