The Malayali girl who worked for Joe Biden

Lubna Sebastian, 24, was the national director of students for Joe Biden during the latter’s 2020 presidential campaign. She speaks about her experiences

Photos: Lubna Sebastian with President Joe Biden. The family (from left) Adila, Lubna, Shahin and Sebastian 

By Shevlin Sebastian 

On October 18, 2019, Lubna Sebastian was having a turkey sandwich in a hotel hallway in Houston. She was helping the Joe Biden campaign before the debate among the presidential candidates of the Democratic Party. Suddenly Biden came up, saw Lubna, and said, “Thank you for coming all the way down here.” 

Lubna, who had flown in from the campaign headquarters of Philadelphia, a distance of 2900 kms, smiled. 

After another debate at Las Vegas, Lubna went up to Biden and said, “Congratulations, you did a superb job.” 

Biden smiled and said, “Thank you.”  

Lubna saw Biden on the road when she worked on the campaign in Iowa and Nevada. “After each speech, Biden would stay at the venue for two hours, interacting with the local people,” she said. “It was crazy. I did not know you could have so much access to a prominent politician.” 

Biden’s humanity always had an impact. “You may only have 30 seconds with him but people would immediately share their problems: ‘My child has cancer’ or ‘I got laid off’,” said Lubna. “He is a person with whom it is easy to be comfortable with. He will listen and connect with you, no matter where you are from.”   

Asked the difference between Biden and former President Donald Trump, Lubna said, “He is the exact opposite of Trump. The level of exhaustion because of what happened during the past four years is immense. We have lived through a disaster. During the eight years of the Obama-Biden administration, things were so calm that people became a little politically absent. Even I was, at times.” 

But for students who grew up during Trump’s presidency, they had to endure tough times. “They saw mass shootings go unanswered, while their parents could be struck off benefits from Obamacare,” she said. “They had seen kids in cages, who had been separated from their parents on the border with Mexico. They heard about a ban on people from six Muslim countries. Some international students were worried about whether they could study further because of possible future immigration laws. The list goes on. The level of stress which people lived under was abnormal.”

As a result, the students became politically active, including Lubna. She joined the campaign, ‘It’s on Us’, which was founded by the Obama-Biden administration. This was a programme to raise awareness of sexual assault on campuses. She became one of 105 students across the country who became a national committee member. 

Asked why a 24-year-old like her supported one of the oldest candidates (Biden is 78), Lubna laughed on a Zoom call, and said, “I grew up seeing Biden on TV. He always seemed personable, someone who was very empathetic and down-to-earth. I felt I had a connection with him.” 

Lubna joined Biden’s campaign as an assistant. When some students, after doing their internships, returned to their schools, Lubna set up a programme to keep the students plugged into the campaign. 

In July, 2020, Lubna was promoted to be the national director of students for Joe Biden. There were over 400 student chapters. Lubna developed campaign updates and national events for the students across the country. 

By this time, Lubna was working 16 hours a day. “Campaign work is back-breaking, and you cannot do it unless you deeply believe in the candidate,” she said. 

On September 3, 2020, Lubna sat for her citizenship examination. Later, Biden wrote a letter in which he congratulated Lubna on becoming a citizen. ‘Your family decided to make this country home because they knew, above all else, America is all about possibilities,’ he wrote.  

Lubna voted by mail for Biden, on October 3, a month before the election. 

After the campaign, in which Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump to become the 46th President of the United States, Lubna worked on the committee that organised the inauguration ceremony of Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. After a month relaxing, Lubna is now job hunting from Bethesda, Maryland, where she is staying with her parents.

Lubna’s father Sebastian James is a Washington-based economist with the World Bank. A graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, in 1995, he got into the Indian Revenue Service and was posted in Delhi. Later, he completed his Master’s and PhD from Harvard University. He resigned from the Government of India when he was Joint Commissioner and went to America in 2002. “I wanted a more challenging life,” he said.  

A Christian, he is married to a Malayali Muslim Shahin whom he had met in Delhi. “It was love at first sight for me,” he said. 

Asked whether the couple faced pressure from their families when they decided to get married, Sebastian said, “Shahin’s father did not believe religion should come in the way of two people who are in love. My side of the family had some reservations, but I convinced them that Shahin’s character was more important than her religion. In both our families, we had members who had cross-religious marriages, and they were doing fine.” 

Apart from Lubna, the couple has another daughter, Adila, who is 17.

Interestingly, both Lubna’s mother and she were born in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences at Delhi, which was set up in 1956. The family migrated when Lubna was five years old. “Growing up in America, there was a lot of pressure to conform,” said Lubna. “No one could pronounce my name. Or they would do it incorrectly. I looked very different from my classmates, most of whom were white. As a child, you don’t want to be different. You want to be like everybody else.”

She felt she did not belong at times. But when she grew up and worked on different professional projects, Lubna met with a diverse range of people who belonged to so many different countries. “We had the most fun, and brought unique experiences to the table,” she said.  

Asked the meaning of her name, Lubna said, “It is an Arabic word which means river of milk in paradise. It is also the name of a tree that produces a fragrant flower.” Many people tell Lubna it is a beautiful name, including her family who are originally from Thiruvananthapuram.

When she was growing up, she would come to Kerala once every two years. But in college, the gaps became larger. The last time she came was in December, 2019. “I grew up with my mom’s parents, because they were in Delhi, so I was closer to them,” she said.  

Lubna admits that when she comes to Kerala, she feels she is reconnecting with her roots. “I blend in a lot more easily because everybody looks like me, unlike in the US, where I don’t always see anybody else like me,” she said. 

Lubna particularly enjoys eating the fruits in Kerala which she says are very fresh, like mangos, bananas, and guavas. 

Asked about her plans, Lubna says she is interested in a career in politics. “There are different ways to be politically active,” she said. “It can be through elected office, or advocacy groups that are inherently political.” 

(Published in OnManorama)