Kathleen Sullivan - How
did you feel reader, when you read a few days ago what that nasty man called
the President said about our Somali population? When he called them “garbage”
and said they were destroying our country and wanted them sent “back to where
they came from?” Or when Vice President JD Vance banged the table in agreement
and the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called his remarks
“amazing” and an “epic moment?”….
The city of Lewiston [Maine] has
a large population of Somali immigrants. I did a little research about how the
Somalis in Lewiston are being treated and what I discovered gives me hope and
helps me to refocus on the good that exists in the world…
The very good news is that in the
last twenty years, by all accounts, the city has successfully begun to address racism
and discrimination. Several organizations and political leaders support the
Wabanaki and French Canadians who were once so vilely treated. Stories are
being told. Art is being made. Music is being played. Many Franco Americans and Wabanaki in Maine are reclaiming with
pride, and now without fear, their heritage.
When the Somali’s fleeing civil
war, drought and famine first arrived in Lewiston in the early 2,000, things
did not go well. The mayor at the time, Laurier T. Raymond Jr.’s, addressed a
letter to the Somali community asking them to stop coming and to stop bringing
their families. In 2003 a white supremacist group hosted a rally in support of
Raymond Jr.’s request. The governor, John Baldacci, attended that rally. But a
rally in support of the Somali population was organized at Bates College and
over 4, 000 people attended. Only 39 attended the white supremacist rally.
In the twenty years since that
time, Lewiston has, by all accounts proven to be a model city for immigration.
In August 2010, the Lewiston Sun Journal reported that Somali entrepreneurs
had helped reinvigorate downtown Lewiston by opening dozens of shops in
previously closed storefronts. Amicable relations were also reported by local
merchants of French-Canadian descent and Somali storekeepers.
Earlier this year I was fortunate
to have been in a group of women who came together to consider how we could
respond to the harms of this administration. There I met Catherine Besteman, a
professor of anthropology at Colby College and a lifelong advocate for social
justice…
I contacted Catherine a few days
ago. She told me that the Somalis’ have formed strong organizations of advocacy
and support for the community. “I guess I would just offer that the Somali
community IS the Lewiston community now. They are elected officials, small
business owners, EDs of organizations, college students, nurses and doctors and
pharmacists, farmers who provide a TON of food to local food banks, and much,
much more.”
In a piece in the Christian Science Monitor she had this to say: “These small
American towns are being transformed quietly without ruckus or violence – they
are stories we don’t pay attention to…. When people are screaming and fighting
about immigration, they aren’t looking at places like Lewiston and saying,
‘Huh, this is working.”
Take that Donald Trump, JD Vance,
Karoline Leavitt.
