The Somalis in Lewston, Maine

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.