With Rising Political Power, Somali Community May Get First City Council Representative
Minneapolis, Nov 02, 2013 (SDN) -Abdi Warsame, 35, seems poised to become the Minneapolis City Council member representing the 6th Ward. With the recent death of Minneapolis School Board member Hussein Samatar, a victory would make him the highest-ranking (and only) elected official of Somali descent in Minnesota, if not the entire nation.
His principal rival, Robert Lilligren, 53, has held the post for 11 years, but Warsame, in an organizational coup, flooded the DFL convention with hundreds of East African supporters this summer and grabbed the party’s endorsement.
Running in a newly formed district that he himself helped to remap, he appears to be headed for victory. “Somalis are hungry for political representation,” he says. “This is a transformative moment for our community.”
Others saw the Somalis as pushy interlopers. “A lot of people came who had never been there before,” says David Weinlick, DFL party affairs director. To party regulars, it felt weird.
“This is a very old American story, and it’s a good one,” says Larry Jacobs, professor of political studies at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Over the centuries, he points out, one immigrant group after another — the Germans, the Irish, the Italians, the Swedes, the Jews — have arrived and elbowed their way into the electoral system. By emphasizing their ethnic identity, they not only won votes but earned respect from the rest of the community. And with access to elected offices, they could hand some of the goodies back to their home communities. The Somalis are only the most recent group to make a bid for political power, at least in Minneapolis.
However, the fallout from the recent al-Shabab attack in Nairobi could deflate those hopes a bit. No one knows for certain whether some of the Muslim extremists involved in the deadly shopping center raid are linked to the Twin Cities’ Somali community. Both religious and secular leaders here have been quick to condemn the bloodshed and dissociate themselves from the actions of the militant group.
But, says Ahmed Ismail Yusuf, author of “Somalis in Minnesota” (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2012), “events in Nairobi may dampen Somalis’ spirits.” They would be concerned, he adds, that others would see them as somehow to blame for the tragedy, and “they would want to hide as fast as they can” — possibly suppressing their own vote. Then too, he says, white voters might be put off when it comes to pulling the lever for a Somali candidate.
Source: minnpost.com