Somali American Public Life Participation | Somalicurrent.com
United States of America is among immigrant nations. They say you might come to America with nothing but you have the opportunity to build or to rebuild your life in the realm of wealth and knowledge, whereby within your purview, you can imagine and create your lifestyle. They call it the land of opportunity and that is not an empty saying. There should be truth behind the word. In America, you have the dominion over your life and your community than you think!
The first wave of Somalia civil war runaways moved to United States early in 1990s. Since that time, more than 20 years passed. A huge segment of Somalis in the US became American citizens. We are Somali Americans. We are a part of this country, the United States of America. We grew aloof and indifferent in feeling more like real Americans. Instead, many of us in the US are glued to our TV screens on daily basis for news happenings back in Somalia. We forgot to worry about our neighborhood (this country) and we stay awake and sleepless about Somalia. No offense, indeed. I got nothing against Somalia. It is where we were born and came from (except those who were born here). We still have to think about our birth nation. But we don’t have to allow it to prevent us from succeeding in American in every way, be it economically and politically. Besides taking care of our private lives, it is time for us to participate in the public life in this nation. It is time for us to take part the democratic and election process. It is time for us to say “enough is enough” and think, otherwise we have just one ear in the water.
In America, nobody offers you all your rights on a golden plate. You have to get educated, smart and aware of how the system works. If the word betterment is missing in your vocabulary, then I don’t have to tell you the outcome; it is too obvious for anyone who wakes up every morning, not with the main purpose being how to pay the bills but how to rise above the kind of a rut that keeps people in mediocrity, ignorance and I-do-not-care attitudes.
Early in October, before Abdi Warsame, a Somali American won a city council seat in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I remember reading the below news article by MINNPOST.
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.”
In the following month, Abdi Warsame won and he became the first Somali American to win a public office that high: Star Tribune wrote that day:
Abdi Warsame made history Tuesday by becoming the highest elected Somali in the country, winning a seat on the City Council in a landslide.
Two decades after a wave of East Africans arrived in Minneapolis to escape civil war, they emerged as a political force to elect one of their own for the first time to City Hall, jumping out of their seats at a Cedar-Riverside theater to cheer, clap and embrace one another as Warsame took the stage.
This year, 2014, is a mid term election year. Mid term elections are held two years after the elections for the president of the United States. As you can see from the phrase, mid term elections are different election where candidates run for different offices in the US such as United States House of Representatives, where 435 seat are up for grabs, and for the United States Senate, contenders vie for the full terms of 33/34 seats among the 100 seats of the Senate. So, as Somali Americans, we have to be acquainted with all of that and we have to learn the basics of the game: running for local offices is a good place to start.
Our Somali American children need a good future from us. We have to be good models for them. We have to wake up to the reality of this country…
A few years ago, I wrote this short story: Somali Short Story Series: The Lion and the Three Oxen:
Once upon a time there were three oxen in the forests of Somalia. One of them was white, one was black and one was red. Whenever there was an enemy, they used to defend themselves as a group and the word “unity” was a very important phrase for those three oxen. Those three oxen used to see everyday weaker animals being preyed on by beasts. This taught them a great lesson that no matter what, they had to defend themselves as a group and see every enemy with the same eyes.
After many successful years where the three oxen lived with freedom and the sweetness of sovereignty, there was a lapse in their commitment to their unity; there was a weak, thin lion who immigrated from a very far away land where hunger and drought killed most of the animals there; the three oxen welcomed the weak lion with open arms with the condition that if he tried anything stupid against them, they had to kill him with their sharp horns.
After many months, the lion gained much of his strength by hunting elsewhere, but couldn’t do anything to the oxen as long as they remained allied with one another. So, the lion resorted to deception turning the oxen against each other; the lion divided the three oxen into individuals; first he singled out the white ox, then the black ox and finally it was the time to eat the red one. Before tearing his meat into pieces, the lion asked the red ox if he had any last words. The red ox said, “why are you eating me today because I have been your friend and I went against my old friends for the sake of you, why?’ “When you accepted me to eat your friends, that was when you accepted me to eat you…” the lion laughed.
As a matter of fact, the reason I shared the above short story is to emphasize the importance of Unity as Americans no matter what color or creed. But as Somali Americans, we are not uniting for a bad course but for a good course: to co-exist with our fellow Americans with respect and integrity and to participate in all the good this beloved country stands for. God bless Somali Americans. God bless America.
Ahmed Said, is a Somalicurrent blogger based in Minnesota, USA. He writes about Somali Diaspora related issues in the world and also the current affairs of Somalia. He can be reached at abdinassirsomalia@gmail.com
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