Pulling together

First there was the drunken woman outside a neighborhood store who mumbled racial slurs at Safia Nur and her little brother. The second time they faced harassment, a group of punks approached them as the brother and sister waited in a car outside a pharmacy.

"You Somalians, go back to your country … " recalls Safia, a 16-year-old junior at Lewiston High School in Maine.

The incidents, which occurred shortly after she moved to Lewiston from Boston in 2001, typify the racial tensions that the traditionally white, Catholic, French-Canadian city has been witnessing since Somali families began moving there in large numbers two years ago.

From a trickle of families in 2001, about 1,100 East Africans, mostly Somalis, today live in the city of 37,000. Not unexpectedly, the shift has stirred xenophobia and bigotry in some circles, but Lewiston’s growing pains worsened this fall, after the mayor’s blundering miscommunication with the Somali community intensified the attention not only of national media, but also racist, anti-Jewish, white supremacist groups.

The National Alliance has exploited the tensions on its Web site and distributed anti-Somali posters and literature in Lewiston. Another group, World Church of the Creator, has scheduled a meeting in the Lewiston Memorial Armory on January 11, 2003.

"This is the hate fringe of America, and nobody in Lewiston wants that," says Steve Wessler, founder and executive director of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence.

"In some sense it’s very sad, yet on the other hand, it’s another opportunity to get people to pull together."

Pulling together is exactly the response envisioned by a coalition of civic and religious leaders who plan a diversity celebration for January 11 in answer to the hate group’s event.

"It’s hard to respond to something like this any way but peacefully," Mark Schlotterback of Lewiston’s Calvary United Methodist Church said at a press conference announcing the celebration.

"We are a community of many different kinds of people and we are immensely thankful for that."

Lewiston’s civic organizations similarly banded together for a Community Friendship Walk in October, when hundreds of residents paraded through the city to demonstrate welcome and support for Somali residents.

Mayor Larry Raymond unwittingly inspired the walk when he told the Somali community by letter that the flow of East Africans was putting a financial drain on the city. Raymond asked them to help slow the influx by telling potential movers to Lewiston that the city was "maxed-out financially, physically and emotionally."

Though Raymond contended later his letter was well-intentioned and misunderstood, the Somali community was deeply offended and other groups in the city were outraged. But if there is a positive outcome for the letter and national notoriety that followed, it helped to mobilize the people of good will to stand up for values of inclusiveness and tolerance.

"It brought all of us together — that’s one of the important things about that letter," said Alazar Swede, a 17-year-old junior at Lewiston High School. As a newcomer to Lewiston, the Ethiopian native was moved by the Community Friendship March.

"It was just amazing to see all those people coming out there and supporting us."

The hubbub over the letter has subsided, but the presence of hate groups may keep civic organizations energized and mobilized to meet the challenge.

"It’s the collective actions of the community that will mean something over time," said Phil Nadeau, Lewiston assistant city administrator. The government sector has responded to the crisis by finding money for services and programs and by making the issue a priority.

For instance, the Governor’s office has formed a task force to study immigration issues and propose comprehensive statewide policies that would help other communities facing such a situation in the future.

At Lewiston High School, Nur and Swede are among a growing number of students trained by the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence to help fight racism and bring tolerance.

Training began last May with the Student Leader Project, when the Center gave an all-day workshop for 40 students. In light of recent events, the program secured grant funding to expand the work, which will include service projects involving African- and American-born students.

The student leaders have been addressing racism and verbal harassment whenever they see it occur in the school, as well as educating others at school assemblies and students in younger grades.

This has calmed tensions in the school and, it is hoped, will affect the wider community as well.

"We teach our students, and our students grow up and many of them will stay in Lewiston," said Ben Mendelson, a 16-year-old junior in the program. "So I do see things in Lewiston improving and I do see Lewiston getting very diverse."

For the more immediate term, the students who learn to get along with others bring the message home to their parents, neighbors and relatives.

"The more people that are involved and the more people that the student population sees, they’re going to realize that [tolerance] is the stronger and more influential way of being," said Cara Gaumont, a 17-year-old senior at Lewiston High.

"The kids are going to be a very powerful force for not only healing the community from what has occurred this past fall, but in bringing that community together," said Wessler.