Hundreds march for Somalis Residents of Lewiston support immigrants

LEWISTON – Hundreds of people joined a peaceful march Sunday to show support for Somalian immigrants in Maine’s second-largest city, whose mayor has raised concerns that local services will be strained if many more Somalis arrive.

Police said about 250 people, most of them longer-term residents of the city, participated in a five-block walk from the Calvary United Methodist Church to a mosque where Lewiston’s Somalis worship. Some of the participants gave speeches expressing solidarity with the new arrivals at the mosque.

One of two protesters who identified themselves as pro-white held a sign along the march route that said, “How long will it take before Lewiston is like Somalia?”

Mohammed Abdi, a Somali elder who participated in the march, said one of the main messages expressed was that Lewiston will benefit from new diversity in its population with the arrival of the Somalis.

“We are one people, we are one community,” said Abdi, adding that the United States “is a country made up of immigrants, and one immigrant group came before another. And the Somalis just happened to come … now.”

Abdi said the Somalis were outnumbered about 3-1 by longer-term residents of Lewiston in the march.

“I think it will strengthen the community. It will bring the people closer together. It was a matter of solidarity and a show of unity,” Abdi said. “I think it’s positive.”

Abdi was one of the local Somali leaders who met with Mayor Larry Raymond on Friday to ease strained feelings following the mayor’s release of an open letter in which he warned of a strain on resources if more Somalis move to the city of 36,000.

The letter said Lewiston, which has absorbed more than 1,000 Somalis in 18 months, cannot continue absorbing newcomers “without negative results for all.”

Somali elders responded by lashing out at Raymond as an “ill-informed leader” who should have sought a private meeting with them instead.

Abdi said after Sunday’s march that the march, envisioned earlier as “a get-together with the local people,” became more urgent after the mayor released his letter.

“We had a little walk planned before the present controversy,” Mark Schlotterbeck, city missionary for the Calvary United Methodist Church, told the Lewiston Sun Journal before Sunday’s event.

“Now lots of people are going to walk: Christians, Muslims, Jews, Unitarians and civil rights teams from local schools.”