In his travels through Maine and elsewhere as director of the Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence, Steve Wessler has become familiar with the negative impressions many people have about the atmosphere in Lewiston since the arrival of its Somali population.

From all they’ve read in the papers and seen on TV, they tell him, it would appear that Lewiston is plagued with nearly insurmountable problems that threaten to cripple the city.

Wessler concedes that accommodating the 1,200 Somalis has been difficult for Lewiston at times, especially after its mayor publicly urged the refugees to cease their migration and, in the process, caught the attention of two racist groups now itching to stir anti-Somali hatred among the city’s mostly white population.

But the hit-and-run national publicity has overlooked a critical aspect of the city’s recent experience with ethnic and cultural diversity, one that has convinced Wessler that Lewiston will emerge as a model of adaptability that other Maine communities may follow one day.

“The truth is that Lewiston people have shown themselves to be some of the gutsiest people around,” says Wessler, a former state prosecutor who specialized in civil rights crimes before leaving the Attorney General’s Office in 1999. “In working with the people in the city, I’ve found that most of them are absolutely committed to making this work out to everyone’s benefit. They’re really trying hard, and that’s the part that gets lost in all the contentiousness.”

And nowhere is that conviction more evident, he says, than among the students at Lewiston High School, where more than 150 Somali students have been enrolled since the winter of 2001. Since May, Wessler’s center has run periodic peer-leader workshops in which Lewiston’s white teens and their new East African classmates are encouraged to explore the cultural differences that might otherwise divide them.

“In one workshop at Bates College, 40 students paired off for a day – a Lewiston-born student with a Somali student – to interview one another about their heritage, ethnicity, religions and families,” Wessler says.

After discussing their many differences, he says, the students understood by day’s end that they all had something in common, too.

“What they learned is that they’re all immigrants, that they live in a country built by immigrants,” Wessler says. “French-Canadian, Italian, Russian, Somalian, Christian, Jews, Muslims. Their backgrounds didn’t matter; they were all in different stages of the same journey. There’s been a tempest recently in the public sphere, but these students, white and Somali, have clearly been trying to figure out together how to make this work. It’s a really positive piece of what’s happening.”

He is also sure that the city’s Jan. 11 celebration of diversity, intended to counteract the white-supremacist gathering in the Lewiston Armory that night, will provide the city with a unique opportunity to show the rest of the state how far it has come in less than two years.

“It will be a time to recognize how despicable bigotry really is,” Wessler says, “but also a time to reflect on the extraordinary role of immigrants in this country. Lewiston is not going to be the last Maine city to have the privilege of hosting people from other countries, so it can be a model of success. I’m optimistic that the community will be much stronger for this.”