A crash course in values

The high school kids in Lewiston are struggling with one of the toughest Maine history lessons they might ever have to learn, and each week there’s another new chapter to be absorbed.

It’s a lesson that can teach them volumes about the difficulties that immigrants to their city faced generations ago and the similar difficulties their newest immigrant neighbors face today. It’s a crash course in tolerance and diversity, too, and in the evil forces that will try anything to undermine those values by preying on a community’s ignorance and fear. And it’s one history course that the students can’t blow off, even if they wanted to, because they’re living it every day in their school, their homes and on the streets of their town.

So far, say the adults who are steering them through the difficult lessons introduced by the arrival of 1,200 Somalis in Lewiston, the kids are earning remarkably high grades.

“It’s inspiring to see,” said Lelia De Andrade, the assistant director of the University of Southern Maine’s Center for the Prevention of Hate Violence. “Their determination is amazing.”

Since last spring, De Andrade has been helping to run peer-leader training workshops at Lewiston High School in which the city’s mostly white youth and their 150 or so new East African classmates are encouraged to explore their cultural differences and find what they have in common.

Yet now that one national white-supremacist group has announced it will stage an anti-Somali rally on Jan. 11, and another has been distributing hate-filled leaflets in Lewiston and Portland to drum up publicity for the event and enlist new members to its cause, the discussions in the high school are also about the racial tension it has caused and where it might lead.

“There’s no doubt that the students are very concerned right now about the arrival of these groups and the damage they could do to the community,” De Andrade said. “They’re disturbed about the image that the rest of the world might be getting about Lewiston because of all the publicity. They worry that people will get the impression that their city is filled with hate, and that it’s not a safe place.”

De Andrade said the workshops began as a way to encourage tolerance and build awareness among students and faculty about the emotional and physical effects of prejudice.

“But as these most recent events have unfolded,” she said, “we have begun to introduce materials published by racist organizations like the World Church of the Creator and the National Alliance so people can understand how disturbing their message really is. We talk about the tension that can arise between the need for free speech and the need to keep our environment safe.”

Several high school students have expressed interest in holding a school assembly in conjunction with the community rally being planned for Jan. 11 to counteract the white-supremacist gathering at the Lewiston Armory that night.

“The support for the community rally is growing all the time,” De Andrade said. “Yes, it is unfortunate that Lewiston has to be on the hot seat right now. But there’s a bright side to it, too. You can see it in the schools, and in the incredible way the student leaders and faculty have chosen to respond to this situation. They’re confident that it will turn out OK, and they want to be part of it.”