Update September 28th: Thanks to reader ‘riveratlantic’ for alerting us, but it seems that the Mayor is saying different things to different people, here.
And, can you imagine it! Lewiston, Maine is one of the Nation’s twenty five LEAST diverse cities, that in spite of the 6000 plus Somali refugees living there.
So what did the Mayor say that has brought the wrath of Maine’s Global Institute down upon him?
Lewiston’s present Mayor told the BBC on 9/11 that first the Somalis were costing the city a lot of money and that they and other immigrants should leave their culture at the door and accept American culture!
Ahhhhh! Get out the tar and feathers!
From Somali Multi-media:
Lewiston Mayor Robert MacDonald is once again facing criticism for remarks he made about Somali refugees in Maine’s second-largest city. In a recent interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, Mayor MacDonald said immigrants are “costing us a lot of money” and they should “accept our culture and leave your culture at the door.” Last year the mayor apologized for comments he made on election night when he said the wanted to make the city less attractive to deadbeats, many of whom don’t speak English. As Susan Sharon reports, members of the Maine Global Institute are now requesting a meeting with the mayor.
Mayor MacDonald’s comments were first broadcast by the BBC on Sept. 11 in a segment focusing on the resettlement of nearly 6,000 ethnic Somalis and Somali Bantus to Maine’s second-largest city over the past decade.
“If you want to become a citizen, that’s fine, welcome to America,” MacDonald said. “But you know what? When you come here, you come and you accept our culture and you leave your culture at the door.”
Read it all.
So, what is this Maine Global Institute I wondered? I couldn’t find a website for it and only a directory listing at the Portland Chamber of Commerce that says they:
Support public and private efforts to help make Maine and Portland a more welcome place for inevitable demographic change.
I did however find this interesting article about a diversity study from Brown University that places Lewiston in the bottom twenty five cities for diversity in the US. I’m thinking that if the city has 6000 Somalis and the rest of the people are native Mainers, yup, not enough diversity—only two colors! Who knew!
From the article in The Forecaster we learn that the first meeting of the Maine Global Institute just happened and how lucky that Mayor MacDonald should say such politically incorrect things for them to blast just at this time. And, what a coincidence that Lewiston’s former Mayor, who was gung-ho for more refugees, is Chairman of the Board of the Maine Global Institute!
Larry Gilbert, former mayor of Lewiston, is chairman of the board. Gilbert is also involved in the Lewiston-based Welcoming Maine, which works to integrate new Mainers into the city.
We’ve written about Mr. Gilbert on previous occasions. Here in 2010 he was feted by none-other than John Podesta’s Hard Left Center for American Progress, a George Soros spawn, when the Mayor told Congress that Lewiston was a multicultural nirvana. But, apparently not multicultural enough according to Brown University.
And readers, don’t be fooled, these little groups that appear to spring up locally, like the Maine Global Institute, are all part of an international organized network of new world order types shepherded by Soros and others of his ilk to ultimately erase borders.
We’ve written many many posts on Lewiston, so use our search function and just type in ‘Lewiston’ for all of those posts. However, be sure to read one post in particular because almost every day this post from 2009 about Maine as a welfare magnet for Somalis ranks in our top most-read posts.
An afterthought! You might want to contact the Mayor and give him some words of support, here.