Update February 21st: Somali community organizer says too much police brutality and not enough cultural competence at South High last week, here.
Several readers have sent me stories about the riot involving hundreds of students at Minneapolis South High two days ago.
There is so much coverage of the story I don’t know where to begin, but maybe with the basics. I wondered to myself yesterday why our old post, “Why so many Somalis in Minneapolis?” was going through the roof with hits. It is our top post still today right above “Barbarians at the Gate.”
I guess this story is why people are searching for just how the Somalis got to Minneapolis (Little Mogadishu) in the first place.
First here is a bit of the food-fight-riot story as introduced by Daniel Greenfield writing at The Counter Jihad Report (Hat tip: Gary):
Bringing huge numbers of Muslim Somalis into the United States and depositing them in places like Minnesota may rank as the one of the worst policies of the last three years and the growing violence is only the tip of the iceberg.
A sensible rule of thumb on immigration policy should be that if a country is a fundamentally violent and broken place, then importing large numbers of its inhabitants will only spread that violence to the United States.
[The ‘church’ groups (and some secular ones as well) contracted by the US State Department think otherwise—here are the nine major contractors, called Volags (short for voluntary agency which they no longer are) that resettle refugees in your cities and towns—ed].
Before I get to the riot, I have to correct Greenfield. He suggests this is a policy of the last three years? Readers, we have been resettling Somali refugees for going on 30 years as this 2008 post of mine demonstrates. By 1993 we had resettled over 4000 and every year since then those Volags (contractors) resettled many thousands each year. Today, the resettled numbers top 100,000 (and they have been producing children for decades) so surely the numbers exceed a quarter of a million by now.
The only year we dropped down to bringing only a few hundred (242) was in 2002. Do you know why? The whole refugee resettlement program came to a screeching halt after 9/11 (briefly!). Then it picked right up again the following year. To date George W. Bush’s State Department brought higher annual numbers of Somalis then any President so far. In 2004 (12,814), 2005 (10,101) and 2006 (10,330).
In 2008, the numbers took another dip (to 2,523) when the State Department realized that the Somalis (and some other ethnic groups) had been lying about who their family members were for the purpose of reuniting the ‘family’ (chain migration). The State Department estimated at the time that there could be tens of thousands of “refugees” who lied to get into the US.
Family reunification has only recently been re-opened and we have already brought over 2000 Somalis in FY 2013 (I directed readers to the stats in this post about how Denmark is considering sending Somalis back to the now “safe” Somalia). At that rate Obama could come close to Bush’s numbers.
So back to the riots
This is not the first time we have seen conflicts involving Somalis in high school. Update: Bruce sends us this news clip which ends with comments that there has been a long history of tension between black Americans and the Somali immigrants.
In Minnesota alone we saw many conflicts develop in the St. Cloud school district here . Here is one of our earliest posts on the “friction.”
Greenfield directs us to this report (via Blazing Cat Fur) on the Minneapolis diversity-is-beautiful melee. (emphasis mine)
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – A number of police cars responded to Minneapolis South High School Thursday after an alleged food fight escalated into a melee involving 200 to 300 students.
Sgt. William Palmer, of the Minneapolis Police Department, said no weapons were involved in the incident. However, four people were taken to the hospital following the melee. Police were pelted by thrown objects as they rushed to break up the brawl.
Twelve people complained that they had been sprayed with mace. Police at the scene said they had to use chemical agent to get the crowd under control as they were being pelted with objects as they tried to break things up.
One student, Abdi Sheikh, said he saw hundreds of students fighting in what appeared to be a racial incident.
“A big riot,” he said. “It was all types of races.”
Another student, Symone Glasker, said that an initial fight happened during the school’s first lunch period. By the time the third lunch period started, all the hype from the initial fight caused tensions to boil over.
She said the fights were over pride.
“I know it’s a pride thing between Muslims and black people,” she said. “They want their pride back for something. I don’t know.”
She also said “boys were hitting girls” and that some people were lying on the floor, with their hands over their heads, in surrender.
The fight, students say, was the result of long-simmering tensions between the 8 percent of students who are Somali Americans and the 20 percent who are African Americans.
On that last line (above), I’ve laughed before about how the Volags have placed Somalis in black neighborhoods with the notion (I guess!) that the black brothers could relate. It is not about skin color it’s about African culture vs. American culture and about Muslims vs. infidels!
Greenfield has a bunch of links to the story, here.
Pamela Geller at Atlas Shrugs has the story too, here (hat tip: John).
And, be sure to visit the comments at Blazing Cat Fur (some are pretty funny), but here is one which is somewhat close to the truth. They won’t, of course blame Bush, but in this case they would be partially right.
This is gonna get funny, the progressives, will have to tie themselves into knots, trying to figure out who to blame… Likely they’ll resort to the default and blame Bush. (robins111)
This is getting too long. If you want to learn more about Somalis (we probably have more than 500 posts here at RRW), just search ‘Somali.’ Or, shorten your search by adding another search word—try ‘Somali terror’, ‘Somali meatpacker’ or ‘Somali San Diego’ for example!
Next! Watch for news that CAIR sticks its nose into the latest Minnesota mess.