And, so it has with the election of Abdi Warsame to the Minneapolis City Council.
The Star Tribune has another glowing profile of the first Somali-American (Englishman?) elected to such an important post in a major America city.
After Somali immigrants failed to elect one of their own to the Minnesota Senate two years ago, a small group of them joined supporters of the victor, Kari Dziedzic, for a campaign event in her father’s home in northeast Minneapolis.
Gov. Mark Dayton, who was there, urged the East African attendees not to give up, saying their time would come.
One of the Somali-Americans in the crowd that day was Abdi Warsame, who became the first member of his community to win election to the Minneapolis City Council this month, two decades after Somali refugees began arriving in the state.
“I felt like he was speaking to me that day,” Warsame said.
His landslide victory in the Sixth Ward race signals the rising political influence of Somali-Americans in Minneapolis and offers a window into the changing demographics that also swept into office the council’s first members of Hmong and Mexican descent.
But Warsame’s win was different from that of the other immigrant candidates, Blong Yang and Alondra Cano, in that he relied more heavily on bringing members of his cultural community out to the polls — some for the first time.
“He couldn’t have done it without other communities in the Sixth Ward, but everyone recognizes the Somali vote was important for him. It was really impressive,” said Ryan Allen, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota who is studying Somali-Americans’ experience in the Twin Cities.
Somali immigrants have created mosques and nonprofits and gotten involved with civic life in ways that outsiders have not immediately seen, he said, and “all of that activity built a base that Warsame was able to take advantage of.”
Warsame joins Ahmed Hassan, elected the same night as he was to the City Council in Clarkston, Ga., as the highest elected Somali-Americans in the United States.
There is more, read it all. I’m still wondering how Warsame came to be an American citizen after being resettled and raised in England. You can’t just pop on over from England and become an American citizen. There is mention in the story that he has a 7-year-old daughter in Texas who he doesn’t want to talk about (he came to the US in 2006). Maybe he married his way in?
Photo is from the Puntland Post.