Readers Write: Attacks on Somali Americans, Minneapolis city spending, hepatitis B

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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As a Somali American, a local imam and a faith leader, I cannot remain silent when the president of the United States refers to my community as “garbage.”

Such language is not merely offensive — it is dangerous. And it demands a response.

This attack follows a familiar pattern. President Donald Trump has repeatedly targeted communities that challenge his political agenda, and Somali Americans are his latest scapegoats.

But slurs cannot erase facts.

Approximately 80,000 Somali Americans live in Minnesota. We arrived as refugees, fleeing civil war and violence, seeking safety and the chance to rebuild. And rebuild we have.

These are not abstract contributions; they are woven into the daily life of this state.

To reduce all of this to “garbage” is not political commentary. It is dehumanization. And history teaches us where the dehumanization of entire communities leads.

I have watched this pattern before: A political figure singles out a group, assigns them a collective label and uses them as a foil to energize supporters. But Minnesotans have seen this tactic, and we are not deceived.

To all Minnesotans: Don’t be fooled. The president’s strategy is to divide and conquer. He aims to split our unity by turning neighbor against neighbor.

We must not let him succeed. Verbal attacks have never built a school, healed a patient or strengthened a community. Only unity, mutual respect and shared commitment to the common good accomplish those things.

Minnesota has faced division before, and we have always chosen solidarity. We will do so again.

Together, we will endure. Together, we will prevail.

Mowlid Ali, Minneapolis

The writer is the imam of the largest mosque in Minneapolis, Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center.

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Ethnicity and racial identity have no place in the discussion. They are being used as a smoke screen to target immigrants. Fraud or the lack of it is a matter of integrity, which knows no ethnic, gender or religious boundaries.

Patricia Harlan-Marks, Robbinsdale

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“The president has also intensified his verbal attacks, describing Somali immigrants as ‘garbage,’ claiming they ‘contribute nothing,’ and suggesting they should be ‘sent back’” (“Trump’s tirade sending ripples,” Dec. 4).

By way of contrast: “As pastors, we the bishops of the United States are bound to our people by ties of communion and compassion in Our Lord Jesus Christ. We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We are grieved when we meet parents who fear being detained when taking their children to school and when we try to console family members who have already been separated from their loved ones” (“Special Message” of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Nov. 12, passed by a vote of 216 to 5).

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For over 20 years I worked with many members of the Somali community in the Twin Cities in my role as a pediatrician at Children’s Minnesota. I cared for more Somali children and families than I can count and loved the relationships that we developed. As a Jew, I often talked with these families about the similarities between their Muslim religion and my Jewish one. I often surprised the kids when they called their father “Abba” and told them that was the same word for father in Hebrew. I also worked extensively with our wonderful Somali interpreters who helped me learn so much about the Somali culture, in addition to helping me communicate directly with the patients and families that I was seeing.

In 2017, I had the opportunity to meet and work with many of the Somali imams at various mosques in the Twin Cities during that year’s measles outbreak. I would go to the mosques to meet with their members and answer their questions about measles and vaccines, in the hopes of getting them to vaccinate their children. All of these Somali individuals were good, kind, hardworking people who were happy to be living in Minnesota and wanted to raise their children in safety. We all owe them the chance to do that.

Sheldon Berkowitz, St. Paul

I am troubled by one aspect of Minneapolis Board of Estimate and Taxation President Steve Brandt’s extensive search for new revenues (“We need an alternative to rising property taxes,” Strib Voices, Dec. 5). Nowhere in his lengthy piece does he broach the possibility of reducing city government expenditures.

In the interim, we do the next most practical thing and cut our spending. I strongly encourage Brandt, the City Council and the mayor do the same.

Jack Uldrich, Minneapolis

Friday was (another) dark day for public health. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted on whether the long-standing recommendation for universal infant hepatitis B vaccination should be rescinded and instead offer vaccination only to infants born to women known to be infected with hepatitis B. The vote was 8 to 3 to eliminate a universal recommendation for vaccination, and this recommendation now goes to the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which typically accepts ACIP recommendations.

The committee, previously comprised of vaccine experts but now stocked with individuals chosen by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (a leading U.S. anti-vaccine figure for the past few decades), listened to one-sided presentations from anti-vaccine advocates and sidelined career experts from the CDC and leading infectious disease societies.

We have seen this play out before. For years the same people cast doubts on the well-established safety of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR). MMR vaccination rates dropped. Measles cases surged. This year three people died of measles in the U.S. — something that hasn’t happened in more than a decade.

Dimitri Drekonja, Minneapolis