According to the New York Times, the number of refugees has nearly doubled in [Lewiston, ME,] a working-class city of 36,000.
Demographically
speaking, Maine is the least ethnically diverse state in the U.S. It is
95 percent Caucasian, 1.4 percent Black, and 1.2 percent Asian. It is
considered a battleground state, as it voted twice for Obama yet also
twice elected a Tea Party governor, Paul LePage... What tourists mostly
see is the blue version of the state, because the Maine vote splits
along the old rural/urban divide. ... Basically, the state gets more
Republican the further north you go...
Give that the
entire population of the state (1.3 million) is smaller than that of the
borough of Manhattan (1.6 million), why should anyone care about a
runoff mayoral election between Democrat Ben Chin and Republican
incumbent Robert MacDonald in Lewiston next week? As Maine goes, so goes
the nation, the old chestnut states... The steady influx of students
and Somalis into white working-class Lewiston has turned it into a
window into America’s soul writ small...
Somalis stand
out against the frozen landscape. It’s because the refugees come from a
climate so pointedly unlike Maine that their attraction to the city
seems a puzzler... "Many Somalis,” explained a thorough report in Mother
Jones, “who are Muslim and tend to have traditional, tight-knit
families, found American urban life too violent, too drug-ridden, too
infused with consumer culture.” They left those locations in favor of
Lewiston, which they chose for its low crime rates, small town values,
and affordable housing. Somalis came to Maine because it’s culturally
conservative and resistant to social change. Lewiston now has a resident
population of over 3,000 Somalis, and a mosque.
...
The two men now in a run-off for mayor of Lewiston perfectly encapsulate
opposing political responses to issues forcing this country into a
collective existential crisis. But in Maine, Somalis aren’t
philosophical abstractions. They’re next-door neighbors.
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