Invade the world, invite the world, elect the world:
Abdi Warsame made history Tuesday by becoming the highest elected Somali in the country, winning a seat on the City Council in a landslide. Two decades after a wave of East Africans arrived in Minneapolis to escape civil war, they emerged as a political force to elect one of their own for the first time to City Hall, jumping out of their seats at a Cedar-Riverside theater to cheer, clap and embrace one another as Warsame took the stage.
It was part of a sweeping turnover on the City Council, where seven new members will be sworn in next year. Two other challengers knocked out incumbents by a 2-1 margin in wards spanning Uptown, the North Loop and Northeast, and the council seemed likely to have its first Hmong and Hispanic members when all votes are counted….
Warsame secured 64 percent of first-place votes for the Sixth Ward seat. He defeated 12-year Council Member Robert Lilligren, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe who strove to show that he could connect with East African voters even if he didn’t share the same cultural background.
Voter turnout in the ward exploded since the last council race in 2009, and Warsame won with three times as many votes as Lilligren garnered in his last election.
Warsame, 35, left Somalia as a child and spent much of his life in England. He moved to Minneapolis in 2006 and heads the tenant association for the Riverside Plaza, the high-rises that house 4,000 East Africans.
Mogadishu on the Mississippi’s newly elected leader is not an American. Not in any sense of the word except the legal one. He’s lived in America less than half the time that I’ve lived in Europe. Does anyone seriously believe that this man has any understanding of the 18th century English political principles that define what America is, let alone any genuine allegiance to them?
Marines were sent to Somalia to prevent Somalis ruling over Somalis. Now Somalis are ruling over Americans. In what used to be America.
Americans did not defend their liberty and now they are getting the non-American government they deserve.