LEWISTON — Crowds of Mainers rallied in support of Lewiston’s Somali community Saturday.
“It’s important for us to show to the Somali community that we’re here with them,” said Reese Remington, a co-organizer of the event and an advocacy director for the Community Organizing Alliance. “We’re in solidarity. This is what community does, we show up.”
The event comes in response to comments President Donald Trump made about Somali people.
Last week, he said he does not want Somalis in the United States and that they “contribute nothing.”
Speakers at Saturday’s rally pushed back against those comments.
“We are Americans. We are citizens, right? He should respect us and protect us and serve us like any other American,” said Safiya Khalid, co-founder of the Community Organizing Alliance and a co-organizer of the rally. “We are no different. There are generations of Somali Mainers who have lived here for decades.”
Khalid also served as Lewiston’s first Somali American city councilor from 2021-2022.
She added that the rally is meant to emphasize that "love is greater than hate."
“[Trump] should not be targeting one group of people and calling them disgusting names and dehumanizing them and spreading hate and division and putting a huge target on the Somali community’s back,” said Khalid.
Those attending the rally met in Kennedy Park before marching to a nearby church to hear from speakers, which included members of the Somali Community and faith leaders.
“I came from Somalia when I was nine years old, and in history class I learned about slavery,” said Ifraax Saciid-Ciise, a speaker at the event. “There were a lot of things I didn’t understand. I’d say, ‘why are people being abducted, why are families being separated?’ I learned about the holocaust and all these being done to human beings, and I am sad to see that such rhetoric is still happening today.”
City and state officials also spoke at the event.
“The language we’ve heard recently from the highest office in the land, language that dehumanizes and demeans our Somali neighbors is hateful and it’s dangerous,” said State Senator Rick Bennett, I — Oxford.
According to the latest U.S. Census data, around 3,500 Somalis currently live in Maine.