Group discussion marks Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Lewiston has come
a long way in fighting racism, but there is
still plenty to do,
Bates panelists agreed.
LEWISTON – Ismail Ahmed’s spirits were high on Jan. 11, 2003.
He’d just returned home from the Many and One rally on the Bates College campus, where 5,000 people showed up to rally for diversity and community spirit.
Then he ran into his neighbor.
“He asked me where I’d been the past week, and I said I was involved with Many and One and the rally,” said Ahmed. “He said, ‘Why do you waste your time with that?'”
The neighbor ended the conversation with a racist comment about where the Somalis really belonged, Ahmed said.
“And everything we’d done, everything those 5,000 people had cheered, went right down the drain,” he said.
Ahmed was part of an open discussion at Bates College Monday about Lewiston in the 12 months after the rally. The discussion was part of the college’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day observance. It also capped the Many and One Coalition’s 10-day anniversary celebration of the Jan. 11, 2003, rally.
Lewiston people have done a lot of talking since the rally, Ahmed said.
“We’ve missed the target,” he said. “We’ve had discussions and workshops and we’ve opened the doors. But we haven’t figured out how to educate these people. We don’t know how to find these people and get them to take part in our discussions.”
Many and One event coordinator Tracy Gregoire agreed.
“We need to find a way to have those tough discussions,” she said.
Many and One organizers have been busy, especially lately. The group shrunk immediately after the rally from 500 members to a handful.
“We went back to our lives, our jobs, our families,” Gregoire said.
Lately, the group’s membership has increased to about 200, with people working to plan for the anniversary. Events have included discussions about health care, the USA Patriot Act, disability rights and diversity and racism. The coalition also sponsored and paid for a showing of Ziad H. Hamzeh’s “The Letter,” a documentary about the events leading up to the Jan. 11 rally.
Such discussions are great, Ahmed said, but they preach to the converted.
“I think it’s high time we took the back seat,” Ahmed said. “We need to listen to what all the people have to say, the people that haven’t been talking.”
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