- 1 year ago
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00:00This, right here, is Minneapolis.
00:07Specifically, it's the Somali neighborhood within Minneapolis
00:11that has recently become controversial due to two figures.
00:15Congresswoman...
00:16Ilhan Omar of Somalia, I mean, Minnesota.
00:23The dumbing of the United States has arrived.
00:26And mayoral candidate Omar Fateh.
00:28It's where Democratic Socialist State Senator Omar Fateh
00:31is now just five points behind Jacob Frey.
00:35There may be no immigrant community in the nation
00:37more tied to its political leaders than the Somalis in Minnesota.
00:41So we decided to go past the clickbait and culture war
00:44and explore the community with curiosity.
00:47That's what America stands for.
00:48Like, everybody's segregated in their own community.
00:50But they're walking around in sandals in the winter
00:52and you're just going, oh my God.
00:54What's it really like?
00:56Do they love America?
00:57Our children will take a gun to defend national interests of the United States.
01:01Our journey took us to a massive open-air Somali mall,
01:04which a cop escorted us out of,
01:06to Omar Fateh's campaign HQ,
01:08to a studio where we interviewed Somali's parliamentarian
01:12who actually lives in Minnesota.
01:13Come with us to Minneapolis.
01:16We are Minneapolis, man.
01:17Murderapolis, bitch.
01:18Get in tune.
01:19That was not the greeting we expected
01:22when we pulled into Cedar Riverside.
01:25This concession in my eyes would be that
01:27the Somali community are a threat.
01:30No.
01:30Before Somali, we're Muslim.
01:32And Somali people that are real Muslims
01:34that are on their deed and on their way, peaceful.
01:37Three marks just in walking distance right now as we speak.
01:40And it's so beautiful that you can just take your feet
01:42and just walk to the mosque.
01:43Everything's easy over here.
01:44I asked Salim how he ended up in Minneapolis,
01:46and he told us that he was actually born in Kenya,
01:49which many Somalis fled to after its government collapse in 1991.
01:52Obviously, I'm an immigrant,
01:54but at the end of the day, this country welcomed me.
01:57For my family to strive in this country,
01:58I'm glad and I'm thankful.
02:00But Salim then fell into hot water in South Dakota,
02:03where he was charged for murder.
02:04Till this day, if you Google my name, Sioux Falls,
02:07you're gonna see murder.
02:09It's called defamation of character for real.
02:11I missed the birth of my niece.
02:12Something you didn't do.
02:13Something I didn't even do.
02:15I feel like I got a little story to tell, too.
02:17My name's Salim Mohammed, man,
02:19and I ain't know how to murder.
02:20Yeah, well, dude, I'm glad at least you're out now
02:22and hopefully you get justice.
02:23Justice been served, but to who?
02:25We left Salim and turned the corner
02:27where we saw the fire he referenced
02:28and also tried to interview some locals.
02:31We're trying to figure out what happened.
02:33Yeah, we have a little fire.
02:35You know what happened here?
02:37You know what happened here?
02:39What surprised us was how many Somalis we met
02:44who moved to Minneapolis from other states.
02:46There's really been a second migration to Minneapolis for Somalis.
02:49First to America and then concentrating there.
02:52One of the Somalis who's done just that
02:54is Omar Fateh, who was born in D.C.
02:56Yo, Afaqadri Yassin, Team K. Go.
02:58We need volunteers.
02:59Today, nearly 100,000 Somalis live in Minnesota
03:02and the majority of them are in the Twin Cities.
03:05I want to speak directly to the Somali community.
03:07Minneapolis is your city.
03:09We are in Cedar Riverside,
03:12which is the Somali capital,
03:13not just of Minneapolis, but of the U.S.
03:16And right behind us are some of their apartment buildings.
03:20This is the sort of center of where the Somalis live.
03:23Now, 50% of the people in this neighborhood speak Somali
03:27and we're talking to some of the residents.
03:28We then met the facilities manager of these towers
03:31who's managed them for nearly 50 years.
03:34But I've worked in it for 46 years.
03:36How has it changed?
03:37Just different immigrants.
03:38So a lot of Somalis live here?
03:40Yes.
03:40In fact, I think it's one of the largest populations in the cities.
03:43Yes, I think they do kind of stick to themselves,
03:46but I have a bunch of them that work under me
03:48and they're pretty social.
03:49Some of the first ones came here
03:51and I know it's a money issue,
03:53but they're walking around in sandals in the winter
03:55and you're just going, oh my God.
03:57But they came here.
03:58Once they got established here,
04:00then they're just, they follow each other.
04:02So they want to be with people that speak the same language
04:04and it has changed a lot.
04:06There's several bars that used to have live music,
04:10the last of which just closed a few weeks ago.
04:13And the Somali, East African people have been buying those buildings up
04:18for daycare centers, mosques, and various things.
04:20So the neighborhood's changed a lot, but I consider it an evolution.
04:24This Omar Fateh, who's running for mayor, do you have an opinion on him?
04:28Not a real positive one, but...
04:30Do you like Jacob Frye?
04:32Better than I like Omar.
04:33Yeah.
04:34It was during this conversation that we actually saw Omar Fateh.
04:39Oh my goodness, I think that's Omar Fateh right there.
04:41It is.
04:41You got to go try to interview him.
04:42How are you?
04:43Nice to meet you.
04:44We didn't want to shove the camera in his face,
04:46so we asked him for an interview, then later implored his campaign team to talk to us.
04:52Uh, unfortunately, no luck.
04:54Everywhere we looked in this area, we saw Omar Fateh signs,
04:57and his popularity has enraged the right,
04:59including Trump's deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller,
05:02and other conservative voices who consider him a travesty.
05:06Well, the Democrat Party has become a party that aids and encourages violence.
05:10Fateh has indeed made a number of controversial claims.
05:14The greatest domestic threat facing the United States
05:16comes from, quote,
05:17specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.
05:21But he's not the only Somali politician who's done that.
05:24Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who was elected to Congress alongside AOC in 2018,
05:28has invited much controversy herself.
05:30Our country should be more fearful of white men
05:34because they are actually causing most of the deaths within this country.
05:39Yeah, there is nothing, um, more fucked up than to completely pretend that his words have not been recorded.
05:47These people are full of shit.
05:49You know, I met the head of Somalia, did you know that?
05:51And I suggested that maybe he'd like to take her back.
05:54And he didn't want her.
05:55And while Somalis remain a minority in Minneapolis,
05:58Ilhan Omar and Fateh have both struck alliances with white progressives,
06:02making them a formidable force.
06:04But sometimes this alliance has proven unwieldy, like with gender ideology in schools.
06:08Somali parents demanded their kids be pulled out of gender classes.
06:12One mom told the school board,
06:14We believe that we have a sacred obligation to teach the principles of our faith to our children
06:18without being undermined by the schools.
06:20This caused one school board member to cry
06:22and tell the Somali women that the queer community has been so good to them.
06:26We kept walking around looking for interviews
06:28and then stumbled upon an 8th grader playing basketball on one of its courts.
06:34You want to play one-on-one?
06:36Yeah.
06:38No!
06:39We're cutting that.
06:42Hit the back!
06:44We're not.
06:45Hit three.
06:47No.
06:53Bro, you just winded the hell out of it.
06:55How do you like living here?
06:57It's good.
06:57It's still dangerous.
06:59I mean, if you look online,
07:00it's going to say this is like a lot of climate and stuff.
07:02But it's really just chill out here.
07:04We have a lot of programs.
07:05At the Bronco, we have a basketball team.
07:07We have a soccer team as well.
07:08It's like a regular neighborhood.
07:09We have a community and stuff.
07:11What do you want to be when you're older?
07:13A basketball player or a businessman.
07:15You want to live here when you're older?
07:17No, I want to move out soon.
07:18It's a good place if you want to come in like right now.
07:20Yeah, I think it's a rally.
07:22As-salamu alaykum, broken news.
07:23There we go.
07:24We love America.
07:25It's just like some stuff that Trump did before.
07:27Not a big fan?
07:28Yeah.
07:31Boom.
07:32Bank's open, baby.
07:35Okay.
07:36All right, let's go, hubby.
07:39Boom.
07:39But Cedar Riverside is not like what they show online.
07:42If you actually come here like during the summer,
07:44there's kids outside, uncles, aunts.
07:46We have a local mosque.
07:47We pray.
07:47It's like a good place.
07:48I have one little sister.
07:49How many kids are in most families?
07:51Three, four.
07:52Do you view Somalis and blacks as differently?
07:55I don't know.
07:56It's amazing.
07:56It's good.
07:57Black, yeah.
07:58It was touching to meet a kid from the next Somali generation like up to me and to humanize
08:03the Somalis in a way they often aren't.
08:05But the cultural differences, some argue, are too difficult to ignore.
08:08Oh my God!
08:09The Cedar Riverside neighborhood has changed enormously in recent years.
08:13All right, so you'll see a ton of now closed businesses in this neighborhood like this bar
08:18here.
08:18So there are a bunch of bars that have closed down.
08:20This used to be a Scandinavian neighborhood and now because of the Somali majority population,
08:25they don't make as much sense.
08:26But it wasn't just in Cedar Riverside that the Somalis live.
08:29We next visited the massive open-air Somali mall just a few miles away where we had a
08:36little snag.
08:36By the way, if you're enjoying this video, please make sure to subscribe.
08:39We capture the world without bias or fear and these kind of videos bring that mission
08:43to life.
08:44The right want to make Somalis look bad.
08:46The left want to elevate them.
08:47We try to just hold a mirror.
08:49If you support that mission, hit subscribe.
08:50Now back to Minneapolis.
08:52All right, so we're pulling up on the Somali mall in the area, the Carmel.
08:56Mall, which is the largest Somali mall.
08:59The Carmel mall was massive.
09:01These shots simply don't do it justice and this footage probably won't do the overwhelming
09:06sense of alienation we felt inside it justice either.
09:09All right, so we're going to go inside the Carmel mall, which is fashion after an open-air
09:14Somali bazaar.
09:15There's a fashion store here, some jewelry.
09:20Totally, totally different style of mall here.
09:24You get the henna stand over here.
09:26The scale of this mall is enormous.
09:29It makes sense that there are about 80,000 Somalis in Minnesota, the vast majority of
09:35whom are in the center.
09:36So right at the end of this mall, by the way, you have a mosque.
09:39Within our community, we can send money back home to the most fortunate.
09:44So up there, they have a money place you can send back home.
09:46All right, so this is what he's talking about in the front, a place where you can easily
09:49send money back home or wherever.
09:51Roughly 40,000 Minnesotans were born in Somalia, so many are still in close touch with their families
09:56back home.
09:57The link between Somalia and Minnesota can't be overstated.
10:00The president of Somalia often visits, and some Somali politicians live in the Twin Cities
10:05like the parliamentary we interviewed later.
10:07I would say in all the reporting we've done, this is one of the most difficult spots to get
10:12an interview.
10:12People are very guarded here.
10:14I don't know if it's because they assume there's a hit piece or they simply don't want to talk
10:19at all.
10:20People have been extremely guarded.
10:21In some cases, a little hostile.
10:23We continued to walk around the Carmel Mall when, as if we weren't out of place enough
10:28already, a cop came to escort us to building management.
10:31YouTube video?
10:33Yeah, it's called Roku News.
10:34We do this all over the country.
10:36Yes, I told the camera.
10:38You saw the camera?
10:39Yeah, yeah, yeah.
10:39Yeah.
10:40So where's the YouTube?
10:41Roku News.
10:42R-O-C-A News.
10:45All right, so we were just pulled aside by security.
10:48Now we're okay though to film inside.
10:49So one interesting thing is when a store is unoccupied, people won't necessarily lock
10:54it.
10:54We've seen a lot of unattended to stores.
10:57It's clearly like a high trust community here and we are the only two white guys in all
11:03four floors of this.
11:04It's very unique.
11:05So here's an open eating area.
11:07Somali flag and Palestine flag.
11:11So they got a couple new style of pizzas I've never seen.
11:14The odd cock pizza.
11:16I don't know how to say that.
11:17The Halib Jaqal a la Macan.
11:20Different kinds of pizza.
11:21So behind us on the rooftop of the cafeteria you can see the Somali flag.
11:25Some people at least saw on social media talked about how it's very similar to the new Minnesota
11:30flag.
11:31And so they wondered if there might have been some overlap there.
11:33Others say that's ridiculous.
11:34But that was a topic of conversation.
11:36A couple recent polls, somewhere around half of Minnesotans said they wanted to keep the
11:40old flag.
11:41We then interviewed a woman entrepreneur from Somalia who had some fascinating insights.
11:46I moved from Sweden five years ago.
11:48What brought me?
11:49I came here because there was already Somali community established.
11:52So I said, okay, let me go there so that I can start my business.
11:56The community are like huge supporters for each other.
11:59The white Americans around, are they friendly?
12:01Are they not?
12:02I know none of them.
12:03When I was coming to America for the first time, I was carrying a Swedish passport and I
12:08was black and hijabi, you know, and the officers in the immigration, they were like, hmm, they
12:12probably were expecting a Viking.
12:14That's what America stands for.
12:15Like everybody's segregated in their own community.
12:17White people are with white people.
12:18Somali people are with Somali people.
12:20That's what America is.
12:21You come here, you start your own community and you stay with your community.
12:24So people normally in America, like are not very fun of strangers.
12:28I think they just don't want to speak with somebody that don't share maybe the same beliefs.
12:33It's helping each and every Somali person.
12:35We have over 600 businesses and 95% of those businesses are women businesses.
12:41But what I can tell you, Somali women are those who build the entire Somali.
12:45Is there a conflict between Ilhan Omar's progressive views and conservative Muslim teaching?
12:51When it comes to us, basically my view, no.
12:55But then I don't know how somebody else can view her.
12:58I just applaud her.
12:59We love her, like as black, African, Somali, Muslim, like women.
13:05I look up to her, definitely.
13:07She is what every black Muslim hijabi woman want to be.
13:11What do you do here in this business?
13:13We basically do money transfer.
13:15And a lot of people come back home.
13:17That's the truth.
13:19You see all these people, like old women that don't even speak good English.
13:23Where every morning they wake up and they open their businesses and they welcome people and they sell.
13:28Everybody is just here to pursue their American dream.
13:32I came early age and I have never thought of leaving my religion or my culture.
13:36But I always embrace whatever culture I come to.
13:39The first time that I came to America, I had to identify myself as a black person.
13:44I have never seen anywhere in the world and I have lived so many places in the world.
13:48I think America is the one that encourages people to identify and segregate people and put people in different boxes.
13:54And I think that is what America encourages.
13:57Somali people, they never felt like they were fully African or fully black or fully Arab.
14:02They always say, I am Somali.
14:04Some of them identify themselves as Arab people.
14:07Some of them identify themselves as black people.
14:10And here they have to like put themselves in a box.
14:12So that's what I have learned in America.
14:14Sure, it's a good opportunity to move to America.
14:17But do Somalis love America though?
14:19We ended our trip to the nondescript office of United Somali TV where we interviewed Somalia's parliamentarian Mohamed Dini for a discussion on Somali-U.S. relations.
14:30In the Middle East, no other nation came to us because there was a warlord in Mogadishu and Americans came to us.
14:36They assisted Somali people and paid millions of dollars.
14:41Number one supporter when it comes to Somalia's stability and peace is Americans.
14:45Indeed, the U.S. came to Somalia's defense after its government collapse in 1991, welcoming tens of thousands of Somali refugees in the 90s thanks to Clinton and then later Bush.
14:55We also aided the Somalis in the war that followed the collapse, including in 1993 for the Battle of Mogadishu as depicted in Black Hawk Down.
15:04We got a Black Hawk Down.
15:05We got a Black Hawk Down.
15:07And a lot of people will say, oh, maybe they don't love America.
15:10But you're saying that's not at all the case.
15:12That's not the case.
15:13And I'm representing a state called Buntalan.
15:16We have been fighting ISIS.
15:17The only backer who supported us, Americans.
15:20Somalis came in Minnesota or in the United States in 1993.
15:24When there was a famine, President Bush sent U.S. military to Somalia.
15:29The reason was to save the starving people.
15:32I appreciate that.
15:33Somali Americans belong to this great nation.
15:35Somalis in America, again and again, love the United States of America.
15:39They want to defend American failure.
15:42Any rhetoric statements or negative words doesn't represent one ethnicity.
15:48Somali Americans, they are in the military.
15:49They are in healthcare industry.
15:51They are teachers.
15:52They are policemen and women.
15:55Anything that hurts the image of our community is unacceptable to us.
16:00I'm Somali American.
16:02American is paid billions of dollars since 1960.
16:07So that's the ideology and mentality.
16:10So forget about someone who is a TikToker saying Somalis they are not belonging to American dream.
16:15Yeah, we belong.
16:17Ilhan Omar, Congresswoman, and Mr. Fateh, they are Americans and they are Democrats.
16:2499% of Somali community already mix it with an American political system.
16:29They are working to build a better America.
16:33And also Minnesota is a great and miracle state because the majority of Somali community that lived in this state.
16:40Every Somali American, whether he is a left or right, they are contributing again and again to American dream.
16:46Living in the United States and living in the great state of Minnesota was a gift from Allah, God, a gift from God.
16:54Socialist Somalis believe to be a good neighbor, to respect the different religions in the United States.
17:01And Islam itself believes that all religions must be respected.
17:07Somalis, they believe whether you are a Jew, whether you are a Buddhist, whether you are a Christian, we can live together.
17:14We can be good neighbors.
17:15I want to go back one more time.
17:16American contribution to Somalia.
17:18The regional Buntilang have been firing almost eight months, ten months against ISIS.
17:23Who came to you unassisted?
17:24You know, Americans.
17:26We didn't see any other superpower.
17:28And I had an event with Somali community in Minnesota.
17:32What I told them was, you guys, if you have a best friend, this is the right people in the United States.
17:37You know, we took an oath, which is allegiance.
17:41Somalis in Minnesota or in the United States are ready to protect and fight for the American dream and respect and work American interests all over the world.
17:51And I am one of them.
17:52Our children, when they grow up, they will defend this great nation by using their ban.
17:58And they will take a gun to defend American failures and national interests of the United States.
18:03Dini swears that the negativity you read online is all just noise.
18:07Off camera, someone in the studio even told us that he's a Republican and that many Somalis would be Republicans if they didn't feel so excluded.
18:14The disconnect between politicians like Fateh and Omar and your everyday Somalis was large, according to Dini.
18:19But then we couldn't help but think, was he performing for us too?
18:22Everywhere we went, we saw more Somali flags and Palestine flags than American flags.
18:28But wouldn't it have been the same in Little Italy in the 1920s?
18:31Are the Somalis just the latest migrant group to be smeared like this?
18:35That is for you to decide, and we wanted to give you a glimpse to help you with that decision.
18:41Our next Minneapolis video, by the way, is on another controversial topic.
18:44It's about the five years since George Floyd.
18:47Stay tuned for that, and thank you so much for watching.