Hiiraan Online

Thursday September 24, 2015

By Mel Reeves 

In a scene reminiscent of the U.S. government negotiating a treaty with an Indian nation (which they had no intention on keeping), Homeland Security set up a community meeting in Minneapolis on Tuesday, September 15 with Somali community members in which every representative of Homeland Security — the police, the TSA — had a pistol on their hip.

I couldn’t help myself and asked out loud to the White guys who were either secret service or undercover cops, “Does everybody have a gun except for the Somali brothers and sisters and myself?” That many guns made me nervous. I was as uncomfortable as a mouse at a cat convention.

Ironically, the Deputy Secretary for Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, when he addressed the audience, said that his parents came from a place “Where they were afraid whenever they saw someone in uniform.” I was thinking, I know the feeling.

It was like a scene from the treaty signing. “We come in peace,” but the 7th Calvary is in the doorway with its rifles pointed at the Indians. And every police and government representative mentioned “trust” and “relationship.”

Unbelievably, a woman got up to speak who said she was from the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties of the U.S Department of Homeland Security. If ever there was a better example of an oxymoron I can’t think of one. The director actually got up and said that her department investigates complaints about Homeland Security’s work. I am sure they do. Civil rights and civil liberties mix with the fascistic Homeland Security like oil and water.

She said they were involved in community engagement in 14 cities. Community engagement is code for “community spying” and attempts to frame and entrap unsuspecting Muslims to feed its fake “war on terror” propaganda machine. If it wasn’t so terrifying it would be funny.

It was a fascinating meeting. The St Paul police chief got up and declared that he was friends with many of the Somali’s in the room. He talked about how the police were bending over backwards to offer programs for Somali youth, even Somali women.

Of course the question is why? Why is he being so nice to the Africans from Somalia while at the same time his department has killed more people over the last eight years than all of the other departments combined? But he wants the Somali’s to believe that he is their friend.

And it must be kept in mind that this same government, their “friend,” is in the process of vilifying and demonizing seven Somali young men who they have charged with terrorism on little to no evidence. This is because they supposedly wanted to travel to Syria to join ISIS, the same group the U.S. enlisted to fight its proxy war in Syria.

The U.S. is getting two for one out of this one, as it has a Black judge, Michael Davis, pretending that these kids are some kind of threat to the U.S. Davis has steadfastly refused to release these young men to their community. Davis knows full well that the charges and the insinuation is crap, but he lacks the intestinal fortitude to act with real judicial or personal integrity.

So the bottom line of the meeting is that the U.S. government, which cares little about the percentage of the population that is poor and colored, suddenly cares about some African folks, the majority of whom immigrated within the last 20 years. The same government that has deported and separated mothers from children, the same government that sent back thousands of children simply seeking safe refuge, wants to provide programs for Somali wellbeing.

I hope my friends in the Somali community see through this charade, because if they don’t they are going to be in for a real taste of what it means to be Black and Muslim in the U.S. They’ll find out that certain folks speak with forked tongue!