Below is a fusion of some FB posts I made about Donald Trump’s obnoxious—emphasis on the ‘noxious’—words about Somali immigrants. The season of Advent would like a word.
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Trump’s vile, abhorrent comments about the Minnesota Somali community are reflective of long-standing and normed racism toward this community, and I renounce it.
In fact, I’ve had to renounce it for close to 10 years.
In 2016, after my two children and I arrived in Two Harbors, and after Trump’s election, I wrote a blog in which I despaired about those who’d voted for this offensive con man: in it, as a key aside, I called out the Democrats and the Church too, for both had enabled his election.
Some local Republicans found the blog, took offense, and, purely out of vindictiveness, with the sole purpose to undermine my application to the Planning and Zoning Commission to create the Spent Dandelion Theological Retreat Center, spread utterly false, completely base rumors about me.
Among the untethered, unhinged gossip points, ones even intentionally spread on a local Fox talk radio station for at least two days running (on one day, the announcer even named my children, then in middle school, on air), rumors were planted, including that:
~really the ELCA is all about building mosques, and that was my true intent;
~when I lived in Sioux Falls I had harbored a terrorist from Iran;
~my OMG: Center for Theological Retreat Center was -everywhere- across the globe (they were looking at omgcenter.org, not omgcenter.com, because I wish);
But the most offensive, the most troubling, the most revealing, and their main plank claim was this:
I was actually intending on building not a retreat center, but rather, and I quote, a “Group Home for 30 Somalis.”
I knew nothing of any of these rumors until I was ambushed with them at the local planning and zoning meeting, the publicized one at which I sought approval for my proposal for the Spent Dandelion.
The place was packed, nothing but butts and elbows, because word had spread everywhere (with the solitary exception being to me), about my alleged plans.
When asked if this were true, namely that I was intending on building a group home for 30 Somalis, my breath was caught.
I confessed that I didn’t quite know how to answer.
Most obviously, I could say that No, of course not.
But then I added two things:
Not only was I not intending on building a group home for 30 Somalis, I was also not intending on building a group home for 30 Norwegians either.
And, I said, I was appalled at the overt racism behind the accusation.
All were welcome at the Spent Dandelion, even Norwegians, but racism in any form was not.
Links to the blog called “The Spent Dandelion and Truth Mattering,” with receipts—including to the on-air recordings of that Fox talk radio show—is below.
We were devastated, frightened, brought up face to face with unvarnished hate, and naïve no more.
~~~~~
So yesterday, we have our convicted felon President saying of the Minnesota community, “They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you....They come from hell and they complain and do nothing but b***h.”
He called them ‘garbage.’
A president, purported Christian, and convicted felon and sexual assaulter calling an entire community of citizens ‘garbage’—while pardoning a drug dealer, bombing fishermen, having pardoned convicted violent insurrectionists, and himself having been convicted of (get this) fraud—that’s next-level mind blowing bonkers.
~~~~~
There is no lie, of course, that there has been a wave of fraud cases involving the Somali immigrant community, and to pretend that that isn’t the case is to intentionally ignore an uncomfortable truth.
Last year, Mr. Kayseh Magan, a US citizen of Somali decent—he served as an investigator in the Medicaid Fraud Division of the MN AG office—wrote such a thoughtful, candid, informative article in the Minnesota Reformer about how it is that these fraud cases seem to center the Somali community.
It’s so well-done, and highlights the complicated, nuanced, cultural, communal, and economic realities facing many within the Somali community both here and in Somalia.
Many of these factors have lent themselves to the very circumstances of fraud which have wreaked havoc in and for their community.
He’s written another in the last few weeks: both articles are below, and I encourage you to read them for context, insight, knowledge, and compassion.
Suffice it to say, though, that the entire matter is nuanced, complicated, wrenching, and also?
Most fraud cases are committed by middle-to-upper class white men.
Including, by the way, crimes committed by our now-President.
~~~~~
Two final pieces:
First, this Somali race-baiting is baked into the Minnesota GOP.
I have yet to see one Minnesota Republican elected official renounce it, it has clearly been a racist trope in these parts for some time, and Minnesotans need to be calling it out.
Although this is who we apparently are, it is not who we should be, or who we perceive ourselves to be.
Time to be honest with ourselves.
Second, addressed to those who are baptized:
It is long past time to lean into the promises, and get specific about the renunciations.
Advent’s themes are for you and for now: repent, prepare, and be woke.
https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/07/17/a-somali-american-investigator-heres-why-youre-hearing-so-much-about-fraud-in-my-community/
https://minnesotareformer.com/2025/11/25/right-wing-reporting-on-somali-money-going-to-al-shabaab-is-sloppy/
https://www.startribune.com/twin-cities-ice-somali-trump/601537681?taid=692f848fb6578a00018102c1&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
https://www.startribune.com/trump-administration-targeting-somali-immigrants/601537917?taid=6930577e75940e0001479f1f&utm_campaign=trueanthem&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
https://omgcenter.com/2016/12/21/the-spent-dandelion-theological-retreat-center-and-truth/
https://www.embroker.com/blog/white-collar-crime-statistics/
https://www.oklahomacitylegalgroup.com/blog/2023/03/who-commits-white-collar-crimes/
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU01/20250122/117827/HHRG-119-JU01-20250122-SD006-U6.pdf
https://rockinst.org/gun-violence/mass-shooting-factsheet/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/mass-shootings/shooters/
