{"id":5581,"date":"2021-11-25T18:20:39","date_gmt":"2021-11-25T22:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/?p=5581"},"modified":"2021-11-25T18:26:18","modified_gmt":"2021-11-25T22:26:18","slug":"working-together-is-the-only-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/working-together-is-the-only-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"Working Together is the Only Solution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"direction: ltr; text-align: left;\">by Bill Meyer, Chair, OneHamtramck LLC<br \/>\nHamtramck is in the world news once again! A century of Polish mayors has come to an end. A new era has arrived with voters electing an ALL-Muslim council and mayor, the first in this country \u2013 and probably, the entire Western hemisphere! This might scare some non-Muslims, especially those who don\u2019t have the advantage of living in a diverse city with many great Muslim neighbors.<\/p>\n<p style=\"direction: ltr; text-align: left;\">There are several factors that should be known to get the full picture of this new phenomenon:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<li style=\"direction: ltr; text-align: left;\">First, this is not unusual in a city that is mostly Muslim \u2013 much like when Poles ran the city when it was mostly Polish. Muslims have long made up more than half the city\u2019s population, which is now easily approaching up to 80%. Although the US Census confuses matters by designating Arabs as \u2018white,\u2019 this can be confirmed by taking a glance at the student registrar to see that more than 80% of the names are Yemeni or Bangladeshi. Same goes for voter registration names. Yemeni Americans are the largest ethnic group in the city, close to half the population. Muslims are the largest growing religious group in the country with over 3.5 million US Muslims, plus Hamtramck also includes many Bosnian Muslims.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<li style=\"direction: ltr;\">Second, this doesn\u2019t mean Muslims are part of the power structure that has ruled the city since its inception 100 years ago. Federal, State and city laws are mostly written by whites, and the City Charter Commission had no Muslims writing the city laws. The police, courts and judges who enforce the laws are mostly white. The city manager who has the most administrative power, along with many of the higher paying department heads are also white. Muslims will not \u2018run\u2019 the city.<\/li>\n<li>and thirdly, hailed as a city of diversity, Hamtramck has actually been divided for a long time along lines of culture, race, religion, ethnicity \u2013 partly because of such diversity. There haven\u2019t been enough conscious efforts made by local officials to bring various cultures together to learn about each other and find common ground on difficult issues.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"direction: ltr; text-align: left;\">However we have reasons to look for a brighter future for Hamtramck:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<li style=\"direction: ltr;\">the newly elected mayor Amer Ghalib, who won in a landslide, has stated his main priority is \u201cto get people together \u2013 to unite the city \u2013 to end the divisions &#8211; to get the trust of the people so we can work together to accomplish our goals and solve our problems.\u201d Despite the many challenges and long history of dysfunction, this gritty inner city has a tenacity and survival mentality having housed so many immigrants who have experienced hardships in their home countries, in addition to the African Americans who have endured centuries of racism.<\/li>\n<li style=\"direction: ltr;\">our newly elected officials have already shown their ability to relate to each other in a friendly and respectful manner. Most reasonable people understand people will never agree on everything, and the \u2018my way or the highway\u2019 approach that has been the dominant style among some leaders, rarely works. Finding ways of working with people of different cultural and political values is a challenge, but it\u2019s the only way we can go forward together.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"direction: ltr; text-align: left;\">Someone once said, \u201cyou can either be part of the problem, or part of the solution. There is NO in-between.\u201d OneHamtramck congratulates and supports our newly elected officials who know the value of working together.<\/p>\n<div class='clear '><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Bill Meyer, Chair, OneHamtramck LLC Hamtramck is in the world news once again! A century of Polish mayors has come to an end. A new era has arrived with voters electing an ALL-Muslim council and mayor, the first in this country \u2013 and probably, the entire Western hemisphere! This might scare some non-Muslims, especially [&hellip;]","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":5582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5581"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5584,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5581\/revisions\/5584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yemeniamerican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}