“How long did you think you were going to be able to run and operate a store that continued to harm and exploit black folks … without reaping what you sow?”
(Sara Hamdan, an IMAN organizer)
Who knew?
As I have said in a couple of previous posts, here andhere, we wouldn’t have known that Arab and Asian (New American!) shop owners in Black neighborhoods treated their customers badly, sold them booze, cigarettes and unhealthy food and then went home to nicer neighborhoods every evening if it hadn’t been for the death of George Floyd.
The tensions in ‘diversity-is-strength’ neighborhoods that led up to Floyd’s death is further explained in this story at Religious News Service yesterday.
It seems this isn’t a case of white vs. black racial tension, but one of immigrant Arab exploiters vs. African Americans.
Did you even know that the store that called police on Floyd was a convenience store owned by a Palestinian?
Minneapolis Cup Foods where George Floyd allegedly tried to pass a counterfeit $20.
Floyd’s death spurs debate on how immigrants should run stores in black neighborhoods
(Emphasis below is mine)
(RNS) — George Floyd was killed after employees at a convenience store owned by a Palestinian American Muslim — with a Muslim prayer space in its basement — called Minneapolis police over a suspected counterfeit $20 bill.
The role that the store played in Floyd’s death May 25 and in all that followed has been a bitter pill to swallow for many Muslim and Arab communities.
This moment has also reignited ongoing debates in Muslim communities over the ethical duties of immigrants who own businesses in black neighborhoods, from when and if they call the police to the role they can play in creating healthier food ecosystems.
“We know now that escalating situations to the police almost always does more harm than good, even for something as harmless as a fake bill,” Mahmoud Abumayyaleh, owner of the Cup Foods store that called the police on Floyd, wrote in a Facebook post.
Cup Foods, which has served customers in a largely black neighborhood for three decades, will no longer involve the police in nonviolent incidents, Abumayyaleh said.
“By simply following procedure we are putting our communities in danger,” he said in his social media post. Instead, he urged, “Work within your communities to find alternatives to policing, until the point that local and state officials decide to seriously hold police accountable once and for all.”
Food and liquor stores, often owned by Arab and South Asian immigrants, are common in mostly black, low-income neighborhoods. But the relationships between these store owners and the communities they serve have often been fraught with racial tension.
[….]
Rami Nashashibi
Rami Nashashibi, director of Chicago’s Inner-City Muslim Action Network, says a massive cultural transformation is needed for nonblack Muslim corner store owners to be allies for those they serve.
[….]
Since the police killing, IMAN has partnered with the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative, a racial justice education organization, to launch “Corner Store Witnesses,” a new training curriculum aimed at nonblack Muslim business owners.
[….]
Imam Jihad Saafir, who heads Islah LA, an inner-city Muslim community center in South Los Angeles, said stores and restaurants run by Muslim immigrants were often the source of alcohol, cigarettes, drug paraphernalia and unhealthy foods that have taken a toll on locals’ health.
Beyond overpolicing, common concerns with immigrant-owned corner stores include gentrification; exploitative pricing; racist hiring practices; hostile security measures such as bulletproof glass and cages; the sale of alcohol and nicotine products; and the sale of junk food, as well as a lack of fresh produce and other healthy foods.
“In many ways, residents in those neighborhoods perceive those store owners in the same way those Palestinian store owners perceive Israeli settlements in the West Bank,” Nashashibi, who is Palestinian American himself, argued. “What justification are you using to be in that black community?”
Linda Sarsour: We have a long way to go to build relationships with the black community.
But we are marginalized so we can marginalize others!
RNS continues….
Many Arab and South Asian store owners respond to allegations of racism by pointing to their own marginalized identities and their need to protect their income. Many are working-class; some are undocumented.
Activist Linda Sarsour, whose father owned a store in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood for 38 years, urged Muslims not to blame Cup Foods’ owner for Floyd’s death, noting that the store has a positive relationship with locals.
“I understand that we have a long way to go to build transformative relationships between Arab/Asian store owners and local Black communities,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “These communities deserve business owners who are contributors to communities not just takers.”
Never let a good crisis go to waste! Leftwing agitators are milking the death of George Floyd for all it is worth.
Just this morning someone sent me news about theSunrise Movement,ostensibly a green new deal group, that is also out stirring up unrest that you can only assume was planned well in advance of the Minneapolis meltdown.
One wonders if Floyd hadn’t died what fuse were they planning to light to ignite the 2020 (election year) revolution.
Dreamers Arrested in Protests Helped Those who “Were There to Commit Crime and Damage”
Maxima goes to Washington. Photo from her closed Twitter page.
Illegal immigrants protected by an Obama-era amnesty for adults who came to the U.S. as children are among the rioters arrested and charged with crimes in Arizona. One of them, 30-year-old Mexican illegal alien Maxima Guerrero, is a community organizer with a Phoenix-based grassroots migrant justiceorganization called Puente Movement.
She has been shielded from deportation under Obama’s controversial program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) since 2013. The former president issued the DACA executive order after Congress repeatedly rejected legislation offering illegal immigrants similar protections. The failed measure was called Development Relief and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM Act) and DACA recipients are often called “Dreamers.”
More than 100,000 DACA applicants have criminal histories, according to figures released late last year by the U.S. government. Many have been arrested for serious crimes such as murder, rape and driving under the influence. The government can deport those charged with crimes, immediately stripping them of the Obama protections but that rarely occurs.
The recent Phoenix arrestees were apprehended in the course of criminal behavior, according to a local news report and information obtained by Judicial Watch from police sources on the ground. Guerrero and two other Dreamers were out rioting and looting in a “Justice for George Floyd” protest in downtown Phoenix, city police sources tellJudicial Watch.
Chief Jeri Williams
Phoenix Police Chief Jeri Williams said this in the media about the vehicles occupied by the arrested Dreamers: “Those cars were used to fortify and give rocks and water bottles, food to those individuals who were there to commit crime and damage, to do dangerous things to our community.”
The information is especially relevant considering the source is an open borders advocate. A few years ago Williams, who joined protestors in downtown Phoenix, tried to make her law enforcement agency an illegal immigrant sanctuary at the request of a leftist group.
Judicial Watch obtained records of a secret meeting in 2017 in which the police chief of Arizona’s largest city took orders from Will Goana, policy director for the state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Continue reading here. There are links to supporting documents and other information.
How can that be? Everyone KNOWS that since both groups are persecuted by white racist Islamophobic Americans they should be working together against their common enemy—us! Right?
And, everyone KNOWS that bringing diversity to impoverished American cities brings strength and “enriches” communities. Right?
One thing that George Floyd’s death has done is shine a spotlight on the tensions between African Americans and especially the Arabs who have moved into ‘their’ neighborhoods (largely thanks to the naive notions the Left peddles about multicultural enrichment). Or is it possible that it isn’t naivety? Maybe creating chaos and discord is the real goal! It surely is for Antifa!
Over the years, writing at RRW,I have come across the issue of poor blacks feeling left out when Arab migrants/refugees are placed in traditional black neighborhoods and just the other day I told you about wishful thinking on the Left that George Floyd would bring the two supposedly maligned groups together.
Now I see at Arab Newsthat there is a lot of work to do to bridge the divide especially as questions arise about Muslim Arabs placing shops that sell liquor and drug paraphernalia in African American neighborhoods, the subject of my post at RRW.
(It is haram for Muslims to drink alcohol, but fine and dandy to sell it!)
By the way there were reports that during the Baltimore riots a few years ago, black thugs directed looting toward immigrant Arab shops. African Americans don’t take kindly to diversity dumping in their neighborhoods it seems.
US riots take severe toll on Arab-American small businesses
CHICAGO: Stores owned by immigrants of Arab and Muslim origin are among the many businesses that were pillaged and destroyed during the protests triggered by the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, while in police custody.
US media has focused almost exclusively on the continued anger over the circumstances of Floyd’s death on May 25, while choosing to ignore an inconvenient truth: the economic setback and mental anguish suffered by hard-working Arab American and Muslim immigrant communities.
Tribalism exists!
Why does the US media ignore the facts surrounding the tension between African Americans and Muslims? Because it goes completely against the meme they are promoting daily—blacks and Muslims are being treated badly by whites and so therefore there cannot be any discord between the supposedly mistreated minorities.
Arab News continues….
Steve and John Salamy saw their liquor store looted and destroyed in recent Chicago riots.
Protesters burned vehicles, smashed windows, defaced buildings and clashed with police as civil unrest erupted in cities across the country. Atlanta, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Denver, Salt Lake City, Nashville and Minneapolis imposed curfews while the governors of Minnesota, Georgia, Ohio, Washington and Kentucky mobilized their states’ National Guards.
Although there are Arab chambers of commerce in many of the cities heavily affected by the rioting and looting, none of the business bodies — except one in Chicago — have been able to collect accurate information on the losses suffered by the community.
Through tears, Ekhlas Salamy described how she and her sons, Steve and John, watched helplessly from across a main street as their store in Chicago was ransacked by looters.
“I am so frustrated by what happened to our store. My husband bought the business in 1988 and it is located in a mixed community of African Americans and Hispanics,” said Salamy, whose family emigrated to the US from the Palestinian city of Ramallah.
It is not fair says Mrs. Salamy!
“We have never had any problems before with the African American community. In fact, five of our employees are black and three others are Hispanic.
“We never treated them badly and never let them feel that they were any different from us. We have always treated them with respect.
[….]
She and her two sons took over the family’s Chicago business, Pete & Jack’s Liquor, at 4156 W Division Street when her husband died in August 2018.
“This is our livelihood. All my family has survived off this business,” Salamy told Arab News.
“The looters just destroyed all our hard work. I have tears in my eyes because we never did any harm to anyone. They stole everything and destroyed the entire store.”
Think it is bad now? Just wait till the Police Departments in major cities are stripped of funding and the power to arrest criminals. Steve and John will have to be hiring their own personal police force.
On Thursday, after ordering a statue of Robert E. Lee be removed, he had the gall to lecture Virginians and indeed all Americans about being racists.
Northam’s Medical School yearbook page! Think about this! Medical School, not High School!
See what Virginia patriot Catherine Trauernicht had to say to the Governor in the Bull Elephant, a Virginia publication for right of center Virginians. Her entire column is here, and below are the opening paragraphs.
An aside: To my reader who asked yesterday what can ‘we’ do about a troubled America, my answer is find some thing ‘you’ can do every day, even if it seems tiny and insignificant, and do it. Don’t worry about what others are doing, ask yourself at the end of each day what have I done to preserve the America we love.
Writing guest columns like this one is something you can do. But, first, if your state or county doesn’t even have a news site like the Bull Elephant, get one!
Ralph Northam’s gall
During his press conference yesterday, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam displayed shameless gall as he scolded Virginians specifically and Americans in general about their racism.
“Today we are here to be honest about our past and talk about our future,” Northam declared. “We have to confront where we’ve been in order to shape where we’re going.” THIS coming from the man who first apologized for a photograph on his medical school yearbook page, and 24 hours later said no one — not even he — could prove whether he was in blackface or the KKK white hood.
During a bizarre press conference in February 2019, Gov. Northam told us how difficult it was to get shoe polish off his face after entering a Michael Jackson dance contest. He even prepared to demonstrate the moonwalk dance routine until his wife whispered that it would not be appropriate under the circumstances. All the while, he was trying to convince Virginians that he didn’t know how the offensive photograph landed on his own yearbook page or how he acquired the nickname “Coonman.”
This is the same Ralph Northam who, during yesterday’s press conference, said, “The eyes can’t see what the mind doesn’t know.” I guess that’s why he keeps us in the dark about the yearbook page.
Vandals have in recent days defaced Richmond’s monument to Robt. E. Lee. Note the KKK scrawled on the base.
The Governor went on to speak about removing the statue of Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond, calling it “a symbol to shore up the cause of those who didn’t want unity after the Civil War,” those who wanted to “keep the system in place.” What the Governor didn’t say was that the militant wing of the Democrat Party at that time was the Ku Klux Klan, whose uniforms were white robes, like the Klan photograph on Ralph Northam’s yearbook page. It was the southern Democrat Party who wanted the “system” to survive.
This story is published presumably to get the word out for people to report the missing Guatemalan children, but I wondered how many more of the ‘asylum seekers’ split and disappear into ethnic ‘communities’ in America.
Unaccompanied minors seeking asylum run away from Holland foster home
HOLLAND, MI – Police are looking for a brother and sister who entered the U.S as unaccompanied minors and have run away from their foster home in Holland.
The 16-year-old (if he is 16!) if found should be denied asylum on the grounds that he is too dumb to be allowed to stay. He is endangering his sister (if she is his sister) and is wasting police manpower as the search is conducted.
Juan Emerson Garcia-Yax, 16, and his sister, Emelyn Garcia-Yax, 8 ran away from their foster home on East 25th Street late Sunday, May 31, or early the next morning.
They are originally from Guatemala. They entered the U.S. in March as unaccompanied minors seeking asylum. The Office of Refugee Resettlement placed them in foster care during the legal process.
“Juan left a note for the foster parents expressing his gratitude for everything they had done for them but indicated that they needed to leave to take care of ‘personal matters,’ Holland police Capt. Robert Buursma said in a statement.
Police said no vehicles are missing from the home. Police contacted bus companies and Amtrak but could not find the children. They have a relative in the state of New York but he has not heard from the children, police said.
Police have not determined where the children could be going or what transportation they may have.
My guess is that he isn’t dumb at all, but was supposed to deliver the girl to someone (a human trafficker?) and he messed up. If anyone sees an update, let me know!
