BY ED FELIEN
Minneapolis City Council Member Abdi Warsame has had a very bad first couple of months.
First, he voted for Barbara Johnson for council president against his fellow Southside council member, Elizabeth Glidden. Any hope progressives had that he would align himself with liberals from South Minneapolis like Cam Gordon, Alondra Cano, Andrew Johnson and Elizabeth Glidden were dashed when he voted to support the more conservative Northside Machine.
Second, the tragic fire in Cedar Riverside that took three lives was certainly not his fault, contrary to the popular belief in China that bad things happen when the emperor loses the Mandate of Heaven. But, when a tragic fire happened in rooming houses at the University of Minnesota more than 10 years ago, Paul Zerby, who was council member there at the time, initiated a full scale inspection program that sent city inspectors into all the rooming houses to try to prevent future disasters. Warsame could (and probably should) have all the older apartments in the area inspected. It now seems likely that the cause of the Cedar Riverside fire was probably faulty electrical wiring. Warsame should not be blamed for the first fire, but he certainly will be blamed for the next one.
And, as if all that weren’t enough, there was the raucus caucus at Cedar Riverside that brought a lot of bad publicity and a possible criminal investigation to his front door. Ilhan Omar, an aide to Council Member Andrew Johnson, was attacked at the DFL precinct caucus at Cedar Riverside. It has been alleged that the people who struck her were either relatives of Warsame or his council aide. It is further alleged that Warsame warned Johnson that Omar should not attend the caucus, which seems to indicate an attack on her was planned and imminent.
As the highest elected official in the state from the Somali community, he voted to approve Susan Segal as city attorney, even though Southside anti-stadium activists were still upset with Segal’s legal opinion that the City Council did not have to allow the voters of Minneapolis to approve spending almost a billion dollars of taxpayer’s money even though the Minneapolis City Charter says in two separate places that the citizens have that right. And he voted to reappoint Velma Korbel as civil rights director even though she was responsible for destroying citizen review of police misconduct.
Abdi Warsame carries a heavy burden of responsibility on his shoulders. Non-Somalis look to him to try to understand Somali culture, and Somalis look to him to try to understand how government works in this culture. He is the bridge of understanding between two worlds, and, right now, that bridge looks like it’s in need of repair.
There is famous somali saying that says Sahankii lagu hungoobey which translates loss before rescue. It means Abdi Warsame is complete disgrace to our community and people of ward 6.
What has he done on the Council so far. New initiatives or just coasting. What has his voting record been so far.
I agree with Vox on so many things, I enjoy radieng his blog more than any other, but I have to take issue with his last line. Do Americans really “deserve” Barack Obama? Did the Russians “deserve” Stalin? Did the Chinese “deserve” the great leap forward? Did the Jews “deserve” Hitler? This whole thing that if your countrymen sell you down the toilet, or in my case as a liberty loving millennial, my fore bearers selling me down the toilet, do I really “deserve” the government of America? I’ve been a libertarian since I was 12, have campaigned for Ron Paul, have worked my way up from nothing, rejected the indoctrination of the school system, and root for liberty to prevail in America everyday. I am not currently living there but no many great Americans who certainly don’t “deserve” Obama. There are things that are outside many good people’s control. Just because they were born in a certain place with tyrants abusing them doesn’t mean they deserve it.Don’t take this personally. You may not deserve it yourself, and the minority of American libertaries may not deserve this either, but you’re an American after all, and somewhere in America’s history your fellow men were either corrupted by leftist lies or simply grew lazy and forgot that vigilance is an eternal duty.I am a Brazilian Christian conservative. That means that most people look down upon me like I am an obsolete idiot that needs to shut up already and realize that “times have changed”, “science has buried God” and that I’m an asshole for thinking that taking it up the ass is questionable. I am sure you realize Brazil is not exactly a superpower and that corruption runs rampant pretty much everywhere here, from politicians down to the police, to scientists, medics and teachers. I am going to be the first to say that we deserve every single bit that’s coming our way down here. We used to be a Catholic country, and in effect we still are if you just take the polls into account, but every single Christian denomination here has let the leftist scum infiltrate into their ranks. Presbiterians, Catholics, you name it. You can’t go to the University and escape the indoctrination, it’s simply omnipresent. Even in the most prestigious Catholic universities: at one of them, one of the teachers is a very well-known abortist japanese half-breed who preaches against the family, the church and every single conservative institution.Let me finish this by citing Lenin’s Decalogue (Lenin’s manual to seize control of a society):1. Corrupt the youth and give them absolute sexual freedom.2. Infiltrate and take control of the mass communication media.3. Divide the population into antagonist groups; encourage arguments between them over social issues.4. Destroy the people’s confidence in their leaders.5. Talk all the time bout democracy and republic, but when the opportunity arises, seize power as a dictator.6. Cooperate with the drainage of public funds; discrediting the image of the country, especially overseas, and create panics within the population through the launching of an inflationary process.7. Encourage strikes, even if they are illegal, in the country’s key industries.8. Promote riots while conspire to prevent intervention by law enforcement.9. Cooperate actively in destroying the moral foundations of society and honesty and trust in the government’s promises. Infiltrate other parties with your own people, forcing them to vote for what is useful to your own party’s interest.10. Register everyone who has firearms, in order to confiscate them when the time comes, preventing them form opposing your revolution.God help us all.