From KSTP-5,
‘Deeply troubling’: Eden Prairie Somali leaders address youth gang violence
KSTP reports,
After several shootings across the metro area, including one at a high school homecoming football game and another at a gas station, Somali community leaders met Wednesday to address youth violence.
Community leaders, including an imam from the Al-Hikmah Islamic Center, met in Eden Prairie on Wednesday afternoon, the city where the most recent shooting occurred.
KSTP live-streamed the event yesterday and it can be seen here. The program begins at the 5-minute mark.
From KSTP,
Speaking about those recent shootings, another leader said, “We recognize that Somali-American youth were involved, and those responsible must be held accountable. But those are also American youth, born and raised all here — educated here, and grew up in our communities. This is not simply a Somali problem; it’s a youth violence and gun violence problem.”
The Twitter (X) account End Wokeness posted a video clip of that segment as well as other clips from the Eden Prairie event.
The speaker is correct, up to a point. Something is clearly wrong in the larger society when otherwise affluent youth, educated in Minnesota schools, turn to violence, or in yesterday’s example, terrorism. But one can’t overlook the unifying thread in these series of disturbances.
In yesterday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune, an opinion piece appears (paywall), under the headline,
Address Somali youth violence with accountability, not collective blame
The piece is by Hamse Warfa, who formerly served in the administrations of Tim Walz and Joe Biden, in various roles. Warfa frames the issue as one of belonging,
Making sure young people feel like they belong here is how Minnesota moves forward.
I would imagine, though, that the concept of “belonging” is a two-way street. As an individual, you need to want to belong. As to his point on “collective blame,” on Monday night at Edina’s town hall on the subject, Morgan Kunz, the criminal prosecutor attending on behalf of county attorney Mary Moriarty, told the crowd (video at 34:23) that her office is careful to not impose “excessive punishment” (his words) on those convicted of crimes due to the danger that individual incarcerations “can destabilize families and communities.” Somehow, individual accountability becomes collective punishment. Society can’t win.
For his part, Warfa embodies the entrepreneurial spirit of both his community and America as a whole. His Wikipedia page notes his founding of several companies over the years. As Warfa himself noted yesterday,
Over the past three decades, my work has taken me across philanthropy, business, nonprofit leadership, Minnesota state government and federal public service as a senior adviser to the U.S. State Department.
Among other accolades, Hamsa is a 2016 Bush Fellow. As Hamsa notes on his own website,
In addition to his public sector work, Warfa is an innovative and successful serial entrepreneur.
At the bottom of that same webpage Hamsa reports,
The first partner, Open Society, is, of course, the main philanthropic arm of New York-based financier George Soros. Hamsa’s LinkedIn page notes that he serves for two years (2023-25) as a Senior Government Fellow at Open Society.
KSTP mentions, as noted above, the involvement in yesterday’s Eden Prairie press conference of the Al-Hikmah Islamic Center. Al-Hikmah (spelled with two “h’s”) is located in Minneapolis, now utilizing a building formerly home to a Lutheran church. I wrote about the Center in this recent post.
[As a side note: Confusingly, a similarly-named, and apparently unrelated, Alhikma Center (one “h” and no “-“) sits across town from Al-Hikmah (two “h’s” and one “-“). This other Alhikma participated in the free-food program under the Feeding Our Future network, taking in some $1.5 million. In federal court records, this other Alhikma appears under the misspelled “Al Hikmah” (no “-“) name. To be clear, none of these entities have been accused of any wrongdoing.]
