![]() ![]() People who could not get into the Hamtramck city council chambers throng the hallway during the council meeting on the flag issue on Tuesday. The resolution, which also prohibits the display of flags with ethnic, racist and political views, comes at a time when LGBTQ+ rights are under assault worldwide, and other US cities have passed similar bans, with the vast majority driven by often white politically conservative Americans. According to the 2020 census some 30% to 38% of Hamtramck’s residents are of Yemeni descent, and 24% are of Asian descent, largely Bangladeshi.Īfter several years of diversity on the council, some see irony in an all-male, Muslim elected government that does not reflect the city’s makeup. By 2013, largely Muslim Bangladeshi and Yemeni immigrants supplanted the white eastern Europeans, though the city remains home to significant populations of those groups, as well as African Americans, whites and Bosnian and Albanian Americans. “We supported you when you were threatened, and now our rights are threatened, and you’re the one doing the threatening.”įor about a century, Polish and Ukrainian Catholics dominated politics in Hamtramck, a city of 28,000 surrounded by Detroit. “There’s a sense of betrayal,” said the former Hamtramck mayor Karen Majewski, who is Polish American. Some leaders and residents are now bitter political enemies engaged in a series of often vicious battles over the city’s direction, and the Pride flag controversy represents a crescendo in tension. ![]() While Hamtramck is still viewed as a bastion of multiculturalism, the difficulties of local governance and living among neighbors with different cultural values quickly set in following the 2015 election. In a tense monologue before the vote, Councilmember Mohammed Hassan shouted his justification at LGBTQ+ supporters: “I’m working for the people, what the majority of the people like.” Muslim residents packing city hall erupted in cheers after the council’s unanimous vote, and on Hamtramck’s social media pages, the taunting has been relentless: “Fagless City”, read one post, emphasized with emojis of a bicep flexing. This week many of those same residents watched in dismay as a now fully Muslim and socially conservative city council passed legislation banning Pride flags from being flown on city property that had – like many others being flown around the country – been intended to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community. ![]()
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