I’m shocked.
It was only a matter of time before this clash manifested somewhere:
This city of 28,000 was once so Polish it was dubbed “Little Warsaw.” But in recent decades, an influx of immigrants gave Hamtramck new character. Bengali and Arabic joined English on signs at City Hall. Yemeni and Bangladeshi mosques, restaurants and shops proliferated.
And last year, a Muslim who emigrated from Yemen as a teenager became mayor — the city’s first leader in nearly a century with no Polish roots — alongside what is believed to be the nation’s only all-Muslim city council.
Many residents in this tiny enclave just north of downtown Detroit saw these changes as a sign of the Hamtramck’s progressiveness. The Muslim community that had previously experienced discrimination, including voter intimidation and resistance to mosques’ public call to prayer, had finally taken its seats at the table.
Yet the ethnic, cultural and religious diversity that made Hamtramck something of a model is being put severely to the test. In June, after divisive debate, the six-member council blocked the display of Pride flags on city property — action that has angered allies and members of the LGBQT community, who feel that the support they provided the immigrant groups has been reciprocated with betrayal.
“We welcomed you,” former council member Catrina Stockpoole, a retired social worker who identifies as gay, recalls telling the council this summer. “We created nonprofits to help feed, clothe, find housing. We did everything we could to make your transition here easier, and this is how you repay us, by stabbing us in the back?”
The council’s unanimous vote in the middle of Pride Month seemed intentional to Stockpoole and others, though the resolution banned not only the rainbow flag but all flags except for the U.S., state, city and POW/MIA banners. Mayor Amer Ghalib, 43, defends the action as one of neutrality, saying no group should be able to promote a political agenda on city property.
“We’re not targeting anybody,” he said recently. “We are trying to close the door for other groups that could be extremist or racist.”
Not everyone buys that.
Of course they don’t. It’s ridiculous. Are they saying that LGBTQ people are extremist and racist? Come on. We know what this is about.
“The sole purpose was absolutely to go after the gay pride flag,” maintains Josh Hansknecht, a local middle school teacher and president of the Hamtramck Queer Alliance. The issue has laid bare tension between the LGBTQ community and socially conservative Muslims like the mayor.
“The ban did not create the conflict, but it emboldened people,” said Hansknecht, 28. “It expanded on that tension.”
It alsotriggered a spike in thefts and vandalism of Pride flags on private property. One YouTube video shows teenagers egging homes that were flying the flag. Some people, like 23-year-old Selena Briggs, are talking about moving out of the city, saying they no longer feel welcome.
“I don’t feel comfortable to even hold hands with my girlfriend,” said Briggs, a lesbian who works at a cellphone shop on Joseph Campau Street, a main commercial thoroughfare lined with mostly aging store fronts where furniture, clothing, jewelry and cannabis can be bought.
Because of Hamtramck’s historic diversity — a reflection of immigrants from Poland, Albania, Ukraine, Yemen and Bangladesh, among other countries — the city likes to describe itself as “the world in two square miles.” Its neighborhoods are filled with small, tightly packed single-family homes and duplexes. Many were built well before World War II.
Flags have long held an important symbolism here.
A 2013 council resolution directed the Human Relations Commission to manage the display of those representing various groups and nationalities on the city’s 18 poles on Joseph Campau. The Pride flag went up across from City Hall in 2021, but only after then-mayor Karen Majewski broke a 3-3 council tie. The next year, despite some officials’ opposition, it flew along with flags representing various countries, the African Union, Cherokee Nation and others. Today, the stars and stripes top every pole.
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Many Muslims and other residents support the council’s decision, the mayor insists.
“I don’t like the fact that [the LGBQT community is] publicly having these flags everywhere, and it’s being forced on me,” said Amin Haque, 26, an Uber driver who is of Bangladeshi descent. “There’s no problem being gay or lesbian, but keep it to yourself. Just don’t push it on us.”
Stockpoole, who served on the council from 2008 to 2012, thinks the real rift is between the LGBTQ community and the city’s male leadership, backed by Hamtramck’s conservative mosques.
Neighbors are not pitted against neighbors, she said. “Everybody I know gets along with their neighbors on a one-to-one basis. We mow each other’s grass, we look out for each other’s kids. Our children play together.”
Anthropologist Rumana Rahman, who chairs the local beautification committee, echoes those sentiments. In a city where low-income immigrants are a significant part of the population, she sees most getting along with the LGBQT community. And their real concerns are not a Pride flag but worries about the challenges of daily life.
“There’s lead in the water, there’s lead in the soil, there’s trash overflowing in the alleys, potholes in the road,” said Rahman, 41, who is from Bangladesh. “A lot of the factory workers don’t have cars. These are their problems.
Right. The trash is overflowing so they don’t want pride flags flying. I get awfully sick of academics and other political experts constantly offering excuses for people’s bigotry. It is what it is and it isn’t going to be solved with a chicken in every pot. Not everything is about money.
The liberals in that town stuck to their principles when they defended people who don’t share their belief in tolerance and diversity. That’s the essence of liberalism. But no one should be surprised when the recipients of that generosity of spirit fail to return it. They don’t believe they have to tolerate people who believe differently.
