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Hatred and Love For Somali Neighbors If you had driven through Lewiston, Me., on Jan. 11, 2003, you would have seen Third Reich flags, Confederate flags, men in Ku Klux Klan robes and members of the World Church of the Creator (a white supremacist group). You would also have seen roughly 4,000 townspeople (with signs that said "Nazis Out") demonstrating against the demonstrators. In Ziad H. Hamzeh's documentary "The Letter: An American Town and the 'Somali Invasion,'" a gray-bearded white man observes this confrontation and compares it to the sorts of things he has seen overseas. "This doesn't look like America," he says. "And it sure don't look like Maine." This strange juxtaposition of hate and love was prompted by about 1,100 immigrants from Somalia who had settled in Lewiston, an old, once prosperous mill town. The federal government had placed the Somalis in Atlanta as refugees, but first in a trickle and then in a flood they had found the safe streets and livability of Lewiston more attractive. The furor began with an open letter written to the immigrants by Larry Raymond, the mayor, saying rather straightforwardly: Tell your friends and relatives not to move here. In a city that one resident estimates to be 97 percent white, the letter is construed by some people as racism, pure and simple. Mr. Raymond says no, this is a matter of economics. "I'm asking as a moral issue," he says on camera. "Give us a break." David Stearns, of the World Church, says it's both, and he approves either way. Speaking of the Somalis, Mr. Stearns says: "They're doing the same things that the African-Americans are doing here. They're leeching off the systems. They're eating up subsidized housing. They're spreading diseases." If Mr. Hamzeh, a Syrian-born filmmaker, was looking for someone to outrage audiences, he must have given a party when Mr. Stearns agreed to talk. Mr. Stearns even says that the phrase "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence was meant to apply only "if you're white and you're Christian." "The Letter" alternates comments from racists like Mr. Stearns; John Fox, also of the World Church; and angry Lewiston residents, with those from the opposition, including white Mainers; black Somali residents; two former mayors, Kaleigh A. Tara and John T. Jenkins (who is black); and John Baldacci, Maine's governor. Once both sides - those who support cultural diversity versus those who feel the new immigrants are taking food from their children's mouths - have had their say, there is not much forward-moving drama in the situation. The only question is whether there will be violence on the day of the demonstrations. Some 230 police officers are assigned, about 150 of them called in from other cities to supplement Lewiston's force of 83. Mr. Hamzeh's film is responsible and intelligent, though, and important as a record of a disturbing incident. And there is something particularly thrilling about the sight of white Mainers, bundled up against the New England snows, happily swaying and shouting the word "freedom" to the beat of an African drum. Film Journal International | Eric Monder | March 16, 2005 The Letter: An American Town and the "Somali Invasion" demonstrates conclusively that racism still exists at many levels in American society. This brief but essential expose could be used in classrooms and should be seen way beyond them. Documentarian Ziad H. Hamzeh traces the events that occur in October 2002, when Lewiston, Maine Mayor Larry Raymond sends an open letter to 1,000-plus newly arrived Somali refugees, warning them to tell their friends and relatives not to immigrate to the financially strapped city. The immediate outcry of racism by Somali representatives and liberal leaders is countered by conservative forces, including white-supremacist groups across the country who see the conflict as an opportunity to rally. A showdown occurs between the anti-immigrant demonstrators and the more tolerant Lewiston citizens, and the results are not satisfying for either side. Little seems to have changed since Anne Bohlen and Kevin Rafferty's Blood in the Face, the superb 1991 documentary about neo-Nazi and white-supremacist group activities across the U.S. The Letter differs, however, by focusing on a single event and its consequences. Of course, director Hamzeh is wise enough to contextualize the literal black-and-white battle. He includes the earlier backstory of America's ill-fated military involvement in Somalia's civil war (in 1993) as well as the history behind Lewiston's socioeconomic malaise. Using archival news footage (circa 2002-03) and interviews with those fighting each other, Hamzeh captures the intensity of the moment without being exploitative (e.g., there are snipers on rooftops during the filming). Hamzeh (and co-editor Franco Sacchi) are particularly adept at recreating the build-up of unease by crosscutting the oppositional comments on both sides. At times, though, The Letter's guerrilla-filmmaking style backfires, with a few too many crosscut sequences, a roughness to some of the "talking head" interviews, and an over-reliance on children for emotional impact. But overall, here is a true story with an "inciting incident" that resonates with significance about race, culture, community, and the world itself. A must-see. New York Post | Russell Scott Smith | February 9, 2005 The Maine Event: A Documentary Thrill-Ride Blacks and whites marching side by side. Pimply faced teens throwing up the Nazi salute. Looking at powerful images like these, you might think of distant history: Selma in the '60s, perhaps, or Munich in the '30s. But the terrific new documentary "The Letter" tells a much more recent story — what happened just three years ago in the small city of Lewiston, Maine, when about a thousand Somali refugees moved to town. The new immigrants were sparks for a powder keg, and "The Letter" does an excellent job of capturing Lewiston's explosion. We meet progressive Lewistonians who invite Somalis for dinner and less-accepting locals who fret that Somalis will take all their welfare money. There's even a white supremacist who babbles on about "Third World people" who "multiply like rats." As it turns out, he's just the tip of the iceberg. The movie's title comes from a public letter that the mayor of Lewiston published in October 2002, telling the Somalis not to bring their relatives to town. After that, there were white vs. Somali fights at the high school, and even shots fired. "I called my mother in Somalia," one refugee recalls, "and she said, 'What are you doing in Lewiston? Are you crazy? Come home!'" Things got worse in January 2003, when several neo-Nazi groups showed up in Lewiston for a protest. The lead-up to the white power rally and the rally itself make up the second half of "The Letter," and that's when the movie really starts to cook. Tension builds as director Ziad Hamzeh cuts quickly between the supremacists, the countermarchers and 230 riot police who set themselves in between with nightsticks, tear gas and fire hoses. In the last 20 minutes, the film moves as breathlessly as a Hollywood thriller — only it's much more frightening, because it's true. LA Times | Kevin Thomas | August 12, 2005 Ziad H. Hamzeh's "The Letter: An American Town and the 'Somali Invasion' " charts the chaos that Larry Raymond, the elderly, conservative mayor of Lewiston, Maine, unleashed in the wake of 9/11 when he wrote an open letter declaring that more Somali refugees would not be welcome in his city. Raymond has said that Lewiston, in decline since the waning of its textile industry in the 1960s and '70s, has "maxed out" its economic resources. But his missive sparked anger directed at the 1,100 Somali refugees who under a progressive mayor had been welcomed to the picture-postcard town. The letter encouraged the least-educated and poorest sectors of the community to lash out at Somali neighbors who they believed got a better break from the government — information from City Hall needlessly inflamed the situation. Raymond's letter triggered a media circus and attracted the attention of hate groups, which culminated in a rally staged by the World Church of the Creator and a counter-demonstration celebrating civic unity and multicultural diversity that involved more than 4,000 concerned Lewiston citizens. "The Letter" has a terrifying in-your-face immediacy, a strong cross-section of talking heads on both sides of the debate, and cuts deeply into the cultural wars dividing this country. Yet it could have been even more powerful with more context, clarity and a well-defined timeline. Undeniably strong, "The Letter" is at times misleading and confusing, possessing the raw materials for a much more coherent and potent film. LA Weekly | Hazel-Dawn Dumpert | August 11, 2005 In 2001, the mayor of Lewiston, Maine, a depressed former mill town, printed a letter in the local newspaper instructing the recent influx of Somali refugees not to bring any more of their kind around. The letter, written after the mayor refused to meet with the refugees’ representatives, ignited a controversy vehement enough to catch the attention of the state government, various churches, hate groups and the international media. Writer-director Ziah H. Hamzeh’s video documentary looks at the conflict as it leads to a symbolic showdown between pro-diversity organizations and two factions of white supremacists, all of whom hold opposing demonstrations on the same winter day. It’s clear where Hamzeh’s sympathies lie — an extreme close-up of a neo-Nazi spewing hate puts him uncomfortably in the viewer’s face, while more reasonable talking heads are framed at a relaxed head-and-shoulders distance. Even so, Hamzeh’s canny editing of a multitude of events, images and voices speaks to issues as diverse as the personal origins of hatred and fear, the intricacies of race vs. class, the history of U.S. immigration, and the fallout from globalized economics. The result is a carefully wrought, historically grounded and thoroughly absorbing look at a quintessential American experience. Hollywood Reporter | Frank Scheck | February 24, 2005 Ziad H. Hamzeh's documentary is a powerful and timely portrait of the tensions that can be generated by immigration situations, especially in a post-Sept. 11 world. The story of the events leading up to a massive protest in the small town of Lewiston, Maine, over an influx of 1,100 refugees from Somalia, "The Letter: An American Town and the Somali Invasion" has been garnering great acclaim on the festival circuit and is a natural for public and cable television airing. The film recently played a theatrical engagement at New York's Two Boots Pioneer Theater. Lewiston, an overwhelmingly white, financially struggling and close-knit community, was an unlikely spot for the federal government to place the black and Muslim Somali refugees, and many of the residents were not exactly welcoming. This group even included the town's mayor, who wrote the titular missive to the newcomers in which he discouraged them from bringing over any further friends or family members. Eventually, the simmering tensions, fueled by various hate groups, led to a massive demonstration by white supremacists and counterprotesters in early January 2003. It became the most heavily policed event in the history of the state. Besides hundreds of riot police officers, there also was a large presence of FBI and Secret Service agents as well as counterterrorism snipers. The film includes testimony from many of the figures involved in the situation, ranging from the immigrants to local politicians to townspeople both supportive and obstructive. Prominently featured among the latter are members of the World Church of the Creator whose vehemently expressed racist sentiments -- including one comment that these "Third World people will multiply like rats" -- provide many of the film's most dramatic moments. Fortunately for the town, the protest was peaceful, though in purely clinical cinematic terms, it does represent something of an anticlimax for this very talky film. Nonetheless, "Letter" is an important social document that merits widespread exposure. Village Voice | Peter L'Official | February 8, 2005 Tracking Shots Curse Ridley Scott for unwittingly inflaming race relations in Lewiston, Maine. His 2001 Black Hawk Down inspired the more jingoistic members of the depressed mill town (riled by the death of a young local in Mogadishu) to focus their formerly indiscriminate xenophobia on one immigrant community: 1,100 Somali refugees newly arrived to the wintry, predominantly white city. The titular missive of Ziad Hamzeh's impassioned documentary, authored by Lewiston's mayor, asked Somali to discourage relatives from joining them in their adopted home—a transparently racist plea that drew white-supremacist groups to Maine and galvanized the larger, welcoming community against the hatemongering horde. Coming to an American studies department near you—which is no slight to its affecting, straightforward presentation of tightly knit, contrapuntal interviews and crosscut rally footage—Hamzeh's film eschews voice-over to allow the more despicable characters to embarrass themselves with their ludicrously foolish invective. White supremacists are never funny until they reveal The O'Reilly Factor as their source for unbiased information. Variety | Robert Koehler | December 3, 2003 Ziad H. Hamzeh's THE LETTER is an especially dramatic… work of polemical reportage on racism in America. The entry of a few hundred Somali refugees in the nearly all-Anglo Maine burg of Lewiston becomes the flashpoint for locals having to deal with diverse, non-Euro cultures for the first time, sparking an inevitable round of bigotry and pleas for tolerance. A sure conversation-starter at festivals... A 10-minute montage of talking heads imparts the feeling of a town hit by a social and political tornado, beginning with the aftermath of the disastrous U.N. and U.S. involvement in 1993 to calm civil war in Somalia. The human result was a U.S. sponsored move of Somali refugees, first to crime-ridden 'hoods in Atlanta, and then (on the initiative of Somali families) to safer communities such as Lewiston. Lewiston is a study of the American Dream in collapse, as residents describe how this once-thriving Franco-American textile center declined with the closure of Bates Mill, once Maine's biggest employer. Despite early acceptance of the suddenly arriving Somalis, much of it facilitated by local churches, a terrible combination of old-timer resentment along with the distinctively foreign look of the African residents creates an ideal brew for racism. A crucial turn for the town, in retrospect, was voters' failure to re-elect progressive mayor Kaleigh A. Tara (who supports the refugees staying and thriving in Lewiston). Instead, they pick her conservative opponent, Larry Raymond, whose open letter – referred to in the pic's title – states in effect, that additional Somalis weren't welcome. Hamzeh splices together participants' comments as a substitute for conventional narration – an interesting approach to non-fiction narrative. …It serves as the dramatic build to neo-Nazi outsiders barnstorming the town to exploit local hatred – and a group of citizens organizing a far larger counter-rally. Some chilling characters are on display, including David Stearns (credited as a "brother" of the World Church of the Creator) who extols complete separation of the races, and white separatist John Fox, who looks like he expected a bigger turnout of bigots in Lewiston than he got. Film Threat | Rick Kisonak | November 6, 2003 In post 9/11 America does the phrase "melting pot" still have meaning? Is the invitation inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor" still in effect? The citizens of Lewiston, Maine probably didn't give any more thought to those questions than ordinary people in most places do until hundreds of Somali refugees appeared on their doorstep virtually overnight. The Letter is writer-director Ziad H. Hamzeh's timely, thoughtful and riveting chronicle of the community's divided response to both the mass immigration and actions taken by the city administration. On one side of the issue we find local religious leaders, a female former mayor, a black ex-state senator and the state's governor, who happens to be of Lebanese descent. Along with many in the general population, they extend a welcoming hand and sing the praises of diversity. On the other is a less enthusiastic demographic composed in part of the unemployed or working poor, concerned that public relief will be diverted to the refugees, members of white supremacist organizations such as The World Church of the Creator, garden variety bigots and Lewiston's mayor. At once the controversy's most pivotal and least visible player, Larry Raymond ultimately reacted to mounting community tensions by drafting a letter to Somali elders asking them to discourage friends, relatives and family members from moving to the city due to the fact that its resources had been tapped out. Picked up by the international press, the letter accomplished little other than the exacerbation of an already volatile situation. People who wanted to see the refugees leave pointed to the mayor's words as justification for their own beliefs. Those who felt the Somalis were being treated unfairly pointed out that Raymond had played fast and loose with the fiscal facts, that financial assistance to the refugees in truth amounted to less than 1% of the town's budget and that the administration had even received extra federal funds to help with the situation. The filmmaker juggles an impressive number of subjects, including anti-Muslim sentiment, the neo-nazi movement, institutionalized prejudice and the nation's immigrant heritage. Opposing notions are explored via interviews with Lewiston residents and Maine's political leadership as well as local and national news footage. Hamzeh keeps the ideas flying and the story building toward a day that made Maine history. On January 11 of this year Lewiston provided the setting for massive rallies on the part of both factions, Somali supporters and a coalition of hate groups. The potential for catastrophe was such that the e vent drew the largest police presence ever assembled in the state. Maine's motto is "The Way Life Should Be." Hamzeh's film attempts to sort out the impassioned debate as to what exactly that means and to whom it should have meaning. It's a lot to attempt in 75 minutes and the jury may still be out on the Lewiston experiment. One thing is beyond any doubt though. As an affecting work of compassionate craftsmanship, The Letter delivers. Pulse of the Twin Cities | Ben Sachs | April 8, 2004 “I could have died 20 times,” says director Ziad Hamzeh plainly, talking about the production of his new film “The Letter.” “They had snipers on the rooftops [when I was filming]. The security surrounding the event was the biggest police presence ever assembled in Maine, and I was the only one allowed inside. Even the good people could have shot me!” These experiences are vital to “The Letter,” a documentary about one of the more shocking recent incidents of institutionalized racism. Last year, the arrival of 1,100 Somali immigrants in the small town of Lewiston, Maine, sparked local—and eventually international—controversy when that town’s mayor wrote an open letter asking them to discourage any friends and family from moving to the town, more or less implying that an immigrant quota had been filled. Hamzeh’s cameras capture the events that erupted in the wake of this brash move, including protests in support of the Somalis and white supremacist rallies that formed in “support” of the Lewiston citizens. In his attempt to tell as many sides of the story as possible, Hamzeh wound up in some unexpected places. “I was given access to the highest people in the government as well as the highest people in white supremacy groups. I’d meet with them in their homes, in parking lots, in gas stations and so on and so on … And they actually don’t like my kind,” he adds, after some deliberation. “They very much hate where I come from, just like they hate everything, unfortunately.” Hamzeh, who was born in Damascus, Syria, and has lived in the United States for the past 30 years, concedes that he has lived most of his life in safety. Yet things changed after September 11th, as it is now cliché to say, and Hamzeh began to feel the effects of racism in American culture for the first time. “I had been living here happily; I’m a citizen. But I’ve never felt—how shall I say?—isolated from the American public as I did immediately following 9/11, simply because I started becoming aware of my nationality. That Arabic part of me started saying, ‘Uh-oh, everybody’s looking at me,’ which felt very frustrating and very painful. Every [Arab-American] seemed clumped together as an immigrant from ‘the land of terrorism.’” Hamzeh is surprisingly cool when talking about the hate mongerers he interviewed, however, some of whom drove from several states away to attend the Lewiston rallies. “Of course, [the movie] addresses the issue of the injustice that the Somali people faced, but it also presents what the people of Lewiston had to deal with. The white supremacists basically descended on their town, saying, ‘Yeah, we’ll protect you,’ when [the residents] were saying, ‘We don’t need your protection. Go away.’” He chuckles at this last comment, as if still charmed by the townspeople’s resilience, or else the startling simplicity of racism. “My crew kept saying, ‘We have to go with you [to the interviews with hate group leaders], we have to protect you, we have to defend you.’ And I’m like, ‘They’re up against the whole government, these people are not going to scare me.’” Regardless, Hamzeh took precautions. “No one ever called me ‘Ziad’ as a full name. They always called me ‘Z.’ And, actually, when the white supremacists met me, first they had to go through their check. So they asked, ‘Where are you from?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m half-French.’ They never bothered to ask what the other half was, so I didn’t really have to deal with it.” The filmmaker’s ability to translate his filmmaking episodes into anecdotes might derive from his background in the theater. Hamzeh founded two theater companies in Los Angeles —the Open Fist and the Egyptian Arena—and his connections to drama seem to affect most of his decisions, down to his precise mode of speaking. “‘The Letter’ is the only documentary film I’ve made, and it’s still structured very much like a narrative, simply because I don’t know any other style. I needed to tell this story in the only way I know how.” More precisely, Hamzeh needed to tell this story, period. Not only did “The Letter” represent a “self-medicating experience” for him, but it served to transform his feelings of exclusion into a more socially-encompassing statement. “This is my response to the situation, in a positive sense,” he says. “As one reviewer pointed out, the movie is a love letter to America in many ways. But you have to go through turmoil prior to arriving at that.” Philadelphia Weekly | Matt Prigge | March 16, 2005 Were it simply a case of truth being stranger than fiction, Syrian-born filmmaker Ziad Hamzeh's America-set doc (which played New York last month) would sport one of the year's most thrilling plots. More than a year ago 1,110 Somali refugees were allowed residency in the predominantly white town of Lewiston, Maine. After the mayor wrote an open letter referring to the town's meager funds, the Somalis were mistakenly seen as violence-prone welfare cases, and attacked first by Lewiston's poor people, then by white supremacists, who staged an inevitably combustible hate parade. Though the film eventually devolves into shouting matches, it would take an outright incompetent to muck up this quagmire, which marries post-9/11 xenophobia with this era's propensity for half-truths that take on a life of their own. Grade: B Educational Media Reviews Online | Maureen Puffer-Rothenberg | April 7, 2004 Ziad H. Hamzeh’s documentary The Letter shows how Lewiston, Maine, once a thriving French-American mill town but now fallen on hard times, became the center of a racial controversy generating national media attention. In the early 1990s Somali refugees relocated to the United States to escape civil war in their home country. Finding street violence rampant in larger American cities, they searched for a safe community in which to start over and raise their families. 1,100 Somalis settled in Lewiston, Maine (population circa 40,000). While some Lewiston residents welcomed the Somalis, others feared the economic and cultural impact these Black Muslim refugees would have on their community. In October 2002 Mayor Larry Raymond published an open letter to the Somalis, saying Lewiston’s financial resources were strained by the influx of refugees and asking them to discourage other Somalis from moving there. When Raymond’s letter caught the attention of national media, television and newspaper coverage fed the fears of those who felt Somali immigrants depleted resources (such as food stamps, housing assistance, tax breaks and welfare) that should have gone to Lewiston natives. The media coverage also attracted neo-Nazi groups who responded to the town’s growing anxiety and increasing racial conflict by scheduling a rally in Lewiston for January 11, 2003. Lewiston’s Many and One Coalition organized a larger counter-rally in support of diversity. Hamzeh and his team filmed in Lewiston in 2002 and 2003, capturing the tension and foreboding residents felt in the days leading up to the two rallies. Hamzeh intercuts scenes from the rallies-- and from neo-Nazi meetings-- with comments from long-time Lewiston residents, Somali refugees, church leaders, white supremacists, police and city officials, and politicians including Mayor Raymond. Some of the interviews are excerpted and spliced to artificially create two-sided arguments. The narrative grows from the cumulative expression of many points of view, with MTV-style quick cuts recreating the cacophony of voices that arose around the refugee issue. The film’s momentum is marred slightly by repetition of certain footage (particularly one scene of white supremacists giving a Nazi salute) and the use of children for emotional impact. However, The Letter succeeds beautifully as slice-of-American-life storytelling and its message - that Americans should welcome today’s immigrants as we hope our forbears were welcomed - is well conveyed. The Letter contains some strong language and is highly recommended for college and university libraries. It will be particularly useful for studies in diversity and multiculturalism.
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