All posts in the topic Minneapolis City council to vote this Friday to become Sister City with Najaf Iraq
Summary
- There are 4 posts — by 4 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by Peter Tobias at 2009 Jul 30 12:43 UTC
Minneapolis City council to vote this Friday to become Sister City with Najaf
Iraq. Call 612-673-3000 or 311 and tell City Council members to say yes!
Todd Heintz, Jordan
Just curious: is this going to cost the city anything? Anything at all (in
dollars)?
Mike Thompson
Windom
Actually, there are some indications that this new sister city relationship could benefit the City, and our other sister city relationships. There's an organization called Sister Cities International (http://www.sister-cities.org) that helps organize these relationships. Quoting from their website: "Sister Cities International applies for grants as they become available and administers these programs, passing the funds on to the local sister city organizations." Entering into the proposed relationship with Najaf could make it more likely that we might receive more of this funding and support, because SCI is recruiting more relationships between US cities and cities in the Muslim world through their "Muslim World Partnership Initiative." (http://www.sister-cities.org/programs/islamic.cfm) This proposed relationship is also being actively supported by the Iraq and American Reconciliation Project, an incorporated a 501(c)(3) that has been an independently functioning organization for two years. It has an active board of directors who are engaged in fundraising, outreach and educational activities. IARP has an active, functioning NGO counterpart in Najaf. (See more here: http://www.mpt-iraq.org/AboutIARP.html) That was all a long-winded way of saying: no, we don't have any reason to believe that this new sister city relationship will entail any additional cost to the City. Robin Garwood Policy Aide to Council Member Cam Gordon Cooper
Partnerships between cities make sense if normal people become involved who can
visit each other, e.g. for friendly games between sport clubs etc. If the
partnership is just facilitating exchanges between city officials, it's a waste
of time and resources - we already have a State Department. Najaf is far away
and seems to have no connection with Minneapolis, so who would go there?
Wouldn't it be better to find a city in Somalia for a partnership that can
build on the existing Somali community here? I know that safety in Somalia is
currently low, but safety in Iraq is not high either.
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