CNN's Costello Asks Michigan Mayor If She Is “Afraid” Of Her “Majority Muslim-American” City Council

Carol Costello: “You Govern A Majority-Muslim-American City. Are You Afraid?”

Written by Media Matters Staff

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CNN anchor Carol Costello suggested there may be something for the residents of Hamtramck, Michigan to be “afraid” of after they elected in November a majority Muslim-American city council. Speaking to the city mayor, Karen Majewski, on CNN Newsroom about police surveillance of Muslims amid terrorist concerns, Costello said, “You govern a majority-Muslim-American city. Are you afraid?” Costello also asked whether the Muslim-majority city council “concern[s] some of your citizens.” From the November 23 edition of CNN's CNN Newsroom With Carol Costello:

CAROL COSTELLO: Mr. Trump's popularity stems in part from that tough talk on Muslim Americans. He's in favor of surveillance on certain mosques as a way to combat terrorism. Of course after 9/11, New York City police did surveillance on mosques. So what did they find? According to a 2007 report on nyc.gov called “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat”, these are some of the findings. “Certain mosques can be incubators for radicalization, but so can cafes, the Internet and prisons.” Basically, any meeting place can bring terrorism. Even butcher shops and bookstores. Now keep in mind, the city has reportedly reached a settlement with Muslim groups, who said they suffered discrimination when the NYPD spies targeted them based on their religions. So what should authorities do? Let's talk about that. Joining me now, Mayor Karen Majewski, she represents the city of Hamtramck in Michigan. The first majority-Muslim city in the United States.

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COSTELLO: You govern a majority-Muslim-American city. Are you afraid?

KAREN MAJEWSKI: No, I'm not afraid. And actually, I'd like to make another correction. We have, as of our last election, which was a couple weeks ago, we elected a Muslim-majority council. Whether the demographics of the city would say we're a Muslim majority city, I don't think that we're there yet. I think we're probably somewhere in the 40 percent Muslim for the city overall. But our city council that will take office in January will be a majority-Muslim council.

COSTELLO: So does that concern some of your citizens?

MAJEWSKI: You know, the issues, we're a small city. We're 23-24,000 people, we're 2.2 square miles. The issues for most of our residents are, can we fix the streets? Will the street lights -- the street light that's out in front of my house, can we get that fixed? They're local issues. And there's not a kind of level of fear that we hear when we talk about this on a national level. Really, our city council and our residents are most concerned with the day-to-day issues that affect their life when they walk out their front door.