Yemeni Americans

Today on Stateside, the Yemeni community in Hamtramck recently marched with Detroit Will Breathe protesters through the city and into Detroit. We spoke with an editor of the Yemeni American News about the community and their role in the protests. Plus, a new biography about Wendy Carlos, the woman who changed electronic music and reset the boundaries for composition.

Southeast Michigan – specifically cities like Hamtramck and Dearborn – is known as a hub of Arab American culture. But that group is not a monolith. Individual ethnic groups have their own cultures, cuisines, and stories about how they settled down in Michigan. That includes the more than 30,000 Yemeni Americans living in the region.

Today on Stateside, Republicans in the Michigan Senate want counties to lose some jail funding if they limit law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration officials. We get reaction from Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon. Plus, it is the 90th annual Tulip Time festival in Holland. We hear about how tulips came to be a symbol of the city's Dutch heritage.

Today on Stateside, a Wayne State University law professor remembers Judge Damon Keith, the longest-serving black judge in American history who died Sunday at age 96. Plus, why the popular flower baby’s breath poses a threat to the coastal sand dunes of the Great Lakes.

Our state is home to the nation's largest population of Yemeni Americans. But what attracted Yemeni immigrants to Michigan in the first place?

For many, the driver was economic opportunity, particularly the kind that could be found while sailing the Great Lakes.

In honor of July 4th, we asked immigrants across Michigan what America means to them. Abdo Najy shared his story.

Abdo Najy has just recently completed his PhD and hopes to run his own lab soon. He's friendly, smiles a lot, and is animated when he talks about his research on breast and prostate cancer. 

Najy is modest and measured, but he knows he has a role in the search for a cure to cancer. He views his work as a scientist as his way to repay this country for educational opportunities he would not have had in his native Yemen. 

Born in Yemen in the 1980’s in the midst of a polio outbreak, Najy contracted the disease when he was just six months old.