TITLE: Internal Emails Reveal How Hate Overwhelmed Springfield After Trump's Lies About Haitian Immigrants
https://www.404media.co/internal-emails-reveal-how-hate-overwhelmed-springfield-after-trumps-lies-about-haitian-immigrants/
EXCERPT: On September 12—after the [Presidential] debate—assistant city manager Tom Franzen contacted two U.S. Air Force officials to notify them about “Springfield Bomb Threats,” in which he said that Springfield had to shut down “multiple facilities” including city hall due to bomb threat, and “we expect ongoing issues like this related to the national attention Springfield is receiving related to the Haitian immigration issues leading up to the Presidential election.”
In between logistical emails between government officials, and dozens upon dozens of media requests, constituents and random people who watched the debate or had seen the false narrative were emailing city officials with a mix of threatening and hateful emails.
Mayor Rob Rue received the majority (but not all) of these types of emails. Here is a sample of them:
One email titled “Haitian invaders” suggested that residents should buy large dogs that would attack Haitian people: “Since it’s obvious that you and the rest of the cowards on the city council are too afraid to handle this invasion citizens will apparently need to do so themselves. Purchase of Belgian Malinois and Cane Corsos should skyrocket along with protection training. If the dog goes in its yard and invaders are there, well, I guess lunch time it is.”
Another said that Haitians “will NOT like the bitter cold” of winter and that Springfield should “have them quietly transferred to blue states.” Another email called Rue an “inauthentic gaslighting moron” and said that city officials “aid the DNC (Treason Party) Propaganda Media in attempting to rig any further Presidential Debates. Americand [sic] in Springfield have my sympathies because it is obviously cursed with some bureaucratic fucktards.”
One email repeatedly called Haitians the n-word
Another email titled “Invasion of Illegal Haitian Immigrants” reads “why you are not doing anything to protect your citizens and remove these haitians immigrants? How much money did you receive from Biden /Harris?”
“Your lack of action on what is happening in Springfield and Ohio's leaders in other cities is outrageous and disgusting. You have immigrants harassing your citizens, going into parks and taking and killing animals, taking people's pets, skinning and eating them in public places, flipping over cars, taking over citizens yards, etc. Why in the world have you not called in the National Guard?”
“I’m a lifelong resident of Ohio And I just want to email you in regards to the illegals walking the parks and destroying property of residence who pay taxes, slaughtering livestock creating chaos!! Ultimately, this is your responsibility top down or not! You will be held accountable for what you allow to happen in your city!”
A woman who claimed to be a resident of Springfield sent a very long email saying that she had recently built a home in Springfield and is now faced with a “very very difficult situation” because some of her neighbors are Haitian. “Our new home is now at risk of immediate depreciation.”
Another email titled “Your Lies” is full of racist disinformation, claims Haitians “do eat cats,” claims voodoo with cats is a “significant part of their culture” and ends by asking “is this the same Springfield as in the Simpsons? Or do they not tell which Springfield the Simpsons live in?”
City manager Brian Heck also received many threats because he publicly said that there were no examples of Haitians eating pets. An email titled “You are a liar” reads “you know your town is fucked by this illegal invasion … stop covering it up.” Another long email includes the lines “Let's thank President Trump for informing all of us what FAKE NEWS is and why it exists,” suggested that the city “form multiple possies” of police to drive out Haitians, “deport them to Washington DC” on buses, and ended with “CAT LIVES MATTER” and three AI-generated images of Donald Trump surrounded by cats and ducks.
City officials also screenshotted various threats on Facebook and shared them amongst each other. One read “We need a Haitian hunting license!!” Another read “Just imagine a world where instead of school shootings, they set their sights on these Haitian animals. The world would be a better and safer place.”
Some emails also reference another false claim JD Vance made that immigrants in Springfield have led to “skyrocketing” cases of HIV, which is not true. This narrative originally came from Republican Kyle Koehler, who is running for Ohio State Senate and who said “A delivery nurse reports that 70% of all scheduled Cesareans are for Haitian women who cannot deliver naturally because of HIV.” The mother of a hospital nurse in Springfield who works for a Christian charity in the city that assists immigrants emailed city officials to say that this was “disturbing misinformation,” and that “My daughter works full-time in the labor and delivery unit and said she cannot see how this information could be even close to accurate, based on what she has observed and the c-sections she regularly helps perform.”
“I am very concerned about the tone, the lack of accuracy, and the fear-inducing results of Koehler's entire speech, and frankly, I am continually shocked and alarmed that people that I know to be people of good faith and good will are using language and tone and misinformation to make a challenging situation even more difficult to address,” the woman’s email says. “I am personally and professionally aware on so many levels of just how difficult it has been to respond to all of the needs that have arisen. But I do not believe xenophobia and fear solve issues. The absurd myths, the horrible dehumanizing language and approach, and the constant weaponizing and politicizing is discouraging to say the least.”
TITLE: This is No Ordinary Anti-Blackness — The Racist History of the Pet-Eating Conspiracy
https://religiondispatches.org/this-is-no-ordinary-anti-blackness-the-racist-history-of-the-pet-eating-conspiracy/
EXCERPT: From Ronald Reagan’s anti-Black rhetorical use of the “welfare queen” trope in 1976, to George H.W. Bush’s anti-Black advertisements about the Willie Horton case in 1988, to the plethora of racist ads and rhetoric in recent state and local contests, the Trump-Vance ticket has joined an expansive stage of political actors who love to play in the dark with overrepresentations of Black deviance and salacious anti-Black mythologies. Even without ever mentioning the words “Black” and “Haitian,” code words such as “immigrants,” “criminals,” and “illegal aliens” are indirect signifiers of Blacks, Haitians, Africans, and other targeted non-White groups.
Such racecraft speaks to a peculiar devotion to America’s most treasured civil religion—Whiteness. It’s little more than a twenty-first-century performance of America’s long legacy of Black voter suppression that reduces Blacks to convenient tropes and props to be deployed in service of menacing political ambitions.
The Trump-Vance ticket’s promotion of, what PBS News calls a “false racist rumor” is essentially an attempt to, “rally xenophobia in a very quick way,” as Sociology professor Anthony Ocampo put it. In fact, many are worried that we may begin to experience the kind of lethal violence we’ve seen rain down on Blacks across the nation during election seasons in earlier periods of American history. Commenting on the rumor, Staci Rhine, a political science professor based in Springfield, Ohio, told US News & World Report:
It’s really dangerous because I’m worried about violence here, because some people will believe that. And there are signs of people being harassed, including not even Haitians, but people who are perceived as Haitians … So there are real risks to real human beings here that are appalling.
Notably, this isn’t the first time that Trump has attacked the first Black republic in the Western hemisphere. In 2017, Edwidge Danticat explained in the New Yorker that he “reopened an old wound” by erroneously accusing Haitian migrants of being carriers of HIV/AIDS, and in 2018 he decried Haiti and several African nations as “shithole countries” whose people are undeserving of refuge.
Following waves of Haitians’ migration to the United States during the later years of François Duvalier’s reign of terror—and the regime’s overthrow in 1987—Haitians experienced tremendous racism in the United States. During this era, the Centers for Disease Control accused Haitians of being one of the 4 H’s (heroin substance abusers, hemophiliacs, “homosexuals,” and Haitians) and thus a prime carrier of HIV/AIDS.
The implication here was that, in the so-called orgies of Vodou ceremonies, devotees became high-risk carriers. To be clear, Haitian immigrants at the time were in no way overrepresented among persons infected with HIV or diagnosed with AIDS. In actuality, Westerners have become fixated on myths of hypersexuality in Vodou, which are unfounded and are more likely a consequence of repressed sexual expression in Christianity. Moreover, the late Paul Farmer and other researchers have demonstrated that it was actually Western foreigners traveling to Haiti for sex tourism that first introduced HIV/AIDS to the Caribbean nation.
TITLE: Hate against Haitian immigrants ignores how US politics pushed them here
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2024/10/02/trump-vance-lie-haitian-immigrants-fight-for-haiti/75408449007/
EXCERPTS: As Haitians find themselves at the center of yet another political firestorm, a pawn in another U.S. election cycle, it’s easy for some in the United States to forget about the real people caught in the middle. The political back-and-forth might lead those unfamiliar with Haiti's struggle to wrongly assume that Haitians are incapable of being at the center of their self-determination, as if today’s Haitians are somehow different from those who rose up in 1791, fought their enslavers and liberated themselves in 1804 to create the first free Black republic.
A new documentary, "The Fight for Haiti," shows how untrue that is.
This gripping documentary takes us into historical and current events sparked by a seemingly simple question: What happened to billions of dollars in missing development funds received through Venezuela’s PetroCaribe oil alliance?
The film centers on the PetroCaribe challenge that struck a nerve in a nation long burdened by corruption, broken promises and worsening living conditions. Despite facing physical loss, death and threats, the aptly named “Petrochallengers” held firm in their question: "Kot kòb PetroCaribe a?" (Where is the PetroCaribe money?)
It was a question Haitians globally were asking. In 2018, Haitian filmmaker and writer Gilbert Mirambeau Jr. posted a photo of himself holding a cardboard sign with that very question. This unsuspecting tweet quickly became the catalyst for a monumental shift in Haiti’s sociopolitical landscape, landing at the perfect moment. Social media challenges were thriving, and a digitally savvy, frustrated and mobilized youth in Haiti turned it into a movement.
The question cut through Haiti's internal social hierarchies, which often separate people by wealth, location or education. Everyone wanted the answer.
The country had grown accustomed to corruption and broken promises, but the film shows why this specific question about the PetroCaribe funds was different. The deal with Venezuela offered Haiti discounted oil, with the savings intended for development projects such as infrastructure, health care and education. Unlike typical foreign aid, which often leaves countries trapped in debt and under foreign control, this was a chance for Haiti to invest in itself.
Unfortunately, much of the money disappeared, stolen by the people trusted to safeguard it. Many projects were either never completed or poorly executed.
Eventually, the government [of Jovenel Moïse] was forced to conduct a full audit. Despite threats against the auditors, the Petrochallengers persisted, and three thorough reports were published.
Ironically, the most recent anti-corruption movement was dismantled by Moïse, a president backed by both the Trump and Biden administrations.
Moïse’s actions before his assassination in 2021 further fueled gang violence, displacing hundreds of thousands.
In testimonies to the U.S. Congress, activists have warned that Washington's continued support for corrupt leaders would result in mass migration ‒ something today’s xenophobic rhetoric ignores.
The United States and Canada have initiated economic and political sanctions against many involved in the funds misappropriation. No arrests have been made, but Petrochallengers hope and continue to fight for justice. "The Fight for Haiti" powerfully captures that determination, making it not just a historical document but an urgent call to action for a brighter future.