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More than 130 people recently packed into a Springfield, Ohio, virtual meeting room. Their goal? To address the wholly unnecessary crisis Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and their allies had dropped in their laps. Despite pleas from everyone from the Republican Governor on down to stop, the former President and his running mate have continued to falsely accuse Springfield’s Haitian community of poaching pets for meals.
That’s why so many local social service pros gathered last week—to firm up a plan to ensure Springfield’s possibly 20,000-strong Haitian community not only makes it through this crisis, but comes out the other side stronger.
“When we come together, we know what we’re working for,” Kerry Lee Pedraza, the executive director of the local United Way chapter, tells me. “We’re working to make this a more inclusive, unified community.”
She won’t say it. I will: Trump and his lies are doing the opposite.
It’s been two weeks since Trump used a nationally televised debate with Vice President Kamala Harris to spread the fake and thoroughly debunked rumor that, in Springfield, “they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats.” He and fellow Republicans have since doubled-down on the malicious myth, admitting they might be wrong—to be clear: they absolutely are—but see the falsehood as useful in elevating a discussion about immigration. The suffering they’ve inflicted on Haitians in the process is not a significant concern apparently. For voters animated by anti-immigrant frustrations, the fabricated story is merely a useful tool to escalate the conversation.
The entire town of Springfield has been rocked by this crisis. A community that had long welcomed tourists coming to see the state’s lone Frank Lloyd Wright prairie-style home is now contending with an influx of white supremacists and conspiracy theorists. Ohio State Highway Patrol officers are still on the street on order of the Governor, and City Hall is in a cycle of episodic lockdown. Public schools that had closed because of bomb threats are back open but heavily guarded. Some universities went all-remote as a precaution. Absenteeism and truancy are hitting the non-Haitians harder than anyone.
But it was lost on no one at the Haitian Coalition summit last week that things had fundamentally changed most dramatically for Springfield’s Haitians—which number as many as 20,000 by some estimates, many of them refugees who arrived after the pandemic. It is impossible to miss the sudden lack of Haitians in the local grocery stores, as many are still choosing to go to work and little else. But it’s also noticeable in the spike in demand for English As a Second Language classes and increased interest in hiring Haitian Creole translators for pre-K programs to accelerate the youngest Springfield residents’ language skills.
Largely behind the scenes, the local United Way has emerged as an accidental quarterback of a coalition of social service groups working in tandem with the Haitian community. Pedraza rolled through for me a detailed and ambitious plan to buttress services for Haitians in the area in this moment of crisis: more translators for young children, language tutors for adults, even driving lessons for newcomers in light of the catalyst of the current panic being a fatal accident at the hands of a Haitian driver.
Pedraza recalled the more than 45 Haitians she saw in attendance at a recent ESL class she audited. Given the considerable waiting list, United Way is looking to raise cash to launch another 10 weekly classes to help ease the load of the volunteer instructors currently leading about 15 sessions.
Helping guide the community through this crisis is Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who lives nearby at his family farm in Cedarville, and has made a point of late to spend more public time in the town than usual. DeWine, city officials, and law enforcement have all said repeatedly that the GOP framing of Springfield as a Port-au-Prince proxy where Haitians are hunting dogs, cats, and geese for meat is bunk.
Still, in a New York Times op-ed published Sept. 20, DeWine treated Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, with a soft touch. “Their verbal attacks against these Haitians—who are legally present in the United States—dilute and cloud what should be a winning argument about the border,” DeWine wrote. While no one will accuse DeWine of being a wuss when it comes to standing up to his party—the man de-endorsed Mitt Romney in 2012 for his seemingly anti-immigrant rhetoric—it was a moment when he reaffirmed his support for a ticket spreading lies about his hometown.
After the debate, Trump said he was planning a rally in Springfield, a promise that to many in the community felt more akin to a threat. No such event has been announced so far.
To those like Pedraza, any outsiders looking to score points out of a manufactured crisis would not be welcome. “I think there are more of us who are saying, please stay away,” she says. “It is a wonderful town, and we love to have people come and visit. But unless you’re coming here to visit and to do something meaningful and productive, then we don’t need you here in our town.”
When the local-born chief of the local United Way, who has spent four decades working in civic groups, tells you to pound dirt, it might be worth a listen.
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