Reaping the whirlwind
I biked 117 miles in two days to visit the Champion City and personally deliver a message from Hog Nation to Frank LaRose.
My first thought when our idiot Senator J.D. Vance stoked racist propaganda against Springfield’s Haitian immigrant community is something I don’t feel comfortable putting into text.
But my second thought was, “Well, who the hell wants to move to Springfield, anyway?”
That was until I got on my bike and rode 50 miles to Springfield on Tuesday.
It had been about 15 years since I had been in Springfield, and that was only a couple of hours to do manual labor for my best friend’s father. I expected to find a city similar to my hometown of Marion, a story familiar to any Ohioan: A once-proud, mid-sized city that had been hollowed out by the evaporation of the manufacturing industry in the post-NAFTA era.
I was in for a rude awakening within minutes of arriving at City Hall in a downtown area where city sachems had spent much time, money, and planning to rehabilitate.
I quickly ran into a mother who had been listening to right-wing media as she came to Springfield to scout if it was safe enough for her 26-year-old son, who works as a social worker and might soon get transferred there:
It’s anecdotal, but I think the exchange is enlightening. She came to Springfield expecting chaos in the streets for which she was still searching despite all empirical evidence to the contrary.
That, my friends, is your brain on right-wing media.
Nevertheless, I left the downtown area to meet a friend at Rose Goute Creole Restaurant, the oldest Haitian restaurant in Springfield:
People on Twitter asked what I ordered since my meal looked delicious.
I am not sure! I didn’t even look at the menu. I told the gentleman that took my order that I wanted some sort of famous Haitian dish.
The restaurant was packed with people of all races and creeds. Some sort of TV figure was shooting an interview with an employee or perhaps the owner. Multiple cameramen were walking around filming the proceedings.
At the table next to us were two French reporters, if that gives you any idea of how far these racist lies have spun out of control.
After the meal, there was a city to explore.
In my active alcoholic days, I used to enjoy breaking up my daily routine of staring at my phone and tweeting by traveling to new cities and finding new bars at which to stare at my phone and tweet.
These days, when in a new city, I prefer to aimlessly bike around town and see what draws my attention.
In one nook of town, I discovered “Pleasant Corners,” a sign that I admired from the outside since it looked like a place I might get my ass whipped if I tried to go inside and order a Shirley Temple as a 37-year-old male.
Later, I learned that the bar belonged to a neighborhood called “Irish Hill.”
It was a lesson that went glove in hand with learning Springfield is called “the Champion City” not due to any famous athletes that the city produced as I originally suspected, but because of the Champion Farm Equipment Company that helped put the city on the map in the middle to late 1800s.
That means Springfield was originally a city of immigrants. Irish Hill, as it turns out, was originally where undesirable ethnic minorities like the Irish and Germans used to live.
The growth of the Champion Interests in the 1870s precipitated an increase in the Irish and German populations in Springfield. These immigrants flooded “The Hill” neighborhood surrounding the factories, creating a mixed ethnic enclave known first as “The Boot” and later as “Irish Hill”. Census data from 1870 and 1880, coupled with select newspaper research, will provide interesting insights into the social history of these often disparaged and simplified populations.
It’s a story familiar to anyone who has even a passing knowledge of American history, which, it must be said, are generally not the types who plan to vote for Donald Trump or J.D. Vance in November.
The Irish and Germans wanted to live among like-minded folks in a new country, and longtime Springfield residents were more than willing to keep those filthy immigrants in an otherwise unremarkable part of town.
We all know what happened next: The Irish and Germans assimilated to the point where they’re just considered white, and they no longer face systemic discrimination, though that didn’t stop Vance from recently launching a bizarrely racist monologue citing those types of immigrants as the source of crime in that era.
Nearly 130 years after the heyday of Champion Farm Equipment, Springfield looked to revitalize a declining city that had lost 20 percent of its population in the past two decades by building an economy around something timeless: Its convenient geographical location.
But it had a problem. Its population couldn’t fill the labor shortage. Enter the Haitian immigrants.
From Radley Balko, who has never been accused of being a solider in the woke mob, recently in The Watch:
So in the mid-2010s, city officials embarked on a campaign to lure new businesses to the area, citing Springfield’s low cost of living and ideal geographical position for shipping and manufacturing. The plan worked. Factories started opening up. Other businesses followed.
But there was a problem: The population that remained in Springfield and surrounding Clark County was aging. There weren’t enough workers to fill the available jobs. So the companies looked to immigrants. This happened to be right about the time Haitians were coming to the U.S. under [Temporary Protected Status]. Word quickly spread in the Haitian immigrant community that there was a town in Ohio with a low cost of living and lots of well-paying jobs. So that’s where they went.
The companies did not turn to undocumented immigrants to pay “slave wages,” as some immigration opponents have claimed. They were documented immigrants with taxpayer ID numbers paid at a market rate (as noted below, wages have increased in Springfield since the Haitians arrived).
Again, this is the story of America! It’s our country at its best.
Something called The Jewish Journal posted an “exclusive” report alleging that a local temporary agency was engaged in “human trafficking” of Haitian immigrants into Springfield.
While I wouldn’t lose any sleep if Ohio banned temp agencies, which employers use to shirk pay, benefits and protections to workers, what is happening is that these agencies are bridging the gap between businesses in search of consistent labor and Haitians who want to work.
The immigrants, which number closer to 15,000 than the oft-reported 20,000 mark, didn’t appear in Springfield overnight. They didn’t appear over weeks or months.
They have appeared in the city over more than a decade.
They are simply answering the call of the free market economy that right-wing Americans profess to love so much until the second it benefits an ethnic minority.
In that way, Springfield Mayor Rob Rue and City Manager Bryan Heck, who have recently been crying about Donald Trump’s unfair treatment of the city, sparked this entire saga back on July 13th during an appearance on Fox News.
The outlet ran the story under the headline, “Ohio city plunged into housing crisis after 15,000+ migrants arrive: ‘Setting us up to fail.’”
Other right-wing outlets weren’t as, uh, even-handed when covering the Springfield officials’ Fox News hit:
That clip, reposted to YouTube by “Trippin’ Tracy,” added the text of “MIGRANT CRIME” above the broadcast and entitled her post, “Springfield, Ohio, population of 58,802, conquered by over 20,000 Haitian #illegals.”
Jack Legg, a former member of the City of Springfield’s Human Relations Board, resigned from that position on July 15th, successfully predicting the firestorm that would come:
Last September, I initiated a conversation about ways the Human Relations Board might work to "lower the temperature" in conversations about our Haitian immigrant neighbors. This took the form of discussions during HRB meetings, an email authored by me suggesting action, and a discussion with City Manager Bryan Heck, who attended our October meeting and suggested there may be some role for the HRB down the road. The board has not met since then and this conversation has not advanced.
Last week, Mayor Rob Rue and City Manager Bryan Heck went on Fox News to discuss the "migrant crisis in Springfield." The footage of this Fox News appearance has been shared from the City Facebook page 468 times (at last count) and from Mayor Rue's page 58 times. Many of these shares include hurtful comments about immigrants, complaints about Haitians "ruining our town," and generally negative sentiments overall. The Fox News segment spread onto other social media platforms, including Twitter/X and Reddit, where both the Ohio and Springfield subreddits hosted spirited conversations about the segment. On one such thread, a Springfield woman posted numerous screenshots, pictures, and articles as further "evidence" that Haitian immigrants are "destroying" Springfield.
Aaron, a subscriber I met by chance while biking past the iconic State Theater, said he considered Mayor Rue to be a good person but that he should have known better than to go on Fox News to talk about the Haitians in that manner.
He said something along the lines that, if the story had been something benign like “Haitian immigrants open several candy shops in Springfield,” the right-wing media circus would have turned it into a “Save Our Children” thing.
Because, as plenty of right-wing grifters who have descended upon Springfield have shown, you can find disaffected white people in Springfield who are willing to shout racial animus into a microphone.
Just like you didn’t have to travel far in the 1880s to find the “right kind” of disaffected white person who was willing to yell about the shifty Irish or untrustworthy German Catholics on Irish Hill.
But when leaders start talking like that—as Mayor Rue and City Manager Heck did—human history has shown the bad things that can happen.
Take Anna Kilgore, who, on August 28th, stuffed meat into her freezer before calling the local police to accuse her Haitian neighbors of stealing her beloved cat, Miss Sassy.
This is the police report that Senator Vance has provided to Springfield and Clark County officials, who are begging him to stop trying to incite a pogrom.
It’s been trotted around the right-wing misinformation mediapshere to show how the main stream media is complicit in the ongoing horrors of Springfield, despite numerous local, state, national and international outlets all reporting from the location.
In typical fashion, however, it turned out to be total horseshit.
From Kris Maher, Valerie Bauerlein, and Tawnell D. Hobbs of The Wall Street Journal, which also has never been accused of belonging to the woke mob:
But when a reporter went to Anna Kilgore’s house Tuesday evening, she said her cat Miss Sassy, which went missing in late August, had actually returned a few days later—found safe in her own basement.
Kilgore, wearing a Trump shirt and hat, said she apologized to her Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter and a mobile-phone translation app.
Wow!
Hard to believe that a cat would want to hide in the basement while its owner tried to weaponize the local police against their Black neighbors. Ms. Kilgore is lucky I’m not Sheriff of Clark County, because SWAT would be paying her house to liberate Miss Sassy before the week was out. That wicked woman doesn’t deserve a majestic creature like a domesticated cat.
I have sympathy for everyday Springfieldians who are going about their business—the only way to really tell something is amiss in the city, other than the reports of numerous bomb threats, is the giant surveillance towers, which are nothing more than a camera synced to an iPad, placed around town by the DeWine Administration to present the illusion of security.
I don’t have sympathy for Mayor Rue, and City Manager Heck, who couldn’t resist the dopamine of a Fox News hit to increase their political profiles by sprinkling some casual racism onto their millions of viewers.
I originally traveled to Springfield to give that message to them in person after covering the weekly City Commission meeting. But maybe next time, I’ll check to see if the meeting was scheduled before departing.
Nevertheless, it’s been humorous watching Rue and Heck get a glimpse into the soul of their party—the party they were comfortable supporting until the leopards tragically ate their faces, which was never supposed to happen to proud members of the Leopard Face Eating Party.
Despite the pleas of Governor Mike DeWine, Springfield and Clark County commissioners, the floundering Trump campaign won’t stop trying to incite a pogrom.
Though details remain sparse, President Business Deals said he plans to rally in Springfield in the next week or two, much to the chagrin of local officials.
From Jessica Orozco of the Springfield News-Sun:
“As a visit from the former president will undoubtedly place additional demands on our safety infrastructure, should he choose to change his plans, it would convey a significant message of peace to the city of Springfield,” Rue said.
DeWine repeated comments from earlier this week when he said as governor, he would always welcome a visit from a presidential candidate. He added that he will support the Republican candidates for president, and that if you want to have impact politically, “you need to be inside one political party or the other.”
In response to a question about whether he is hopeful that Trump will stop making baseless claims about Springfield, DeWine said “Well, I hope he does.”
Asked why he hadn’t reached out directly to Trump and told him to stop, DeWine said, because “I didn’t think it would do any good.”
It would almost be fitting for a cycle that started with the mayor and city manager crying in bad faith about immigrants straining resources on Fox News to end with President Business Deals unleashing an insane rally upon the area and then refusing to pay the bill for the additional strain on city and county resources, as his campaign has been wont to do throughout his three presidential runs.
The Rooster will again be in Springfield if he brings that circus to town.
But it’s hard to overstate what a disaster that would be for the safety of the Haitian community, who, again, only came to the city to work. Vance said two days ago he’d still call them “illegal aliens” despite their legal status and the free English program at Clark State College has a six-month waiting list due to the number of immigrants looking to work the language.
I’m not saying there aren’t growing pains. I’m not saying Springfield is a classless utopia. Like all other Ohio cities, it has its rich and poor areas and a history marred by racial unrest, to put it bluntly.
But public schools are already underfunded in this state, even if all their students speak English. Americans, by and large, have forgotten how to drive in the coronavirus era, which was a problem before adding a large immigrant group who doesn’t speak the language before integrating into a car-brained culture like America. That hasn’t stopped outlets like The New York Post from breathlessly covering any crash involving a Haitian driver.
But that’s why the Mayor and City Manager should have been having these discussions with the business leaders that depend on Haitian labor and state officials—not blaring racist dog whistles on Fox News.
They both deserve to lose their jobs for the chaos they helped bring upon their city. It’s not as if Trump has suddenly become a different person. The results were easy to predict for anyone honest with themselves.
Originally, I planned to spend Wednesday morning and early afternoon on the streets of Springfield. But unfortunately, Frank LaRose and the Ohio Ballot Board had a different plan, calling a meeting on Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. at the Statehouse to solidify the grotesque, upside-down language inserted into the ballot language of Ohio’s proposed anti-gerrymandering amendment.
I made a business decision and decided to cut the trip short, but not before the Patriots Caucus sent its regards to the Haitian Community Help & Support Center:
Standing with the minority and the vulnerable is the morals by which I try to set my political compass.
I’m only God’s perfect angel in the reflection of Ohio’s failed leaders like Governor Mike DeWine or Mayor Rue, who can’t even muster the courage to criticize Donald Trump in any meaningful way despite Trump repeatedly their hometown and putting the safety of its residents at risk.
History will not remember them fondly, and I take pride in the fact that this humble publication's brave and noble readers helped deliver a modicum of comfort in these trying times.
That is the America in which I take pride.
But as I said last week, in this game, you have to know how to hate, which is why I decided to leave a moderately appointed Motel Six room along I-70 in Springfield at 5 a.m. on Wednesday to bike to Columbus to tell Frank LaRose that he would soon face the Hog Voter Tribunal.
I caught a flat tire in Battelle Park, took an UberXL—shoutout to the five-star driver, a Ghanaian immigrant named Abudu—to the Hilltop and then took my backup bike roughly five miles to Capitol Square.
Outside the Statehouse, while throwing away the pocket knife I accidentally kept in my biking backpack, I almost had to wave off one of my favorite readers, Sue of Upper Arlington, in a desperate attempt to make the deadline to submit a testimony slip to the Ballot Board.
I didn’t think LaRose would let me speak if my name wasn’t on the paper. I made the deadline, with two minutes to spare, and my name was the only one on the list in a state of 11 million people:
You can see the full testimony in the video above.
I like to switch tactics to keep my political opponents on their toes. At the last Ballot Board meeting, I waited outside the chamber’s backroom to shout a few pleasantries at LaRose before his team shuffled him into a secured catwalk.
This time, however, I knew they wouldn’t expect me to put my name on the paper to testify. Not that it would ultimately matter, though it would be a lot cooler if I had caused a sudden epiphany in the three controlling Republicans on the board.
I just think it’s important for regular people to see another regular, well-adjusted person who looks strikingly like famous actor George Clooney telling powerful politicians to go fuck themselves—maybe not in those exact words.
In the scheme of things, the ballot language is small potatoes… as LaRose and the Ballot Board found out last November when hog voters enshrined abortion into the constitution despite the board’s repugnant machinations with the English language.
LaRose, Senator Theresa Gavrone (R-Bowling Green) and the walking corpse of banking lobbyist Bill Morgan didn’t even have the heart to meet with legacy media after the media and defend their work.
In my ideal world, there would have been a line out the door of citizens willing to tell LaRose to eat shit in a variety of ways. We would have humiliated and demoralized him in a way that would have affected the psyche of his descendants.
But this is America, where most people are overworked and underpaid. They also have bosses who don’t take kindly to employees who seem to have a problematic relationship with authority. Or whatever else the reasons may be.
But that’s not me, thanks to readers like you. And while the appearance won’t go down in the pantheon of speeches next to Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King, I still think we delivered a message that LaRose will not remember fondly when we end gerrymandering once and for all in November.
It’s YES on Issue 1. Tell a friend to tell a friend.
THOSE WMDs. To understand J.D. Vance, you need to understand the young men who want to end the 19th Amendment… The summer when The New York Post chased the Son of Sam… The Nazi of Oak Park: A respected school custodian was a concentration camp gaurd… The Stono Slave Rebellion was nearly erased from U.S. history books… Inside the effort to spare the life of the Parkland shooter.
Thanks DJ. Hold their feet to the fire.
God bless you for your service, Frank looked thoroughly deflated. Well done.