09/16/24

Good morning! It’s Monday, September 16th.

National Tattoo Story Day.

Alright fine, I’ll tell you one story about one tattoo. But buckle up because it’s truly beautiful.

I was in Vegas with some of my best friends and… it was $10.

The end.

And now, the news.

Trump, Vance, and a Party of Hate

-via The Guardian, NPR, ABC News, and Texas Tribune

Okay so this will be the only episode this week. The last two weeks are because I had Covid and it was truly awful. This week is because I’m working and still trying to take it easy.

So only one episode this week but it’s an important one, so buckle up:

If you watched the debate last week, or have been online at all, you may have heard Trump yell loudly into a microphone about how, in Springfield, Ohio immigrants from Haiti are eating cats, dogs, and geese.

It’s… truly unhinged.

So, I’ll come back to this more in a moment but let’s start with the obvious. It’s incredibly racist. Wildly racist. Like I said, I’m coming back to that but I can’t, in good faith, get too far into the story by just calling out how horrifically racist it is.

Okay, so…

As most bad things do, this all started on Twitter last month. In early August, a group of neo-nazis called Blood Tribe (yikes) marched through Springfield, with their stupid swastikas, to protest Haitian migrants. A few weeks later, a resident of Springfield went to a Springfield City Commission meeting and claimed that migrants were eating ducks in the park. A truly insane claim (ducks being famously difficult to just casually catch at the park) that neo-nazis, some of whom were at that meeting, echoed on Twitter.

This is not the first time Haitian immigrants have been the subject of baseless claims and attacks in Springfield, but it’s really gotten to a whole new level.

Springfield is a town of around 60,000 and has received between 15 and 20,000 Haitian immigrants in the last four years. It’s caused some growing pains, but the city has also worked to help bring these new residents into the fold. St Vincent de Paul Society’s Springfield chapter got immigration lawyers and interpreters to work with them to help get folks work permits and kids set up in schools.

It's vital to note here that the vast majority of Haitians in Springfield are in there legally through a temporary protected status allocated to them because of the violence and unrest in Haiti. That status is not a pathway to US citizenship. It’s only valid for 18 months, after which is needs to be renewed by Homeland Security before that person can stay in the US.

In August of 2023, tragically, an 11-year-old boy died in an accident after the school bus he was on swerved to avoid an oncoming car, that happened to be driven by a Haitian immigrant without an Ohio license.

That spurred a barrage of incredibly racist comments on and offline. There was a nazi march then too.

In December, a man was sentenced to twenty years in federal jail for hate crimes after repeatedly assaulting and robbing Haitian nationals specifically because they’re Haitian.

So that’s the back story. That’s last year. That’s the vibe. The vibes are… bad. Because of nazis.

Back to just a few weeks ago when, in mid-August, a woman in Canton, Ohio, almost 200 miles away from Springfield, when a woman did, in fact, kill and then eat a cat in front of multiple people. She was arrested and has no known ties to Haiti.

And yet… that has not stopped the literal worst people on the internet from taking that story, tying it to Haitian immigrants in Springfield, and making it more outrageous.

Because now we’ve got all of those terrible humans, plus Donald Trump and JD Vance, as well as Senators like Ted Cruz, posting online about how, in Springfield, pets are disappearing because Haitian residents are stealing them – dogs, cats, geese… stealing them and eating them.

And again, truly outrageous.

Have you ever tried to catch a goose? I have not. Why? Because they are fast! And they peck! You cannot casually catch a goose!

But as I mentioned, as anyone can see, it’s incredibly racist. This lie is straight out of the nazi handbook. This dehumanization is how a country allowed a holocaust. How this country allowed, allows slavery.

So to see someone who wants to be president say it, is, and should be, shocking. It cannot be less shocking, less abhorrent, because it’s Trump doing it and we don’t expect anything good from him. Just because he’s horrible, just because we’d seen and heard him do racist and sexist and literally all the bad “ist”s before, do not because we can’t be shocked by this.

On September 10th, the parents of that young boy that died last year, asked Trump and Vance to stop using their son as a political prop. Their son died. It’s just been a year and now the former president is forcing them into the national spotlight because they represent a party for whom their racism garners votes.

They have yet to publicly apologize to the parents.

Vance did, however, say on Twitter that it’s possible these lies aren’t true (he called them rumors) but still encouraged people to share memes making jokes about Haitians eating cats.

And of course, Trump went on the debate stage and went on his completely unhinged tirade.

The following day, Ohio’s governor DeWine said, "I think we should take the word of the city manager and the mayor that they've found no credible evidence of that story of Haitians eating pets."

The following day, the city received a bomb threat, followed by bomb threats at schools that forced them to close this past Thursday and Friday.

As a reminder, Vance is one of Ohio’s senators. He grew up 50 miles from Springfield.

And while his constituents ask him to stop, he is out there continuing to ring this racist bell.

Trump was given the chance, at a press conference on Friday, to at least say the bomb threats are dangerous and tell his supporters to back off. Instead, when a reporter asked him to respond to the mayor of Springfield and the governor of Ohio saying the pets of Springfield are not in danger, Trump just went off on a rant about the border.

Let’s all remember that, in 2019, a man walked into an El Paso Walmart and shot and killed 23 people, injuring 22 more. It was one of the largest hate crime cases in the country, and the shooter’s manifesto included language that mirrored Trump. Now, he also wrote that his beliefs pre-dated Trump, but again – mirrored language.

On Saturday, the Proud Boys, a neo-nazi group went marching down the road in Springfield. As a reminder, the Proud Boys are the ones that Trump told to stand back and stand by.

The straight-up KKK are passing out fliers in the town.

Trump and Vance have yet to denounce this.

Governor DeWine is a Republican who has previously endorsed Trump. So far, he has not come out to revoke that endorsement. In fact, as of this recording, while children’s schools are closing because of bomb threats, and a small town is being terrorized by literal nazis, thanks to Trump and Vance’s speeches and social media posts – not one Republican who has previously endorsed Trump has revoked that endorsement.

Not one.

Listen, I’ve never once pretended like there was a chance that I was going to vote for them. I’ve made fun of Trump a lot here, because there’s a lot to make fun of.

Same with JD Vance.

But there is nothing funny here.

This is dangerous and disgusting and should be disqualifying as well as the first sentence in any story about either of them.

These people are white supremacists using, repeating, and giving a megaphone to the same style of rhetoric that nazis and enslavers use.

We need to win, and we need to win by an incredible margin, in November.

There are 50 days until Election Day.

It’s going to take all of us giving everything we have, but we are going to win this election.

Talk to your friends. Talk to family. Talk to strangers.

Explain the truth of what’s happening in Springfield.

These are small, terrible people. They don’t deserve to be in charge of anything, let alone the entire country.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

Regular episodes are back next week. In the meantime, get registered to vote. Double-check your voter registration. Tell your friends and family to do the same – be the Taylor Swift of your community.

I’m proud of tattoos. I have also have a tattoo of an outline of Texas with a voter checkbox in the middle. That’s how much I love voting!

But more than tattoos, because here’s one thing that’ll never fade… I’m proud of you.