Home City, USA
September 26, 2025 at 02:30AMPooja Bhatia has covered Haiti for many years: presidential elections, the 2010 earthquake, and other major events. For this dispatch, she traveled to Springfield, Ohio, where Haitian immigrants thought they’d found a haven, only to come under siege. City commission meetings have become a cruel kind of theater, where anti-immigrant voices make absurd, racist claims—for instance, “that resident Haitians, who had fled a land laid low by gangs, were themselves criminals,” and that they “had IQs lower than animals”:
Public comment at the commission meetings is technically open to anyone who lives in Clark County. But very few Haitian residents have spoken at them. And only a minority of residents has taken to the dais to urge kindness and humaneness. One consistent voice of welcome belongs to Pastor Carl Ruby, who believes that welcoming and protecting immigrants and other vulnerable people is central to Christianity. “Carl Ruby is a piece-of-shit coyote who should be run out of town,” an anti-immigrant resident posted on Facebook, according to Ruby. He was able to get that comment taken down, but the nastiness soon resumed.
Over the course of my reporting in Springfield, I learned that the lopsided views in the public comments aren’t proof of majority hostility among residents, many of whom have shown courage and generosity in other ways. But there was a painfully won understanding among those who support immigrants that their three-minute speeches were likelier to put a target on their own backs than to change minds or soften hearts.
One of Ruby’s primary worries is for the safety of his congregation, given other episodes of violence at houses of worship. Ohio doesn’t require permits for gun ownership, open carry, or concealed carry. A sign on the door of Ruby’s church prohibits firearms inside.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/09/25/home-city-usa/
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