Peter Orner

Because Harris wouldn’t demonize innocent Haitians who’ve already been through enough hell this year

Last night some dude stole the Harris sign off my lawn in rural Vermont. I say it was a dude without evidence, but let’s be honest, odds are it was a dude, who can’t even drive by a Kamala Harris sign without having such a tantrum he’s got to hit the brakes and uproot her very name. It’s nothing new. It’s politics. Even up here in Vermont, where Harris is up god knows what in the polls. Biden won our state with 66.5 percent of the vote in 2020. But here’s what’s interesting, to me anyway. Whoever took my Harris sign left two others, one for Rebecca Holcombe and another for Jim Masland, both Democrats running for reelection to the Vermont House. A Harris sign: No. Holcombe and Masland signs: Sure, what’s the harm? Those two are only local. Holcombe and Masland remain in my rocky Upper Valley ground untouched. I’m pretty certain the dude (or not) who nabbed my sign doesn’t agree with much of what Holcombe and Masland stand for, two progressive-leaning and long-serving, honorable public servants. But when there’s a presidential election, it’s all national all the time, even up here. This got me thinking about what’s been happening, locally, in Springfield, Ohio. More than a month ago now I watched a video of a man named Nathan Clark speaking at a meeting of the Springfield City Commission.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbV6B76LwR8

Nathan’s son Aiden was killed in a school bus accident. The accident was caused by a driver of Haitian descent and resulted in the death of Aiden and injuries to twenty-three other people. On the video Nathan says the following: “I wish that my son was killed by a sixty-year-old white man. I bet you thought you’d never hear anyone say something so… blunt. But if that guy had killed my eleven-year-old son the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone.” He then goes on, with Aiden’s mother trembling beside him, to call out individuals by name, including Donald Trump and JD Vance, as well as Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno. And this was before Trump’s racist meltdown at the debate. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” he spat, “they’re eating the cats.” God help us. Not only did Trump and Vance (father of three young kids) not stop, they took it all so much further. In this war all things local are utterly expendable, including Aiden Clark’s parents, thousands of innocent Haitians (the vast majority of whom have been granted temporary protective status because of the extraordinary level of violence in Haiti) and Springfield itself.

The anguish of a mother and a father lost in all this noise. I’d call it shameful but there’s no shame left. 

Peter Orner is the author of seven books. This month, along with coeditor, Laura Lampton Scott, he published The Four Deportations of Jean Marseille, a book that documents the life of a Haitian father as he struggles to escape the violence gripping his country.  A new novel, The Gossip Columnist’s Daughter, will be published in 2025. Orner is chair of the English and Creative Writing Department at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont.