The concerns followed previous comments made at city meetings and at a Thursday forum intended to address racism and discrimination against Haitian immigrants and Black Springfield residents.
Springfield Mayor Rob Rue shared a statement on behalf of the commission, saying the forum held Thursday by the NAACP provides a space for commissioners to listen to the public’s concerns and for the community to work toward solutions. The next NAACP forum will be held at 6 p.m. Aug. 29.
“We want to keep this to a business forum. We want to have a constructive dialogue with you,” Rue told the audience. “We care about your comments. We want to hear your comments and we know that there is a lot of emotion in this entire long season of life that we are all in. So we want to acknowledge that.”
Rue said any interruptions would result in the person being asked to leave. He asked three people to leave during the meeting.
On Saturday, 12 people carrying swastika flags and guns while wearing ski masks walked around downtown Springfield during the Jazz & Blues Fest. The city said the group was “from outside of our community” and police were aware and “watching the whole time.”
At the city meeting, multiple people denounced the group, and one questioned their origins.
When speaking about the Haitian community, several individuals expressed disdain for being called racist, and said they were concerned about the city’s infrastructure being overwhelmed by thousands of Haitian immigrants with specific needs like driving instruction and language services.
City Manager Bryan Heck said at the meeting that after the room reached capacity, city staff met additional people outside and took down their information and concerns, which he said the city will follow up on. This echoed Rue’s statement that the city would not answer questions during the public comment portion of the meeting, instead following up with each person individually.
Glenda Bailey, who has been a vocal opponent of the Haitian community’s growing presence in Springfield, told the commission that the NAACP forum was a “political Kabuki theater” with the majority of attendees being nonprofits and “high-earning leftist whites.” She denounced the NAACP using members of the Nation of Islam as security during the event.
“The only thing average working class whites want is to be left alone to live our lives without others demanding more and more of the taxes that we already work six months out of the year to pay for,” Bailey said.
Shannon Stanley lamented the Springfield of her youth. She said she drove around the city this week and became emotional about how things have changed, with run-down buildings, signs “in an unfamiliar language” and “groups of strangers” walking around the city “like lost tourists.”
She said she became emotional thinking about good memories of Springfield, which have now become fuel for her anger.
“I feel like we have been invaded by some kind of pest,” she said, though she said that her feelings were not about race. She claimed the Haitian immigrants were “acting like animals” and they are not “civilized people.”
Mark Sanders, a regular speaker, said he feels the city has become more divided at every commission meeting. He shared his own concerns about school children’s safety with unsafe driving practices, being a bus driver for Northwestern Local School District now.
Credit: Jessica Orozco
Credit: Jessica Orozco
“We can sit here and bicker and argue all we want, but we can’t let the kids be hurt,” Sanders said. “So leave here with that.”
Earlier this year, Hermanio Joseph, a Haitian immigrant was convicted of charges related to a Northwestern school bus crash with his minivan in which a student died and dozens were injured. A jury ruled that he did not have a valid license when he crossed over the center line into the oncoming lane on state Route 41, striking a bus and causing it to flip on its top, ejecting 11-year-old Aiden Clark and killing him.
Since then, many Springfielders have shared their disdain for having Haitians here without the proper infrastructure, and the city has gained national attention, becoming an example for broken immigration policies for politicians and networks like Fox News and Breitbart.
Most Haitians are here legally, making their way from a violent and gang-ruled island homeland to Latin America, then to the U.S. on a parole program. Many then receive Temporary Protected Status, which allows them to stay in the country for a designated period of time but does not provide a direct path to citizenship.
Haitians paroled into the U.S. who do not obtain a form of legal status undergo removal proceedings.
Springfield High School student Jude Earlywine urged community members to stop dehumanizing the Haitian population.
“A lot of what I heard today is, well, dehumanizing. These people are not a number or a statistic,” Earlywine said. “They are people. Humans. But we need to work through our frustrations and welcome our new community members to our city.”
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