With Trump and Vance doubling and tripling down on vile racist lies about legal Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, it is a perfect time for Harris and Walz to embody their campaign’s calls to turn the page on hate by traveling to Springfield to hold a Community United Against Hatred celebration. The Republican mayor of Springfield has already called for “Help, not hate.” Harris and Walz should offer exactly that.
It could be risky, sure. One of the risks is that MAGA-supporting Proud Boys and Neo-Nazis might try to attack the event. Security would be important. However, if this happened, it would draw the contrast between the two campaigns, illustrating which candidate supports peaceful neighborliness and which supports authoritarian violence.
Another risk is that Harris will be portrayed as a promoter of illegal immigration. But Trump and Vance are already portraying her that way, so no harm done. And with all the justified hullabaloo over the lunacy of the Trump-Vance pet-eating lie, Trump’s pernicious lie that Haitians in Springfield are “illegal immigrants” has gone largely unchallenged. Almost all Haitian-Americans in Springfield are here perfectly legally. A multi-racial celebration in Springfield, led by Harris and Walz, would clearly signal which major party candidate supports the people of this country when they’re under attack by any enemy, foreign or domestic.
Taking a risk by speaking out against bigotry during a high-stakes Presidential race might seem foolhardy. Briefly examining a historical example might be useful.
As described in an excellent article in Time Magazine published in 2017, in late October 1960, in the last weeks of the bitterly close race between JFK and Nixon, Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested in Georgia. The racist Georgian officials transported him at 4 AM between jails, clearly threatening to lynch him. Civil rights leaders called on both Presidential candidates to speak out. Some of Nixon’s advisors, including Jackie Robinson, wanted him to, but Nixon refused. Many of Kennedy’s aides, including his brother and campaign manager, RFK, were dead set against it as they thought it would be political suicide. But JFK’s brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, was able to get some time alone with JFK and managed to convince him to call Coretta Scott King to voice his concern about King’s safety. The resulting surge in black support for JFK most likely won him the Presidency, as it probably won him Illinois, South Carolina, and other key swing states.
There is plenty of debate about Kennedy’s motivations and whether he acted more as a political opportunist than as a morally committed civil rights advocate. I personally lean towards the former explanation as more consistent with his track record. But even if he did the right thing partially for the wrong reasons, it underlines the importance of showing political courage to stand against bigotry, and illustrates how politically beneficial standing up against bigotry can be, even when the standard political calculus cautions against it.
As the slogan of Showing Up for Racial Justice (@ShowUp4RJ) says, “When we fight racism, we all win.”
