By Pablo Alvarado
There’s not much any one person can do to defeat racism and White supremacy in the United States. President Biden can put out a statement today, but tomorrow Donald Trump will still be on the brink of winning office again, with over 70 million people unbreakably clinched to his vision that racist lies are the key to restored American prosperity.
And yet Biden can and must act. He is still President of the United States. He can’t save all people caught in Trump’s cross hairs, but he can try to save some. He can stand beside the people who are living through a real life nightmare right now because of Trump’s white supremacist American fever dream.
He can go to Springfield, Ohio.
For the Haitians of that city, the fear of torches, bombs and guns is immediate. Trump and his running mate, J.D. Vance, have lied about them viciously and repeatedly. Confronted with their dishonesty, the MAGA pair have dug in and doubled down. JD Vance even admitted to Dana Bash on CNN that he created the story to generate attention.
Everything about this story is untrue. The Haitians are not criminals. They don’t come from insane asylums. They aren’t “illegal.” Most have Temporary Protected Status and are lawfully authorized to live and work in Ohio. They are not killing pets. Local and state officials, including Gov. Mike DeWine, say that’s a lie. And they are not destroying the economy but building it, as hard-working immigrants have done since this country’s beginning.
Biden quietly said the right things last Friday, with some anger and passion, from a lectern at the White House. But remarks aren’t enough. Our President needs to use the full force of his office and the power of his example to galvanize unity in the country and to defend its core ideals of equality and justice. He can speak there. March there. Pray there. Invite allies and organize rallies. Support businesses. Comfort families. He can deploy the Department of Justice.
Biden needs to act as if we were back in 1960’s Mississippi. Or 1930’s Germany. Because that is where Trump has nearly taken us.
If you haven’t heard the vicious, racist, dehumanizing language Trump is using, you haven’t been listening. Here are some of his lies about immigrants and his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, just from this month.
“She flooded America with savage, illegal alien criminals who have been raping, pillaging, and killing our cities and our towns.”
“She’s allowed at least 20 million illegal aliens into our country, including millions and millions of unvetted fighting-age men from 159 countries. You know, it’s no longer just South America. They come from Africa, the Congo, they come from — a lot coming from jails in the Congo.”
“Let me tell you, these people … they make our criminals look like the nicest people on earth. That’s how tough they are. They come from the Middle East. They come from areas that we’re fighting. They come from enemy terrain. They come from all over the world, and they do come from South America, but not only from South America, 159 different countries in the last year.”
This is crazy talk. Unhinged and depraved. There’s nothing real about it — except the real potential for violence. Remember how fear of a Hispanic “invasion” spurred a gunman to massacre Latinos in El Paso. The media have forgotten or gotten numb to Trump’s fearmongering about the arrival to the US of non-white people. It’s no longer news.
But the survivors in El Paso remember the terror. And the people in Ohio are living through it now.
We all know Trump likes to elevate himself by humiliating people. He has said disgusting things for years about his political opponents, about his former employees, about women, but mostly about Black and Brown immigrants. As candidate, He said Mexico was sending rapists over the border. When he was president, he said Haitians and Central Americans come from “shithole” countries in an unconstitutional effort to de-document and expel them that was blocked by courts.
Immigration is almost the only thing he talks about. Fearing immigrants is his only subject. Hating them is his only proposed solution. Ask him any question, and he will make it about immigrants. The economy? Immigrants. Crime? Immigrants. Climate change? Immigrants.
This is his message: If you fear for the future, about anything, hate those people, and vote for me because I hate them, too. It’s not you, it’s not me. It’s them.
This is how dictators take power. They create intense feeling, offering hate like a powerful drug. But when you get addicted to a drug, you have to keep taking more and more. That is why Trump keeps repeating and repeating the lies. And it is why his supporters accept them. To feed the hate. His words keep getting darker, more extreme, more horrible. His followers get more afraid and angrier. It’s what will surely come next that makes me scared. And if tragedy unfolds in Ohio, my fear will become anger too.
Who can step up against this? President Biden can. He is not running for re-election. He is running for his place in history. We have all heard endlessly about his diminished abilities, his age, his frailty. But some strengths he still has in abundance — including his reputation for compassion, empathy and understanding. That’s what the country needs from him now.
Mr. Biden, please go to Ohio.
Pablo Alvarado is the Co-Executive Director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, which advocates for immigrant and low-wage workers.
