Anti-Haitian hate pops off on Spokane city government socials

Anti-Haitian hate pops off on city government socials

As Donald Trump is inaugurated as president, echoes of his anti-Haitian campaign rhetoric are reverberating in Spokane. Spokesperson Lisa Gardner is looking for ways to mitigate it.

This story was written in partnership between FāVS News and RANGE Media, a worker-owned newsroom in Spokane. Learn more about RANGE’s work here.

News Story by Aaron Hedge | FāVS News and RANGE

Katia Jasmin felt a swell of optimism when she saw the Jan. 2 announcement posted on the Spokane City Council Facebook page. The city would host her organization, Creole Resources, which helps Haitian migrants in Spokane learn English and access education and workforce support, at a “Community Day” event where local Haitians could share their culture with the wider Spokane community. 

Mayor Lisa Brown was scheduled to formally recognize Jan. 1 as Haitian Independence Day, a commemoration of the island nation’s emancipation from France in 1804 and present a proclamation to Jasmin. 

Jasmin hoped the event would bring the Haitian community closer to the broader city.

Her hope subsided when, within hours, the post was flooded with hateful comments saying things like, “Haitians…. are NOT Native to America,” “The only Independence Day any US government entity should be involved with and promote is the USA’s Independence Day” and “Haiti is the most Racist Country on Earth.”

For Jasmin, optimism became fear. She questioned whether she should even attend the event, accept the proclamation and read a gratitude letter she wrote to Spokane, as planned.

“I started reading the comments, and I was like, ‘Oh wow,’” she said in an interview. “And I read a second one and a third one. I freaked out. I was like, ‘Oh my God, why?’ And then I was feeling so bad, I started crying.”

Other Haitian Spokanites had similar experiences, she said, describing the reaction of one of her Haitian colleagues who grew up in Colville.

“They used to call her ‘monkey’ over there,” Jasmin said. “They used to treat her the same way they are in those comments, and then she was reading those comments, and she started crying too.”

But, Jasmin said, she felt a responsibility to follow through despite the online rhetoric, and the event went ahead at the City Council meeting on Jan. 6.

Anti-Haitian hate in the election

The Facebook comments were reminiscent of one of the most prominent national controversies of the last year. During his September presidential debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Donald Trump, who clinched his second term in the highest office in the land this November, falsely alleged that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, were kidnapping their neighbors’ pets for food.

“They’re eating the dogs,” Trump said during the debate, repeating false and racist comments previously promoted by neo-Nazi groups. “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Even after Trump’s claims were proven false, his running mate JD Vance repeated them. Bomb threats against public facilities and schools in Springfield followed. Haitians feared for their safety and considered leaving.

Trump will be sworn in as president today (Jan. 20), and many worry his term will usher in a flood of hate against marginalized communities, generally. In the days after his electoral victory, the U.S. edition of the Spanish newspaper El País reported that Black people across the country received text messages saying they’d been “selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation,” a reference to American slavery.

Though no one in the comments for this post accused Haitian migrants in Spokane of devouring pets, the general sentiment Jasmin perceived in the messages was that she and her fellow Haitian migrants were unwelcome here.

Haitian migrants have recently become an integral part of communities, including Springfield, contributing tax dollars to local communities and educating Americans about their vibrant culture. Jasmin told The Spokesman-Review there are about 200 Haitian migrants living in Spokane, many of them here on a special visa program created by the Biden administration as Haitians flee violence in their home country.

The Facebook comments on the Haitian Independence Day announcement falsely accused the city of spending tax money on the event. Though the city has spent some money on previous Community Days events and has offered to reimburse Creole Resources for the food served on Jan. 6, no taxpayer money has yet been spent on the Haitian Independence Day event.

Navigating policy in a scary future

As Trump takes his second oath of office, City Council spokesperson Lisa Gardner is working with the city of Spokane’s Equity Subcommittee to address what she anticipates will be an uptick in hate against Haitians and other minorities in the city.

At the same time, Facebook is loosening its content management practices, which experts worry will allow hate to proliferate even more than it already can on the troubled platform. It’s part of a larger capitulation to far-right backlash against recent progressive advancements in tech and media spaces as Trump resumes power.

Currently, Gardner can only hide a post on the City Council’s social media accounts if she can make a case that they directly and immediately threaten a specific person. Public records laws bar her from deleting the posts. And free speech laws prevent her from removing content that might be hurtful, racist or even vaguely dangerous.

She and Alex Gibilisco, who runs the Council’s Equity and Inclusion Initiatives, are mining the policies of governments around the country for models on how to address hate groups posting to official accounts, Gardner said. She said some city staffers have memberships with the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE), a nonprofit that builds racial equity in cities around the United States. 

“ I typed in the word ‘hate,’ and a lot of discussion came up,” Gardner said of GARE. “But it was all during 2020 after George Floyd, where people were like, ‘What can we do in regards to hate speech?’”

But she said resources are still somewhat thin in regard to how to combat hate on social media.

“It wasn’t about what to do online,” she said. “I came across another thread [saying], ‘What do we do about the hate groups that are online?’ And no one responded.”

It’s not clear whether anyone who posted hateful comments to the City Council’s Facebook page was part of a larger group.

Nation of migrants

Jasmin, a Haitian single mother of two, fled her home country after a gang had broken into her home with guns. She earned a degree in the Dominican Republic and came to the U.S. a decade ago to be with family, including her brother Luc Jasmin III, who sits on a number of public bodies and advocates for police accountability, racial equality and other causes.

Years later, Haitians are fleeing increasing violence there for the United States.

“ We are not here to harm anyone,” Jasmin said. “We are here because of what’s going on in our country. We are not doing anything bad. We are working, and we are paying taxes. We don’t bother people.”

This story echoes the widely-told story about Europeans who came to the Americas fleeing religious persecution and looking for a better life — a truth in which Gardner finds a stinging irony when migrants of color are persecuted or made to feel unwelcome.

In addition to being the City Council spokesperson, Gardner is also president of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP and spoke in an interview in a dual role, commenting on City Council business and policy as the Council spokesperson and on racism as an individual and in her capacity as NAACP president.

Speaking from the perspective of her role at the NAACP, Gardner criticized the Facebook comments as “hypocritical.”

“America was founded on the premise of trying to obtain freedom,” Gardner said. “They migrated from England to the United States searching for that better way of life and freedom. Yet someone else comes here to get that same thing, then all of a sudden they’re no longer welcome. … How hypocritical are we?”

She said citizens have a responsibility to stand up against hate on an interpersonal level.

“If you see something that’s wrong, say something about it,” Gardner said. “‘No, that’s wrong.’ Racism is part of a moral compass. … Call out right and wrong, when someone’s moral compass is not in alignment, to be able to say something like, ‘Hey, that moral compass is pointing in the wrong direction.’”

Long, forgotten struggle

When she was designing the flyer for the Haitian Independence Day event, Gardner realized there would be a backlash. Community Days events, which often highlight marginalized communities and racial minorities, are no stranger to hateful online rhetoric, Gardner said.

Given the national elevation of Trump’s xenophobic comments, “I’m thinking ‘This is going to get such blowback,’” Gardner said. “I was absolutely expecting this because of the comments that I saw in previous Community Days.”

Still, Gardner believes in working toward a better, more inclusive Spokane, both in her capacity as City Council spokesperson, and her role as NAACP president.

Jasmin, for her part, said she’s dedicated to continue connecting Haitian migrants to the broader community. She reminds herself that the folks leaving hateful comments on City Council socials are a minority.

Jasmin’s father is pastor of Eglise Evangelique Maranatha in Spokane, which hosts a largely Haitian congregation. She sees the church as a place for them to gather and have community with other Haitian migrants, but her organization, Creole Resources, has bigger dreams: creating bridges for Haitians to become more integrated in the community. The organization fosters relationships between Haitian Spokanites with the Spokane Community College, creates access to English language classes and works with the Teamsters to help Haitian migrants find good jobs.

She said that, despite the hate displayed on the City Council’s Facebook feed and sometimes in in-person interactions, she has had great experiences with most Spokanites, who she said are friendly and welcoming. She said the entire City Council welcomed her community and that it was lovely to be hosted in the Chase Gallery, which is named after James Everett Chase, who won his 1981 election for Spokane mayor in a landslide, making him the city’s first Black mayor.

And she saw an extra spark of hope when people outside the Haitian community enthusiastically participated in the Community Day event, which featured a number of Haitian dishes, Haitian music and two Haitian American children who sang the Haitian National Anthem.

​​”We had rice and beans, which was delicious. We had something we call griot — that’s fried meat and plantain,” Jasmin said. “People did come and eat it, and they loved it. … Trust me. If you try it, you will see, you’ll want more.”

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