​Folks,

​Big news yesterday out of New York City: Wheeling, West Virginia’s own John Russell won an Emmy for his coverage of multiracial organizing in Springfield, Ohio for More Perfect Union. The town was made famous after Donald Trump claimed Haitian immigrants were eating cats there.

​John is a friend and previously collaborated with Payday on its coverage of strikes in Huntington, West Virginia, and Erie, Pennsylvania. Everyone here is really proud of how he went past the headlines created by Trump that Haitian immigrants were eating cats, and got deeper into industrialization and union busting, which changed the town.

​John’s gets deeper, examining how the once-proud UAW town had been hollowed out by de-industrialization. Many town leaders encouraged Haitian immigrants to move there to revive the Rust Belt town. At the same time, Ohio political leaders gave massive tax breaks to bring non-union foreign auto plants to Springfield, Ohio, employing more than 8,000 residents in low-wage, non-union autowork.

​The documentary profiles Patrick Joseph, a Haitian autoworker and community leader, who is attempting to build multiracial alliances in a town rocked by Trump’s conspiracy theories. The segment examines how Tobre, a Japanese auto company, demanded that autoworkers work 12-hour days for $18-an-hour, firing many local white workers, leading to a high turnover of local workers.

​Instead, Tobre preferred hiring Haitian immigrants, whom they viewed as easier to exploit because they needed to keep their jobs to stay in the United States. Around the same time as the non-union, foreign auto companies expanded, 15,000 Haitian immigrants arrived in Springfield, a city of 58,000 residents, creating a strain on local government resources at a time when the city was dealing with extreme poverty among white residents.

​The piece also examines how the United States helped create the violent conditions in Haiti that led Haitians to Springfield, where they have been scapegoated by other poor Springfield residents and exploited by foreign Japanese automakers like Tebre.

​John Russell’s documentary garnered over 2 million views on YouTube and created a conversation about how workers are pitted against each other in Springfield while offering an alternative, multiracial organizing.

​It’s inspiring work and only 27 minutes long, so I hope folks take time to watch John’s Emmy-winning segment.

Melk

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