Hate groups converge on Springfield after false claims about Haitian immigrants

Credit: Jessica Orozco Local News By Sydney Dawes

Neo-Nazis, the KKK and other hate groups are now routinely visiting Springfield, marching through city streets or distributing recruitment flyers and raising fears of intimidation and violence.

Over the weekend, the Blood Tribe — a violent Neo-Nazi hate group, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) — stood outside Springfield Mayor Rob Rue’s home waiving swastika flags. In a previous march through the city, some carried guns.

Also this weekend, an unidentified group stood outside Springfield city hall with a banner that said “Haitians Have No Home Here” in English and Haitian Creole.

These groups are responding to the growth of Springfield’s Haitian community, an issue that made the national spotlight following unsubstantiated rumors circulated on social media and parroted by politicians that Haitian immigrants were eating Springfield residents’ pets.

Since then, Springfield NAACP president Denise Williams says residents have also reported to her agency flyers being distributed in local neighborhoods from a group associated with the Ku Klux Klan.

“They’re trying to intimidate us. But we’re not a city that’s easily intimidated,” Williams said. “We need to stand together.”

The group, the Trinity White Knights, has a P.O. Box based in Kentucky. The Lexington Herald-Leader reported in September that similar flyers from the same group were distributed in Covington, Ky.

Springfield Police Chief Allison Elliott said the department is aware of the flyers.

Some residents have reported harassment from a group of people purporting to be members of the Proud Boys, which the SPLC designates as a hate group that believes in “Western chauvinism” and “an anti-white guilt agenda.”

Clark County Democratic Party chairman Austin Smith said a volunteer canvassing near the political party’s Springfield headquarters earlier this month was returning to the office to drop off campaign materials when a truck with large flags that appeared to say “Proud Boys” pulled up.

A group of men in the truck, the volunteer told Smith, made “vaguely threatening” statements.

“We’ve had threats and things pour into the office. No bomb threats, but ‘You better watch out.’ ‘We’re watching you.’ So that definitely created a lot of fear,” Smith said.

The party increased security measures for its recent meeting as a safety precaution, Smith said.

Members of the religious group Israel United in Christ (IUIC) were also in Springfield in September, gathering in multiple public places around the city.

The members, clad in purple shirts with the group’s name and logo, were seen marching and passing out literature to passersby.

At one point, group members gathered in the parking lot of Groceryland on South Limestone Street, near the corner of East John St. Members were preaching into a microphone about the organization’s teachings. Members also met with NAACP leaders from Dayton and Springfield.

According to its website, the IUIC is a Bible-based organization that believes people within the Black, Hispanic, and Native American communities represent “the true and historical descendants of the Biblical Israelites.”

SPLC categorizes IUIC as one of the handful of “Radical Hebrew Israelites” groups in the U.S. The SPLC designates these groups as hate groups. IUIC denies that it is a hate group, according to a post on the IUIC Classrooms Facebook page. The newspaper reached out to IUIC but did not hear back.

Williams said the Springfield NAACP chapter has plans to host a virtual community meeting to talk about recent activity in the city.

Springfield’s police chief asked residents to remain vigilant and “say something if you see something suspicious or out of the norm.”

“We know our city has looked a little different lately, and you also may notice an increased public safety presence. We assure you that our top priority has always been and will continue to be safety,” Elliott said. “Safety is a shared responsibility and our officers, along with our public safety partners, take all tips and information seriously.”

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‘Everything is dead’: Ukraine rushes to stem ecocide after river poisoning

Russia is suspected of deliberately leaking chemical waste into a river, with deadly consequences for wildlife

By Luke Harding and Artem Mazhulin in Slabyn, Ukraine. Photographs by Alessio Mamo

Serhiy Kraskov picked up a twig and poked at a small fish floating in the Desna River. “It’s a roach. It died recently. You can tell because its eyes are clear and not blurry,” he said. Hundreds of other fish had washed up nearby on the river’s green willow-fringed banks. A large pike lay in the mud. Nearby, in a patch of yellow lilies, was a motionless carp. “Everything is dead, starting from the tiniest minnow to the biggest catfish,” Kraskov added mournfully.

Kraskov is the mayor of the village of Slabyn, in Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region. The rustic settlement – population 520 – escaped the worst of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion. But the war arrived last week in a new and horrible form. Ukrainian officials say the Russians deliberately poisoned the Seym River, which flows into the Desna. The Desna connects with a reservoir in the Kyiv region and a water supply used by millions.

A toxic slick was detected on 17 August coming from the Russian border village of Tyotkino. According to Kyiv, chemical waste from a sugar factory had been dumped in vast quantities into the Seym. It included ammonia, magnesium and other poisonous nitrates. At the time, fierce fighting was going on in the surrounding area. Ukraine’s armed forces had launched a surprise incursion into Russia and had seized territory in Kursk oblast.

The pollution crossed the international border just over a mile away and made its way into Ukraine’s Sumy region. The Seym’s natural ecosystem crashed. Fish, molluscs and crayfish were asphyxiated as oxygen levels fell to near zero. Settlements along the river reported mass die-offs. Kraskov got a call from the authorities warning him a disaster was coming his way. He spotted the first dead fish on 11 September. “There were a few of them in the middle of the river,” he said.

He returned the following weekend to find the Desna’s banks clogged with rotting fish, stretching out from the shore for three metres into the water. Volunteers wearing rubber boots, masks and protective gloves shovelled the fish into sacks. They found a metre-long catfish. “The stench was terrible. You could scarcely breathe. The river was quiet. Nothing moved apart from a few frogs,” Kraskov said. A tractor took the sacks to an abattoir that used to belong to the village’s Soviet-era collective farm. They were buried in a pit.

Serhiy Zhuk, the head of Chernihiv’s ecology inspectorate, described what had happened as an act of Russian ecocide. “The Desna was one of our cleanest rivers. It’s a very big catastrophe,” he said. Zhuk traced the slick’s route on a map pinned to his office wall: a looping multi-week journey along the Seym and Desna. “More than 650km is polluted. Not a single organism survived. This is unprecedented. It’s Europe’s first completely dead river,” he said. (snip-MORE)