Media organization to hold benefit for Springfield, Ohio Haitians

The Bulwark, a media organization made up largely of former Republicans who oppose President Donald Trump, is holding a live event in Dayton, Ohio on Friday. Proceeds will benefit the Haitian Support Center in nearby Springfield.

That city’s Haitian community has grown rapidly in recent years as people have fled chaos and hunger in their home country. Many came to the U.S. under temporary protected status following a devastating earthquake in 2010.

Conditions in Haiti have only grown worse since. 

The influx of as many as 15,000 Haitians came with growing pains, but it was also credited with reviving a local economy that had been waning for years.

Even so, Trump and then-Ohio U.S. Sen. JD Vance in 2024 amplified a racist lie that Haitians in Springfield were killing and eating their neighbors’ pets.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said in a Sept. 10, 2024 debate with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, and Springfield police and city officials all said the claims were completely false.

Once in office, the Trump administration revoked the protected status of all 350,000 Haitians who had it in the United States, and immigration authorities are sending them back to Haiti.

Immigrant advocates sued, arguing that the administration didn’t meet a legal requirement that it show conditions were safe in home countries before people with protected status can be forced to go back.

Several federal courts agreed, but the Republican-appointed majority of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that in most instances, the courts can’t adjudicate such claims.

Trump is forcing Haitians to go back despite the fact that nearly half the people there can’t get enough to eat, murder and kidnapping are rampant, and gangs are raping children as a way to project their power into new areas.

UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, reported a 1,000% increase in child rape in Haiti between 2024 and 2025.

In a 2025 press briefing, spokesman James Elder said gangs had turned children’s “bodies into battlegrounds.”

As Springfield-area Haitians were fitted with ankle monitors prior to deportation, one, a Wright State University student, died by an apparent suicide, his family said out of despair and humiliation.

The Bulwark benefit for the Haitian Support Center will be at 8 p.m. Friday at the Dayton Masonic Center, 525 W Riverview Ave. It will feature “good faith commentary, signature banter, and fellowship.”

Participants will include Bulwark publisher and political consultant Sarah Longwell, Bill Kristol, a neoconservative writer and founder of The Weekly Standard, Tim Miller, a political commentator and former Republican consultant, writer and author Jonathan V. Last, and journalist Sam Stein.

Tickets are available here.