Trump’s shameful IUP performance
Donald Trump’s campaign for president plunged deep into the heart of the Mon Valley last week. Appearing at Ed Fry Arena, the basketball home of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania Crimson Hawks, Trump once again took aim at a population of legal Haitian migrants.
Weeks before descending on IUP, Trump weirdly claimed that Haitians living, and working, in Springfield, Ohio, were menacing the town’s cats and dogs. Pet entrees for everyone!
“We have to get them the hell out,” Trump told his followers at the Indiana rally before asking, about Charleroi, “Would you say your town had changed slightly?”
People in the crowd could be heard saying, “It’s completely different” and “They’re everywhere,” and “It’s horrible.”
The indicted former president said, “You can’t have them,” referencing not just Haitians but presumably others, including the many thousands of legal refugees fleeing injustice, poverty, and political repression and violence in their native lands.
A chant went up from the rally crowd, “Send them back! Send them back!”
Early this year, Trump effectively killed a bipartisan Senate bill to clamp down on illegal crossings at the Southern border, and this is why: Nothing warms a demagogue’s dark heart more than the kind of vitriol Trump was able to evoke among the faithful at the Indiana rally. The shame of it is, this kind of thing wins votes.
“Think of the cruelty Kamala Harris has inflicted on the people of Pennsylvania,” Trump added, topping things off with a flourish of spiteful misdirection.
Soon enough a veritable swarm of reporters swooped into Charleroi to take the pulse of the town.
NBC’s Yamiche Alcindor interviewed a woman resident who echoed Trump. “People need to know that it’s just not Springfield,” this woman said. “This [migrant influx] is coming to a town near you.”
Asked why she thought the situation was dire, since, Alcindor said, the United States is “a nation of immigrants,” the woman replied, “They are not coming here to assimilate with us. They are coming here to take over.”
Another woman told another outlet that the checkout lines at the Dollar General store in town were slower than ever, as Haitians struggle with the English language.
What was once “uncluttered,” said a Charleroi business owner, was now “cluttered.”
Cluttered may be one way to put it. Over the past four to five years, perhaps as many as 2,000 Haitians and other foreign nationals have moved on their own to Charleroi. One gauge of all this is the number of students taking English language learning classes in the Charleroi School District.
The numbers went from 12 in the 2019-2020 school year to 175 last year and 225 this year, including 133 elementary students.
As a consequence, the district has hired additional teachers, an English language “coach” and a translator, on an additional outlay of $400,000. The district’s budget stands at $30.7 million.
Total student enrollment climbed from 1,340 in 2021 to 1,567 as of today.
Without downplaying the challenges, Charleroi school superintendent Ed Zelich declared, “We are not struggling.” State reimbursement to the district has gone up, according to Zelich.
The school chief told WESA radio, “Misinformation – that’s my biggest challenge. Getting the misinformation cleared up.”
Zelich told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “We’re worried that Charleroi will become the new Springfield,” citing threats to the school. “We serve students,” he said.
Borough manager Joe Manning, council president Kristin Hopkins-Calcek, and Republican state Sen. Camera Bartolotta all pushed back against Trump’s lurid, self-serving narrative.
Bartolotta has been especially pointed, remarking, “These Haitians are hard working… They are here legally.” Kamala Harris did not bus them in. They are not menacing Charleroi, they are aiding it.”
Trump is wrong for the country in so many ways. The ugly truth is that his many falsehoods encapsulated in his abuse of Charleroi menaces everything America has ever stood for.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com