“It’s a zoo,” someone shouted in Philadelphia’s Convention Center not long before midnight on Tuesday. And it was.
The energy of the ferocious television debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump had given way to a clamorous atmosphere on the “spin room” floor, basically an open area where various Democratic and Republican governors and senators, paraded beneath tall poles bearing their name, would enter the media bear pit and give their side of the story. There was an unseemly rush to Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, pandemonium when Robert F Kennedy jnr swept through the room, and when Trump unexpectedly entered the arena to put his own spin on things, all decorum was lost. If you stood back and watched for a moment, the entire scene was laughable: the height of human folly.
And because of the scale and hype surrounding the presidential debate, one of the most dignified and powerful political speeches of the entire election year was somewhat lost. A meeting of the Springfield city council in Ohio took place a few hours before the big debate. The session opened with “public comment” in which residents can come in and air their views. They are given three minutes. The first speaker was Nathan Clark, who stood at the podium alongside his wife, Danielle. And what he said was a lesson in brevity and dignity and spoken with a kind of savage honesty that leaves all the political speechifying of the summer look like hollow showbiz in comparison.
“I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man. I bet you never thought anyone would say something so blunt,” Nathan Clark began.
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“But if that guy [had] killed my 11-year-old son, the incessant group of hate-spewing people would leave us alone. The last thing we need is to have the worst day of our lives violently and constantly shoved in our faces.”
In August of last year, the community of Springfield was left shocked after a minivan veered into the path of a schoolbus. Aiden Clark was killed and 26 other schoolchildren injured. His son was, Nathan Clark pointed out, “not murdered” but “accidentally killed by a migrant from Haiti”.
That man, Hermanio Joseph, was found guilty of vehicular homicide and sentenced to at least nine years in prison. But in recent months, the tragedy has become a frequent reference point by Republican politicians using it as an example of the havoc wrought on US communities by immigrants.
Nathan Clark had had enough. “They make it seem as if our wonderful Aiden appreciates your hate, that we should follow your hate ... We have to get up here and beg them to stop. Using Aiden as a political tool is, to say the least, reprehensible for any political purpose. And speaking of morally bankrupt: politicians Bernie Moreno, Chip Roy, JD Vance and Donald Trump, they have spoken my son’s name and used his death for political gain. This needs to stop now,” he said, before referencing some of the wilder claims that would be repeated by Trump during a portion of the debate that will live on through the decades.
“They can vomit all the hate they want about illegal immigrants, the border crisis and even untrue claims about fluffy pets being ravaged and eaten by community members. However, they are not allowed, nor have they been ever allowed, to mention Aiden Clark from Springfield, Ohio. I will listen to them one more time to hear their apologies.”
He sketched a brief portrait of his son: a gardening enthusiast, well able to haggle for a bargain and fascinated by other cultures and communities.
“In order to live like Aiden, you need to accept everyone,” his father told the gathering in Springfield. “Choose to shine. Make the difference, lead the way and be the inspiration.”
It was a direct unfiltered message, delivered in just three minutes. In the hours after the debate, the lurid description, watched by 60 million Americans, offered byTrump of pets being taken and eaten in Springfield became a sensation.
“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.”
It was the cause of disbelief across the world and, naturally, became the source of endless memes and jokes, easy fodder for the social media masses and the kings of late-night comedy talkshows alike. At heart, of course, it stands as a dismal demonisation of an entire immigrant community and, by association, the twisted portrayal of an otherwise Everytown, America (it’s hardly accidental that the creators of The Simpsons chose Springfield as their town name).
Leaving aside the clarifications from the town’s mayor and city managers that none of the claims had been substantiated, here, through the ceaseless din of political voices telling the people of the US exactly what they need in their future, came a voice from one of those very people. What a moment from parents who could be forgiven for lashing out blindly, for giving into the kind of hatred that has poisoned so much of the political conversation on the immigration issue but who instead had the grace to stand up, in their local civic office, to restore some dignity not just to the reputation of a town undeservedly sullied but also to the entire bizarre election carnival.
The shame is that the political class has not taken time to listen. And on Thursday, Springfield town hall was evacuated, after receiving a bomb threat.