We won a second Emmy Award
Ain't nobody eatin' cats in Springfield, Ohio
I wedged my foot in the door as Anna Kilgore was closing it.
Springfield, Ohio. Freezing. Snowy. A Trump flag fluttered on the sagging porch. He’d just been re-elected.
“Anna, there’s a chance Donald Trump himself might see this video.”
Moments later, a bushy, ambivalent Maine coon weaves between my legs. My inner monologue: “This cat is a detonation device in the race war of Donald Trump’s wildest dreams.”
“What’s her name?”
“Miss Sassy.”
Of course it is.
In the fall, Donald Trump had alleged on national TV that a roving band of cat-hungry Haitians was terrorizing the streets of nice, white America. “They’re eating the dogs… They’re eating the cats… The pets… of the people who live there.” Specifically, this cat — Miss Sassy — owned by Anna and Ron Kilgore of Springfield, Ohio.
Spoiler alert: no one ate the cat. Or the dogs. Or, for that matter, did anything that the president had alleged about the struggles of Springfield, Ohio, at the hands of people who migrated there.
Yes, it was all a lie – one of many that millions choose to entertain. Maybe because it’s easier to believe wild fantasies about your neighbors than it is to connect all the red strings that point to the multi-decade billionaire fascist takeover at the root of all the suck. At least you can see your neighbors. Billionaires don’t walk the streets of Springfield. Do they even exist at all? In the age of the Gigawatt-Powered Lie Machine, it’s tough to tell which way is up. And who has the luxury of time to figure that out anyway?
Not Anna and Ron Kilgore. They have more immediate problems. We sat in camping chairs in the living room. Some walls were plywood. OSB. The kind made from a bunch of wood shavings glued and pressed together into a board with rough, uneven surfaces. The paint job - classic landlord special. A poor excuse for another recent rent hike.
It was better than being homeless. Anna, a white woman, and Ron, a black man, had both spent time on the streets. They try hard and do their best. That doesn’t always work out in the richest country on earth, as 2/3rds of Americans living paycheck to paycheck will tell you. And when it doesn’t, lots of people will believe a Who Dun It. Something easy and repeatable with heroes and villains, passable enough not to think twice. Just march out to the polls and let Donald Trump sort it out.
“Immigrants are destroying our nation, taking your jobs, draining our money, and holding us back. The Democrats are too woke to say it. Our movement will fix it.” … something like that.
It’s classic divide and conquer. A fitting story for a repeat of the Gilded Age. This story must be told for billionaires to maintain their power rather than face pitchforks. During the last Gilded Age, railroad tycoon Jay Gould claimed he could “hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.” Jay Gould was worth 71 billion in 2026 adjusted dollars, not enough to qualify for today’s top ten richest Americans.
The quiet(ish) part of the story is Donald Trump and 1,000 of the richest people on Earth running off with the wealth of nations and leaving us, immigrants and not, with the empty bag.
The omniscient security state is erected, amidst the robbery and corruption, to systematically beat the shit out of anyone who objects. Bloody scenes of resistance extend from Minneapolis to Delaney Hall. Democrats, the flaccid opposition party, assure protestors that getting beaten by the state police is better, actually, than getting beaten by ICE. Thank you very much.
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And because of that, we’re allowed to say that 400 of the richest people in history are running humanity into the ground to preserve levels of private wealth that make the United States defense budget look like a piss ant. Try saying that on CNN.
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But we get to write the rest of the story, and there’s a great place to start.
William Kelly is a veteran. He was homeless when we were filming. We sat in a corner of a warming shelter as nearly a hundred people snaked through a maze of tin foil trays filled with rigatoni. “Back then, I thought I was fighting for God and country… Now that I look back at it, I fought a rich man’s war,” he tells me. He bought the rumors about his Haitian neighbors: the magic food cards, the lavish housing vouchers, the claim that they’re living high on the hog.
“But what if they’re not? What if they’re struggling just like you?” I ask. A quick pause from William before he replies, “Then I’m wrong, and I’m willing to admit it.”
You’d be surprised how much this happens. It happened more than once in Springfield, Ohio. For William, it was a simple invitation to see his Haitian neighbors as he had seen himself: as pawns in a rich man’s war. And, to question the absurd narrative that it’s your neighbors robbing you, rather than a corrupt elite sitting on the world’s biggest pile of money.
William and I talked for 15 minutes. It takes longer than that to unwind decades of production by the lie machine (now artificially intelligent and gigawatt-powered). But all the king’s men can’t compete with a face-to-face conversation about solidarity. There are too many of us, and not enough of them.
For the whole story, watch our Emmy-winning documentary here.
Credit to the best team in the biz at More Perfect Union, who made this piece what it is:
Josh Hirschfeld-Kroen, Editor and Producer
John Russell, yours truly, Reporter and Producer
Nehemiah Stark, Cinematographer and Producer
Paul Blest, Reporter and Producer
Meg Herschlein, Supervising Producer
Josh Miller-Lewis, Supervising Producer
You can see all the videos I’ve done with More Perfect Union here.
On Springfield
The citizens of Springfield, Ohio, live on a knife’s edge. A group of them gathered in Carl Ruby’s church, diligently studying the unfolding resistance of Minneapolis, then watching in horror as Renee Good and Alex Pretti were murdered by ICE. Would the same arrive on their doorstep? No one can say for sure, but the odds are far shorter than they should be.
Eternal credit to the people of Springfield fighting for a place at the table for everyone.
And to those who specifically shared their stories in our piece: Patrick, Gilner, Mia, Carl, Casey, Hannah, Jason, Anna, Ron, Barron, and William.
I have relatives in Springfield. I asked my cousin what the hell was going on and she said “old people on Facebook.”