A married couple who fled Haiti for Virginia achieved their American dream when they opened a variety market on the Eastern Shore, selling hard-to-find spices, sodas and rice to the region’s growing Haitian community.
When they added a Haitian food truck, people drove from an hour away for freshly cooked oxtail, fried plantains and marinated pork.
But Clemene Bastien and Theslet Benoir are now suing the town of Parksley, alleging that it forced their food truck to close. The couple also say a town council member cut the mobile kitchen’s water line and screamed, “Go back to your own country!”
“When we first opened, there were a lot of people” ordering food, Bastien said, speaking through an interpreter. “And the day after, there were a lot of people. And then … they started harassing us.”
Oh the irony.
“…law firm it hired, Pender & Coward”
“Virginia”
Naturally.
Eh, it’s the Eastern Shore. But honesty no different than most of the rural areas.
I went to Virginia once years ago before I transitioned. I’m from the north and I’m white as fuck and the TSA there was extremely rude to me just because of that. However they were even worse to foreigners. Like they purposely did things to delay them so that they would miss their flight and when other people tried to help those people not miss their flight the TSA would get all aggressive and threaten everyone. It was by far the worse travel experience I’ve ever had and given that I’ve transitioned now I’m never going anywhere even near the south ever again. I feel really bad for the poor souls that are stuck living there.
It’s sad that people are so ignorant and racist. Could’ve made friends with a nice couple and had some yummy new food. But no, had to be xenophobic assholes instead.
Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, on the “overview effect” – the impact of seeing literally with your own eyes the beauty, fragility, and unity of the Earth as it appears from orbit:
“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’”"
Shoot racist politicians into space? I like it.
Read Bill Shatner’s remarks about going. Some folk on his flight were more interested in selfies. That might just be old man grumbling, but it appears not everyone gets that overview effect
That sentence was longer than it needed to be.
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home.
That’s us.
On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994So we should launch all racists and bigots into space?
Some people need to go to space to understand that, for the rest of us we just need to look around us.
Your comment is a balm to sore hearts. Thanks for posting it.
People are often racist dick heads, but sometimes they’re actually just shutting down businesses that aren’t being run in a way that is safe for workers and customers.
Except they passed a state health inspection. Unsurprisingly, the guy who is taking issue with it sells appliances to brick and mortar restaurants.
Ah yes, the most effective way to address businesses (allegedly) not being run safely is to find (only black owned) businesses, sabotage their property, and yell “go back to your own country!” How totally fair and equitable. This is totally acceptable. /s
Give me a break.
In this case it was racism plus the councilman thinking they were hurting his business leading to vandalism, and racist remarks.
Allegedly. That’s really the key, isn’t it. No need to get the rage train fired up based on what is claimed in a lawsuit that hasn’t been resolved yet.
You know what? The legislative branch is not charged with enforcing the law. Some random fucking town council member shouldn’t be messing with town sewage lines and everyone with a basic elementary level knowledge of civics should know this. So fuck this guy, being able to vote on a budget doesn’t mean you get to be a town vigilante. And I am really really not inclined to give someone with obvious rage issues the benefit of the doubt that they didn’t say something stupid and mean while doing something stupid and mean.
Clearly you’re inclined to get really mad over something that might not have even happened. Chill out.
Was this business being run unsafely?
The couple failed to apply for a conditional use permit and chose to sue instead, the law firm countered. It said the council member cut an illegal sewage pipe — not a water line — after the food truck dumped grease into Parksley’s sewage system, causing damage.
I could see how that situation would make someone tell them to take that behavior back to where it’s the norm.
Allegedly. That’s really the key, isn’t it. No need to get the rage train fired up based on what is claimed in a lawsuit that hasn’t been resolved yet.
Funny how you keep flipping your argument in order to come down on the side of the councilman from this podunk little town.
I’m not trying to defend anyone, just pointing out that this story is entirely based on accusations in a lawsuit. Don’t get your blood pressure up over something that might not be true or accurate.
They generally don’t scream to “go back to your own country” when that happens.
You don’t make bigoted comments while doing the right thing? I thought everyone did that. Just the other day when I was donating blood I called 9 people various ethic and religious slurs.
If someone screamed go back to my own country at me I’d have a really hard time not punching them. And yes, I live in a country that I wasn’t born in so I can totally see this happening. Luckily my second home country is full of kind people and not assholes so in the 7 years I’ve lived here I’ve never experienced something like that. The worst I ever dealt with was someone laughing when my pronunciation sucked. I just asked him in his native language how many languages he could speak. Shut him up right quick.
I’m a foreigner where I live but I’m white like they are and speak the local dialect so I “don’t count”
The couple failed to apply for a conditional use permit and chose to sue instead, the law firm countered. It said the council member cut an illegal sewage pipe — not a water line — after the food truck dumped grease into Parksley’s sewage system, causing damage.
And also:
_The food truck opened in June on the store’s property after the couple passed a state health inspection and obtained a $30 business license, their lawsuit stated. But Henry Nicholson, the council member, allegedly complained the food truck would hurt restaurants that buy equipment from his appliance store.
Nicholson cut the water line, causing $1,300 in spoiled food, the lawsuit said, and then tried to block a food shipment and screamed: “Go back to your own country!” when Bastien confronted him._
Could they have passed inspection if it was the alleged illegal sewage line? Can the town prove that and that grease was dumped in it? How does that differ from any other not-bright household dumping grease down the sink, because it seems likely a place where several households might do.
Volume. The difference between a household and a restaurant is the volume of grease
Why is a council member cutting any pipes. Pretty sure that’s not their job.
I am sure that according to some nonzero number of his constituents, damaging property and screaming to drive away brown immigrants who are threatening the white people’s investments is 100% his job and what they elected him for.
This person is most definitely representing their constituency.
Only the skinny ones. If you get between me and marinated pork…well we are going to have words.
Yeah; but just because that’s their reality doesn’t mean it’s consensus reality (ok maybe in that area but in general. So far.).
They claim that this particular person is also in the public works department or something, arguing (I guess) that he was authorized to do that. In reality, you’d probably need to have gotten the courts involved by that point before just summarily doing what you like.
Lol! You got me, there, but I was hyper-focused on if the business passed requirements or off some other permit would be needed.
Still, that guy just sounds cray/hateful.
Brought to you by the ‘if you don’t like your country, you should just move’ crowd. Good grief.
The town council is pushing back through a law firm it hired, Pender & Coward, which said its own investigation found many allegations “simply not true.”
Lol, imagine having Coward as a family name.
Worked okay for Noel Coward the playwright.
move to a city that isn’t full of garbage people
Sad to see this racism.
Shame they can’t move to the West Coast (or to any bluer area really). There are tons of people who would love to try authentic Haitian food from a food truck - myself included. They’d probably make a killing.
So a family comes to our country and does exactly what they’re supposed to do: Open a business and improving the quality of life in their community.
And what happens?
Redneck shitsticks absolutely lose it.
I bet you a billion dollars I know which presidential candidate those racist fucknuggets support.
And I’ll bet you another billion none of them ever built a successful business themselves.
That depends if pimping your daughter out at truck stops for meth is considered a successful business.
Perhaps they weren’t registered properly with the country or city. If they were, no one would bother them. I think perhaps we are not getting the entire story…
Nobody would bother them??? You mean besides the racist fucks right? Or maybe you’re one too…
You sound like the type that would say “if you’re innocent, then you got nothing to hide” when talking to the police
