1y ago

They opened a Haitian food truck. Then they were told, 'Go back to your own country,' lawsuit says

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.”

116 comments

I clicked on this story by accident, but I'm glad I read it. There's some real gold in here...
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'm mad at you for getting grease in the sewer...so I will cut this line which I supposedly believe contains grease so it can go all over the street, smelling great and eventually getting washed into this very same sewer anyway!"
But Henry Nicholson, the council member, allegedly complained the food truck would hurt restaurants that buy equipment from his appliance store.
"T'is but a coincidence!"
Nicholson ... tried to block a food shipment and screamed: “Go back to your own country!” when Bastien confronted him.
“We did everything we’re supposed to do,” Bastien said. The couple came to the U.S. in the 2000s and received asylum after fleeing this hemisphere’s poorest nation. Benoir is a U.S. citizen, while Bastien is a permanent resident.
Several community members said the lawsuit unfairly maligns a town that has integrated recent immigrants into its 0.625 square miles (1.62 square kilometers).
Parksley has two Caribbean markets, a Haitian church and a Latin American restaurant
U.S. Census numbers show that 600 people identify as Haitian in Accomack County, with several thousand more on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and in lower Delaware. Sangaramoorthy said the region’s Haitian population likely numbers in the tens of thousands.
Sounds like this guy isn't aware who funds this town... They must make up a large portion of the residents to have this much stuff there in this tiny little town.
“We’re waiting to see what justice we’re going to get,” Bastien said. “And then we’ll see if we reopen.”
The couple’s lawsuit is seeking compensation for $1,300 in spoiled food, financial losses and attorneys’ fees. They also want $1 in nominal damages for violations of their constitutional rights.
I wish my town was full of people as patient and civil as this couple!
She said Parksley’s Haitian food truck provided something vital — familiar foods that remind people of their homeland — to people often working long hours.
“It’s a community that is triply marginalized for being foreign, Black and speaking Haitian Creole,” Sangaramoorthy said. “They feel like they need to keep to themselves, so it’s surprising that this couple was brave to even file a lawsuit.”
How dare they?!?
Thanks for posting, OP, this was crazy!
- Sounds like this guy isn't aware who funds this town... They must make up a large portion of the residents to have this much stuff there in this tiny little town.
  And, contrary to suburbanite propaganda, communities like this Haitian one often are the ones funding the wealthy suburbs where all the city councilors live, not the other way around.
  
  Interesting link, thank you for sharing!
  The very poor and very rich pay very little tax relative to their income. By lifting people up to a decent income, making them taxpayers, it would seem help everyone. I don't get the incentive to keep anyone poor.
  Plus I'd rather have a cool Haitian neighbor than some snooty person. Haiti seems to get especially screwed over by both people and nature, so those guys deserve a break.
  
  I was curious about how this approach differed from gentrification and thought I'd leave what I had learnt for other curious people.
  It seems the main difference is in displacing the existing residents. The improvements suggested by the article are small things that help the community. Gentrification would be the other way around where shiny new homes are built to attract wealthier residents and then the area is improved afterwards to accommodate them, pricing out the existing population.
  It's a small change in the approach to improving an area but it makes a big difference.
  
  I lived in Lafayette. Had to nope out of that article, too many bad memories. Thanks for sharing though.
- How do I subscribe to your commentary?
  
  Lol I'm live all day, every day at !superbowl@lemmy.world
  Stop by this weekend for the Superbowl Superbowl...it's like the Puppy Bowl, but for owls, and you get to participate!
- What's the deal with $1 in nominal damages?
  
  You have to make a demand for damages. Asking for $1 makes it symbolic more than anything. A jury can still go "Screw that, pay them a million bucks" though.
  
  Looks like they’re not being unnecessarily vengeful, just making the point stick?
Oxtail, fried plantains and marinated pork; in addition to being racists, the town council doesn't know good food. That all sounds delicious.
- How we ended up with a native cuisine inferior to the English is something I don't get. It isn't like the entire planet is injecting us with immigrants at all times.
  
  Gotta get out of WASP neighborhoods, there's tons of good American food developed (mostly by immigrants and slaves) over the hundreds of years since colonization. And it's not like the native population was eating dirt.
  
  I'd argue Cajun cooking is native cuisine, granted that was cobbled together from the cooking traditions of several immigrant cultures.
  
  I live on the east coast and travel to major east coast cities a few times a year for fun. Seeing people in NYC eating at like Chipotle or other fast food drives me bonkers.
  I know some people are locals and that's reasonable, but visiting a place like that and not eating the local grub seems so dumb.
- The palate for oxtail is way different than mayonnaise on white bread. Or even plain rice and boiled chicken.
  
  The plantains might be a little too much for them too.
- That's the sort of thing we eat down here all the time. What's wrong with fried plantains? Oxtail is kind of hit or miss, but if you know someone who can cook it well... 👩‍🍳😘 Truly divine. And who hates marinated pork? It makes the best tacos.
  
  What’s wrong with fried plantains?
  Judging by their open bigotry, what's wrong with all of this is that it was cooked by black folk.
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.
Racism is so ugly and stupid. It is always wild people saying go back to your own country when they are not natively from here as well usually.
- I'm from the US and have been told to go back to where I come from based on my name alone.
  
  I think they were referring to indigenous people. But you're right, even 2nd generation immigrants who are American citizens get told to go back "where they came from"
  
  I've been told to go back to my country. Which is Hawai'i haha
- In my home country there are minorities, as I would guess in most other countries, and they quite often are told to go back to where they came from, despite literally being native to the country 🤦‍♂️
  
  I'm dutch. We colonized anything darker than pale and stole everything we could and now people complain about multiculturalism.
  
  Australia?
- "Go back to your own country" isn't something you yell if you aren't racist.
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"
- I also live in a country where I was not born, and it is full of kind people. I am very visibly different from most of the population, so people usually assume I'm a tourist. They always seem pleasantly surprised to learn that I live here.
  I've been here almost three years, and I haven't mastered the language yet, but people are usually really kind about my limited vocabulary.
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.’”"
- 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, 1994
- So we should launch all racists and bigots into space?
- 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.
- 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.
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.
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.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
- Volume. The difference between a household and a restaurant is the volume of grease
Oh the irony.
"...law firm it hired, Pender & Coward"
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.
"Virginia"
Naturally.
- 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.
- Eh, it’s the Eastern Shore. But honesty no different than most of the rural areas.
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.
Sad to see this racism.
Some days I'm just ashamed to be white. I'm English/Irish so I'm so pale I glow in the dark but the white hood brigade just have me seeing red.
- So I'm either an eighth black or half that. I'm see through white in skin color. Fuck that shit be white as fuck. Tell them motherfuckers to eat gravel.
  
  Hey sorry, quick question, do you listen to The Pixies by any chance?
  
  Racists make us all look bad. How are we supposed to expect people of other ethnic backgrounds or colour to be comfortable around us if the majority of white people they come in contact with are assholes to them?
  Racists are embarrassing as fuck.
Brought to you by the ‘if you don’t like your country, you should just move’ crowd. Good grief.
move to a city that isn't full of garbage people
More background:
https://easternshorepost.com/2023/10/20/parksley-food-truck-owner-i-am-being-persecuted-by-the-town/
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..
- You sound like the type that would say "if you're innocent, then you got nothing to hide" when talking to the police
  
  I'd love to hear the police's reaction to being told that, to be honest lol.
- Nobody would bother them??? You mean besides the racist fucks right? Or maybe you're one too......
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Except they passed a state health inspection. Unsurprisingly, the guy who is taking issue with it sells appliances to brick and mortar restaurants.

116 comments