Ex-DuPage County NAACP head calls on Haley to quit state post after comments about migrants
The former president of the DuPage County NAACP is urging Springfield's Teresa Haley, the state director of the NAACP, to resign after likening immigrants to rapists and savages in a video shared on Tuesday.
Patrick Watson, who posted the one-minute-and-forty-eight-second video of Haley making remarks during an NAACP state presidents' meeting on Nov. 30, told The State Journal-Register Tuesday he was "horrified" at the remarks. Watson later resigned his position with the DuPage group, which covers parts of four counties in the Chicagoland area, citing Haley's comments about the LGBTQ community in another gathering of branch presidents.
Gov. JB Pritzker in Chicago Tuesday called Haley's remarks "extraordinarily inappropriate" and hoped she would apologize.
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But Michael Childress, who succeeded Watson as president of the DuPage group, said the release of the video was "a smear campaign" against Haley.
Haley, who has also been president of the Springfield NAACP branch since 2009, was traveling out of the country and didn't respond to messages from the SJ-R seeking comment.
Springfield Mayor Misty Buscher said following city council's committee of the whole meeting Tuesday that she also saw the video.
"I know there is an immigration issue in our country, but we also need to realize these are all human beings, people with feelings, emotions, families and we need to be respectful of that," Buscher said.
Referring to migrants who have been bussed to Chicago, Haley said "these immigrants have come over here, they’ve been raping people. They’ve been breaking into homes. They’re like savages, as well."
Watson said Haley made the comments after Chicago Westside branch president Karl Brinson brought up the migrant situation in Chicago.
Haley acknowledged that some of the treatment of the migrants was "inhumane" because people were "renting out abandoned buildings and allowing them to live up in there...they don't have the sewage, the plumbing, the drainage, but to get them off the streets, they're housing them everywhere.
"And we’re seeing families on the street and we’re like, 'Oh my God, we’re not used to seeing families on the streets.' But Black people have been on the streets forever and ever and nobody cares because they say that we’re drug addicts, we’ve got mental health issues."
Watson said he had been in contact with some of NAACP's national leaders, including Carmen Watkins, a senior vice president, among others.
The national organization didn't immediately respond to messages left by the SJ-R.
Childress, who lives in Bloomingdale, said Watson was being removed as president, a move signed off on by Haley, and Watson chose to release the video when he knew Haley was going to be out of the country.
"It doesn't surprise me at all, given the person that he is," said Childress of Watson.
Regarding Haley's comments, Childress said "those are not words I would use, but I still believe (the comments) were taken out of context."
Watson, a 40-year-old small business owner from Lisle, said he recorded the video from the nearly two-hour-long meeting. He said he was the first person to speak out publicly against Haley.
Haley, 58, was first elected in 2015 as president of the NAACP state chapter, the first woman to ascend to that position. She is retired from the Illinois Department of Transportation.
As state director, she has advocated nationally to have the site of the Springfield 1908 Race Riot designated a national monument site. The NAACP was born out of the race riot the following year.
Haley won the inaugural Activist of the Year award at the NAACP Image Awards in Pasadena, California, in early 2020, months after being named The State Journal-Register's First Citizen.
"She is a leader, and these statements are coming from her," Watson said. "This is why I'm calling for her to resign. For her to serve on the national board of the oldest civil rights organization in the country when this is how she thinks of a group of people that she should be advocating to protect is reprehensible."
Watson recalled at the Nov. 30 meeting, Haley said the NAACP was becoming more diverse and that "I had people wanting me to call them 'they,' 'them,' 'it.' What the hell is that?"
Watson said there wasn't a video of that meeting, but "for me, that was the last straw."
The two had a rocky relationship from the beginning, Watson admitted. Just three weeks after taking over as president of the DuPage chapter, Watson said Haley suspended him because she thought he "disparaged" her in a livestream. Watson claimed the suspension was "outside of the domain of the bylaws" and he stayed on as president.
"I've definitely not had a good relationship with her in the past because I've raised questions about things, questions about certain behavior."
In a statement released Wednesday, the Springfield Immigrant Advocacy Network (SIAN) rejected Haley's statements.
Veronica Espina, president of SIAN, pointed out that the NAACP has "a history of supporting immigrants and refugees in our country that we ought to honor and remember. We have worked with our NAACP siblings against injustice, racial profiling, and to protect (Illinois DACA recipients) and migrants applying for asylum and refugee status are people of color coming mostly from the Global South.”
Beth Langen, co-chair of SIAN, stated that “divisive rhetoric causes real harm. It reinforces inaccurate stereotypes, it doesn’t reflect the many intersections of being and of experience among marginalized peoples, and it thus requires response and repair of these important relationships. We don’t heal alone but in community. What we need to be doing is to work in solidarity to create and advocate for better policies, and to make our cities better for all of us.”
Contact Steven Spearie: (217) 622-1788; sspearie@sj-r.com; X, twitter.com/@StevenSpearie.
This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: In a video, Illinois NAACP state director likens migrants to 'savages'
