A collaboration between palabra and the Texas Observer.
Early in the morning of September 15, two buses full of migrants arrived near Vice President Kamala Harris’s residence in Washington DC, sent by Texas Governor Greg Abbott. The day before, about 50 migrants came to Martha’s Vineyard on flights originating from Texas, but chartered by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. These were the latest in a series of headline-grabbing provocations by three Republican governors, led by Abbott, who have sent thousands of migrants to liberal strongholds around the country.
In 1962, a nearly identical political stunt was pulled by a racist organization in Louisiana, sending hundreds of Black Southerners to Northern cities in a brazen attempt to get liberals to tie themselves in knots. Back then, the trips were called the “Reverse Freedom Rides.” Abbott’s buses started rolling earlier this year, but it wasn’t until DeSantis’s copycat flights landed migrants on Martha’s Vineyard that the media took note of how nearby Hyannis, Massachusetts had also been a target of the Reverse Freedom Rides.
