SPRINGFIELD, Ohio — Katie Paris opened a “Unite for Springfield” Zoom gathering of more than 4,000 people earlier this week by asking participants to share one thing in the chat that was giving them hope.
“Times are heavy. The subject we are discussing tonight is heavy. We’re in a heavy moment. It is so important in these times to tap into a sense of hope,” the mother of two said, sitting in front of a colorful wall displaying her children’s artwork.
“One thing that’s giving you hope right now, okay, let’s turn on the chat. Let’s see them,” Paris prompted.
“My children.”
“Minnesotans.”
“Community.”
“Family.”
“Decency.”
“Grandchildren.”
“Liam Ramos.”
Red Wine & Blue, an organization that Paris founded in 2019 to build a diverse “sisterhood” of suburban women to fight political extremism, hosted the call just hours before Tuesday night’s slated expiration of Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, an immigration designation that has allowed some 350,000 Haitians to live and work legally in the country. Springfield, a central Ohio city of 60,000 where as many as one in four residents are Haitian, was bracing for an influx of federal immigration enforcement officers akin to the Trump administration’s violent crackdown in Minnesota. Paris, who lives outside of Cleveland, about a three-hour drive northeast of Springfield, tempered the hopeful tone at the start of the meeting with political reality.
“Last night, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for Haitians living and working legally in America, and the fight is far from over. The Department of Homeland Security immediately stated that they are taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, and we know what that means: With this Supreme Court, Haitians could lose their status in really a matter of weeks,” Paris said.
“We’re going to talk about what’s next legally in all this, we’re going to talk about what we can learn from Minneapolis, and we’re also going to talk about how we can stay safe. Finally, perhaps most importantly of all, we are going to be giving you opportunities to take real action tonight,” she continued.
Women have been leading the opposition to Donald Trump’s second presidency, playing key roles in resistance efforts and forming groups to counter the administration’s policies on immigration and more. During the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly targeted the Haitians in Springfield with lies — as did now Vice President JD Vance, an Ohioan — to bolster his calls for a crackdown on even legal immigration. The president said he would “protect” women from immigrants, “whether the women like it or not,” despite polls showing that women did not rank immigration among their top concerns, nor did they trust Trump the most on the issue.
A PBS News/NPR/Marist Poll released Thursday showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans now believe Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, has gone too far in its methods after federal agents killed Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. When broken down by gender, just 26 percent of women said they approved of how ICE was doing compared to 40 percent of men, the poll showed.
Paris, who worked in national politics before moving back to her husband’s hometown from Washington, D.C., founded Red Wine & Blue to harness the political power of suburban women, a rapidly diversifying group that determines the outcome of elections — and often votes with different priorities on their minds than men do.
(Courtesy Red Wine and Blue)
“It was really my reaction to the 2018 election and seeing all these women, particularly in the suburbs, become involved in politics for the very first time as a result of the 2016 election,” she said in an interview after the organizing call. “I knew that we needed to keep them engaged, and women are not always taken as seriously as I believe they should be.”
The Ohio chapter was Red Wine & Blue’s first, followed by chapters in Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Michigan — all critical states in presidential elections. There is also a national network of “Trouble Nation” groups for women living outside of those four states. Red Wine & Blue now has more than 600,000 members and a staff of about 60. Its members and affiliated groups held 4,000 events last year, most of them in person.
The opportunity for action during Tuesday night’s Zoom came in a series of requests for donations for Springfield groups supporting Haitian families. Participants heard from local pastor Carl Ruby, whose congregation includes Haitians and is vocal about supporting them; Catholic charity leader Casey Rollins, who has urged Haitian parents to get passports and documents for their U.S.-born children in case of deportation or separation; Viles Dorsainvil, director of the nonprofit Haitian Community Help and Support Center; and legal experts who advised them on their rights and precautions to take when documenting ICE activity. Minneapolis-based Rev. Ashley Horan also joined to talk about how her community stepped up to care for their immigrant neighbors.
In between speakers, Paris reminded those on the call — the vast majority were women and many were Ohioans, or had connections to Ohio or to Haiti, or a mix of those — that the way to help this time was to give money, and to do it fast. “We’re not going to keep this donate page up for long because we do need to get these funds in the hands of these organizations quickly — they are providing such urgently needed services on the ground,” she said.
The chat lit up again as the participants donated as little as $10 and as much as a $10,000 match.
“Donated.”
“Donated.”
“Donated again.”
In less than an hour, Red Wine & Blue surpassed its fundraising target for the evening, collecting more than $107,000 for local groups supporting Springfield’s Haitian residents.
Red Wine & Blue focuses on what Paris describes as “friend-to-friend” organizing; it does not spend money on expensive television ad campaigns or anonymous phone-banking efforts. Third-party analysis that matched Red Wine & Blue’s contacts to voter files showed that their on-the-ground organizing increased turnout by 5 percent in even years and 8 to 11 percent in odd years. Paris said that a recent membership analysis showed that 54 percent of their members are current or former political independents or Republicans.
She gave the group its name — no wine consumption is required for membership, by the way — because she is “all about leaning into the tropes” that are put on women to “regain our political power.”
“They called us the ‘suburban housewives’ in 2020. We’ve been the ‘Chardonnay Antifa.’ Now they’re saying the ‘wine moms’ are paid protesters. We’ve been ‘soccer moms’ and ‘Zoom moms.’ I think all of that is meant to reduce us, as a group of women who actually do have political power,” Paris said.
After a Fox News columnist wrote last month that “organized gangs of wine moms” were using “Antifa tactics” to oppose ICE, Red Wine & Blue fired back on social media: “Add it to the very long list of names they’ve called us. They can try to scare us, they can try to shame us… but we’re still showing up, still supporting our communities.”
After the Zoom call, Paris said, “People are already getting their protest signs ready for the next ‘No Kings’ Day, saying: Red Wine & Blue, the original ‘wine moms.’”