Ou la!

It’s one of those weeks where the community news and the community itself feel like they’re pulling in opposite directions.

There’s a courtroom in Chelmsford you need to know about, and not because it’s far away.

It isn’t.

There’s also a dance premiere in Cambridge your partner would actually want tickets to, and a professor coming to Amherst with the kind of argument about Haitian Creole that’ll make you want to text your group chat mid-talk (assuming UMass has decent WiFi in Furcolo Hall).

Let’s start.

At Chelmsford’s immigration court, a remote judge with limited experience reportedly dismissed asylum claims and ordered deportations during what were supposed to be preliminary hearings, not final ones.

One immigration lawyer on the scene described it as “chaos with intention.”

This isn’t abstract policy talk.

People showed up for what they understood to be a first step in their case and walked out with a deportation order.

An estimated 45,000 of the 330,000 Haitians who lost Temporary Protected Status were living right here in Massachusetts.

That’s your neighbor, your cousin’s coworker, or somebody whose TPS renewal just became somebody’s removal order.

Deportees have described landing in Cap-Haïtien shackled, their belongings gone.

One man said the $6,000 he had on him when detained was never returned.

A woman said the same about her $600 passport.

This is happening forty minutes from Dedham, a part that bears repeating.

Global Arts Live just opened The Platform, a new arts space in Kendall Square, and the first big swing out of the gate is local: Jean Appolon Expressions premieres “Pouvwa” there November 13–14.

Appolon’s company has spent years building Haitian-folkloric choreography into something that plays on major stages without losing what makes it Haitian, like drum music, Afro electronica, and visual installation, all built around a question: “What happens when power gets misused, and how do you reclaim it for something good?”

The venue matters here too.

The Platform is brand new, Global Arts Live is betting on it, and dance shows at spaces like this tend to sell out once word gets around.

This is a Boston company, in a Boston-built space, doing Haitian work on its own terms.

Get tickets now, not in October.

Dr. Marky Jean-Pierre returns to UMass Amherst on October 15 to make a case that’s been building across nearly two centuries of Haitian constitutions: that Haiti hasn’t fully shaken its colonial past, and language policy is a big reason why.

He’ll argue for Haitian Creole as the language of instruction and law, not just conversation, and back it with a school he founded that’s already given 350 kids free education entirely in Creole.

It’s in Amherst, not Boston proper, so it’s a drive.

But it’s a rare public talk with Q&A, on an argument most of us have felt but rarely heard made this directly.

Worth the trip if you can swing it.

Your weekly map of what’s worth showing up for.

Les Grenadiers are riding a two-game win streak in Group A. Good enough reason to start the watch-party text thread now.

Konpa, Rabòday, Gouyad, Zouk, full DJ lineup. Straightforward. Go.

Dr. Marky Jean-Pierre on Haitian Creole, colonialism, and what comes next. Open Q&A after.

World premiere from Jean Appolon Expressions. Tickets are on sale now; this one will move.

I keep thinking about that $600 passport that never came back.

It’s a small detail in a very big story, but small details are usually where the truth lives, and this week had two very different kinds of truth.

If someone in your life needs to know about Chelmsford, or needs tickets to Cambridge, forward this to them.

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Mèsi anpil. See you next Thursday.

GUSTAVE • FOUNDER, SAK PASE BOSTON