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New Orlean's Heart is in Haiti
By Jordan Flaherty
New Orleans and Haiti are connected by geography,
history, architecture, and family, and news of mass
devastation and loss of life in the island nation has
hit hard in the Crescent City. Almost every hurricane
that has hit our city first brought devastation on our
neighbors in Haiti. We are linked not just by a shared
experience of storms, but also by first-hand
understanding of the ways in which oppression based on
race, class and gender interacts with these disasters.
Many New Orleanians have roots in Haiti, and their
revolution lent inspiration to our city. The 500
enslaved people from the parishes outside New Orleans
that participated in the 1811 Rebellion to End Slavery
(the largest armed uprising against slavery in the US)
were directly inspired by the Haitian revolution. Even
much of our housing design—such as the Creole cottage
and shotgun house—came here via Haiti.
As historian
Carl A. Brasseaux has noted, "During a six-month
period in 1809, approximately 10,000 refugees from
Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) arrived at New
Orleans, doubling the Crescent City’s population. . . .
The vast majority of these refugees established
themselves permanently in the Crescent City. [They] had
a profound impact upon New Orleans’ development.
Refugees established the state’s first newspaper and
introduced opera into the Crescent City. They also
appear to have played a role in the development of
Creole cuisine and the perpetuation of voodoo practices
in the New Orleans area."
After Katrina, Haitian-American writer
Edwidge Danticat said
New Orleans looked more like Haiti than the US. “It’s
hard for those of us who are from places like Freetown
or Port-au-Prince not to wonder why the so-called
developed world needs so desperately to distance itself
from us, especially at a time when an unimaginable
tragedy shows exactly how much alike we are,” Danticat
said. “We do share a planet that is gradually being
warmed by mismanagement, unbalanced exploration, and
dismal environmental policies that might one day render
us all, First World and Third World residents alike,
helpless to more disasters like Hurricane Katrina."
In the days after Katrina, there was no rescue plan for
the thousands of people trapped in Orleans Parish
Prison, most of whom had not been convicted of any
crime, the majority held for nonviolent offenses that
ranged from drug violations to traffic tickets. In Port
Au Prince, nearly 4,500 Haitians held in a prison built
for 800 had the walls fall around them. Many died while
others managed to escape. And the corporate media used
the fact that these prisoners had freed themselves as an
excuse to sow fear against the earthquake victims.
Now, just as after Katrina, the media is eager to
demonize and criminalize the victims as “looters.” Pat
Robertson has even added a new twist to this old libel,
accusing the people of Haiti of literally making a deal
with Satan.
New Orleans’ education, health care, and criminal
justice systems were already in crisis before Katrina.
In Haiti, two hundred years of crippling debt imposed by
France, the US and other colonial powers drained the
country's financial resources. Military occupation and
presidential coups coordinated and funded by the US have
devastated the nation's government infrastructure.
Haitian poet and human rights lawyer
Ezili Dantò
has written, "Haiti's poverty began with a US/Euro trade
embargo after its independence, continued with the
Independence Debt to France and ecclesiastical and
financial colonialism. Moreover, in more recent times,
the uses of U.S. foreign aid, as administered through
USAID in Haiti, basically serves to fuel conflicts and
covertly promote U.S. corporate interests to the
detriment of democracy and Haitian health, liberty,
sovereignty, social justice and political freedoms.
USAID projects have been at the frontlines of
orchestrating undemocratic behavior, bringing
underdevelopment, coup d’état, impunity of the Haitian
Oligarchy, indefinite incarceration of dissenters, and
destroying Haiti's food sovereignty, essentially
promoting famine."
Author
Naomi
Klein reported that within 24 hours of the
earthquake, the influential right-wing think tank the
Heritage Foundation was already seeking to use the
disaster as an attempt at further privatization of the
country's economy. The Heritage Foundation released
similar recommendations in the days after Katrina,
calling for “solutions” such as school vouchers.
Our Katrina experience has taught us to be suspicious of
Red Cross and other large and bureaucratic aid agencies
that function without and means of community
accountability. In New Orleans, we've seen literally
tens of billions of dollars in aid pledged in the years
since Katrina, but only a small fraction of that has
made it to those most in need.
A recent letter signed by six human rights organizations
brings these concerns to the discussion of Haiti relief.
“There is no doubt that Haiti’s hungry, thirsty,
injured, and sick urgently need all the assistance the
international community can provide, but it is critical
that the underlying goal of improving human rights
drives the distribution of every dollar of aid given to
Haiti,” said Loune Viaud, Director of Strategic Planning
and Operations at Zanmi Lasante, one of the drafters of
the letter. “The only way to avoid escalation of this
crisis is for international aid to take a long-term view
and strive to rebuild a stronger Haiti—one that includes
a government that can ensure the basic human rights of
all Haitians and a nation that is empowered to demand
those rights.”
INCITE Women
Of Color Against Violence and other feminist
organizations brought attention to the way that disaster
is gendered, noting that women were especially
victimized by Katrina and its aftermath. An organization
called the Gender and Disaster Network released six
principles for engendered relief and reconstruction,
stating, “Gender analysis is not optional or divisive
but imperative to direct aid and plan for full and
equitable recovery. Nothing in disaster work is ‘gender
neutral.’”
INCITE activists forwarded a list of Women-run
organizations in Haiti, encouraging activists to support
relief that focuses on those hardest hit by this
disaster.
The final lesson from New Orleans is this: Haiti will
still be in crisis long after all of the news cameras
have left. As concerned family and friends of Haiti, New
Orleanians have pledged to stay involved and not forget
about the continuing needs of rebuilding and recovery.
We share a common history, and we will work for a shared
future of justice and liberation.
Source:
Huffingtonpost
Jordan Flaherty is a journalist, an editor
of Left Turn Magazine, and a staffer with the Louisiana
Justice Institute. He was the first writer to bring the
story of the Jena Six to a national audience and
audiences around the world have seen the television
reports he’s produced for Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, GritTV,
and Democracy Now. Haymarket Press will release his new
book, FLOODLINES: Stories of Community and Resistance
from Katrina to the Jena Six, in 2010. He can be reached
at
neworleans@leftturn.org.
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U.S. Attempts to
Erase Haitian Nationhood—The
Haitian peasantry, which not so long ago kept the
country self-sufficient in basic foodstuffs, became
inconvenient after Washington forced Haiti to accept
U.S. government-subsidized rice. Port-au-Prince, a town
of about a quarter million in 1960, swelled to at least
2.5 million
as small rice farmers were forced off the land and into
the shanty-opolis, where they built what they could with
the resources at hand. U.S.-imposed “structural
adjustment” made Port-au-Prince a high-density death
trap.
Somehow, this U.S.-mandated migration – which also
contributed to the exodus abroad of many hundreds of
thousands – is now numbered among the many “failures” of
the Haitian people. They must now move again, to places
outside Port-au-Prince where they can “reimagine the
future,” in Bill Clinton’s words. But whatever the
Haitians might imagine, the United States is determined
to deny them the right to pursue those dreams. Americans
hector Haitians to summon the will to rebuild, but
strangle Haitian civil society by effectively outlawing
the nation’s most popular political party, Aristide’s
Fanmi Lavalas. Self-determination is among those things
Haitians must not be permitted to rebuild or reclaim.
The
Americans seem to prefer that Haitians have no
government, at all, even one as compliant as that of
President Rene Preval, who collaborated in banning Fanmi
Lavalas from taking part in elections. Only one cent of
every dollar in U.S. “relief” money goes to or through
the Haitian government, which is thus reduced to a
crippled and largely irrelevant spectator. The Americans
will at some point “reimagine” precisely how the Haitian
“protectorate” will be managed in these extraordinary
times.
The
Haitian people “need democracy and self determination,”
said a statement by the U.S.-based Black is Back
Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations,
“not more military interventions by the U.S., which has
sent more than 10,000 troops to subdue our people.” On
February 20, the Black is Back Coalition will hold a
National
March and
Rally to Defend Haiti,
in Miami, Florida. “Our people in Haiti must have
reparations, not self serving charity from France and
the U.S.”— Glen
Ford,
BlackAgendaReport
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Hopes and Prospects
By Noam Chomsky
In this urgent new book, Noam Chomsky
surveys the dangers and prospects of our
early twenty-first century. Exploring
challenges such as the growing gap
between North and South, American
exceptionalism (including under
President Barack Obama), the fiascos of
Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S.-Israeli
assault on Gaza, and the recent
financial bailouts, he also sees hope
for the future and a way to move
forward—in the democratic wave in Latin
America and in the global solidarity
movements that suggest "real progress
toward freedom and justice." Hopes and
Prospects is essential reading for
anyone who is concerned about the
primary challenges still facing the
human race. "This is a classic Chomsky
work: a bonfire of myths and lies,
sophistries and delusions. Noam Chomsky
is an enduring inspiration all over the
world—to millions, I suspect—for the
simple reason that he is a truth-teller
on an epic scale. I salute him." —John
Pilger
In dissecting the rhetoric and logic of
American empire and class domination, at
home and abroad, Chomsky continues a
longstanding and crucial work of
elucidation and activism . . .the
writing remains unswervingly rational
and principled throughout, and lends
bracing impetus to the real alternatives
before us.—Publisher's
Weekly
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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The White Masters
of the World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest / Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The
Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding
of Haiti
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
posted 9 February 2010
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