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Pierre Labossiere on welcoming Aristide home to Haiti
April 10, 2011
“I was at his (President Aristide’s) house, we heard a roar of shouts of joy, and then over the walls people started coming in, pouring into the courtyard of the house when they saw the car. People were accompanying the car as many as three miles from the airport to his house,” relates Pierre Labossiere of the jubilant welcome that greeted the Aristides on their return to Haiti ending seven long years of exile for them and brutal repression of the people they had to leave behind. Pierre tells the story of the Haitian people and how their never-say-die spirit continues to inspire the world.
Open letter to our brother, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide
March 4, 2011
As people of faith, we know that the road to democracy and justice is not an easy one. These years of enforced exile have been painful – not only for you and your family, but for the people of Haiti. We join the call from all over the world for this exile to end.
Waiting for Aristide
March 1, 2011
In this new documentary short, released to coincide with the seventh anniversary of the 2004 coup d’etat in Haiti, independent filmmaker Paul Burke asks Haitians what they would say to President Obama about the return of former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Haiti.
Prominent anti-apartheid movement veterans call on South African government to assist Aristide in returning to Haiti now
February 25, 2011
Several prominent figures from the international anti-apartheid movement have sent South African President Jacob Zuma an open letter “in the hopes that he can assist” former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his family in returning to Haiti “as soon as possible.”
Haiti: Annul the elections
February 23, 2011
This “run-off” presidential election, scheduled for March 20, helps to explain the re-emergence of Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier, since both candidates, Mirlande Manigat and Michel Martelly, have links to the Duvalier past. Manigat’s husband is said to have advised Duvalier to create the dreaded tonton macoutes. And Martelly, who was himself a tonton macoute in his youth, has pledged to make Duvalier one of his advisers. Join the Haiti Action Committee for “Seven Years after the Coup in Haiti: Democracy at the Crossroads” at Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakland, on Tuesday, March 1, 7 p.m.
Deep inside every one of us is a Revolution waiting to happen
February 16, 2011
Once again, the world is rising up against oppression. In the U.S., our time will come. Remember the kind of commitment we saw in Malcolm X, who was murdered 46 years ago this month. On the morning of Feb. 21, Malcolm received a phone call saying, “Today is the day.” He showed up anyway, knowing that that day could be his very last day on this Earth. Malcolm did not let fear control his commitment to the cause of freedom and justice. That is the real stuff we all are made of. Deep inside every one of us is a Revolution waiting to happen.
Let the people’s will be done in Egypt and Haiti!
February 11, 2011
Join your voice with the roar of the crowds in Egypt and Haiti to demand that President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton end support for Mubarak and support the Egyptian people’s will and allow Aristide to return and allow real democracy in Haiti.
Awakening the power of the human dream of freedom
February 5, 2011
Individuals in North Africa, Europe and West Asia are rewriting the history of their countries as “people power” takes center stage. This “people power” has always existed within us; history is written by those who recognize the power of the human dream of freedom and who set about making that dream a reality, against all odds.
In Haiti, reliving Duvalier, waiting for Aristide
February 5, 2011
The return of Jean Claude Duvalier, “Baby Doc,” to Haiti as a free man was excruciating to veterans of the struggle that overthrew the 30-year dictatorship. The traumatizing symbolism of Duvalier’s return at Haiti’s weakest hour is an insult to the dead and an assault on the living.
WikiLeaks points to U.S. meddling in Haiti
January 23, 2011
Confidential U.S. diplomatic cables from 2005 and 2006 released this week by WikiLeaks reveal Washington’s well-known obsession to keep exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of Haiti and Haitian affairs. “All efforts must be made to keep Aristide from returning to Haiti or influencing the political process,” the U.S. embassy told Brazil, which heads the U.N. occupation of Haiti. Did those efforts include covering up the assassination of the Brazilian general in charge who had no taste for slaughtering Haitians who simply want their president back?
Aristide should be allowed to return to Haiti
January 21, 2011
Haiti’s infamous dictator “Baby Doc” Duvalier returned to his country this week, while the country’s first elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is kept out. These two facts really say everything about Washington’s policy toward Haiti and our government’s respect for democracy.
Congresswoman Waters opposes plot to control Haiti
January 21, 2011
The plot to control Haiti has gone from the absurd to the ridiculous. The return of Jean Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier raises serious questions about who in Haiti facilitated his return and what his supporters expect to gain by bringing him back.
If Duvalier can, why can’t Aristide?
January 19, 2011
Today, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean Bertrand Aristide, whose return to Haiti is demanded daily by his people – he was kidnapped Feb. 29, 2004, in a U.S.-engineered coup and has since lived in South Africa – wrote the following letter to the South African and Haitian governments seeking to return home. But, asks Ezili Danto, who forwarded his letter, “If Duvalier can, without trouble, travel on an EXPIRED Haitian passport, why can’t President Aristide do the same?”
In memory of John Maxwell
January 5, 2011
John Maxwell is one of those rare human beings, one of those rare souls, and one of those rare minds whose death leaves us naked. Bare. Smaller.
Ride it ‘til the wheels fall off …
December 21, 2010
Prisoners in at least six Georgia prisons went on strike Dec. 9. On Friday, Dec. 17, a strong, positive, fiercely determined and highly spirited march and two rallies took place in downtown Oakland despite the driving rain in support of those prisoners, whose strike has become the largest in U.S. history.
Women’s movement building and creating community in Haiti
December 14, 2010
One of the stories least reported has been the one about Haitians organizing for themselves. This is one woman’s story of how she, her family and the people in the various communities in which she works came together collectively to care for each other’s needs and how that struggle has become the foundation of a new movement of the poor for change in education and the material lives of women and men – a struggle for dignity.
Ted Pontiflet says farewell to Oakland
November 26, 2010
Ted Pontiflet is an Oakland icon. He is East Coast swing meets West Coast bop. Classy. The man is too smooth to be close to 80. Ted is around until Dec. 1 and then away he goes.
Disaster capitalism – in Haiti, Congo, Pakistan and New Orleans
November 24, 2010
A series of disasters has displaced and killed millions of people. Distinguished panelists who are not afraid to voice radical viewpoints give us an update on the current situation in Haiti, the DR Congo, Pakistan and New Orleans. Two of these advocates, Ezili Danto of Haiti and Kambale Musavuli of the Congo, are well known to Bay View readers. Ezili (longtime readers will remember her as Marguerite Laurent) emphasizes the economic disparity in Haiti: Half of 1 percent of Haitians own 98 percent of the wealth.
‘All elements of society are participating’: impressions of Cap Haitien’s movement against the U.N.
November 20, 2010
Haitians say protests are the inevitable outcome when troops who have occupied Haiti for five years with seeming impunity have introduced a deadly, misery-multiplying disease.
The many faces of Oscar Grant and Mumia Abu-Jamal
November 18, 2010
We are not fooled by the corporate media hype that criminalizes our righteous struggle. We are not fooled by a prison industrial complexed court system acting to protect its own from criminal prosecution! Did not Malcolm X tell us that it would do no good to take the crimes of the criminal to the criminal’s courts?