Tag: Haiti and Latin America

The people of Haiti, who won their independence with the world’s only successful slave rebellion, will rise again – with our help and solidarity. Donate to the Haiti Emergency Relief Fund through HaitiAction.net; consult this page for frequent updates; add your recommendations and information in the Comments section.

The Haitian government-under-U.S.-U.N.-occupation has again excluded Haiti’s largest political party from participating in upcoming elections financed, orchestrated and supported by the United States and the international community. This time, it’s the February and March 2010 legislative elections.

On the first night of her Aug. 20-24 Triumph Tour, our sister Cynthia McKinney put a face on Gaza, Palestine, I don’t think many in the audience had seen before – I’m speaking of African Americans who are not usually the target population of such media focus. McKinney was speaking at Oakland’s landmark Grand Lake Theater, kicking off her Gaza Solidarity Triumph Tour, a series of fundraisers for the struggling SF Bay View newspaper.

In many ways, Black August, at least in the West, begins in Haiti. It is the Blackest August possible — revolution and resultant liberation from bondage. From its earliest days, Haiti was declared an asylum for escaped slaves, and a place of refuge for any person of African or American Indian descent.

The 9,000 U.N. troops in Haiti are paid over $601.58 million per year and have been in Haiti for four years. That is $50.13 million per month, $1.64 million per day. Yet, during the recent floods and hurricane season in Haiti, the Haitian president had to call for international help from the international community. Wasn’t that help already in Haiti, to the tune of 9,000 U.N. – MINUSTAH – troops already cashing in $1.64 million per day?

The young man who appears to have been gunned down by U.N. occupation troops after a funeral last month received an all but secret funeral himself on July 14 in Port-au-Prince because the priest and family were fearful of U.N. and Haitian government reprisals.

Port au Prince, Haiti (Haiti Action.net) – Brazilian soldiers with the U.N. occupation in Haiti (known as MINUSTAH) killed a young man from the neighborhood of Solino immediately after the funeral of Father Gerard Jean Juste June 18 as he was getting ready to board a bus leaving with the cortège headed to the town of Cavaillon, Haiti.

This musical tribute to the towering hero of Haiti, Father Gerard Jean-Juste - or Pe Jan Jis in Kreyol - who joined the ancestors May 27, 2009, is sung by Rosemond Jolissaint, the Haitian sensation who won Haiti's version of American Idol in 2007.

The mood was militant, even joyous, as thousands poured out of the Port-au-Prince Cathedral following the funeral of Father Gérard Jean-Juste on June 18. They merged with rara bands which had been circulating in the streets outside the church during the four hours since the service began at 6 a.m. Then about 10 gunshots rang out. People ran and dove for cover. It all lasted about 30 seconds.

Haiti's largest privately owned TV station, Radio Tele-Ginen, released video footage today that contradicts denials by the U.N. that they only fired shots into the air during the funeral for Catholic priest Father Gerard Jean-Juste on June 18. The footage clearly shows two shots being fired by Brazilian troops from the back of a small pickup truck at crowd level.

Haiti's largest political movement and party, Fanmi Lavalas, organized a second successful boycott of Senate elections yesterday, posing a serious challenge to their credibility. President Rene Preval's handpicked Conseil Electoral Provisoire (CEP) excluded the Fanmi Lavalas party from participation in the elections on a technicality.

The U.N. and the Obama administration continue to endorse and finance a second round of controversial Senate elections in Haiti. The first round was marked by a voter turnout of only 3-4 percent following a successful boycott campaign waged by Fanmi Lavalas.

Haitian priest Father Gerard Jean-Juste was a Jesus-like revolutionary. In jail and out, he preached liberation of the poor, release of prisoners, human rights for all and a fair distribution of wealth. Though he died May 27, he remains present in the hearts of millions. Watch a video he recorded just for SF Bay View.

Haitian Americans demand that the Obama administration stop the threatened deportation of some 30,000 Haitians back to their strife and storm battered country and that Haitian migrants be granted Temporary Protected Status.

Seeing the resilience of our beloved Haiti has strengthened my commitment to our global revolutionary liberation struggle - until the last drop of my Black royal blood.

Will the Obama-Nation become an abomination if it fails to stop the bombing of nations? From Gaza to Afghanistan, the American people must take a stand and tell Obama to forge a better plan to free the land.

Dec. 16, was the 18th anniversary of Haiti's first free and democratic elections that gave rise to the Lavalas movement which catapulted Aristide into the presidency in 1990. Thousands of Haitians took to the streets.

"No one cares about the children, living or dead," one furious father of children in the collapsed school outside of Port au Prince, Haiti, swore Sunday. "Government officials and people from all the NGOs, they all come, take pictures, make speeches and they leave us with nothing. We need action!"

I grew up with the picture on the left. That's the America that lynched Black soldiers in their uniforms after World War II. It's the America I was taught. It's the America unfortunately I've lived through. It's the America that killed the Dreamer. But on Nov. 4, 2008, I was most happy to actually meet the America that chose to make the picture on the right its new dawn. I don't know this America. I didn't think it was possible.

Haiti is now forced by the World Bank and its bloodsucking siblings like the IMF to pay more than $1 million a week to satisfy debts incurred by the Duvaliers and the post-Duvalier tyrannies. Haiti must repay this debt to prove its fitness for "help" from the Multilateral Financial Institutions (MFI).