Haiti is the site of the world's first successful slave revolt of the modern nation-state era, and it has always been imperative that it should not be allowed to succeed. On the one-year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, Democracy Now! took a critical look at the "lack of progress" to put things kindly. It began by replaying a clip from its coverage a year ago, a clip that ended thus:
DR. EVAN LYON: This aid attention is nice. The extra supplies are nice. The energy and the money is helpful. But if the Haitian institutions are not rebuilt, nothing will be durable, and in one year we'll be exactly where we are right now, which is in pain.
Followed by Amy Goodman:
AMY GOODMAN: And one year later, the words of Dr. Evan Lyon, a professor with Partners in Health, are agonizingly true: Haiti is still in pain. If anything, the situation has gotten worse. A cholera epidemic has spread throughout the country, killing more than 3,600 people, infecting more than 170,000. More than a million people remain homeless, still living in makeshift shelters in hundreds of tent camps. Port-au-Prince is a city of earthquake refugees. There is little food, clean water or sanitation.
Reconstructions efforts have barely begun a full 12 months after the disaster. By some estimates, less than five percent of the rubble has been cleared, and only 15 percent of the temporary housing that is needed has been built. Less than 10 percent of the $9 billion pledged by foreign donors has been delivered.
This outcome is hardly a surprise. In fact, it's exactly what anyone with a knowledge of Haiti's history would have predicted: an continuing intensification of outside control, overpromising aid and goodwill, under-delivering basic necessities and turning a blind eye to ongoing inequities when not actively engaged in perpetuating or expanding them. Haiti is the site of the world's first successful slave revolt of the modern nation-state era, and it has always been imperative that it should not be allowed to succeed.
On Wednesday, Democracy Now! completed three days of coverage of Haiti six months after the earthquake. One segment served as a capstone: "Land Ownership at the Crux of Haiti's Stalled Reconstruction". Although it drew on other material, it was primarily an interview with Kim Ives, journalist with the newspaper Haiti Liberté. And what do you know, it turns out to be just one more example of the Shock Doctrine in action
First we start with the conditions people face, and how land is being used to funnel even more money to the haves:
SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS:.... Well, the issue of land is at the crux of the recovery effort in Haiti. For the more than 1.5 million Haitians left homeless by the quake, plans for permanent housing are, to say the least, remote. Even plans for even just temporary shelters to get them out of the tent camps have not been drawn up. Where will all these people go? ....
AMY GOODMAN: .... We're now joined by Kim Ives.... In his latest article in Haiti Liberté, he writes that the earthquake, quote, "reveals that the principal fault-line in Haiti is not geological but one of class." Kim Ives is now back in Miami.
Kim, welcome to Democracy Now! Lay out this issue of land, which is not being raised very much.
KIM IVES: Well, Amy, as we saw, in fact, the wolves have been put in charge of the chicken coop. The bourgeoisie has been put in charge of resettling the squatters' camps, and they have the best land in suburban Port-au-Prince, the large tracts of land very suited to building cities of new cities, where people could have good houses. And there's dozens of proposals of how to build those houses. But the good land is not being given. What they've done is give a place like Corail, which they own, too, and they pay themselves handsomely for its use. And so, what they're doing is keeping their best land; selling, at a high profit, their worst land. And the people are paying the price.
Then we move on to how the anti-democratic emergency governance structure is overseeing everything. It's classic shock doctrine, "a coup without an army":
It's now been six months since the Haitian earthquake, in which more than 300,000 people died, but Haiti has virtually disappeared from public view, returning to the invisible status it has almost always had in America, except for when it periodically appears as an object of menace. One of the few national news programs to offer detailed coverage of Haiti on more than a crisis basis has been Democracy Now!, and so it's no surprise that Democracy Now! did a whole hour of programming on Haiti today, including an interview with Patrick Elie, a longtime Haitian democracy activist and Haiti's former Secretary of State for Public Security. This interview provides a good overview of the state of Haiti today, and how it fits into Haiti's history.
My own big-picture take is that South America has begun to free itself from the control of American imperialism (with the obvious exception of Colombia, of course), while Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean remain torn in a state of struggle that has certainly changed over the past few decades, but which remains largely in a state of limbo... except of course, for when it more closely resembles hell:
AMY GOODMAN: .... Six months ago was just days after the earthquake, January 12, 2010. One of the worst natural disasters in history. Over 300,000 people have died. Yet, since we saw him after the earthquake in Creole, known as Terre Tremble, the earth trembled, not much has changed. Thousands of people remain under the rubble. The rubble has hardly been moved. 1.7 million people are homeless. There are more than 1300 official refugee camps. Hundreds more dotting the country. People under tarps, under tents, outside their homes on baking plateaus, waiting, waiting for something to change here in Haiti. Today we will be speaking with a human rights attorney. We will go to one of those camps. But first, we are going to speak with the former Secretary of State for Public Affairs, a longtime pro-democracy activist. We are standing in the ruins of the Montana Hotel. Just behind me, one part of that hotel that was the site of international press for many years. 111 guests died, more than 200 people were killed in the earthquake, people who worked at the hotel. Today it continues to lie in ruins. Our guest is Patrick Elie We welcome you to Democracy Now!
PATRICK ELIE: Thank you for the invitation.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you first talk about your country?
Cross posted from Worldwatch Institute's Nourishing the Planet.
It’s hard to believe, but an estimated 2.6 billion people in the developing world—nearly a third of the global population—still lack access to basic sanitation services. This presents a significant hygiene risk, especially in densely populated urban areas and slums where contaminated drinking water can spread disease rapidly. Every year, some 1.5 million children die from diarrhea caused by poor sanitation and hygiene.
It is in these crowded cities, too, that food security is weakened by the lack of clean, nutrient-rich soil as well as growing space available for local families.
But there is an inexpensive solution to both problems. A recent innovation, called the Peepoo, is a disposable bag that can be used once as a toilet and then buried in the ground. Urea crystals in the bag kill off disease-producing pathogens and break down the waste into fertilizer, simultaneously eliminating the sanitation risk and providing a benefit for urban gardens. After successful test runs in Kenya and India, the bags will be mass produced this summer and sold for U.S. 2–3 cents each, making them more accessible to those who will benefit from them the most.
In post-earthquake Haiti, where many poor and homeless residents are forced to live in garbage heaps and to relieve themselves wherever they can find privacy, SOIL/SOL, a non-profit working to improve soil and convert waste into a resource, is partnering with Oxfam GB to build indoor dry toilets for 25 families as well as four public dry toilets. The project will establish a waste composting site to convert dry waste into fertilizer and nutrient-rich soil that can then be used to grow vegetables in rooftop gardens and backyards.
In Malawi, Stacia and Kristof Nordin’s permaculture project (which Nourishing the Planet co-director Danielle Nierenberg visited during her tour of Africa) uses a composting toilet to fertilize the crops. Although these units can be expensive to purchase and install, one company, Rigel Technology, manufactures a toilet that costs just US$30 and separates solid from fluid waste, converting it into fertilizer. The Indian non-profit Sulabh International also promotes community units that convert methane from waste into biogas for cooking.
On a larger scale, wetlands outside of Calcutta, India, process some 600 million liters of raw sewage delivered from the city every day in 300 fish-producing ponds. These wetlands produce 13,000 tons of fish annually for consumption by the city’s 12 million inhabitants. They also serve as an environmentally sound waste treatment center, with hyacinths, algal blooms, and fish disposing of the waste, while also providing a home for migrating birds and an important source of local food for the population of Calcutta. (See also “Fish Production Reaches a Record.”)
Aside from cost and installation, the main obstacles to using human waste to fertilize crops are cultural and behavioral. UNICEF notes in an online case study that a government-run program in India provided 33 families in the village of Bahtarai with latrines near their houses. But the majority of villagers still preferred to use the fields as toilets, as they were accustomed to doing their whole lives. “It is not enough just to construct the toilets,” said Gaurav Dwivedi, Collector and Bilaspur District Magistrate. “We have to change the thinking of people so that they are amenable to using the toilets.”
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Earlier this week, the Associated Press reported that a boat carrying 62 Haitians was intercepted by the Royal Bahamas Defense Forces. The Prime Minister for the Bahamas said that its passengers will be returned directly back to Haiti, and a U.S. Coast Guard spokesman stated that U.S. ships would be available to repatriate the Haitians if needed.
Recovery from a natural disaster should be able to make survivors “whole.” However, when the starting point is life in one of the poorest and most dangerous countries in the Western hemisphere, getting back to normal becomes a trickier proposition. Haiti has the highest rates of infant, under-five and maternal mortality in the Western hemisphere. In 2003, 80% of the population was estimated to live under the international poverty line. As demonstrated by the extended recovery process from Hurricane Katrina, economic condition has a determinative effect on the ability to recover from a natural disaster, with the worst impact and least independent ability to recover suffered by the poorest residents.
Although this paints a bleak picture, and there’s no denying that the reality is grim, the only possibility for hope or optimism lies in a new roadmap for recovery. Any attempt to rebuild Haiti must be developed with an eye to erasing past inequities. It cannot be enough to rebuild the Haiti of January 11, 2010. Most Haitians lived by subsistence farming. With a lack of arable land, continuing deforestation, and destruction of much of the country’s infrastructure, Haiti’s economy must be rebuilt on a new basis. If the country must begin anew, the opportunity to develop something entirely new exists.
The lingering effects of colonialism, racism, and poverty must be eliminated as the country begins to map out its future. Internal and external factors that have perpetuated, and actually increased, the disintegration of Haiti – its infrastructure, its agriculture, and its people – must be left out of the country’s future. The color line of Haiti’s elites must go. An economy based on unsustainable agriculture must go. Governmental instability and corruption must go. Unacceptable mortality rates for infants, children under five, and women giving birth must go. All of which leaves room for a new, more equitable, more self-determined Haiti – with the help of all of us.
Alan Dershowitz, the bane of human rights advocates in the US and elsewhere else, has been given his day in court to vent for Israel on Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington's left wing blogosphere newspaper.
Alan is not my favorite Democrat, far from it, mainly because his hypocrisy is so evident. When you discuss Israel, he falls into the deepest abyss of right wing Zionist ethnocentricism. He appears liberal and humanistic, and even advocates for human and civil rights, but when it comes to Israel, he falls into the exceptionalist trap. Alan is so rightward in his support of Israel, he is even able to justify the killings of Palestinian children, who he implies are terrorists.
Still let's give Alan his day in court, even though he uses the occasion to ply Israeli propaganda by the barrel full and gives the usual exceptionalism to Israel's occupation, colonialism, and state terrorism, the root of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Professional pundits and Democratic politicians are in a frenzy over what Martha Coakley's senate seat loss to Republican Scott Brown might mean for American politics.
Immigration reform in jeopardy
As Harold Meyerson of the American Prospect reports, the loss of one seat probably won't derail heath care reform, but it does make the chances of passing immigration reform slimmer. Meyerson writes that immigration reform is "necessary to restore our economic vitality and political equality," and actually passing reform would benefit the Democratic faction. Unfortunately, that means that immigration reform will require 60 votes in order to pass the senate.
The Texas Observer's Melissa del Bosque writes about the slim chances of immigration reform passing in 2010. According to Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, a 2011 target date is "probably more realistic." del Bosque refuses to lose hope, reminding us that Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) has assured the public that "the Obama administration promised to bring up the issue in 2010." Of course, bringing up an issue and actually passing reform are two very different animals.
Holding on to hope for 2010
In her daily roundup of Spanish-language media, Erin Rosa of Campus Progress also urges a positive outlook "despite the reorganization of the Senate." Rosa relays that Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA) assured the media during a telephone conference that President Obama "remembers his promise well." While "most latinos" interviewed are impatient, they hold on to hope that 2010 is the year for reform.
TPS for Haitians
Haitian undocumented that are currently within U.S. borders will be given Temporary Protected Status (TPS), as Julianne Hing reports for RaceWire. The decision only applies to Haitian immigrants in the U.S. prior to January 12, 2010. Hing observes that it is unfortunate that it took "a disaster of this magnitude" to inspire the White House to offer TPS to Haitian immigrants, though it is "a great relief."
What will the recently granted TPS status mean for Haitians that are already in deportation proceedings? Such is the case of Haitian immigrant Jean Montrevil, asAarti Shahani reports for New America Media. Montrevil came to the U.S. on a green card in 1986 to "make it big," but in his efforts, "got stupid," and caught up in selling drugs from his taxi cab. That was 20 years ago, and Montrevil has served 11 years in prison to pay for his errors. Montrevil is now a father of four and a community leader. The Department of Homeland Security considers his prison time proper cause to deport him. Many others feel he has done his time, and is a positively contributing member of our society. Democracy Now! also covered Montrevil's story recently, as noted in the Jan. 7 Diaspora.
Invisible to the first world
Why are countries like Haiti mostly invisible to first world nations like the U.S. until catastrophe strikes? Leonardo Padura asks, before the earthquake, "Who talked about Haiti?" for IPS News. Haiti desperately needs the emergency aid so generously given today, but the country has needed help for a long time. "Let us hope that tomorrow, when the tragedy no longer dominates the headlines, and the dead are buried," writes Padura, "we will not forget Haiti exists...."
Disappointingly, "U.S. corporations, private mercenaries, Washington and the International Monetary Fund" are remembering Haiti in a rather cruel and opportunist fashion, as Benjamin Dangl reports for AlterNet. At a time of crisis and great human need, Washington D.C. is "promoting unpopular economic policies and extending military and economic control over the Haitian people." This is disturbing, as a long history of economic exploitation helped render the country vulnerable to disaster. The recent earthquake has claimed roughly 200,000 lives so far.
Haiti in context
While borders and border cities bear the brunt of blame when migrants move, the cure won't be found in bigger bails of barbed wire, or harsh enforcement tactics that deny escape from economic desperation or dangerous conditions.
Jocelyn Barnes, reporting for The Nation, provides a much needed contextualization of Haiti. There are many related factors that weakened and harmed Haiti's ability to thrive, not the least of which have been storms and earthquakes. But the privatization of Haiti's infrastructure-which was "championed" by current envoy to Haiti in charge of "leading the quake assistance brigade" former president Bill Clinton-have definitely been instrumental in the country's fate.
Marching against Arpaio
Finally, given the recent holiday celebrating the life and efforts of civil rights hero Martin Luther King, Jr., we would be remiss in overlooking the January 16 march in Arizona protesting Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The event was organized by Salvador Reza, a respected Mexican American activist and community organizer in Arizona. Musician Linda Ronstadt, Co-Founder of United Farm Workers Dolores Huerta, and approximately 5,000 people marched from a park to Tent City, the name for the sheriff's makeshift detention center.
Arpaio is reviled by many in the Latino and undocumented community for his methods of racial profiling and humiliating treatment of detainees. Recently, Arpaio was compared to Bull Connor by an ad published in in the Arizona Republic by 60 black leaders and the Center for New Community.
King's vision was large and led to new horizons; it cannot possibly be contained to one era, or one day on a calendar. The struggle continues, every day, everywhere.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Today, Americans are engrossed in earthquake coverage. The tremor in Haiti bought unimaginable death and destruction just south of our borders. Events related to the recovery and rescues emerge as banner headlines. Haitians Seek Solace Amid the Ruins. For a week now, the struggle to survive, revive the injured, and retrieve the bodies strewn on the streets of Port-au-Prince was also the central theme of most every broadcast. In the midst of the misery, many Americans, felt desperate for a reprieve from the devastation that emotionally drained them. Millions took time to escape in a welcome distraction. Sassy, former Governor and Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin Made Her Debut appearance on Fox. Tomorrow another reality will replace these stories, just as each superseded the hoopla over Harry Reid's reference to race. Metaphorically, the tales provide persons, policies, and, or practices fifteen minutes of fame. In actuality, these fade from our mind quickly.
Rampant poverty can't be written off as the result of historical accident or a worker's incompetence. It is actively cultivated by bad public policies that direct economic resources into the hands of a wealthy few. The resulting inequality creates unnecessary suffering all over the world, from the humanitarian crisis in Haiti to the alarmingly high poverty rate in the United States.
Systemic poverty in Haiti
The tragedy in Haiti is not only the result of a massive earthquake. As Richard Kim explains for The Nation, Haiti has long been one of the world's poorest nations, and that poverty has prevented the country from protecting itself against natural disasters. As Kim explains:
Haiti's vulnerability to natural disasters, its food shortages, poverty, deforestation and lack of infrastructure, are not accidental. To say that it is the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere is to miss the point; Haiti was made poor-by France, the United States, Great Britain, other Western powers and by the IMF and the World Bank.
Kim details Haiti's struggles under the weight of colonialist debt that dates back to 1804, the year it won its independence from France. Soon after the revolution, the U.S. and France threatened a trade embargo against Haiti unless the nation of former slaves agreed to pay reparations to its former slave-masters in France. Haiti paid off this extortion with loans from U.S. and European banks. The country was still paying those loans back in the 1940s.
In 2003, Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide demanded that France repay Haiti $21 billion of these unjust payments. He was ousted by a military coup for his efforts. Even today, the emergency IMF loans that are ostensibly helping Haiti cope with the disaster are crippled by insane stipulations, such as raising electricity prices for Haiti's poorest citizens.
One-eighth of U.S. population receiving food stamps
The U.S. has been waging a quiet war against its own poor for decades as well. In a blog for Working In These Times, Akito Yoshikane highlights today's record level of poverty: One in four U.S. children are living on food stamps, while one-eighth of the entire nation is receiving them. That's over 38 million people, or more than four times the population of New York City. A poverty epidemic on this scale is a total affront to any concept of economic justice, liberal or conservative.
MLK and economic justice
Just economic policy was a critical concern for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. But today's 13.2% U.S. poverty rate is actually higher than when King spoke out against it in 1968, as Rich Benjamin notes for AlterNet. The economic oppression of minorities continues to this day. While the overall U.S. unemployment rate is 10%, among black workers, the rate is an astonishing 16.2%, while Latino and Latina workers face 12.9% unemployment.
10% unemployment vs. multi-million dollar bonuses
It's impossible to tolerate 10% unemployment in any economy. But those high rates are especially cruel considering the multi-million-dollar bonuses being paid to bankers who were bailed out with U.S. citizens' tax dollars. Nomi Prins' fantastic interactive chart at Mother Jones reveals both the obscene executive pay levels and staggering federal bailouts that banks subsequently used to boost profits and banker pay.
Top bank executives scored regal paydays for nearly destroying the economy, and some of them even helped pervert the government into an enabler of banking excess. Need an example? Prins highlights Robert Rubin, who pushed through a host of radical deregulatory laws as Treasury Secretary in the 1990s, then left to take a job at Citigroup, where he reaped over $120 million before his company needed a massive bailout. There's no reason for policymakers to accept a 13.2% poverty rate while subsidizing paychecks for wealthy bankers.
What can be done?
The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, a panel convened to uncover the causes of the financial crisis, could play a key role in overturning the injustices embedded within the U.S. financial system. As Ruth Coniff notes for The Progressive, it's not simply that the bailouts saved the banks. It's that the banks are piggybacking on taxpayer-granted perks to score record profits.
Economic arguments are routinely deployed to excuse outrageous social injustices-the most common argument for the U.S. bank bailout claims that things would have been much worse for everyone if we hadn't thrown billions at the banks. There are grains of truth in the argument. If all of the banks had actually failed, the result would have been economic mayhem. But that bailout money should have come with major strings attached. There is no reason why bank CEOs, rather than taxpayers, should be reaping the rewards from profits that taxpayer funds generated.
In both global and domestic politics, severe inequality is often accepted as an economic fact, not a problem that must be solved. But the moral outrage prompted by the disaster in Haiti and the U.S. financial bailout is both real and justified. If we want to live in a just society, we cannot continue to subsidize the rich by exploiting the poor.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
If a group of dedicated scholars, attorneys, journalists, and activists had tried to generate a comprehensive list of impeachable offenses committed by George W. Bush as president, and only 35 of them had been introduced into Congress, one of the many discarded ones, in rough and overly detailed form, might have read something like this:
In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed", has both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates, caused the United States of America to kidnap, imprison, intimidate, coerce, threaten, confine, abduct, and carry away the elected, constitutional President of Haiti, and his wife, a U.S citizen, in violation of United States statutes, to wit:
There are those people who run up against facts they don't like and questions they can't answer and seal those things off in their minds with yellow police-type tape that reads "God did it, move along." They put that tape around questions like, 'where did these weird fossils come from' and 'why is there inequality in the world,' and they just don't think about them.
I don't have anything against believing in a god, or the supernatural, I'd still consider myself to fall into that category. But if there is a deity, I doubt such a being is served by having their followers cripple their minds on purpose. If we weren't meant to use our brains to figure sh*t out, why give us such outlandishly big ones with so much problem-solving capacity? Which brings me to Pat Robertson.
Others have covered in great detail how vicious, evil and historically inaccurate a thing this was to say, or how it was a deeply un-Christian pander to an audience who wants to believe that the magic of the faith you're selling will turn away all suffering. Though I'd like to stick with how stupid it was.
Pat Robertson doesn't approve of turning to science, or government, or regulations like building codes as a way to solve human problems and decrease the pain of our existence. He has one answer to everything: pray and then send him money. This makes stupid godsdamn nonsense come out of his bigoted, ignorant mouth, because it's just not true that this is the right answer to every question, and the untruth makes people morons:
... Racism, bigotry and xenophobia are immoral, of course, but they are also, just as fundamentally, untrue. They are unreal. They provide a theory and a framework for living in the world that cannot be reconciled with the reality of this world. The person who chooses to accept that unreal framework is thus constantly forced to choose between unreality and reality, between the theory and the facts. To hold onto the unreal framework, they must continuously reject reality. And every time they do that, they get a little bit dumber. ...
Anyway, when I was a child I spent most Sunday mornings getting up early, putting on uncomfortable clothes and passing a few hours with people who didn't like to read, but would if God said they had to. Now I can spend Sundays resting and contemplating stuff.
What I would like to contemplate today is whether there are places in my mind walled off with yellow tape that are making me dumber, because a person is never entirely out of danger of becoming Pat Robertson stupid. In fact, the more you forget that danger, the closer it seems to get. So there.
Haiti's successful slave revolution and its defense against the French attempt to re-enslave them was directly responsible for France's abandonment of its claims in the New World, including the sale of the Louisiana Purchase, without which the US would have been permanantly hemmed in to the Eastern Seaboard. Thus, America owes more to the people of Haiti than any other people on Earth--but, with few exceptions, we have only repaid them with suffering and sorrow.
The earthquake in Haiti is terrible natural disaster, but it's also a man-made disaster as well-both the built environment of urban slums and the social environment of dysfunction and non-functional government are the products of hundreds of years of imperialist exploitation. While similar patterns are seen throughout the world, the US and Haiti have a unique relationship that's been systematically hidden from the American people. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of all is that the tremendous heartfelt outpouring of concern by the American people, a genuine representation of what is best about America, is so utterly disconnected from the historical reality, and so terribly unlikely to make any difference in how that history will almost certainly be replicated, so that countless future generations of Haitians will continue to suffer, not for the sins of their ancestors, but for their exemplary acts.
Paradoxically, while the news coverage is so relentlessly focused on the immediate horror, for most Americans it's left to rightwing opinion-mongers such as Rush Limbaugh-and especially Pat Robertson-to remind them of the true historical context, albeit not by discussing it, but instead by vividly acting it out. When Pat Robertson credits Hatian liberation to a pact with the Devil (and who's a better expert than he on such pacts?), he is accurately resurrecting the roots of Euro-American attitudes toward Haiti that have never been fundamentally reset since the Haitian people pulled off the only successful slave revolution in recorded history.
Over 100,000 people are believed dead after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck near the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, on Tuesday afternoon. The quake buried countless buildings, from shantytowns to the presidential palace. All hospitals in Port-au-Prince have been leveled or abandoned. The United Nations headquarters and the city's main prison have collapsed as well. Thousands of residents are homeless and without food, water, or electricity.
On the ground in Port-au-Prince
Haiti is in a state of chaos, as Kayla Coleman reports for Care2. "The streets...are flooded with the rubble of collapsed buildings and displaced people. ... The earthquake has destroyed much of the already fragile and overburdened infrastructure."
Because all hospitals have been destroyed, there is nowhere to take the injured. According to Coleman, the United Nations says it will immediately release $10 million from its emergency fund to aid relief efforts.
Haiti before the earthquake
And though Americans are now paying attention to Haiti in the wake of this disaster, little to no attention was paid to the "daily chaos and misery" that plagues the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, as James Ridgeway writes for Mother Jones. "It is hard to imagine what a magnitude 7 earthquake might do to a city that on any ordinary day already resembles a disaster area."
Ridgeway also cites a 2006 New York Times report that details how the Bush administration helped destabilize Haiti in the years leading up to the 2004 coup.
Ridgeway writes:
"For the most part, Europe and the United States have continued to sit by as Haiti has grown poorer and poorer. When I was there you could find the children just outside Cite Soleil, the giant slum, living in the garbage dump, waiting for the U.S. army trucks to dump the scraps left from the meals of American soldiers. There they stood, knee deep in garbage, fighting for bits of food. As for the old, they people every street, gathering at the Holiday Inn at Port-au-Prince in wheelchairs, waiting at the doorway in search of a coin or two. They have no social safety net. And nobody with any money-no bank, no insurance company, no hedge fund, no mutual fund-ever makes any serious investment in the country."
Will prevailing attitudes towards Haiti change?
At RaceWire, Michelle Chen writes that Haiti, a place "where buildings have been known to suddenly collapse on their own, even without the help of a natural disaster," was still trying to recover from the severe tropical storms last spring that leveled hundreds of schools and left tens of thousands homeless.
Now the situation is desperate. "There will be an outpouring of sympathy across borders, a spasm of humanitarian aid," Chen writes. But "will there be an attitude shift in the power structures that have long compounded natural disaster with politically manufactured crisis?"
'Supporting the right kind of aid'
For those in Haiti, outside help is crucial. The country is in need of search and rescue volunteers, field hospitals, emergency health, water purification, and telecommunications. To ensure that you are supporting the right kind of aid-"the kind that builds local self-resilience, strengthens the local economy, and fosters local leadership," as Sarah van Gelder details for Yes! Magazine-donate to one or more groups with a proven track record, such as Doctors without Borders, Grassroots International, Partners in Health, and Action Aid, among others.
Hip-hop artist and Haitian native Wyclef Jean has led efforts to help Haiti for years through his charity Yele Haiti. Jessica Calefati at Mother Jones reports that Yele spends $100,000 a year on athletic programs for Haitian children and helps feed 50,000 people a month with food donated by the UN. When Jean received word of the disaster, he immediately acted, sending a "flurry of tweets" for people to donate $5 by texting 501501. He has already returned to Haiti to help.
How you can help
For more details about how you can donate effectively, check out Yes!, Mother Jones,Care2, and The Nation's roundups. You can also watch Free Speech TV's action update video for more information.
GritTV aired a segment on Haiti featuring Danny Glover, Marie St. Cyr, and a performance by the Welfare Poets. The video (below) covers the devastation in Haiti after the quake as well as the state of the country prior to the crisis:
How not to help
For an example of how not to help in a time of crisis, take a look at televangelist Pat Robertson, who claimed yesterday that the quake was Haiti's payback for a "pact with the devil" that slaves made to obtain independence from French colonials. As a rebuttal, Afro-Netizen points out how Haiti's liberation greatly benefited the United States, and Tracy Viselli at Care2 writes that "if there is a god, Pat Robertson is one of the devil's pied pipers."
More coverage of the crisis
For more information about relief efforts in Haiti, what you can do to help, and some historical context, check out the below list of coverage by Media Consortium members.
Video from the Real News Network on how World Bank policies led to famine in Haiti.
Garry Pierre-Pierre of Inter Press Service reports on humanitarian efforts of Haitian-American leaders in New York.
Monica Potts explains why Americans should concentrate on our policies toward Haiti for The American Prospect.
Erin Rosa at Campus Progress writes about Ansel Herz, a young journalist that is on the ground at Haiti.
Video from The UpTake of President Obama's pledge to send aid.
This post is a special report on Haiti and features links to the best independent, progressive reporting by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. For more updates, follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
On Tuesday, the worst earthquake in 200 years struck just off the coast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as The Nation reports. Bringing "catastrophic destruction" to the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, the disaster has spurred relief efforts worldwide. Crises like this are important reminders of how the treatment and protection of refugees must be a part of immigration reform.
Temporary protected status for Haitian refugees
In September of 2009-just one year after Haiti was decimated by four successive hurricanes and tropical storms that affected at least 3 million people-New America Media (NAM) made a prescient call to halt all deportation to Haiti, and grant Haitians temporary protected status (TPS) status in the U.S. "before more Haitians die or are impacted by natural disasters."
Andrea Nill, writing for NAM's EthnoBlog, reminds us it was only ten months ago, in March of 2009 that the Obama administration indicated it would "continue deporting undocumented Haitians," in spite of the critical situation on the ground. Yesterday, Nill argued that not granting Haitian refugees TPS at this point would be "inconsistent with the promises the Obama administration has already made to the people of Haiti." Later in the day, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano responded by stating deportations to Haiti would, indeed, be temporarily halted.
[ED. NOTE: Stay tuned for more coverage of Haiti and relief efforts. The Media Consortium will release a special report compiling our member's coverage of the crisis and ways to help later today.]
Legalize the undocumented; boost the economy
It's a fortunate confluence of circumstance, when doing the right thing could also help our faltering economy. Jorge Rivas of RaceWire highlights a new study on the beneficial economic effects of legalizing undocumented workers through comprehensive immigration reform. The study came about through a partnership between the Center for American Progress and Dr. Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda, associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. The research suggests that legalization would yield $1.5 trillion to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product over a 10-year period, generate billions of dollars in additional tax revenue, increase wages for all levels of workers in the U.S. (the "wage floor") and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
Detention center cover up continues
RaceWire also reveals new developments in the horrific tale of corrupt immigration officials "desperate to conceal" multiple incidents of abuse in Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers. Violations of law include "covering up evidence of gross mistreatment, undercounting the number of detention deaths, discharging patients right before they die, and major efforts to avoid scrutiny from the news media." Reportedly, ICE has made great efforts to cover up detention conditions and cruelty. (Video below).
'Draconian' anti-immigration legislation passed in Mississippi
Rev. Jeremy Tobin of American Forum reports on a piece of "draconian" anti-immigration legislation passed in Mississippi in March of 2008. SB 2988 makes it a felony for an undocumented immigrant to work in the state. The bill includes a waivable fine for employers that cooperate with the prosecution of undocumented workers. SB 2988 oppresses immigrants and weakens the power of organized labor. According to Tobin, one frustrated legislator said that the bill was "making it a crime to work an honest job."
Tobin calls out various organizations that backed the bill. These groups "started out anti-civil rights" and have since "reinvented themselves to be anti-immigrant rights." He also notes that a "disturbing" number of Mississippi Democrats voted for SB 2988.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
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It’s hard to believe, but an estimated 2.6 billion people in the developing world—nearly a third of the global population—still lack access to basic sanitation services. This presents a significant hygiene risk, especially in densely populated urban areas and slums where contaminated drinking water can spread disease rapidly. Every year, some 1.5 million children die from diarrhea caused by poor sanitation and hygiene.
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