On Second Thought . . .

Second Responders: Self-Empowerment in Haiti

 In 2000-2001 I worked for the Lambi Fund of Haiti, a spectacular Haitian nonprofit organization committed to the democratic empowerment and self-determination of the Haitian people. I continue to admire Lambi's professional staff and the work they do as the best model of grassroots development I know.

I'll admit that in the wake of the earthquake I've hesitated to name Lambi when people have asked "what can we do?" On their own website, Lambi declares, "we are not first responders. We are second responders." They invite donations--as I have as well--to Doctors without Borders, the Red Cross, and Partners in Health.

(I've also recommended not just donations but pledges to Episcopal Relief and Development, the designated relief agency for the Episcopal Church in Haiti which currently serves more than twenty-three thousand people in refugee camps, according to a letter to ER&D from Msgr. Jean Raché Duracin, Episcopal Bishop of Haiti.)

But Lambi's work continues to be vitally important. It's not just that they "will be there after the relief service providers have departed." It's that Lambi's Haiti staff are already busy organizing that "second response," as they report on their Facebook page. 

 It's important to know that Lambi (the name is the Kreyol word for the conch shell used centuries ago to signal slaves and marrons to the struggle for liberty) is a Haitian organization, coordinated from a small office in Port-au-Prince (which still stands, mesi Bondye!). Their professional staff--who share multiple degrees and decades of experience in development--spend their time in peasant communities in the countryside, organizing democratically collectives that identify their own needs, administer received development funds, and are accountable to their communities as well as to Lambi. Most Lambi projects are directly funded "infrastructure"--peanut and grain milling machines, motorized tillers, avocado seedlings in deforested areas--that enable hard-hit agricultural communities to regain control, quite literally, of the fruits of their labor.

I remember being overwhelmed by the statistics I typed up for a 2001 annual report: some five hundred thousand Haitians had benefited directly from Lambi projects over less than a decade. Almost all the communities involved in Lambi projects had achieved economic self-sufficiency (the breathtakingly ambitious measure of success for a Lambi project in impoverished Haiti) within eighteen months. (Click here for a GoogleEarth map of Lambi's projects across Haiti.)

Compare that to the dismal record of any U.S.-organized "development" fund, or the predatory record of different "mission" groups, or the economic strangulation policies of the World Bank (to which Haiti still owes $38 million in unforgiven debt) or International Monetary Fund (now preparing to lend $100 million to Haiti). 

 Most important is the news Lambi has posted on their Facebook page:  Lambi staff are already communicating with local organizations in rural communities to determine how best to support thousands of displaced Haitians who flee Port-au-Prince daily for the countryside.

Lambi's "second responders" are now the first responders some communities will ever see. Explore their website and consider a pledge!

A Letter from the Episcopal Bishop of Haiti

 Bishop Jean Raché Duracin of the Episcopal Church of Haiti has written to Episcopal Relief and Development designating ER&D as the relief organization through which aid should be channeled for Haiti. Bishop Duracin also pleads that North Americans NOT plan on traveling to Haiti to help just now: "unless they are certified professionals in relief and recovery, they must wait. We will need them in the months and years to come, but at this point, it is too dangerous and too much of a burden for our people to have mission teams here."

Bishop Duracin also writes to members of the Episcopal Church, "the people of the United States and indeed the people of the world that we in Haiti are immensely grateful for their prayers, their support and their generosity. This is a desperate time in Haiti; we have lost so much. But we still have the most important asset, the people of God, and we are working continuously to take care of them."

Please continue to keep the people of Haiti in your prayers, your hearts, and your efforts. Please continue to give generously to www.er-d.org. (To members of St. Paul’s on the Hill: By writing a check to St. Paul's with "ER&D" in the memo line you can participate in our congregational donation to Episcopal Relief and Development.) 

Electronic photos of the murals displayed here--of The Baptism of Christ and The Crucifixion from the Cathedral Saint Trinité in Port-au-Prince--are all that remain; the church was destroyed in the earthquake.

David Brooks's Paternalism Has Already Been Tried in Haiti--and Failed

>In the wake of the devastating magnitude 7.0 earthquake in Haiti, New York Times columnist David Brooks summed up the situation by blaming Haitian culture and calling for the introduction (sic!) of "locally led paternalism" to clean up the mess. (His column was puboished in the St. Paul Pioneer Press under the headline "Let's acknowledge difficult truths.")

The indefatigable Tom Driver of Union Theological Seminary responded with an open letter to Brooks, posted in various places around the Web (here on the Haiti Justice Blog of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti). Pointing out that his column was "so shockingly ignorant of Haitian history and culture and so saturated with the language and ideology of cultural imperialism that no valuable 'truths' remain," Prof. Driver proceeds to set the record straight. His open letter is a deeply needed remedy to the usual stew of condescension and prejudice on offer from much mainstream media.

My own response to Brooks's column was published as a letter to the Pioneer Press. Excerpts from what I wrote there:

"David Brooks apparently isn't ready to acknowledge the most salient and, for many Americans, the most difficult truths of all. [He] wrings his hands (along with the economists on whom he depends) that 'we don't know how to use aid to reduce poverty,' though he admits that micro-aid is a good idea ('vital but insufficient'). What he doesn't get is that all 'aid' is not equal. 'Aid' dollars that came as massive loans with iron 'structural adjustment' chains attached--the sort of austerity requirements no U.S. bank or corporation would ever accept--have strangled Haiti's fragile economy, requiring that scarce resources be dedicated to loan repayments and forcing markets to accept cheap imports that undermine local production."

(That's why giving money to U.S. organizations that export U.S. rice to Haiti is a really, really bad idea. Unfortunately it's remarkably popular in U.S. churches.)

"Any responsible economist should have told Brooks that, but then responsible economists were shown the door during the reign of the neo-liberal 'Washington Consensus.' At length the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have forgiven Haiti's 'odious debt,' but other 'aid' institutions have yet to follow suit."

To give more precision: The World Bank and IMF (known in Haiti as the sponsors in the 1990s of Plan Grangou, "the Starvation Plan") forgave only what they were pressed to recognize as "odious debt." Much of their outstanding "development" loans to Haiti remain on the books, and as Reuters reported on Jan. 21, those institutions have now expressed their magnaminity by rolling back the payment schedules on the outstanding debt for a few years. (The World Bank loan is about $38 million. The IMF is considering a new $100 million loan to Haiti.)

My letter continues: "Brooks admits that Haiti has known its share of 'ruthless dictators, corruption, and foreign invasions,' but argues that's no excuse. What they need is a stern dose of 'locally led paternalism.' The missing link [from Brooks's article]--which accounts for much more of Haiti's present crisis--is that for centuries the mightiest nation in the hemisphere sponsored those ruthless dictators and the corruption of the same oligarchy that still holds the people by the throat, and sent in wave after wave of invasions, all in the cause of paternalism. Every impulse toward self-determination on the part of the Haitian people has been met with immediate antagonism and, eventually, overwhelming violence."

Much of that violence has been carried out by U.N. "peacekeeping" forces, made up of Sri Lankan and Brazilian soldiers (among others), who have made the poorest sections of Port-au-Prince--where exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide has the strongest support--into a fortified prison and who have carried out periodic "raids" on "gang leaders." Normally that has not meant the sort of pinpoint police action that the term "raid" suggests; rather, armored cars have driven around and through Site Soley firing indiscriminately into the shanty neighborhoods. The death tolls have included women and children shot through the walls of their homes. Courageous reporting from the war zone that is Site Soley has proven invaluable. The violence is one reason Haitians are not more enthusiastic about armed U.S. troops coming ashore to "restore order."

In a way, the disastrous earthquake and the continuing disaster of its aftermath are a boon to U.S. policymakers. The U.S. military has effectively taken over operations, blocking diplomatic delegations from Haiti's neighbors (CARICOM) and aid groups (Doctors without Borders) from landing at the Port-au-Prince airport. That leaves U.S. troops in a position for a two-pronged campaign. First, as they deliver aid to wealthier neighborhoods and extract U.S. citizens, they'll also be able to exert the kind of crowd control that will keep the desperately poor people in their place. (Recall that in the much-vaunted 1994 invasion, U.S. officers described their orders as "keeping the people from going up the hill"--into wealthier neighborhoods. The first priority of that invasion was to get Raoul Cedras and his fellow putschists safely out of the country.)

Second, the U.S. troops are already enjoying ample opportunities to pose for "iconic" photographs helping injured and starving Haitians (especially children). Such images of benevolent paternalism both warm American hearts and perpetuate stereotypes of the natives who just can't help themselves without supervision. 

As already mentioned, the international financial instruments that have long imposed their cruel austerity programs on Haiti (now referred to as Plan Lanmo, "the Death Plan") can both extend their grip and, by stretching out the loan repayment schedule, pose as wise, caring benefactors.

Diplomatically, the U.S. and U.N. are already pledging additional support to the upcoming national elections in Haiti--although the electoral council has, in an unconstitutional move, disqualified the largest political party in the country, Aristide's Lavalas, from participation. Expect much heated rhetoric about the illegitimacy of Aristide (who was first smeared in 1990 by a CIA campaign that agent Brian Latell later admitted to Congress was a tissue of lies) and Lavalas.

And, now that the celebrities have thrown their fundraising telethons, expect to see Haiti fade from awareness over the next few months--though the sore needs of the Haitian people will only worsen.

What to do? Read up on Haiti--not only its dramatic history but the real story of two centuries of U.S. antagonism. Press for genuine aid, the cancellation of Haiti's debts, and the payment of reparations from France for the historic crime of slavery. Press for the restoration of Lavalas to the national elections and the return of illegally deposed president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

And give to ongoing development in the country. Episcopal Relief and Development invites ongoing monthly pledges to its Haiti fund: www.er-d.org. 

Aid to Haiti Must Be Only the First Step

"A crisis is a terrible thing to waste." --Stanford economist Paul Romer (later quoted by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel)

The staggering toll of death and human misery in Haiti will no doubt grow as survivors of last week’s 7.0 earthquake continue to suffer the lack of clean water, food, medicine, and electricity. Local emergency personnel were hard pressed to offer any help. The principal base of the U.N. mission in Haiti collapsed and many of peacekeepers were killed or remain missing. Doctors without Borders lost several of the clinics where they have offered free medical care. Haiti’s already dismal infrastructure is made incalculably worse by collapsed buildings and shattered roads. U.S. troops and foreign aid workers confront near-insurmountable roadblocks–-quite literally–-as they try to move desperately needed supplies to the hardest hit areas.

It didn’t have to be this bad. Of course even the wealthiest and best organized U.S. cities are devastated when earthquakes, hurricanes, or floodwaters wipe out whole communities. But any disaster–-and Haiti has experienced more than its share–-is grievously worsened by that country’s lack of basic material and organizational infrastructure that in other places would have been quickly mobilized to help.

This deplorable lack of the most basic “safety net” in Haiti is no accident. Neither is it solely the result of “mismanagement” and a series of corrupt and/or disorganized administrations, though the people along Delmas Avenue could certainly recite a litany of official abuses.

 The great scandal is that a handful of powerful nations–-the United States, France, and Canada chief among them–-have for decades systematically stymied efforts at reform within Haiti, often by the application of spectacular force. The detailed and sordid history of U.S. efforts in the country are well documented. Since the 1960s the U.S. has reliably supported the most repressive regimes, stymied the democratic movement, and twice removed the wildly popular president, former priest Jean-Bertrand Aristide, from office–-first, in 1991, by supporting Army officers (led by a former CIA “asset”) in a coup d’état and second, in 2004, by organizing a covert “contra” army in the neighboring Dominican Republic and then “rescuing” Aristide from it by removing him, by armed force, to the Central African Republic.

Throughout these decades–-and accelerating under President Clinton–-the U.S. tightened the screws, withholding millions in promised aid and mortgaging Haiti’s fragile economy to “onerous debts” to the World Bank and IMF. (Haiti at last won partial relief under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries program, but the U.S. and France continue to press for loan payments that constitute the largest expenditure in the Haitian economy.) In the U.N. Security Council, France and the U.S. pressed for the current U.N. mission that has from its first days been yet another mechanism of torment, charged with an unprecedented series of massacres, rapes, and sexual abuse of Haitian children. (Details and policy recommendations are available at www.haitiaction.net and www.ijdh.org.)

 Haitian activists have looked in vain for any glimmer of hope that the Obama administration will reverse this decades-long punitive history. But up to now, this president has been “audacious” mostly in refusing to grant Temporary Protected Status to Haitian refugees (a policy reversed, on a limited basis, only after the earthquake) or cancelling remaining Haitian debts–-as if in the twisted U.S. moral calculus Haiti still “owed” anything to its historic exploiters. By making her first policy speech regarding the region from the floor of one of Andy Apaid’s notorious sweatshops, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton (photo from www.haitiaction.net) signaled that the future Washington sees for Haiti is the expansion of the sweatshop sector that enriches a tiny elite and keeps cheap goods–-Gap clothing, Disney merchandise, baseballs–-flowing into the U.S.

Obama’s promises of massive relief for Haiti are welcome–-and long overdue. We must press our government to take this catastrophe as the occasion for a decisive change of course. The current mobilization of attention, compassion, and aid must be only the beginning of restoring to the Haitian people the dignity that decades of antagonism and exploitation have tried to strip away.

Haitians on a Precipitous Slope

A Memory

On my first visit to Haiti in 1995 I stayed in a "mission house" in Petionville, the rich section of Port-au-Prince, run by a North American couple. In what had been an elegant resort home belonging to a wealthy Haitian family before the dechoukaj, the democratic "uprooting" of 1986, these missionaries welcomed a constant flow of North American visitors, many of them clergy; in our case, a human rights attorney, a college professor-activist, and a translator. The home was elegant, clean, and open on two sides to the bracing Caribbean breezes (though sliding doors could quickly be shut against sudden downpours). A tall concrete wall, stuccoed and brightly painted, separated the leisure of this retreat from the current of human traffic just outside, where ti machann peddled stubs of charcoal, sparse handfuls of vegetables, and pieces of freshly slaughtered goat and boys pressed all their charms into duty to invent entrepreneurial proposals that would have made Horatio Algiers marvel. To call them "beggars," as some blans did, vastly underestimated their creativity.

The house was of necessity a split-level, built onto a steep hillside. To go to dinner each evening we stepped out any of several doors on different levels onto a precarious slope of plastered cement--obviously poured to keep the earth beneath from washing away in the next torrential rain--and loped down to a picnic table set against the lower wall of the property. Looking down over that wall, one saw miles of Port-au-Prince drop away precipitously, making it all too easy for inhabitants literally to look down on millions of their neighbors.

I saw the same dangerous slopes everywhere, dropping away from the wealthy houses that lined paved streets down into ravines and canyons that plunged down into unseen depths. And everywhere beneath those houses I saw the homes of the people who worked in them--cleaning them, cooking food for their owners, selling them fuel and vegetables and lottery tickets. Staring at a particularly terrifying vertical heap of concrete blocks, cardboard boxes, and scraps of tin clinging to the side of a cliff, I asked my guide, "what do you call these?" meaning, I suppose, what's the Kreyol word for "slum"? "That's a neighborhood," she answered. "People have their homes here. They raise their children here." She was trying, I realized, to point out that in Haiti, my perceptions were the anomaly.

There was nothing romantic about those "neighborhoods." To the contrary, one of the principal findings of our investigation was that those scrabbled-together conglomerations of the flimsiest of materials, those "homes" that afforded such poor protection against rainstorms and hurricanes, afforded even less shelter from the organized rampages of FRAPH. That was the name for the armed thugs, culled from police and former Army units and mobilized (at the inspiration of a CIA agent) by "Toto" Constant, who systematically moved through poorer neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince--and yes, even "up here," our guide insisted--by night and sometimes, brazenly, by day. In units of six to eight men they would enter homes, beat and rape women, terrify and torture children, and kill men. Judging by the numbers of rapes and assaults reported the next morning--a scant fraction of actual assaults, since the reports had to be made to police officers who, likely as not, were participants in the assaults--we calculated that each squad would have to move very quickly and methodically through each neighborhood in an eight-hour shift. 

The Crisis Today

Now many of those neighborhoods have collapsed as an unprecedented 7.0 magnitude earthquake has shattered Haiti, sending walls of rubble and dirt and iron sheets tumbling down canyon sides, taking families with them. The presidential palace and at least one hospital are in ruins. Hundreds have died and the death toll will surely mount in the coming days. So will official pronouncements of compassion and promises of aid from U.S. government officials.

Talk is cheap. So far as the historical record goes--in Haiti, as for Native American communities (who recently were forced to settle their pathbreaking lawsuit against the U.S. government)--U.S. talk is a tissue of lies. The ten million promised in 1995 to fund an impartial investigation of the 1993-94 terror campaign never materialized; tons of relevant documentation seized by U.S. forces when they invaded Haiti in 1994 have never been returned to Haiti to assist prosecutions. Meanwhile the U.S. has sponsored yet another coup d’état against the democratically elected president (in 2004) and turns a blind eye to massacres carried out by U.N. forces in the slums of Site Soley. 

A devastating earthquake provides Haiti--at most--another fifteen minutes of fame; more to the point, it provides U.S. officials a photo opportunity to pose as Haiti's friends. But the disaster of the last two centuries-and-counting was not natural, it was carefully plotted and executed from Washington. From the time of Duvaliers on, Haitians have recognized that they serve as Washington's Caribbean "laboratory" for ever more exotic and inhumane experimentation. The constant exploitation of Haiti's people and resources has forced the country's poor majority to live in the daily jeopardy of those cliffside "neighborhoods" and stymied the most basic efforts at reform.

What Haiti Owes

The World Bank and IMF have added Haiti to their program for "Heavily Indebted Poor Countries," effectively extending Haiti's presumptive international debt--which now consumes up to 45% of the nation's GDP--into an indefinite future. But as the Jubilee 2000 campaign and activist Randall Robinson tirelessly work to remind the world, that "debt" was racked up by the dissolute tyrants "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvalier, with the connivance of the United States. And that debt only adds to the accumulated misery of centuries of slavery (under the Spanish, then the French) and punitive economic sanctions (under the U.S., enraged by the effrontery of mere slaves to claim freedom for themselves).

Haiti owes the world nothing. The best way to help Haiti today is to demand an immediate cancellation of all Haiti's presumed debts. Actual delivery of unrestricted aid money--to the elected government, not to U.S.-operated NGOs who continue to profit off the mission industry in Haiti like leeches on a bleeding body--would be a good second step.

Most urgently needed in the present catastrophe is aid from reliable, established, and large-scall aid organizations--like the American Red Cross and UNICEF.

Trustworthy organizations working to support genuine economic development and popular democracy in Haiti include  

The Lambi Fund of Haiti

Fonkoze

Partners in Health--Haiti (Zanmi Lasante)

Doctors without Borders

Hats off to the popular democratic movement in Haiti

Chapo a ba a pep Ayitien-la!

  Jan. 1, 2010, marks the 206th anniversary of Haitian independence--an event of breathtaking significance in world history: the first successful slave revolt that established the first free black republic in the Western hemisphere. It was also an event that enraged the United States, which has threatened Haiti's independence ever since through economic, political, and military pressure. This date also marks the sixth anniversary of the brazen coup d'etat that removed the popular elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, from power. (On the ignominious role of George Bush's administration--which orchestrated the "Cannibal Army" and other terrorist groups and then arranged Arisitide's kidnapping to "protect" him--see Randall Robinson's An Unbroken Agony; and my columns at The Witness, calling attention to the U.S. role in the coup; marveling at the ease with which U.S. media and churches subsequently accepted the government line and proceeded to "move on"; and insisting that until and unless the U.S. reverses its anti-democratic course, the vaunted rhetoric of bringing freedom to the world rings hollow.)

Since the coup d'etat, Haiti has been occupied by a UN "peacekeeping force" that has operated largely to keep the teeming population of Site Soley inside a fortified ghetto and to punish them--by infamous massacres--for massive demonstrations of support for their banished president. Those demonstrations show the unwavering political will of the vast majority of Haiti's people, which gives the lie to sham elections (in which the U.S.-supported government has simply outlawed the majority party) and the official narrative of progress. The "progress" supported by the Bush and now Obama administrations--and by the U.N., where Haiti's former colonial masters hold sway in the Security Council--is the maquiladorization of the country, most recently evangelized by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from the floor of an infamous sweatshop. (Her husband is now the U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti, putting a happy face on the policy of economic reduction.)

For current information and analysis:

Haiti Support Group (based in England)

Haiti Action Net (based in the Bay Area)

Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti

Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network

Welcome from Neil

Welcome to my blog! Here I intend to offer occasional commentary on matters of faith, politics, and critical thinking. (Are you sure you want to be here? Check my "Disambiguation" page.)