BARACK OBAMA CONGRATULATES JOE BIDEN
I could not be prouder to congratulate our next President, Joe Biden, and our next First Lady, Jill Biden.
I also couldn’t be prouder to congratulate Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff for Kamala’s groundbreaking election as our next Vice President.
In this election, under circumstances never experienced, Americans turned out in numbers never seen. And once every vote is counted, President-Elect Biden and Vice President-Elect Harris will have won a historic and decisive victory.
We’re fortunate that Joe’s got what it takes to be President and already carries himself that way. Because when he walks into the White House in January, he’ll face a series of extraordinary challenges no incoming President ever has – a raging pandemic, an unequal economy and justice system, a democracy at risk, and a climate in peril.
I know he’ll do the job with the best interests of every American at heart, whether or not he had their vote. So I encourage every American to give him a chance and lend him your support. The election results at every level show that the country remains deeply and bitterly divided. It will be up to not just Joe and Kamala, but each of us, to do our part – to reach out beyond our comfort zone, to listen to others, to lower the temperature and find some common ground from which to move forward, all of us remembering that we are one nation, under God.
Finally, I want to thank everyone who worked, organized, and volunteered for the Biden campaign, every American who got involved in their own way, and everybody who voted for the first time. Your efforts made a difference. Enjoy this moment. Then stay engaged. I know it can be exhausting. But for this democracy to endure, it requires our active citizenship and sustained focus on the issues – not just in an election season, but all the days in between.
Our democracy needs all of us more than ever. And Michelle and I look forward to supporting our next President and First Lady however we can.
Barack Obama
BERNIE SANDERS CONGRATULATIONS
Bernie Sanders: "I want to congratulate all those who worked so hard to make this historic day possible. Now, through our continued grassroots organizing, let us create a government that works for ALL and not the few." https://abcn.ws/3n2llHX
Haiti : Vandal Knocks Down Dessalines Statue In Cap-Haitian
HAITIAN TIMES
A vandal knocked down a statue of Jean-Jacques Dessalines at La Place de Notre-Dame in the city of Cap-Haitian, Thursday Nov. 4th, smashing the historic monument.
Multiple residents said the suspect, Lucien Calixte, suffers from a mental illness. When officials interrogated him, the 40-year-old struggled to answer or give a motive.
Other historic sites and monuments have been vandalized in the Northern Department. The Catholic Church of Milot, which served as the Royal Chapel during King Henry Christophe’s reign, was set on fire last April.
March For Murdered Student Draws Hundreds Protesting Impunity
HATIAN TIMES
More than 100 classmates of murdered student Evelyne Sincere took to the streets in Port-au-Prince Thursday (Nov. 5) to ask for justice.
Evelyne Sincere, a high school senior, was kidnapped last week. She was dead in a garbage dump Nov. 1.
Students at Jacques Roumain High School, the school Sincere attended, organized the march. Joined by family and hundreds of other supporters along the way, the protesters walked from Fontamara 43 to the Ministry of Justice, where they asked officials to keep working on the case.
The students plan to march again next week, according to Panel Magik.
A HAITIAN DOCTOR IS WORKING AROUND THE CLOCK AGAINST CORONAVIRUS
Haitian times
Doctors, nurses and hospital employees across New York City are on the frontlines of the war against the coronavirus pandemic, which has now taken thousands of lives and infected every borough.
Dr. Tamara Moise, a Haitian-American emergency room doctor who opened the first Black-owned Urgent Care Center in Brooklyn, has been working around the clock to help save lives from the deadly virus.
Dr. Moise splits her time between the emergency room at Brookdale Hospital Medical Center and the Urgent Care she owns on Church Avenue, working tirelessly to help patients that are increasingly showing up more and more sick.
She works about 4-6 shifts in the emergency room each month, averaging about two shifts each week. She then spends the rest of her time helping patients at the Urgent Care, hoping to relieve some of the load felt by emergency rooms across Brooklyn. Her co-owner also works at a hospital and the two split time at the Urgent Care, doing their best to see everyone that comes in.
At the hospital, Dr. Moise said they’re now seeing less patients due in small part to recent governmental efforts to keep people at home and lower the infection rate. But each of the patients that does decide to come to the emergency room are showing up extremely sick, even “deathly ill” she said.
“Even though it’s less people, it’s a lot of resources and it’s very, very sick people. I’m in the hood, so it’s sick people. We are not a healthy population. It’s a very tough situation because I’m in Brooklyn, in the Brownsville and East New York Area. We get Haitian patients here and a lot of West Indians. Unfortunately, our community is not the healthiest, sometimes due to a lack of resources and other reasons,” Dr. Moise said.
“The problem is that because we have such high rates of diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, and heart disease, we’re the ones that suffer a lot from this because the coronavirus attacks the people that have those medical problems especially, so it’s tough.”
Dr. Moise’s on-the-ground assessment has been proven true in recent days by dozens of reports from across the country showing that Black communities are being hit particularly hard by coronavirus.
Data from communities in Milwaukee, Detroit, New Orleans, Chicago and New York released this week shows Black people are bearing the brunt of the virus due to a variety of health conditions endemic to communities of color. During a White House press conference on Tuesday, Dr. Anthony Fauci spoke passionately about how staggering it was to look at the data and see how the virus was disproportionately killing Black people across the country due to longstanding systemic healthcare issues.