Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 18 aout 2020

 Entrepreneur, activist Bernard Fils-Aimé dead at 67

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August 11, 2020

Bernard Fils-Aimé, 67, was an activist and organizer who was a founding member of the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami before pioneering cellular service in his native Haiti. 

As an entrepreneur, he helped pioneer cellular service in Haiti as the chief executive officer of a mobile phone company where he made corporate giving and responsibility the rule rather than the exception, and gave working Haitians access to technology and the chance to get connected. 

And as a retiree, he used his skills as a former assistant dean of students at Miami Dade College to groom Haiti’s next generation by giving them a shot at a college education as chairman of the board of the Haitian Education & Leadership Program, HELP.

But it is Bernard Fils-Aimé’s role as a militant activist and organizer, which eventually led him to become a founding member of one of the most powerful Haitian rights organizations in the United States, the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami, that he was most proud of and will be best remembered for.

“I was at the forefront of the battle to gain legal status for Haitian refugees,” Fils-Aimé told state Rep. Dotie Joseph in May as part of a spotlight on trailblazing Haitians during Haitian Heritage month. “We won many legal battles, which paved the way for the development of the vibrant Haitian-American community in South Florida today.”

Fils-Aimé, who spent his life working to raise the voice of Haitians at home and abroad, died Saturday at the University of Miami Hospital in Miami after becoming infected with the novel coronavirus. He was 67.

“What gave his life meaning, besides his loving family, is he always fought for people’s rights and for communities, especially for Haiti,” said son Karl, 35. “He was an exceptional human being and an even better father. He will be missed dearly.”

Fils-Aimé’s untimely death is not only hitting his family hard but a closely knit circle of friends and collaborators in South Florida and Haiti, the two communities where he and his wife of 41 years, Marise, called home and divided their time after moving back to Haiti in 1995. 

A former president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Haiti, Fils-Aimé often advised his close friend, the late President René Préval, on a number of issues including the development of Haiti’s private sector. Lately, he had spent a lot of time thinking about the country’s political future, its struggling private sector and how he could best influence Haiti’s path.

“He had flawless rationale and the ability to extract the big picture from a huge amount of information or a big event. René appreciated his capacity to reach out to people from all categories and reunite them with a common purpose, which was to strive to make things change for the good of all,” said Préval’s widow, Elisabeth Débrosse Delatour Préval.

As news traveled this week about his death, former employees of his mobile phone company, Communication Cellulaire d’Haïti, S.A. or ComCEL, which was better known by its trademark Voilà before being acquired by Digicel Group in 2012, remembered Fils-Aimé as a caring and generous boss.

“He was really proud at one point because ComCEL/Voilà was the No. 2 organization that had paid the most taxes,” said daughter Erica Brown, 46. “He was proud because it was about providing stability for the betterment of the community.”

Another proud moment came just weeks before the Jan. 12, 2010, Haiti earthquake. In December of 2009, the company’s U.S. subsidiary, Trilogy International Partners, was honored by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Voilà’s corporate responsibility programs, transparent business practices and contributions to the economic development of Haiti under Fils-Aimé’s management. 

“Some would like to see in Bernard two different people,” said Fritz Longchamp, a longtime friend and former Haiti foreign minister who served as chief of staff to Préval during his second term in office. “The militant activist who fought for the rights of the Haitian people and the minority owner of a telecom enterprise. But that was absolutely not the case. For Bernard, it was two sides of one coin. His primary objective was always the wellness of the people.”

Rulx Jean-Bart, a former director of the Haitian Refugee Center, agreed.

“Bernard is a guy, who practically all of his adult life was devoted to the betterment of the Haitian people,” said Jean-Bart, who lives in Miramar. “Whether it was as a student in college in New York, or his fight against Duvalier, he’s been there.”

Recalling the various Haitians organizations that he and Fils-Aimé were involved in to help Haitian asylum seekers win the right to remain in the United States, Jean-Bart said, Fils-Aimé “was a key person, instrumental in a lot of decisions.”

Fils-Aimé was born in Petionville, Haiti, on May 24, 1953. At the age of 13, he moved to New York with his mother to flee the dictatorship of Francois “Papa” Doc Duvalier.

As his children recalled his legacy and pivotal moments in his life on Monday, they said he had several loves: his wife, a good glass of Scotch with his friends and sòs pwa, a popular Haitian bean soup dish. 

They recalled his stories about getting chased while fighting on behalf of farm workers, fighting against the Duvalier dictatorship and deciding to relocate to Miami from New York because he believed “this was going to be the front line for the rights of Haitian immigrants,” said son Gerard, 40.

“We’ve all been to protests with him at Krome when we were young kids,” he added. “He was a freedom fighter.”

In addition to his wife and three adult children, Fils-Aimé is survived by five grandchildren and a host of family and friends. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fils-Aimé’s family said he will be laid to rest in a private ceremony on Thursday. A Catholic Mass in his honor will take place Friday at Saint Charbel in Peguyville, a residential area of Port-au-Prince.

In lieu of flowers, the family asks those who wish to honor his legacy to make a contribution in his honor to HELP, undefined, the education charity that was close to his heart.

Haiti-coronavirus: Jimmy 'Barbecue' Cherizier unites gangs while Moise watches

The Washington Post

Anthony Faiola

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Jovenel Moïse is president of Haiti, but ask the people of the terrified shantytowns who's in charge in this impoverished Caribbean capital, and they'll point to a man called Barbecue.

A former police officer who portrays himself as the savior of the streets, Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier has come to symbolize the accelerating erosion of Haiti’s already challenged rule of law during the coronavirus pandemic. Accused of orchestrating massacres that left dozens of men, women and children dead, he has succeeded in accomplishing the once unthinkable: uniting the warring gangs of Port-au-Prince into a powerful new confederation aimed at what he calls “revolution.”

Daily protests are paralyzing Haiti. Here’s why.

Cherizier announced the alliance on YouTube in June in a powder-blue three-piece suit. His newly formed “G9 Family and Allies” paraded triumphantly through the streets of the capital last month, led by gang leaders and dozens of armed men — both a flagrant violation of coronavirus rules and a warning to all.

On a recent afternoon, Cherizier led a reporter through the run-down neighborhood of La Saline, stomping over festering piles of garbage, barging into one corrugated shack after another, bellowing, “You see the conditions they live in?” as residents cowered.

“This is an armed revolution,” Cherizier told The Washington Post at his headquarters in Delmas 6, a no-go zone where he is hailed as a protector. “We will put guns in the hands of every child if we have to.”

But critics say he’s not targeting the government — he’s going after its opponents. Human rights activists and political opponents say the U.S.-backed Moïse has done little to check the rise of Haiti’s anarchic gangs, at least in part because their growing influence has appeared to serve the president’s interests.

With an apparent goal of becoming the strongman of the streets, Cherizier and members of his consolidated gang are extorting businesses, hijacking fuel trucks and kidnapping professionals and business owners for exorbitant ransoms as high as $1 million.

As he brings Port-au-Prince to its knees, Cherizier is also terrorizing poor neighborhoods where opposition to Moïse runs deep — potentially neutralizing any challenge to his party’s continued rule.

Barbecue expanded his turf through the alliance, controlling all of Port-au-Prince’s downtown and critical cross sections leading to the north and south, and the dense, opposition-dominated slum Cite Soleil that is now living a gang-fueled reign of terror.

Cherizier denies an alliance with Moïse. But in Cite Soleil, victims and human rights groups say G9 gang members have looted and burned down shacks and stalls, systematically raped women, killed at random, and dismembered or torched bodies.

When Cherizier’s men took to the streets in June, witnesses claimed to have seen them ride in the same armored vehicles used by the national police and special security forces. Justice Minister Lucmane Delile denounced the gangs and ordered the national police to pursue them; within hours, Moïse fired him.

Haiti has a tragic history of disasters. Will covid-19 be next?

Moïse’s office initially agreed to an interview but then did not respond. The president has denied ties to the gangs, which he has described as Haiti’s “own demons.” His government says it is seeking a disarmament accord with them.

“We prioritize dialogue, even in our fight with bandits and gangs,” Moïse said in March. “I am the president of all Haitians, the good and the bad.”

There’s a standing warrant against Cherizier for allegedly possessing illegal arms and failing to report for duty — the reason police gave for firing him last year — but it has not been served. Cherizier denies that his gangs have committed violence in the slums. He has not been charged in a 2018 massacre that left dozens dead in La Saline, or any other killings.

But for his long-suffering countrymen, Cherizier’s G9 is evoking the horrors of the Tontons Macoutes, the government-backed paramilitaries that terrorized Haiti for decades under dictator François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude.

“The government has said nothing about [Cherizier’s rise], and the international community has turned a blind eye,” said Pierre Espérance, director of Haiti’s National Human Rights Defense Network. “There is no rule of law anymore. The gangs are the new Macoutes. It feels like there is a manifest will to install a new dictatorship.”

Governments across Latin America have used the coronavirus to harass their opposition, delay or manipulate elections, and consolidate power, undermining democracy in a manner not seen in the region in decades.

The right-wing interim government in Bolivia is accused of unleashing an intensifying wave of repression against its political opposition. Critics say Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele is violating civil liberties with mass arrests of quarantine violators and gang members. Courts controlled by the authoritarian government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro have replaced the heads of opposition parties amid a fresh wave of arrests of journalists and social leaders.

15 babies and children died in a fire at a group home in Haiti run by a U.S. church

“Coronavirus is the perfect excuse for a power grab and authoritarian measures to crack down on political opponents,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank. “This is a regionwide trend, but the consequences are worse in the countries already facing the most dire situations.”

Moïse, 52, won the 2017 presidential election after a 14-month standoff over alleged fraud in a previous vote. Analysts say his base of support is thin amid allegations of government corruption in the petrodollars that flowed for years from Maduro’s Venezuela.

The former business executive was the target last year of protests by students and opposition groups that led to a three-month Peyi Lok, Creole for “country shutdown.”

Businesses were burned, hotels and restaurants shuttered, and thousands of Haitians left jobless. By January, the underpaid national police joined the protests, burning their own vehicles and blocking traffic on the capital’s main arteries.

Moïse has postponed legislative elections indefinitely. The opposition says his term ends in February, but he says he can stay in office a year beyond that.

“There’s no possibility of holding elections while he’s in power,” says Andre Michel, spokesman for an alliance of opposition parties. The opposition is calling for Moïse to resign and a transition government to be put in place.

U.S. officials have urged Moïse to call new elections. But critics say they’ve largely turned a blind eye to his government’s alleged links to the gangs because they value his support for the Trump administration’s hard-line policy against Venezuela’s Maduro.

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) sent a letter to U.S. Ambassador Michele Sison in May denouncing what she called Cherizier’s “politically motivated” death squad.

“There is no real concern for the plight of the Haitians, whether they are being beaten and killed by the president of Haiti,” Waters told The Post. “As long as the president is in our pockets, everything is okay.”

David Mosby, head of the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, met with Haitian police officials this month to discuss the wave of gang violence.

Sison called on “all of Haiti’s actors” to engage in dialogue.

“Rather than pointing fingers,” she told The Post, “our point is to encourage all actors . . . to think about the most vulnerable who continue to bear the brunt of these challenges.”

U.N. peacekeepers fathered, then abandoned, hundreds of children in Haiti: Report

Few nations are as vulnerable as Haiti. The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere has lumbered through decades of misery, finally shedding the yoke of the Duvaliers in the 1980s only to spiral into a gyre of lost potential and repeatedly failed efforts to lift its population out of dehumanizing poverty.

The 2010 earthquake that killed more than 200,000 Haitians and left 1.5 million homeless crystallized the country’s plight, bringing, for a time, an avalanche of international organizations and promises, finally, of transformative aid. But many of the charities have since departed, the transformation unrealized, leaving a mix of resentment and hopelessness as the country has teetered on the verge of anarchy.

Health analysts feared the coronavirus would devastate Haiti. Most believe numbers are higher than the official count of 7,810 infected and 192 dead, but the country’s relative isolation seems to have spared it the worst of the pandemic so far. Still, the outbreak has made chronically underfunded health care here worse — medical staff, lacking protective gear, have failed to show up for work, leaving hospitals operating shorthanded or closing altogether.

Rumors, particularly in rural areas, that symptomatic Haitians are being used as experiments for unproven vaccines have led some to avoid treatment. Doctors say parents are now rejecting regular vaccines for their children in alarming numbers.

“People fear they are being guinea pigs,” said William Pape, head of the government’s covid-19 task force.

The coronavirus crisis has opened a window of opportunity for Barbecue. As a police officer, Cherizier, whose nickname stems from his mother’s locally famous grilled chicken, allegedly led a feared gang that for years was involved in murder, rape, extortion and kidnapping.

Haiti, spared a major coronavirus outbreak so far, now a ‘tinderbox’ set to ‘explode’

While Haitians were locked down, he helped unify street gangs under the G9 Family and Allies umbrella. Gang members began rolling into anti-government hotbeds in sophisticated armored vehicles with automatic weapons and tear gas. The National Network for Defense of Human Rights and witnesses say homes were torched, weapons fired and at least 111 people killed.

Police say they are unable to explain why their vehicles appear to have been used in the operation. They say they are investigating.

In a narrow alley between ramshackle two-story dwellings, Cherizier paced back and forth, alternately shouting or laughing into a succession of cellphones rushed to him by a posse of eager-to-please youth.

He insisted he was not working for the government but to liberate the Haitian people.

“The bourgeoisie, the opposition, the government, they are the problem,” he said. “They call us gangs — they are the gangs! We’re defending the ghetto. It’s live or die here.”

The alliance pushed last month into Cite Soleil. It was here that Lenese Leo, 38, says she was caring for her 8-month-old daughter on July 12 when bullets slammed into their shanty. When the shooting stopped, she said, the infant lay on the floor, bleeding from the head. She hailed a motorcycle taxi to go the hospital, but the child died in her arms.

In Haiti, family members of gang victims often avoid reporting deaths, for fear of reprisal. But Leo and her partner have instead insisted on an autopsy and shared their grief on social media. She says they now get death threats.

“It’s never been like this,” she said. “I’ve lived here all my life. I have never lived in so much fear.”

Faiola reported from Miami.

Program helps new immigrants blend into their communities

Geralde Gabeau, who emigrated from Haiti 26 years ago, started the Boston-based Immigrant Family Services Institute.

Social justice warrior Geralde Gabeau has worked for over two decades advocating for and developing public health initiatives for immigrants, especially for women and children.

But while working on her doctorate degree in strategic leadership several years ago, Gabeau learned something that moved her in a new direction and, in turn, is impacting the lives of thousands of immigrants in the Boston area.

"I came across some articles on immigrant integration and how long it takes for a new immigrant to integrate into the U.S.," she said. "So that really pushed me to research more and realize that it can take five to 10 years for an immigrant to fully integrate and that time means a lot of challenges for families, a lot of barriers to accessibility. And if they are children, most of the time, they are left behind."

That understanding motivated Gabeau to create the Immigrant Family Services Institute five years ago to help reduce the challenges faced by Caribbean, African and Hispanic immigrants in the Boston area. Adopting a "village model," the nonprofit organization provides academic support for children, advocates for immigrant rights, and acts as a bridge for employment, health care and education services. With a staff of 15 and a team of 200 volunteers, IFSI serves about 5,000 clients.

"We embrace the concept of the whole family, which means that we work with children, parents and grandparents," said Gabeau, who emigrated from Haiti 26 years ago. "So when we serve the children, we also serve the family. We also do a lot of educational programming for adults regarding the different issues immigrants are facing. The idea is to facilitate the integration of immigrating to their communities a little faster than usual."

One Dorchester family turned to IFSI for help when the youngest child faced difficulties in school. Restless and unfocused, the 4-year-old girl was having trouble learning and following directions. A friend referred her mother, Alice Therlonge, to the program, and things began to turn around quickly. After enrolling in IFSI's after-school tutoring program, Carla, now 7, is learning to play the violin and thriving in her classes.

"I can tell you this program is a miracle for me," Therlonge said. "She's sitting down and doing the work. She's listening. She does everything they ask her to do. I think the music program really helped her. She really enjoys the violin. She can play 'Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star' by herself. Imagine that!"

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization has moved its tutoring programs online. "She's doing well, just like when she's in the classroom," Therlonge said. "But she does keep asking me when she can go back. She misses her friends."

IFSI also is supporting Boston-area immigrants by identifying social determinants of health and educating clients to make healthy choices. It recently received a grant from the American Heart Association's Social Impact Fund, which invests in enterprises in several cities that are helping to overcome social and economic barriers to health equity.

"When we talk about health, if you don't know what's going on around you, you're going to make poor choices," Gabeau said.

In light of the nation's recent civic uprising and Black Lives Matter movement, staff and volunteers also have been working with the organization's youth on channeling their emotions and educating them on the best ways to express their anger, sadness or fears. The children are encouraged to write, draw or play music.

"Since we are an immigrant organization, anything that affects the community through our Black and brown children affects us directly," Gabeau said.

"We invite them to create something new that could be used as a symbol in the fight against injustice and against racism so that it doesn't follow the same pattern that we are dealing with now in our society."

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Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 12 aout 2020

Panama Proposes Flying Haitian Migrants Home After Clash

By The Associated Press

Aug. 3, 2020

PANAMA CITY — The government of Panama said Monday it has proposed giving some Haitian migrants flights back to their homeland after frustrations boiled over at the remote camps where they are stuck. 

The camps in Panama’s southern Darien province also house some Cuban and African migrants, but about 80% of the 2,000 migrants there are from Haiti. 

Public Safety Minister Juan Pino said Monday he offered improved medical services or repatriation flights to the migrants, who want to travel overland to the U.S. border but cannot do so because of coronavirus restrictions. Over the weekend the migrants protested conditions at the camp, setting afire tents and tossing rocks at Panamanian officials. 

Pino said “some (migrant) representatives said yes, but it is one thing for them to say it and another for them to want to do it voluntarily,” adding “nobody can force someone to get on an airplane.” 

Many migrants hike up through the jungles of Darien from South America, hoping to travel through Central American and Mexico. Many Haitians were already in South America after taking refuge there following Haiti's 2010 earthquake. Economic downturns have motivated them to try to reach the United States.

But some Central American countries have imposed border restrictions to halt the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

U.S. Embassy Statement on Increase in Gang Violence in Haiti

The United States is deeply concerned by the loss of life in marginalized communities as a result of gang-related violence.  We note that armed gangs systematically violate the human rights of residents of communities such as Cité Soleil, La Saline, Bel Air, Martissant, and Village de Dieu.  The United States urges the Haitian government to protect its most vulnerable citizens by countering the proliferation of gangs and by holding the perpetrators of violence and their accomplices accountable.  Violence, corruption, and impunity have impeded Haiti’s development goals and the Haitian people’s aspirations for a better life for far too long.  The United States continues to call for accountability for human rights abuses and corruption, and we reiterate the need for the Government of Haiti to investigate and prosecute those responsible for these acts of gang-related violence.  The Haitian National Police (HNP) continues to face increasing operational pressures and budget constraints; the United States remains committed to working with the HNP to strengthen its capacity to respond to growing security challenges.  Without timely and sufficient funding, the HNP cannot fulfill its public safety mandate to protect citizens.  The United States also continues to provide assistance to promote the development of an independent, credible, and effective judicial sector and to advocate for the strengthening of the rule of law in Haiti.  

 (End of text) 

FANM

Request your vote-by-mail ballot today for the Florida primary elections! Voting from home is easy and safe! Visit miamidade.gov #votefromhome #votebymail

HAITIAN-AMERICAN SOCCER PLAYER KONRAD DE LA FUENTE TO PLAY WITH MESSI, SUAREZ ...

The American striker will remain at FC Barcelona for a further two seasons, with an option for two more and a buyout clause of 50 million euros - rising to 100 million if he joins the first team

Konrad signed his new contract at the Estadi Johan Cruyff, alongside Barça B director Xavier Vilajoana and technical secretary Eric Abidal.

Blaugrana since 2013

Konrad de la Fuente, born in Miami to Haitian parents 18 years ago, arrived in Barcelona at the age of 10 when his father was transferred to the Haitian consulate in Barcelona. He first played for Tecnofutbol and Damm, before joining Barça’s U13B team in the 2013/14 season and playing alongside the likes of Nils Mortimer, Arnau Tenas, Takefusa Kubo, Nico González and Sergi Rosanas. He has played in 11 football teams for the club, and has won league titles with the U15B (2015/16), U15A (2016/17), U19B ( 2017/18) and U19A teams (2019/20). Konrad is a strong, fast and explosive winger, good at one-on-ones, and can play on both wings. Konrad debuted for Barça B under García Pimienta on December 1, 2018, against Valencia Mestalla at the Miniestadi (2-2). In addition, he has played three more games with the second team, in which he scored his first goal in the Segunda B. This season he has played 852 minutes in the league with the U19A team and has scored 4 goals. In the UEFA Youth League, he featured in nine games in the 2018/19 season, scoring a goal on route to an elimination in the semifinals to Chelsea on penalties. Under Víctor Valdés and Franc Artiga he played 5 matches in the group stage, in which he scored three goals against Slavia Prague.

Konrad has been international with the United States at all youth levels since the age of 14. With the U20 team he played in the 2019 World Cup in Poland, where the United States lost in the quarterfinals against Ecuador.

Statements from Konrad de la Fuente

"I am very happy to stay at the best club in the world"

 "It has always been my dream to play for the first team, and that is why I want to stay here - to try to achieve it"

 "The main objective now is to move up to the Segunda División with Barça B"

“Having Garcia Pimienta as coach at Barça B is very good. I have already played under him for the U19B team.”

Broward Health Offers Free Immunizations for Uninsured Children

Fort Lauderdale, Florida – Two Broward Health community health centers are helping children prepare for the school year by offering free immunizations and low-cost physical exams. 

Mobilize to Immunize summer immunizations return, creating even greater access to care for children between the ages of 4 and 18 who are uninsured, have Medicaid, or identify as American Indian or Alaska Native. 

“It’s vital that all children are properly immunized against infectious diseases to safeguard their health and well-being,” said Margaret Lott, M.D., pediatrics, Broward Health Physician Group. “Through Mobilize to Immunize we’re able to provide, in many cases, lifesaving care to some of our most vulnerable children.” 

Broward Health Community Health Services caregivers will provide immunizations against infectious and life-threatening diseases such as whooping cough, measles, mumps, rubella, influenza, Hepatitis B and polio. Human papilloma virus (HPV) vaccinations will also be provided in partnership with the American Cancer Society. 

Immunizations and physicals are available from 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m., July 27 to August 21 at Cora E. Braynon Family Health Center, 200 NW Seventh Ave. in Fort Lauderdale, and Broward Health Pompano Pediatric Primary Care Center, 601 W. Atlantic Blvd. in Pompano Beach. To better meet the needs of the South Florida community, Spanish and Creole communications are available, with additional translation services accessible. 

For more information or to schedule an appointment, call 954-759-7500. 

Trump ready to sign executive orders on evictions, unemployment if Democrats don’t bend

By Steven Nelson

President Trump is prepared to sign executive orders on Friday to revive a moratorium on evictions and the lapsed federal boost in unemployment insurance pay, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said Wednesday.

“By Friday if we haven’t made significant progress and we’re just too far apart, the president is prepared to take an executive action on those two items,” Meadows said in a CNN interview. “The good news for your viewers is if Congress can’t get it done, the president of the United States will.”

Trump repeated the threat — but not the specific date — at a White House press briefing Wednesday night. The president said he was also considering reducing payroll taxes by executive order.

“The Democrats are primarily interested in a $1 trillion bailout of the poorly run states,” Trump said. “And we can’t go along with the bailout money. We’re not going to go along with it, especially since it’s not COVID-related.”

The federal eviction moratorium and a generous $600-a-week boost in unemployment pay expired last month. An estimated 23 million people could face eviction by October, and more than 30 million people are receiving unemployment benefits from states.

Talks on Capitol Hill are moving slowly.

Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin are leading the Republican side of talks with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

Schumer vowed Wednesday to “keep slogging through step by step, inch by inch.” Pelosi has urged Republicans to cave and pass a $3.4 trillion Democratic plan.

Republicans unveiled a $1 trillion coronavirus relief package last week that would give $1,200 stimulus checks to most people, shield companies from virus liability except in cases of gross negligence and misconduct, reduce a federal unemployment supplement to 70 percent of pre-pandemic pay and give schools $105 billion to reopen.

Democrats also support more stimulus checks, and the sides agree they want to continue the recently lapsed moratorium on evictions.

The Democrats, who hold the House of Representatives, largely oppose the GOP liability protection plan and want to continue at the same rate the expired $600 weekly supplement for unemployed people.

The Democratic plan, which passed the House in May, included almost $1 trillion for state and local governments. The Democratic package also would lower federal taxes for wealthy people in areas with higher state and local taxes, such as New York City.

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 7 aout 2020

 The king of Haiti’s dream

How a utopian vision of Black freedom and self-government was undone in a world still in thrall to slavery and racism

Marlene L Daut14 July 2020

After declaring independence from France on 1 January 1804, Haiti became the first state anywhere to permanently outlaw slavery and ban imperial rule. By establishing a land of freedom in a world of slavery, Haiti’s founders – the generals Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Henry Christophe and Alexandre Pétion – challenged the contradictions of the western European Enlightenment, whose proponents had pronounced liberty and equality to be only for white men. ‘I have avenged America,’ proclaimed Dessalines, independent Haiti’s first leader.

To this day, Haitian independence remains the most significant development in the history of modern democracy. The theories undergirding it – that no human beings could ever be enslaved – continue to define contemporary political ideas about what it means to be free.

Despite the Haitian Revolution, much of the credit for the eventual destruction of the transatlantic slave trade and the elimination of Atlantic slavery has gone to French and British abolitionists. The Trinidadian historian Eric Williams complained about this in his groundbreaking book Capitalism and Slavery(1944) when he wrote of the abolitionists: ‘their importance has been seriously misunderstood and grossly exaggerated by men who have sacrificed scholarship to sentimentality and, like the scholastics of old, placed faith before reason and evidence’. Many historians have likewise chosen to forget that Haiti’s fight to end slavery in the Americas didn’t cease when the Haitian revolutionaries declared victory over France.

The 19th-century French anti-slavery humanitarian and historian Victor Schoelcher diminished the importance of the Haitian Revolution when he suggested that the Haitian people didn’t use their newfound freedom to help end slavery elsewhere in the Americas.­ ‘Is it not a shame,’ he admonished, ‘that you have not taken any part in the efforts of Europe for emancipation, that you have not even sent any statement of solidarity or sympathy to the friends of emancipation, and that in this republic of emancipated slaves, there is not even a society of abolition?’ But Haitians did directly interfere with the inner workings of slavery: both discursively, by circulating anti-slavery pamphlets, and materially, by disrupting a key node in the international slave trade – the Middle Passage.

After Dessalines was assassinated in October 1806, Haiti was split into two, with Pétion ruling in the south and Christophe ruling in the north. Even though both states of Haiti had laws declaring that they wouldn’t interfere in the ‘business of other countries’, Pétion provided amnesty, weapons and ammunition to the Venezuelan freedom-fighter Simón Bolívar, who subsequently defeated Spanish rule to create the independent state of Gran Colombia; and both Haitian governments, but especially Christophe’s – who would crown himself king of northern Haiti in 1811 – contributed to anti-slavery struggles by seizing slaving vessels and liberating their captives.

The most renowned of these liberation operations occurred in October 1817. The Royal Gazette of Hayti reported that Haitian authorities had captured a Portuguese frigate near the northern city of Cap-Henry. The ship was on its way from Cape Verde, off west Africa, to Havana when officials from the Kingdom of Hayti took control of it and set free 145 Africans, ‘victims of … the odious traffic in human flesh’. The captives were in ‘an awful state’: many had already perished, and the survivors ‘looked like ghosts ready to die of misery and starvation’. Once ashore in Haiti, they were greeted by a crowd who assured them that ‘they were free and among brothers and compatriots’.

Seven years earlier, the northern Haitian military had captured a different Portuguese slaver carrying two Hausa-speaking children. These so-called ‘nouveaux haytiens’ were as stunned to hear their native language as they were surprised to find some of their ‘former countrymen’ already living in Haiti: ‘It was as if they were meeting once again the parents from whom they had been ripped away.’ Such operations had by that time become common. The northern military intervened to stop the slave trade again on 2 February 1811 when they captured a Spanish ship, the Santa Ana, and liberated 205 Africans shackled in the hold.

Out of revenge, Spanish and Portuguese slavers began to attack Haitian merchant ships and engage in raids on Haitian beaches, seizing men, women and children to sell into slavery. In 1812, a Spanish schooner captured the Haitian brig Poule d’Or, and sold its captain, Azor Michel, and two children on board in Cuba. Azor and the children were returned only after Christophe intervened to request ‘the return of all Haitian subjects who are or may still be detained in Cuba’.

The existence of freedom and independence on the island of Haiti terrified planters and heads of slavery throughout the Atlantic World, including the US president Thomas Jefferson who subsequently punished both states of Haiti by issuing trade embargoes. But Christophe’s success in forcing the return of captive Haitian citizens shows that, despite the precarious position of his Kingdom of Hayti, this monarch was not a powerless figurehead who could simply be pushed around by the colonial powers.

After two centuries of bad press, confronting these accusations against Haitian leaders is important

King Henry, however, wasn’t always recognised as having used his powers for good. Although he was something of a hero during his lifetime to British abolitionists such as Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce, soon after his death in 1820, it would be Christophe himself who would be accused of effectively re-enslaving the Haitian people.

In The Present State of Hayti (1828), James Franklin, a British traveller who had lived under King Henry, wrote that Christophe forced his people ‘to perform that labour which ought to have been performed by brutes’. In 1842, the British Quaker John Candler accused Christophe of having ‘compelled’ ‘bands of men and women … to labour under insufficient rations of food’, causing ‘vast numbers’ of them to die. These were grave charges to heave at the late king.

After two centuries of such bad press – whereby Haitian leaders have been charged with ‘national incompetence’, and the populace has been described as at once ‘progress-resistant’ and of having ‘deep in [their] psyche … a violence that goes beyond all violence’ – confronting these accusations is an important challenge.

As a Haitian American, I feel a responsibility to treat this history right, especially when such damning recitations of Christophe’s rule have been repeated across the Americas. In The Kingdom of This World (1949), the Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier, combining elements of marvellous realism with apocryphal legend, paints Christophe as ‘a monarch of incredible exploits’ who everyday ordered ‘several bulls’ to have ‘their throats cut so that their blood could be added to the mortar to make [his] fortress impregnable’.

Christophe’s story, recorded in histories and plays, poetry and novels, and in journalistic accounts, by his friends and his foes, is filled with enough legends and fables, ambiguities and silences, triumphs and failures to preclude anyone from claiming to set down a definitive version. In fact, the Citadelle erected in 1813 to protect the kingdom from foreign invasion – today a UNESCO World Heritage site – unwittingly symbolises the numerous interpretations available to those who seek to probe Christophe’s life. In the words of the St Lucian poet Derek Walcott, King Henry’s fortress marks ‘the slave’s emergence from bondage’ at the same time as it suggests that ‘the slave had surrendered one Egyptian darkness for another’.

Yet France’s aggression against its lost colony proves that its leaders were far more pharaoh-like than Christophe. In the early 19th century, Napoleon was overthrown twice and, both times, Louis XVIII – who was restored as French king in 1814 and 1815, respectively – following the urges of the former colonists, attempted to ‘reconquer Saint-Domingue’ (as the French called Haiti) and bring back slavery. Indeed, throughout the 19th century, Haiti faced consistent existential threats to its sovereignty from the US too. What almost all previous attempts to write about the vexing reign of Christophe have lacked is recognition that the Haitian king was attempting to create a free and prosperous country in a world hostile to the very existence of people who looked like him.

Historians disagree about Christophe’s origins. Three men who had been, at various times, in his inner circle – Hugh Cathcart, a British agent at Port-Républicain; Colonel Vincent, a French military officer; and Baron de Vastey, secretary to the king – report that Christophe was born on 6 October 1767 on the British island of Grenada. Vastey’s Essay on the Causes of the Revolution and Civil Wars of Hayti (1819) is the most significant account: the only one we know Christophe read and sanctioned.

According to Vastey, Christophe, aged 12, fought in the Battle of Savannah during the American revolutionary war with the French Chasseurs Volontaires, a regiment of French troops of colour from the colonies. By the time widescale slave rebellion broke out in Saint-Domingue in August 1791, Christophe was back in the colony, employed at the Hôtel de la Couronne on rue Espagnole in Cap-Français.

The Jacobins abolished slavery in the French empire in 1794. However, by 1799, Napoleon was determined to restore it as he assumed control over France. When he sent his brother-in-law Charles Leclerc to Saint-Domingue with 20-40,000 French troops in late January 1802, he found brigadier-general Christophe, commander over the city of Le Cap, stern, stoic and inflexible. Christophe eventually had the city burned to the ground in order to prevent French occupation. But in April 1802, convinced by Leclerc that the French had no intention of reinstating slavery, Christophe defected to their side, which would lead to the demise of the great revolutionary general Toussaint Louverture. Soon after, Louverture was arrested and deported to France where he would die in prison.

The Kingdom of Hayti had a beautiful palace that rivalled the most opulent structures in old Europe

After news reached Saint-Domingue that Napoleon had reinstated slavery in Guadeloupe, Christophe became a key member of the indigenous army that would eventually free Haiti. Wary of the fact that Christophe had previously joined the French side, rival general Jean-Baptiste Sans-Souci refused to accept Christophe’s re-integration. In retaliation, Christophe had him executed. This execution has clouded Christophe’s legacy – even if, relatively speaking, it was hardly discussed in a world already suppressing the significance of enslaved people overthrowing their masters.

Despite such disastrous internecine struggles, under the leadership of Dessalines, on 18 November 1803, the indigenous Haitian army defeated French troops at the Battle of Vertières and declared Haiti independent. Given command over the entire military by Dessalines, who had made himself emperor, Christophe later found himself accused by Pétion of contributing to the plot by which Dessalines was killed. Christophe, in turn, charged Pétion with orchestrating the assassination. These conflicts led to the 13-year civil war in Haiti that would be extinguished only once both Christophe and Pétion were dead.

By 1813, the Kingdom of Hayti under Christophe had an entire system of nobility, with hundreds of dukes, counts, barons and chevaliers, as well as a beautiful palace, richly adorned with complex architectural details that rivalled the most opulent structures in old Europe. The construction of this palace, called Sans-Souci – some say in lugubrious recognition of the man Christophe had killed, others say after Frederick the Great’s summer chateau in Germany – led to the charges that, although he proudly proclaimed himself to be the ‘first monarch crowned in the New World’, the Haitian king had merely brought to it old-world despotism.

By 1820, after Christophe’s suicide, the Kingdom of Hayti was no more. In 1833, the US traveller Jonathan Brown visited Haiti, and criticised the late monarch in The History and Present Condition of St Domingo (1837): ‘With the despotic power and a portion of the prospective ambition of the ancient Egyptian kings, Christophe employed vast multitudes of his subjects, gathered from every district of his kingdom, to accomplish the stupendous undertaking which he had planned.’ Claiming to have based his claims on firsthand testimonies, Brown continued: ‘When measures of public necessity or public embellishment required it, the whole labouring population of a district was called out en masse, and made to continue their toil until the work was finished.’

Writing in the 1840s, the Haitian historian Thomas Madiou also described Christophe as having mandated ‘forced labour’ when he ordered that farm workers be ‘attached to the glebe’, meaning that they couldn’t leave the habitations where they were employed. Furthermore, Madiou wrote: ‘The proceeds of this forced labour were used largely to cover the expenses of his government. Property owners were no longer the masters of their income; tax officials seized [their revenues] to fill government coffers.’

In 1812, Christophe had issued a complex series of labour laws called the Code Henry. Yet even with its titular echo of both Louis XIV and Napoleon’s draconian Code Noir and Code Napoléon, respectively, foreigners recognised Christophe’s Code not as a blueprint for a form of forced labour that was simply slavery by another name, but as the greatest work of legislation governing the rights and duties of workers that the world had ever seen: ‘In lieu of wages,’ the third article states, ‘the labourers in plantations shall be allowed a full fourth of the gross product, free from all duties.’ The Code thus described an elaborate system of compensation that much more closely resembled a paternalistic cross between share-cropping and feudalism than chattel slavery.

The British naturalist Joseph Banks wrote: ‘It is without doubt in its theory … the most moral association of men in existence; nothing that white men have been able to arrange is equal to it.’ Banks explained that these codes could prevent worker alienation: 

To give the labouring poor of the country a vested interest in the crops they raise, instead of leaving their reward to be calculated by the caprice of the interested proprietor, is a law worthy to be written in letters of gold, as it secures comfort and a proper portion of happiness to those whose lot in the hands of white men endures by far the largest portion of misery. 

Banks hoped that Christophe’s Code could help ‘conquer all difficulties, and bring together the black and white varieties of mankind under the ties of mutual and reciprocal equality and brotherhood’.

The French anti-slavery historian Antoine Métral echoed the admiration. He referred to Henry’s laws as ‘original beauties’, and the Black American abolitionist Prince Saunders was so enamoured that he had portions of the Code printed in English translation in his Haytian Papers (1816), before relocating to northern Haiti to start a school in Port-de-Paix. Saunders became acquainted with Christophe through Wilberforce, who sent him to Haiti to distribute the smallpox vaccine.

The aim was ‘for every Haytian … to have the ability to become the owner of the lands of our former oppressors’

Christophe was in regular contact with Thomas Clarkson, too. On 5 February 1816, Christophe explained to the renowned abolitionist his plan to institute a public school system:

For a long while, my intention, my dearest ambition, has been to secure for the nation which has confided to me its destiny the benefit of public instruction … I am completely devoted to this project. The edifices necessary for the institutions of public instruction in the cities and in the country are under construction.

To facilitate national education, Christophe created a programme to sponsor foreign artists, scientists, musicians and mathematicians, as well as English teachers, to come to instruct Haitian students, both boys and girls. He set up a Royal Chamber of Public Instruction, appointed a minister of education, and issued an edict mandating that schools would be developed throughout northern Haiti.

While exports – indigo, cotton, sugar and tobacco – of the kingdom’s staples were strong, Christophe also urged Haitians to cultivate wheat and other grains. The goal was to make his country less dependent upon foreign imports. He also created a programme whereby any Haitian could apply to acquire the erstwhile farms of the French planters. The aim was ‘for every Haytian, indiscriminately, the poor as well as the rich, to have the ability to become the owner of the lands of our former oppressors’.

Some of the world’s most storied anti-slavery advocates admired the Kingdom of Hayti, but many of northern Haiti’s foreign inhabitants questioned whether the king’s codes benefited the average Haitian citizen. William Wilson, a British teacher who worked in Cap-Henry, wrote to Clarkson shortly after Christophe’s death: ‘They owed him all that they had. As the founder of their most beneficial institutions, he had done everything for them.’ Yet, ‘If he made good laws, he was the first to violate them,’ Wilson explained. ‘In a word, he was a philosopher.’ A rival journalist from the southern republic, Hérard Dumesle, also claimed that, though the Code described the plan for a remarkably novel society, it was one that ‘only existed on paper’.

In March 1818, the Gazette announced that: ‘All the idle people in the towns and villages have been rounded up and sent to the countryside to engage in the work of farming.’ The Haitian people were assured that preventing ‘idleness’ was merely proof that ‘our august and beloved Sovereign is taking every care to ensure the prosperity of agriculture and commerce’. Some of Christophe’s foreign supporters claimed this harsh hand of ‘kingly power’, as the US journalist Caleb Cushing wrote, had been needed to preserve Haiti’s freedom from slavery and independence from colonial rule in a world determined to see the descendants of Africans fail.

Madiou disputed the claim that instituting feudalism could secure Black freedom. According to him, workers on northern farms received almost no compensation and the farmers themselves, because they had to pay such high taxes to the state, could keep only a quarter of their revenue. For Madiou, this was not the kind of liberty and equality promised by the Caribbean’s first and only modern king, one who had sworn at his coronation ‘to never allow, under any pretext, the return of Slavery nor of any feudal system contrary to liberty and the exercise of the civil and political rights of the people of Haiti’.

In the early 19th century, Haiti was the only example in the Americas of a nation populated primarily by former enslaved Africans who had become free and independent. Other nations, including Haiti’s trading partners, were determined to prevent abolition and their colonies from becoming free, so they refused to recognise Haitian sovereignty. When France finally agreed to do so in 1825, it extracted the astounding price of 150 million francs from Haiti for the act. To preserve slavery in its territories, England didn’t officially recognise Haitian independence until 1838, five years after it abolished slavery. The US refused recognition until after the start of the American Civil War, when most of the southern states had seceded from the Union. Even in the so-called Age of Revolutions, Black freedom in the Americas was not only feared, but reviled.

Understanding the kind of state Christophe tried to create means understanding that the world he lived in was one where the liberty of Black people was everywhere under threat. To deny that diplomatic nonrecognition, the return of slavery and the threat of foreign occupation made governing Haiti complicated is to contest the very force and power of slavery and colonialism. The spectre of Black freedom and self-government in the Americas was so frightening that its realisation brought punishment to Haiti again and again. At the same time, the insidiousness of Atlantic World slave economies was so great that, even though he never did reinstate slavery, the king of Hayti still profited from the institution. Indeed, by trading with the colonial powers, the break with the capitalist order sparked by the initial slave rebellion in Saint-Domingue dissipated into the air.

Still, even though his rule was full of the kinds of contradictions facing every modern state, paradoxically, the end of the Christophean era would lead to a Haiti that was far less free than the one King Henry left behind. No one knows how things might have turned out had Christophe lived, but we do know how things turned out without him. Christophe was adamantly against paying any reparations to the French. And his death opened the door for France to extort Haiti for millions as the price of the very liberty that the Haitian people had already spilled so much of their blood to secure.

Détails

Catégorie : What's up Little Haiti

Création : 15 septembre 2014

 Jeudi, le Conseil de sécurité a tenu, un débat sur Haïti au cours duquel la proposition du Secrétaire général de diminuer progressivement des forces militaires de la Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti (Minustah) a été l’objet de divergences d’appréciations, principalement des pays amis d’Haïti, d’Amérique du Sud. Rappelons que dans son dernier rapport du 29 août dernier sur la Minustah, le Secrétaire général, Ban Ki-moon, avait recommande au Conseil de sécurité de proroger d’un an le mandat de la Mission jusqu’au 15 octobre 2015, tout en proposant un retrait de la Mission en deux temps. Dans un premier temps, il se propose de ramener les effectifs militaires à 2 370 hommes d’ici à juin 2015, soit : le Quartier Général de la force, avec ses éléments d’appui, deux bataillons mécanisés, une compagnie du génie, un hôpital de niveau II et une flotte aérienne propre à assumer les capacités aéroportées voulues. Dans un deuxième temps, la force pourrait être encore réduite, peut-être à un bataillon avec les éléments habilitant voulus, à la suite de l’élection présidentielle en 2015 et de la mise en place d’un nouveau gouvernement, si la situation le permet. Avec ces effectifs plus restreints, la composante militaire n’aiderait les institutions haïtiennes que si la Police nationale n’était pas en mesure de rétablir l’ordre avec l’appui de la composante de police de la Minustah