Its great to know what the truth is.
.-= keepingmumsane´s last blog ..Wordless Wednesday =-.

The plain facts of the matter are that the US OWES Haiti, big time! Our oppression of that country goes back over 200 years. When slaveholding president Thomas Jefferson paid a few million bucks to Napoleon Bonaparte for the Lousiana Territory, the money was in part, intended to offset the costs of Bonaparte’s vicious, brutal attempts to put down the Revolution in Haiti. Haiti’s revolution was truly the first egalitarian revolution of the modern era.

The Haitian Revolution was consciously modeled on the revolutions that gave both Jefferson and Napoleon their respective heritages. But “Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite” had its limits. A black slave revolt in Haiti scared the crap out of Jefferson; it was his ultimate nightmare, his “fire bell in the night.” It conjured visions of Cinque, Gabriel Prosser, and hundreds of other enslaved African men and women slave rebels of enormous courage and intelligence, who unlike Massa Tom himself, were willing to take up arms against their oppressor and die rather than live in bondage. Jefferson would have given up every freedom he described so rhapsodically in his contrived, though elegant, prose if doing so would have guaranteed that he would never awaken to find his plantation on fire and his field hands with a knife at his throat. To this day the best account of the Haitian revolution is The Black Jacobins, by CLR James, a great if under-appreciated historian.

The US response to the earthquake was predictably to give priority to “securing” the landing strips so that our troops could disembark in front of planes carrying aid shipments! If you care to get an idea of what is ahead for the people of Haiti, read Naomi Klein’s masterpiece, The Shock Doctrine, especially the chapters on Katrina. For the most vile and rapacious among us, a “natural” disaster in Haiti is just an economic opportunity in disguise. Tsunami, Katrina, Haiti.

By all means, please contribute to the relief effort that Jake recommends, they are good people. We have a lot of amends to make to the people of Haiti. It ain’t charity, it’s reparations. But, tax deductible nonetheless.

And, don’t get me started on the French!

Even last week when HMBANA released their “urgent call” for breast milk donations, I sort of rolled my eyes and wondered how they’d been foolish enough to even hit publish on that press release. The one thing I am pissed off about, though, is why that one NICU baby on the Comfort who doesn’t appear to have a mother can’t at least get the donor milk that’s already there. It makes no sense to allow the milk that’s already made it to Haiti and been screened to go to waste.

And I second your recommendation for Edwige Danticat’s book. I have a connection to Haiti because my husband is Haitian and his mother was born and raised there. He does have some family still there, but thankfully everyone is alive and well.