The Haitian
Lawyers Leadership is a Haitian-led capacity building
organization that brings together a network of lawyers, artists,
students, Haitian activists, cultural experts, workers and human
rights organizations, advocates, government officials and progressive
radio, press and media outlets to support and work cooperatively
with Haitian freedom fighters and grassroots organizations promoting
the civil, human and cultural rights of Haitians living at home
and abroad.
Since its founding by pro-democracy and human rights activist
attorney and performance poet, Ezili Dantò in 1994, the
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network has:
1. Supported those who are working
to institutionalize democracy and the rule of law in Haiti;
2. Written a judicial reform agenda for Haiti;
3. Assisted in countering the corporate media's mass disinformation,
fabrications, colonial narrative and smear campaign against the
Haitian people, their 506-year struggle against Euro/US enslavement,
dependency and containment-in-poverty;
4. Promoted solidarity amongst
the world's victim of Empire as well as called for a true pan-Americanism
hemispheric agenda that is inclusive of the masses;
5 . Were the first to assist in drafting and promoting a procedure
for Haitians living abroad, who were born in Haiti and have not
renounced their Haitian citizenship, to be able to cast their
votes for local and national elections in Haiti. (A concern that
still remains an HLLN priority);
6 . Assisted in drafting and in promoting a dual citizenship law
in Haiti. (A concern that has now been superceded
by other
HLLN priorities);
7 . Promoted Haiti as the first to struggle for, not only Pan-African
solidarity, but also Pan-Americanism in that Haiti was the first
to put "Liberty-and-equality-into-application" when the U.S. Constitution
was still declaring Black people as 3/5ths human; and as Haiti
was the first, in this Western Hemisphere to help liberate five
Latin American countries from the shackles of slavery and Empire;
and
In, general, the Haitian Lawyers Leadership is an organization
dedicated to establishing the Haitian people's:
- right to life
-to dignity
- to a non-Pepe education
- to eat
- to clean water
- to live free from state-sponsored terror
- to health care
- to passable roads
- to social inclusion
- to develop their own domestic economy
- to choose their own leaders
- right to travel
-to equal protection and civil rights abroad, and not to be automatically
repatriated or subject to indefinite detention;
- the right to establish a Haitian system of justice and rule
of law in Haiti without organizations, like IRI, NED, USAID, U.S
Embassy, European Union or others, imposing phony civil society
fronts, arming Haitian mercenaries, or financing opposition Haitian
press, media and radio outlets expressly to undermine Haiti's
democratic efforts and empowerment of the mass electorate.
- the right and respect for the one-person-one vote principle
without such foreign and dollar diplomacy intervention
-the right to use Haiti's
resources to help the passport-less Haitian peasant
and urban dweller
-right to protect Haitian agriculture from fraudulent
free trade globalization policies
The Haitian Lawyer's Leadership
also stands for:
Respect for the Haitian people's uniquely Haitian and Afrocentric
culture;
Respect for Vodun and the freedom of religion,
and most of all,
The Haitian Lawyers Leadership is dedicated to mobilizing
the entire Haitian population, of all hues, creeds, classes and
political affiliations, to LOOK OUTWARDS TOGETHER in order
to break the Euro/U.S cycle of debt, dependency and foreign domination,
(started with the 1825 Haitian reparations paid to France and,
before that, with ecclesiastical colonialism,) that traditionally
foments chaos, empass, incites violence and strums Haitian division,
polarization, fratricide, and, that is primarily responsible for
the containment-in-poverty the entire Haitian populist has had
to endure and the, now, 33+ violent Coup D'etat/regime changes
the Haitian people have had to survive, endure and overcome.
In
1926 during the first US occupation of Haiti, Normil Sylvain observed:
“I know they throw
the history of Haiti in our face – its long tissue of
revolutions and massacres. Yet the American war with the Cacos
killed more
people than 10 or 20 revolutions put together; it devastated whole
regions
and ruined the cattle of Haiti, as veterinary experts can testify
if they are
honest. Revolutions were fomented by foreigners – English,
French, American,
Dutch traders – who risked nothing, and always profited.
Loans which dealt
rather in human lives than in merchandise were made at rates of
1,000 per
cent and those who thus enriched themselves overthrew any government
that was not subservient to them.”
–excerpt from a letter written by Dr. Normil Sylvain, a
Haitian, in 1926 to
Emily Balch who led a delegation of the Women’s International
League for
Peace and Freedom to Haiti to observe the effects of the US occupation.
Not much has changed in terms of the Euros and Americans inciting
violence in order to profit in Haiti and rectify the humiliation
Haitian handed the French in 1804. The situation in Haiti, since
the US-imposed Latorture regime, followed by the occupation of
Haiti by the UN in 2004, in terms of Haiti security, human rights,
economy, the judiciary have become 10 to 20 times worst than it
was when Haiti was un-occupied by foreigners.
July 28, 2010 shall mark the 95nd
anniversary of the first US invasion of Haiti by US Marines in
1915. The Marines occupied Haiti for 19-years, until 1934. One
of the first things the Marines did was steal all the gold out
of the Haitian treasury, packed it on a boat and sent it to New
York for deposit in the City Bank. In 2004, the first thing the
US Marines did as they took over Haiti, to later hand it over
to UN troops, was to close Haiti's medical school, turn it into
military barracks and a prison for Haiti's Black youths.
HLLN's basic mission and vision is encapsulated as follows:
All human beings
are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
"It is terribly cruel, grossly repugnant, inhuman
and uncivilized for any human being, due to their nationality,
Black race or revolutionary legacy to be forcibly incarcerated
at home, by international laws and their applications solely to
Haitians. Haitians are abused, coerced and forced to live without
the freedom of association with other human beings worldwide and
prevented from asserting the human soul's basic thirst to travel,
expand or merely to witness Nature's global vastness, majesty
and boundless beauty.
No human being is an alien. No law is justified that works to
contain a nation of millions of Blacks on an Island for more than
two hundred years because said people broke their US/Euro enslavement
and are a bad example to other freedom lovers worldwide. Haitians
have suffered enough isolation. There should be one Hemispheric
Americas passport in addition to the nation-state passports. This
would be true globalization.
Besides
control of their own lands, seas and territory, food sovereignty,
the right to travel freely, the freedom of association with
other Haitians and other human beings worldwide - fair and equal
access to world markets, loans, financial credits, the world's
cultures, religions; fair and equal access to observe and absorb
Nature's majesty, grace, beauty and divinity; the right to live
in dignity without local governmental repression or international/foreign
interference; access to clean water, clean air, affordable housing,
living wages, freedom of religionas well as, opportunities
for fair and equal employment and basic health care - these, are
basic human rights for Haitians, not charity.
In Haiti, a Haitianist-designed education, legal and economic
system to promote and protect Haitian society, sovereignty, spirituality,
Vodun psychology, art, music and culture are a Haitians' birthright.
The Haitian peoples' basic human, political, economic, property,
travel, cultural and civil rights ought not be systematically
eviscerated in the name of "free trade, justice, democracy
or good governance" by the so-called "international
community," or, systematically undermined
by any foreign-designed and implemented "reform" or
World Bank/IMF/IFC projects. Ezili Dantò,
Founder and President, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, March
1995
The Internationals, these poverty pimps, who, as Haitian
Dr. Normil Sylvain said of their
counterparts in 1926, risk nothing and always profited, have
landed in Haiti in this 21st century via-the 2004 Bush Regime
Change and second US/Euro occupation.
- "It is organized violence on top which creates individual
violence at the bottom. It is the accumulated indignation
against organized wrong, organized crime, organized injustice
which drives the political offender to his act." --Emma
Goldman
- "If
you have come here to help me then you are wasting your
time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound
up with mine then let us work together." -- Lila
Watson
******
Under cover
of humanitarian aid and helping a failed
state, like in the days of the old Christian missionaries,
these poverty pimps are now saviors. Never mind that these same
International saviors forced Haiti's 2004 chaos and destabilization
through withholding life-saving loans and credits, the deployment
of a barrage of
negative media assaults and by militarily overthrowing
Haiti's fledging democracy. A new slavery model to fulfil Leclerc's
genocidal imperative is under way. Never mind that
Haiti's miserable socioeconomic condition and "history of
violence and instability" is formented by Western imperialism
and need to dominate and profit from Haiti. The avowed international
philanthropists for Haitian welfare are freely privatization,
robbing,
looting, pillaging and fleecing Haiti
out of its natural resources: maintaining free trade not fair
trade, slave-wage cheap labor for
US and Brazil's use (and, to
a lesser extent the Latin American powers of Argentina and Chile),
taking over Haitian territory, including the Windward passage
through Haiti's Mole St. Nicholas, controlling Ile de La Tortue
and proposed new transshipment
oil trade at Fort Liberte while
looting
Haiti's oil -onshore and off-shore
- in La Gonave, the Gulf of La Gonave, Iles Cayemites and throughout
central Haiti (in the area of Hinche/Cerca-La-Source).
Their artificial legal entities (transnational corporations) are
exploiting, without accountability to the disenfranchised Haitian
people or concern for the environmental effects - through the
barrel of the UN's international guns- Haiti's deep water ports,
Haiti's gas reserves near Acquin, Haiti's gold mines, iridium
deposits, uranium deposits, underwater treasures in Ile-à-Vâches
and other locations, privatizing-to-foreigners Haiti's State owned
companies and assets and further displacing the passport-less
Haitian peasant and urban dweller with UN occupation, checkpoints,
repressions and police raids that ultimately rob Haitians of not
only their freedom, dignity and liberty but out of prime and oceanfront
properties, et al. The Coup D'etat countries of the US, France
and Canada are further containing the Haitian people in indefinite
detention, building child prisons instead of schools and crushing
a starving, systematically discriminated, abused and deprived
nations under endless World Bank/IMF debts and calling this "democracy,
justice and development." (Haiti's
Holocaust and Middle Passage Continues;
The Haiti Forum 2009, The
Two most common neocolonial storylines about Haiti
and, Ezili
HLLN's proposed solutions to create new paradigms.)
*
"I don't know why it is...but since the beginning of time
Haitians have
been suffering" --- Haitian
migrant, 2009
* 500 lane depi w (blan kolon) vle efase n. Jodi a ou vle m
kwè se
sèl ou ki ka sove n --- Edike
from Daniel 'Dadi' Beaubrun's Lataye (buy
album)
[English - "For 500 years the whites (settlers/colonists)
have tried to erase us. Today they want us to believe they're
the only ones who can save us" --- Edike
from Daniel 'Dadi' Beaubrun's Lataye (buy
album)]
*****
Haiti, because it is Black
and was founded on the denial of Euro/US enslavement, Bourgeois
Freedom and human beings as mere labor-for-profit tools,
has no major allies on this planet. Cuba, Venezuela, Libya, the
African Union and the others who are natural sympathizers, are,
like most of the 192 nation members of the UN, side-stepping or
existing on the sufferance of the five veto-wielding world powers
and thus are too busy with survival issues of their own to further
incite the wrath and might of the post-World War II powers and
their client states. Haiti is a collective human mirror vividly
detailing the measure of grace, humanity, compassion, unselfishness
and civilization there is in this world without the force of arms
or an ally with nuclear, trade and economic power at your back.
It is organized
violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom.
It is the accumulated indignation against organized wrong, organized
crime, organized injustice which drives the political offender
to his act. To condemn him means to be blind to the causes which
make him. I can no more do it, nor have I the right to, than the
physician who were to condemn the patient for his disease. You
and I and all of us who remain indifferent to the crimes of poverty,
of war, of human degradation, are equally responsible for the
act committed by the political offender. --Emma
Goldman
An international crime -
murder
and mayhem - is in progress
in post-2004 Haiti - led by the US, Canada and France with Brazil
as the "black?" token head militarily controlling Haitian
territory - peopled in humanitarian imperialism of more than 10,000
NGOs/charitable organizations supporting the selfish and fearful
minority Middle Eastern elites exercising power so as not to become
victims of power themselves, forming a shadow government enchaining
Haiti's upward progress, human rights, self-determination, food
sovereignty, right to fair trade, fair wages and Haiti's use of
its own natural resources for its people's welfare and domestic
development.
The crime is obscene no
matter that some of these Internationals have good intentions.
For essentially, the granting and administration of World Bank/International
Financial Institution credits, loans, USAID projects and other
international foreign aid endeavors are vehicles for exclusion,
for financial colonialism, for the reproduction of the status
quo's privileges. The Internationals and their foreign aid do
not improve the lives of the Haitian majority. Rather, their bourgeoisie
freedom work
increases inequality, fosters dependency,
paternalism, racism, ethnocide(forced assimilation/ethnic cleansing)
and mental colonization. As long as the Internationals, with no
public responsibility or accountability to Haitians or Haiti’s
long term well-being, directly and indirectly, impose famine through
fraudulent free trade policies that destroys Haitian food sovereignty,
gain power through coup d'etat, preside over an over-militarized
Haiti that denies the people's voice, Constitutional governance,
self-determination and stability, than their imposed-presence,
for native and Diaspora Haitians with no stake in their hegemony,
shall continue to be objectionable. They are but the triumph of
power over truth, justice, grace and humane co-existence.
The
"Men Anpil Chap Pa Lou" Haitian Lawyers Leadership Working Committee
members are:
Picard Losier, LLM, Taxation; JD, Licensed NY
1984 & PA, 1981 Maguy Duteau, Esq., NY, 1988 Bob Celestin, Esq, Licensed NY 1985 Lionel Jean Baptise, Esq, Licensed IL, 1991 Ulrick Gaillard, Esq. Darwin Beauvais, Esq., 1993 Jean (Jafrikayiti) St. Vil, Restitution and Reparations,
Campaign 7 Director
Professor Frantz
Jerome, Executive Director of the Ezili
Danto Witness Project Chantal Laurent, Graphic Artist, HLLN's Website
Designer and webmaster David Laurent, Documentary Filmmaker, HLLN's
Film and Video Producer/Editor for Ezili
Danto Witness Project and
FreeHaitiMovement
Ezili Dantò/Marguerite Laurent (colonial name)is founder and President of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership
network, dedicated to promoting the civil, human and cultural
rights of Haitian at home and abroad. Before her human
rights work, Ezili Dantò worked for more than
ten years as an entertainment attorney within the music, recording,
merchandising and independent film industries and is known as
the hip hop lawyer and activist. She is
an author, an award
winning playwright and a
performance poet who performs internationally and has
presented at venues such as Carnegie
Hall and the United Nations.
Ms. Dantò
is an essayist and educator who specializes in teaching an “Art
and Business Law” seminar class at colleges and universities.
She also conducts workshops and residencies about the light and
beauty of Haitian culture; the "Symbolic and archetypal nature
of Haitian Vodun;" the illegality and immorality of forcing
neoliberalism policies on Haiti and the developing world; the
illegality and human rights violations caused by the current US/UN
occupation of Haiti; the need for France to repay the extraordinary
1825 ransom it extorted from the Haitian people and the constant
Euro-US hostility Haiti faces, endures and struggles to overcome
as the first Black Republic in the world, after Ethiopia, in a
Eurocentric world which purposely inflames instability, insecurity,
impasse and chaos in the Black republics in order to better exploit
their labor and natural resources. She is the artistic director
of the Ezili
Danto Spoken Word Theater Dance company. Her e-mail
address is Erzilidanto@yahoo.com
Men Anpil Chaj Pa Lou!!! -
Many Hands Make Light a Heavy
Load!!!!
********************************************** “Be true to the highest within your soul and then allow
yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or
arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle.”
Ralph Waldo Trine
**********************************************
********************
Hitler
merely applied to Europe colonialist procedures
"It
would be useful to study clinically, in detail, the behavior of
Hitler, and of Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished,
the very humanist, very Christian twentieth century bourgeois that
he has a silent Hitler in him, that Hitler inhabits him,
that Hitler is his demon, that if he vituperates, it is
by lack of logic, and, in sum, what he does not forgive Hitler is
not the crime in itself, the crime against man,
it is not the humiliation of the man in himself, but the
crime against the white man, the humiliation of the white man, of
having applied to Europe colonialist procedures which till now were
reserved to Arabs in Algeria, coolies in India, and Negroes of Africa"
--Aime Cesaire, Discours sur le colonialisme,
1955 (Excerpted from V.Y. Mudimbe's The Idea of Africa,
page 212).
Before Hitler, we know the French gassed, in the hull of their ships, the rebelling Africans taken as prisoners during the Haiti revolution. And thirty years before Hitler, there's the first and forgotten German genocide, death camps in Namibia and Shark Island. Three quarters of the Namibia population were massacred (1904-1907) in German concentration camps built in Africa. The White settlers genocidal rampage across the world killed hundreds of millions of Africans, peoples in Tasmania, in the Americas, Australia, indigenous people all over the planet and Africans in the Caribbean were annihilated or pushed to the brink of extinction - Less Haiti or Blacks worldwide forget the nature of Haiti's traditional enemies- StopMINUSTAH; StopAFRICOM (See, BBC documentary-Genocide and the second Reich 2 German abuse of Hereros.)
"...HLLN dreams of a world based on principles, values, mutual
respect, equal application of laws, equitable
distribution, cooperation instead of competition and
on peaceful co-existence and acts on it. We put forth these ideas,
on behalf of voiceless Haitians, through a unique and unprecedented
combination of art
and activism,
networking, sharing info on radio interviews, our Ezili Danto
listserves and by circulating our original
"Haitian Perspective" writings. (See also
Ezili
Dantò's blog on open salon.) We make presentations
at congressional briefings and at international events, such as
An
Evening of Solidarity with Bolivarian Venezuela.
With the Ezili
Danto Witness Project, HLLN documents eyewitness testimonies
of the common men and women in Haiti suffering, under this US-installed
Un occupation, the greatest forms of terror and exclusion since
the 19-year US occupation (1915-1934) and the days of slavery;
conducts learning forums on Haiti (The "To-Tell-The-Truth-About-Haiti"
forums) and, in general, brings the
voices against occupation, endless poverty and exclusion
in Haiti directly to concerned peoples worldwide - people-to-people
and then to governments officials, international policymakers,
human rights organizations, journalists, the corporate and alternative
media, schools and universities, solidarity networks. We are often
quoted in major alternative and even the corporate papers and
press influencing the current thinking of readers today."
HLLN, November 9, 2005.
See, The Nescafé
machine, Common Sense, John Maxwell Sunday, November 06, 2005
, quoting
HLLN's chairperson, Ezili Dantò.
************************
***********************************************
"Transformation
is only valid if it is carried out with the people, not for them.
Liberation is like a childbirth, and a painful one. The person
who emerges is a new person: no longer either oppressor or oppressed,
but a person in the process of achieving freedom. It is only the
oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors."--
Paulo Freire, from Pedagogy
of the Oppressed (learn
more)
***********************************************
To help create a new paradigm on this planet for the poor, know
the proposed HLLN actions and proposed
solutions. Circulate our
Ezili Dantò/HLLN mailings and posts to your mailing list
and e-mail contacts, join the FreeHaitiMovement.
Sponsor an HLLN workshop, donate
to support Ezili's HLLN work. Subscribe and unsubscribe
by writing to: Erzilidanto@yahoo.com
Do Press Work: Join our HLLN letter-writing
campaigns and media campaigns to help free the political
prisoners in Haiti, stop the media vilification of the Haitian
people, the persecution of Haiti's most popular political party
and to restore Haitian sovereignty and Constitutional rule. Write
a letter, call the media, fax, - Join our listserve for sample
letters and contact information. Check the various Ezili
Dantò Blogs to know which campaigns we are currently
asking that letters be sent out for. Some of our letter-writing
campaigns include:
LETTER
WRITING CAMPAIGNS
Letter to
Editors – Please change your stylebook. It’s
Vodun or Vodou, not - “Voodoo.”(See below).
We are writing you today because in all other countries, child
domestic laborers or servants are not called "slaves" or their
indentured situation "slavery" by the media, except in
Haiti for obvious historical neocolonial purposes. Haiti was
the first to abolish brutal European colonialism, chattel slavery, forced assimilation and the
Triangular Trade that fed it and, in combat with the same Euro-US plantation
interests Haiti faces today.
It's
repugnant when children are forced to work for food and shelter,
not provided with schooling and a loving and nurturing childhood
is stolen from them. We all must together change this for the
world's poor. But our concern is that in all poor countries there
is some form of child labor. Until very recently child labor was
also prevalent in industrialized countries including the United
States.
Today, the media and the hypocritical poverty pimps at the charitable industrial complex regularly refers to child domestics as "slaves"
mostly in Haiti. This is far too obvious, arbitrary and capricious. Especially in light of the for-profit US-prison- industrial-complex and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in the US that still legally allows for slavery. Something you won't find in Haiti whatsoever. Not to mention the reality that wealthy US businessmen are hiring underage laborers all over China, Bangladesh, India, as well as in the agricultural fields in the U.S. South. But this same media and their "philanthropists" are mostly blind, deaf and dumb about this because Haiti is an easy target for intellectual dwarfs.
These dwarfs never
consider reporting on the real enslavement in Haiti - that is,
the slavery
in Haiti the media won’t expose. Eleven to thirteen
mercenary families in Haiti own most of the country's wealth while
the majority starve and live in utter misery and poverty. There
would not be a child labor problem in Haiti without the colonial and financial tyranny of the former enslaving nations, especially the United States. Their neoliberal policies of bringing famine, plunder and chaos to Haiti. The false charity of US-Euro Christian missions, their fake orphanages,
fake food aid and the fake Euro-US benevolence administered by USAID
serves the billionaires in Haiti, not the poorest of the poor. The slavery
to focus on destroy in Haiti is US imperialism and the regime changes and coup d'etats it sponsors with the
backing of the so-called "international community." Essentially, the US-Euro governments keep the majority of Haitians
in poverty's bondage and thus are sponsoring the poverty that undergirds the child labor issue. (See, Ezili
Dantò's review of TRAVESTY in Haiti and excepts
from Travesty
in Haiti - A true account of Christian missions, orphanages, fraud,
food aid and drug trafficking.)
Euro-US financial colonialism, false charity and fraudulent free
trade destabilizes, causes famine, instability and slums in Haiti.
This allows the wealthy to exploit the poorest of the poor and
forces the poor to send their children to relatives or others
supposedly better able to take care of them. Your media ought
to report this and stop the capricious colonial narrative that
only labels Haitian child domestics as "slaves," but
won't report what causes Haiti's impoverishment. Read carefully
coverage of this matter at, "The
Slavery in Haiti the Media Won't Expose."
The long term solution for Haiti's future, for Haiti's small children
is equitable distribution of the Haiti's
massive natural resources; an end to foreign-sponsored dependence,
false benevolence, occupation/dictatorships/regime change and
the monopoly of the rich, forced scarcity and assimilation, exclusion
of the majority, endless debts, financial colonialism,
and the fraudulent
free trade of US foreign policy that causes famine,
wage slavery and containment in perpetual poverty.
Re:
Elevate your journalistic standards. Correct your stylebook. It’s Vodun or Vodou, not - “Voodoo.”
Letter to the Editor of___________,
Dear Editor:
I am writing to request that your newspaper not refer to the spiritual path of Haitians by the derogatory Hollywood terminogy of "Voodoo!" Please update
your professional standards and styles book as the New York Times and others
have done on this and use the accepted and correct spelling of either "Vodun"
or "Vodou," and never ever, even unintentionally denigrate Haiti's people
or culture again, in writing, by referring to their sacred path
as “Voodoo.”
This derogatory face given by Hollywood
to the sacred path and way of life of the people of Haiti is racist. It evidences irresponsible and unprofessional journalism and a blatant disregard for the proper terminology used by Haitians to refer to Haiti's indigenous religion. This sensational display of media ignorance ought
not to continue into the 21st century by supposedly informed peoples. Your immediate and positive attention to correcting this error is requested.
Reports on Haiti would be infinitely less bias without this distracting error or worse, the purposeful contempt for Haiti's sacred Vodun
path, archetypal psychology and majority culture.
Volunteer to maintain
and send us updated or new phone numbers and addresses to put
on our Contact
Information Sheet pages for our Network's pressworks.
Virtual interns and
volunteers are always needed to help us translate selected materials
into French, Kreyol, or Spanish to reach a wider audience. Volunteers
with some research and computer skills are also needed to help
us update our "List of Victims" and "Personal Testimonies"
pages under Campaign One. (We
have the materials, what we don't have we know where to extrapolate
them, but need help to put it together and in the format on our
website page.)
Volunteers wanting
to concentrate as primary coordinators/contributors to one
of our seven
campaigns.
Follow our Ezili
Dantò/HLLN blog. Join our Ezili Danto/HLLN Listserve.
Those who only want to see these posts at their leisure, or, who
cannot receive daily mailings, will
have access to these materials and posts through our archived
format.
Fundraise for the
work of HLLN. Donate to our projects. Or, cover your expenses,
save lives and spread meaning and value by becoming an
HLLN Marketing Associate trained to train other HLLN Associates
and licensed to use our logo and HLLN materials to sponsor a "To
Tell The Truth about Haiti
Forum and Teach-In."
********* Those
who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it:
See, the first US occupation and administration of Haiti
and how, then too, President Wilson of the US called the US. marines
exploits on behalf of New York bankers and multinationals, an
exercize in "civilizing" and "developing"
the "corrupt,," "failed" and "inept"
blacks of Haiti....Charlemagne
Pèralte Speaks!
“Be true to the highest within your soul and then allow
yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or
arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle.”
Ralph Waldo Trine
**********************************************
The
2009 Haiti Resolution ANSWER
THE CALL:
Join the FreeHaitiMovement. Help create a new paradigm, protect
Haitian sovereignty, self-determination, culture and people.
To sponsor a FreeHaitiMovement
yearly event (May 18, July 6, August 14 and Oct. 17)
FreeHaitiMovement
- On October
17, May 18, July
6 and August
14 of each year, Ezili's HLLN sponsors events and E-forums
celebrating Haitian culture and art as one of the richest culture
in the Western Hemisphere and by promoting Haiti's revolutionary
legacy. We ask those organization or individuals who have joined
the FreeHaitiMovement to participate: on Oct. 17, May 18, July
6 and August 14. In addition to those dates, Ezili's HLLN pays
special attention to November
18 (Vertieres) and January
1st (Independence Day) and ask our FreeHaitiMovement
sponsors and endorsers to send letters to France at least on these
two days of the year demanding France pay Haiti back the Independence
Debt. (See sample
letter and France,
Vertieres and Ayisyen Ginen).
*
"I don't know why it is...but since the beginning of time
Haitians have
been suffering" --- Haitian
migrant, 2009
* 500 lane depi w (blan kolon) vle efase n. Jodi a ou vle m
kwè se
sèl ou ki ka sove n --- Edike
from Daniel 'Dadi' Beaubrun's Lataye (buy
album)
[English - "For 500 years the whites (settlers/colonists)
have tried to erase us. Today they want us to believe they're
the only ones who can save us" --- Edike
from Daniel 'Dadi' Beaubrun's Lataye (buy
album)]
*****
FreeHaitiMovement
- ACTION
REQUESTED: Sponsors
are encouraged to endorse the Haiti Resolution, join HLLN's letter
writing campaigns, (such as, our Media campaigns to stop the lies
and fabrications and criminalizations of the poor majority in
Haiti, "stop UN massacres in Site Soley" and the "free
the political prisoners campaigns"). Endorsers are encouraged
to sponsor a "To-Tell the truth about Haiti Forum",
to sponsor teach-ins, rallies, picket-lines, vigils and lectures,
throughout the year, but especially on May
18, Haiti's flag day, on July
6 to demand an end to the UN occupation, repressions and demand
justice for the victims of the UN-Canadian-US-French/coup d'etat
massacres in Haiti, on August 14 -the anniversary of
Bwa Kayiman, the ceremony that begun the great Haitian revolution,
and, on October 17th - the anniversary of Dessaline's death, and
Haiti's very first coup d'etat. Sponsors and endorsers of the
Haiti Resolutions and FreeHaitiMovement
are encouraged to learn and teach their communities about Haiti's
historical accomplishments. HLLN, shall provide, upon request,
access to suggested written materials, audio and video streaming
for internet and DVD distribution of testimony from victims and
resisters of the coup d'etat; letter campaigns, media outreach
campaigns; HLLN suggests the wearing and flying of the blue and
red colors of Haiti; and, that each year, at least on May 18,
July 6, August 14 and Oct. 17, sponsors and endorsers commit to
fax, call-in and deliver to the French, Canadian and US Embassies
and Consulates worldwide, the People of Haiti's demand that France,
Canada, the US and the international community respect Haitian
sovereignty, stop inflicting Haiti with their traditional "benevolence,"
racism, patriarchy and incessant corrupt intervention in Haiti's
affairs, through foreign "aid" and debt. (See, Haiti
Policy Statement for the Obama Team and
HLLN's proposed long term solutions
to create a new paradim for the poor in Haiti.)
Vodun Woman: A Performance Poetry Collection by Ezili Dantò
($20US)
Red, Black & Moonlight: Between Falling and Hitting the Ground
($20US)
(A 90-minute DVD of the one-woman, jazzoetry theatrical performance
of
"Between Falling and Hitting the Ground from the Red, Black
& Moonlight
series by Ezili Dantò)
There are perhaps two common stories about Haiti that are retold
ad nausea.
One is, the convenient black-on-black crime dismissal
where the manipulated Haiti image displays the fighting
"troubled" Haitians with the "winner
take all politics and attitudes" who won't allow Western
countries to help them modernized and who are continually killing
each other in "civil unrest" and who simply cannot absorb
foreign aid or use effectively the generous help provided by the
benevolent,
heroic and wealthier U.S./Euro white world...
Two - The second most common news story on Haiti
details the "needy (and pitiful but proud) Haitians"
of Haiti.
This second neocolonial storyline on Haiti "tells the perpetual
story of the poor, pitiful, proud and victimized Haitians and
of the young, innocent, compassionate white American, come to
“do good” in Haiti.... I've read a thousand of them
with different faces, same storyline on Haiti.
One group is heroic and self-less, one group is helpless and proud
victim and forever shall that be, as is intended, by the powers
always not allowing there to be any relief from these pre-ordained
roles and the racists and cultural biases it extends about Haitians
from the time Haitians chose Africa instead of Europe at Bwa Kayiman,
on August 14, 1791...
What is going on?
Why, if there are more NGO's and such charitable non-profit organizations
concentrated in Haiti than anywhere else in the world; why, if
these compassionate Westerners are continually returning to do
"good" in Haiti, for over 200-years, have there not
been any significant advancements made and the vast majority of
Haitians in Haiti are poor and still just looking for food to
eat? ..."
Oh yeah, just go back, rewind to: Common Neocolonial Storyline
Number One! - "..the fighting "troubled"
Haitians with the "winner take all politics and
attitudes" who won't allow Western countries to help them
modernized and who are continually killing each other in "civil
unrest" and who simply cannot absorb foreign aid or use effectively
the generous help provided by the benevolent,
heroic and wealthier U.S./Euro white world...(Click here,
for complete article.)
Dessalines Is Rising!! Ayisyen: You Are Not Alone!
"When you make
a choice, you mobilize vast human energies and resources which
otherwise go untapped...........If you limit your choices only
to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself
from what you truly want and all that is left is a compromise."
Robert Fritz
Donate
to HLLN's work
Dessalines
Is Rising!! Ayisyen: You Are Not Alone!
HLLN's
controversy
with Marine
Spokesman,
US occupiers
A
group of Haitian migrants arrive in a bus after being
repatriated from the nearby Turks and Caicos Islands,
in Cap-Haitien, northern Haiti, Thursday, May 10, 2007.
They were part of the survivors of a sailing vessel crowded
with Haitian migrants that overturned Friday, May 4 in
moonlit waters a half-mile from shore in shark-infested
waters. Haitian migrants claim a Turks and Caicos naval
vessel rammed their crowded sailboat twice before it capsized.
(AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
Slide
Show at the
July 27, 2004 Haiti Forum Press Conference during the DNC
in Boston honoring those who stand firm for Haiti and democracy;
those who tell the truth about Haiti; Presenting the Haiti
Resolution, and; remembering Haiti's revolutionary legacy
in 2004 and all those who have lost life or liberty fighting
against the Feb. 29, 2004 Coup d'etat and its consequences