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Gade
Sa Neg d'Ayiti fè mwen! -
Look at what Haiti (Haiti's Tyrants) did to me!"
Veye Yo is Father Gerard Jean Juste's grassroots human rights
organization on 54th Street, Miami, Florida, which he founded
in 1979. - "Don't cry when I die," said
Father Gerard Jean Juste, I leave the rest for all of
you."
*
Inside the
Veye Yo headquarters, on June 6, 2009, after the Church
memorial at the Notre Dame D'Haiti Catholic Center, I met
up with veteran Haitian human right activists from all over
the US, Haiti, and Canada and we gathered together as a
community in mourning but doubly
determined to
continue the work of Father Gerard Jean Juste ("Jyeri").
We shared our stories and many made it a point to tell me
how important and meaningful our HLLN advocacy work, information,
promotion of Haitian culture and counter-colonial narratives
is for them.
Old Angelina St-Phar, sat in the same place at the Veye
Yo headquarters that she has been sitting at for over twenty
years of attending Veye Yo meetings. Everyone acknowledges
that she had a very special relationship with father Jean
Juste. She's your mother, your special grandmother, that
aunt you have who is always making you a healing cup of
tea. She was that for Father Jean Juste throughout the years
at Veye Yo and like Veye Yo, a safe harbor even when he
was in Haiti. Angelina St-Phar is a self-effacing woman,
a natural nurturer mother/warrior who prayed for Jyeri when
he was ministering in Haiti, in the US, at street demonstrations,
in jail or out of jail. She prepared special care packages,
shaving kits, soap, socks, what mothers do. Watched his
back and was known for whispering truth directly into his
ear or for being a steady, calm center even when things
got heated at Veye Yo's weekly Friday evening meetings.
Angelina St-Phar will not be named in the tributes to father
Jean Juste. In fact, his organization is virtually ignored
by most in power, including the mainstream papers. But Lavarice
Gaudin, the head of Veye Yo and the members at Veye Yo,
including the tall sentinel strength and true solidarity
of Jack Lieberman, provided Father
Jean Juste with the support, care and loyalty
to do the work he did, draw the fire of the powers-that-be
while the luckier Haitian poor, needy and without papers
would try to move behind him to safer ground. Angelina St-Phar
is a prime example of this strength. She was his quiet advisor
and with his death, Angelina St-Phar, like Haiti, lost a
treasured son. Lavarice Gaudin, like all of Haiti's young
men and women, lost a father, spiritual leader and mentor.
But when I walked into the Veye Yo headquarters Angelina
St-Phar was there, sitting in the same spot, not crying,
watching everything (that's what the Kreyòl word
"Veye Yo" means - "Watch them!"). I
listened to the men and women of Veye Yo recount their many
bittersweet memories of Father Jean Juste. It was a sad
and tragic telling of a life of struggle, suffering and
untold persecutions by the Church and the political powers,
both in the US and in Haiti. Amongst all the telling to
Ezili Dantò/HLLN, two veterans from Veye Yo, examples
of solid courage like that of our warrior mother, Angelina
St-Phar, these Haitian women told of the episode I'm about
to recount.
"Tell this story to the world Ezili Dantò,"
said Yannick Jolicoeur and Veronique Fleurime. I promised
these unheralded Haitian foot-soldiers that I would give
them an international voice; that I would say this was "yon
mo kle de Jean Juste" - I would tell of this relatively
final insult, in a hundred such cumulative injustices suffered
by Father Jean Juste for us and on our behalf as a community.
For what Jean Juste declared at that time most touched and
tore their hearts.
But before I do, it is important for those who knew nothing
of Father Jean Juste to understand that he was a priest
who struggled for Haitian rights his entire career. He was
the spokesperson for the poor Haitian, the homeless and
those without shelter, refuge and asylum. For this work
for the poor and needy, he was ostracized, crucified, vilified,
denigrated and imprisoned. At the time of his death, the
Catholic Church, after his 30-years of service and struggling
to help the poor, had stripped him of the right to perform
as a priest, suspended him. He thus had no resources to
pay for his hospital treatment and health problems, caused
by two prison terms in Haiti for speaking out against rule-by-force,
the UN occupation and the US-imposed Boca Raton regime from
2004 to 2006.
During his last hospitalization in Miami, in January of
2009, when the hospital insisted Father Jean Juste had to
give up the hospital bed and leave without the medication
he couldn't afford, even though he was almost at death's
door unable to breathe with a respiratory problem, these
women of Veye Yo, who sat with him, took turns sleeping
in the hospital to comfort him, relayed this to be close
to his very last words, said with some strength before he
would fall into semi-consciousness. Jean Juste, a fighter
to the end, told the Miami hospital that was refusing him
medical care that he could not leave without three things
- he asked for a wheelchair, medication for the pain and
gas for his respiratory tank. The hospital refused because
they said he owed too much money already and needed to pay
at least half of "perhaps more than $60,000, I am not
sure but he owed a lot" recalls Veronique Fleurime
of Veye Yo. No Church official was there. Father Jean Juste
had been fighting for human rights and equal treatment in
Miami for Haitians since before 1979 when he headed Miami's
Haitian Refugee Center. Ultimately it was "Ben"
from Veye Yo who would hurry and apply for Medicaid to stop
Jyeri from being thrown out of the hospital without any
medication while so ill. Reportedly, the hospital's social
worker, charged to do this task, never put the Medicaid
papers through.
Meanwhile, before the application approval hit the computers,
and asked to leave for lack of payment, a demoralized Father
Jean Juste got out of the hospital bed, paced the floor
and as the Veye Yo women and men at his bedside, stood in
tears and grief, feeling utterly helpless, he said:
"Kounyè a espwa m fini. Si m paka jwen swèn
medikal se pou m ale lakay mwen pou m'al tan lamò.
(epi li frape pye a tè li di:) Gade
sa Neg d'Ayiti fè mwen!"
- "My hope is gone now. If I can't get medical care
I'm being sent home to die. (stamping his foot he ends with
emphasis on these words:) Look at what Haiti (Haiti's Oligarchy,
tyrants) did to me!"
This occurred approximately two weeks before Jyeri was released
from the hospital. He had flown into Miami on January 7,
2009, directly from Haiti, going straight to the hospital.
He went home once, in time to witness President Obama's
inauguration. But would return to the hospital, after this
brief home stay on an oxygen tank, and remain there until
he died on May 27, 2009.
*
There's not
enough space in all of the universe to hold the pain of
the Haitian men and women whose suffering Father Jean Juste
sought to alleviate, nor that of his closest friends and
family at Veye Yo, like Lavarice Gaudin, Farah Juste, Angelina
St-Phar, Fabius Rodieu, Yeye Boul (Andre E. Joseph), Leader
Fenfen, Thony Jean-Thenor, Lucie Tondreau, Ertha Noel, Yannick
Jolicoeur and Veronique Fleurime, to name a few, who are
witnesses and combatants alongside Jyeri and helped to bear
the awful life struggle that was Jyeri's burden to bear
for our community. The question is, who will now draw the
fire for us, until death, like Father Jean Juste did, in
pursuit of better treatment for those Haitians without papers,
without power, without asylum, safety, and justice of any
kind and who can't risk telling truth-to-power?
Never following the path of least resistance, Jyeri's power
was centered on his faith and love of Jesus and used to
serve and protect, not to maintain himself in a job or public
position. He provided the needy protection and walked the
perilous journey, in the frontlines of Haiti's populous
neighborhoods, with the 2004 to 2006 demonstrators against
Bush Regime change. They were demanding the return of President
Jean Bertrand Aristide, denouncing the Haitian people's
wholesale disenfranchisement, the privatization of Haiti,
foreign militarization, debt, dependency and domination.
Father Jean Juste's huge sheltering presence is gone, but
his indomitable spirit lives on. And, as witnesses and participants
in
this David-vs-Goliath-Haitian-struggle for
freedom and human rights, we at Ezili's HLLN, in
solidarity with all our collaborators, shall
pursue justice for Father Gerard Jean Juste and for Haiti's
most needy - li kite res la pou nou menm - until
US immigration and the State Department starts treating
Haitians and Haiti equal to all other nationalities and
countries; until they no longer embolden the Haitian Oligarchy's
repressive and undemocratic rule.
Pursuing Justice For Jean Juste - Ezili's counter-colonial
narrative to the Miami Herald's coverage of Father Jean
Juste's June 6, 2009 Memorial Services
To the end
of pursuing justice, if you want to be kept engaged and
posted on Haiti and the community’s life in the Diaspora,
skip the Miami Herald’s coverage of Jean Juste’s
June 6, 2009 memorial and click on our photogallery.
You will learn more there about Haitian thinking, dress,
memorial attendance and the ways the Miami community remembered
Jean Juste than you’ll ever find out from reading
the Miami Herald/Jacqueline Charles-Trenton Daniel’s
article on Jean Juste, dated June 7, 2009 and entitled “Thousands
attend Little Haiti funeral for Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste.”
Though I know better, it still amazes me when I attend a
Haitian event, whether in the US or in Haiti, and then read
about it from the embedded press. Little of the majority
view of things in Haiti, on Haiti issues or on the depth
and visceral nature of what actually took place is captured
by these folks. You’ll see the sound bites yes, the
begrudging “Even though Jean-Juste fought against
a system he sometimes deemed unfair to Haitians, he respected
and admired the United States." But then the zingers
will appear, such as these Miami
Herald outlays: – “Jean-Juste also had a
knack for getting in trouble…In 1980, he was fired
from his $16,000-a-year job at the HRC (Haitian Refugee
Center) for what the Christian Community Service Agency
called his ''ineptitude'' and ``erratic and unproductive
behavior… 'The jail time, the illness brought a lot
of wisdom,'' Jean-Mary of Notre Dame said. ``I wish he had
developed it earlier...''
See, the Miami Herald was always a voice for Haiti’s
ruling oligarchy, the world’s oligarchy - corporate
America and the Church and so, in conflict to Jean Juste
throughout his life and now as expressed in their article
on his death.
Thony Jean-Thenor, a Veye Yo militant I spoke to said the
Miami Herald article on Jean Juste’s memorial was
a “second killing.” The article almost gave
the Church Jean Juste fought all his life, the last word
on Jean Juste. They chose to quote not any Veye Yo members,
but a priest who said that prison in Haiti and the resulting
illness it caused had matured Jyeri - gave him "wisdom"
he didn't have!
For every good word they are forced to say about him, there's
an awful jagged-edged pen-knife-stabbing ahead or below
it. To wit: ''The jail time, the illness brought a lot of
wisdom,'' Jean-Mary of Notre Dame said. ``I wish he had
developed it earlier. At the same time, you have to respect
his convictions. He was a fighter.'' (Miami
Herald, June 7, 2009)
What the Miami Herald fails to tell you is that by 1980,
Father Jean-Juste had incurred the wrath of the archdiocese
of Miami by conducting funeral services for non-Catholic
Haitians who drowned at sea and by picketing Archbishop
Edward McCarthy of Miami, who he said was a racist for not
defending the rights of Haitian refugees. No. The Herald
will not contextualize. They butcher his reputation, even
at his memorial.
You won't learn that Father Jean Juste ran afoul of the
Church in the 1980s because, when the church agencies wanted
to treat the Haitian refugees - just as the current NGO’s
are treating Haiti and Haitians in Haiti - as charity cases,
Father Jean Juste objected, insisted Haitians are in their
situation because of injustices done to them. The pillage
and plunder of Haiti by the rich and the US backing and
profit from this. Justice, according to Father Jean Juste,
demands rectification, changes in the US immigration laws,
changes in US policy that supports dictatorship, exclusion
and coup d’etat, not charity after the harm has been
done. He found that unconscionable, not generous and benevolent.
A Matter of Justice for Jean Juste
The Miami Herald is "consistent in tarnishing the image
of Father Gerard Jean Juste, just as it is in tarnishing
anything that comes from the popular movement in Haiti and
in glorifying anything the deviant people - the outlaw people
put in place by the Bush Administration in Haiti, do"
says Thony Jean-Thenor of Veye Yo. "Since the beginning
until today, they've done their best to show that the Coup
D'etat that ousted democratically elected President Jean
Bertrand Aristide was the best thing for Haiti. They always
give the de facto's a voice while ignoring or vilifying
the popular movement for justice...The day after the 2004
Coup D'etat the Miami Herald put Haiti on the business page,
for the very first time, as if to say Haiti has been reborn."
"The Miami Herald denigrates Father Gerard Jean Juste
because he didn't want to support the kidnapping of President
Jean Bertrand Aristide. President Aristide and anyone, who
was part of his government have been vilified all over the
pages of the Miami Herald from 2001 until today" confides
Thony Jean-Thenor.
In the Miami Herald's article, covering Jyeri's memorial,
you won’t learn that when, in November of 1980, the
powers-that-be, including the Church, simply left 102 shipwrecked
Haitians to starve to death on the deserted Island of Cayo
Lobos, in the Bahamas, Father Jean Juste was the only priest
to fly to the Island, on his own initiative, to bring them
food, water and the media attention necessary so that officialdom
would not just let these maroon Haitians die there without
being rescued or be harmed when taken by force and returned
to the Haiti they were fleeing. The United States had refused
to come to the shipwrecked Haitians' assistance to avoid
having to bring them into U.S. territory. The Bahamas made
the same choice. The shipwrecked Haitians had become skeletal
from starving on the isolated Island for 6 days before Jean
Juste reached them. Jean Juste ignored Church warnings and
went to their aid. These are some of the reasons, unexplained
by the Miami memorial article that starkly contends, Father
Jean Juste “had a knack for getting into trouble.”
Father Jean Juste insisted that the Haitian refugees had
a right to asylum because they were fleeing injustices.
“'Don’t go back to Haiti,' Jean Juste warned
after arriving aboard a television network’s helicopter.
The leader of the band, Claude Pierre, said they ‘could
not go any place but Miami. We sell everything to go to
Miami,’ Pierre said. ‘We lose everything in
Haiti. They (Papa Doc’s US-supported Tonton Macoute/dictatorship)
will beat us up, kill us, put us in jail. It’s a decision
between life and death.” (See,102
Haitian Castaways Repel I Rescuers; Demand Trip To US.)
Back then, alone, a very young Father Jean Juste raised
a media storm on behalf of these shipwrecked Haitians who
were left to die on Cayo Lobos because the US did not want
to apply its "wet foot/dry foot" policy to Haitians
only for Cubans. Jean Juste’s intervention allowed
for the refugees to, for once, tell their own stories. But
still, they were brutally beaten by the Bahamians while
the cameras were rolling and forcibly evicted and returned
to Papa Doc’s Haiti because Reagan’s US would
not open its door to "black refugees." Knowledgeable
observers believe that this public airing of the plight
of Haitians to a world audience, sensitized and influence
US policy makers, embarrassed by the publicity, to began
to afford more equal and humane treatment to other Haitian
refugees, later on. By then Father Jean Juste had made some
very powerful and fierce enemies.
You won't see any of this in the Miami Herald's article
about why Jean Juste may have been fired. Instead, you'll
read in the Miami Herald that "…In 1980, he was
fired from his $16,000-a-year job at the (Haitian Refugee
Center) HRC for what the Christian Community Service Agency
called his ''ineptitude'' and ``erratic and unproductive
behavior…"
At that time, in 1980, Miami’s elected officials were
telling all and sundry that all the Haitian refugees would
be sent back to Haiti. As far as they were concerned, there
was no place in Miami for a Haitian community as there was
for the Cuban refugees. And but for Jyeri’s work,
that would probably have stayed true.
Today’s Haitian community in Miami owes its existence
to the pioneering work of Father Gerard Jean Juste. At his
memorial services, Haitians and even Miami's elected officials
and the Church, paid homage to this. But don’t expect
these details from the Miami Herald's coverage on Jean Juste’s
memorial. As we've already shown, if they write something
good about him in a sentence, you may be sure, that soon
after they will insert a zinger, like: “Jean-Juste's
penchant for publicity -- more than once he threw himself
on the asphalt in defiance of immigration policy.”
Still, we all know that no matter how they vilified or denigrated
his work on behalf of poor Haitians, abused and being murdered
in the Bateys, in the prisons of Krome, at Cayo Lobos or
in coup d’etat or dictatorship Haiti, Father Jean
Juste always insisted: “My rosary is my only weapon.”
According to Thony Jean-Thenor of Veye Yo, the Miami Herald
newspaper, like most of the corporate press, was "so
close" to the de facto imposed 2004-2006 regime from
Boca Raton, they would begrudge Jyeri the truth even at
his funeral.
But, Ezili Dantò is writing this piece, and Jyeri
showed us the path. Jean Juste taught us-activists by example.
When Officialdom fired him from his job at the Refugee Center,
or when they threw him out of the Church he had built up
in Miami, he had founded his own grass-roots, Veye Yo, watch
group organization to continue to give voice to the downtrodden,
hungry and homeless. God, indeed, blesses the child who
has his/her own.
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We, at Ezili’s
HLLN have our own Ezili Network. Our daily posts and writings
are circulated over and over again and reach millions upon
millions of people. As a Haitian-led, Haitian-capacity building
organization, we are the foremost counter-colonial narrators
for Haiti and so the Rochambeau’s of this era will
not be writing Haiti’s history and telling our story.
No.
When they fired him, he kept going.
When they imprisoned him, he never stopped feeding the poor
or ministering.
Father Jean Juste gave away the food his parishioners from
St. Claire Haiti brought to him to other prisoners and even
over the prison bars and fences to people in the neighborhood
outside the prison who were hungry.
Like Haiti's great revolutionary hero, Kapwa Lamò,
Father Jean Juste would not let any suppression of the truth
stop his trajectory. Neither will we allow this Miami Herald
article the final world on Father Gerard Justice. No.
What hurts us the most, those of us who came to witness
and honor Jean Juste's life and works, is that his various
butchers let him perish "without
confessing their wrongs and without altering their ways...
a man whose heart was filled only with compassion and tolerance."
We write here today to counter the Miami Herald's lies with
truth. To support the footsoldiers at Veye Yo who won't
be acknowledged in their darkest time and grief period.
It's a matter of justice for Jean Juste. And, yes, we own
this space, this place Haitians gather to, to duct this
eras’ cannon balls of oppression being hurled at us
by the media and their corporate and ruling tyrants. Like
Jyeri we say no to violence, no to exile, no to arbitrary
arrests, indefinite detentions, no to Coup D’etats,
no to unequal immigration treatment of Haitian refugees,
no to the plunder
and pillage of Haiti
by the Haitian ruling oligarchy on behalf
of transnational corporations, no to the media's butchering
of Haiti's freedom warriors and glorifying of the Internationals'
paid thugs, death squads, imposed dictatorships and UN occupation.
Batay
la Fèk Komanse - The battle has only just begun!
We're still
here after 300-years of enslavement and over 200-years of
containment-in-poverty. No, our Ancestors did not yield
to the combined forces of the whole world. Neither shall
we. As far as we're concerned - nou pap bay legen
- the battle has just begun.
Ezili's HLLN
is the place Haitians come to if they need a message of
truth on Haiti circulated. So, go to our photogallery
to experience the thinking of Haiti's popular movement
as expressed at Jean Juste’s memorial and learn how
Haiti and Miami came together, on June 6, 2009, to the Veye
Yo headquarters to mourn, honor and remember the life and
works of Father Gerald Jean Juste.
Jean Juste founded Veye Yo across the street from the Haitian
Refugee Center (HRC) when HRC became embroiled in political
and funding battles during the early 1980s of the Reagan
years. Veye Yo, a political action/humanitarian assistance
organization formally split the legal and political work
of Jean Juste so that the Haitian Refugee Center could freely
raise money to support the legal work and Veye Yo could
do the "political work" through volunteers, funding
itself and not soliciting funds and salaries as a non-for-profit.
The "legal" entity requiring outside funding and
paid staff did not last. Today, Veye Yo, because it meets
the needs and constraints of Haitian life and reality, is
the largest and most powerful Haitian grassroots group,
not just in Miami but in the Haitian Diaspora. But you won’t
read that in any mainstream paper, certainly not in the
Miami Herald.
*
Jyeri did not deserve to die this way. Ironically, as soon
as he was dead, the Catholic Church immediately reinstated
him fully as a priest. It was his dearest wish when he was
alive, but he never got that respect until he was dead.
At his Miami church memorial, on June 6, 2009, the Archbishop
of Miami, John Clement Favalora, who could not stay for
the entire service came on first and proclaimed: "His
presence with us was a sign that God was walking with us...He
has walked the journey with you. He provided you with hope,
strength and courage...but your walk is not over...This
leadership is needed. The journey for Jean Juste is over.
But the journey for you has not ended... The Church in the
United States and the Arch Diocese in Miami walk with you
on your journey." That said, the Archbishop immediately
left the church hurrying to another more pressing engagement.
Ezili
Dantò
President,
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network("HLLN")
June, 2009
Email: erzilidanto@yahoo.com
*
Ezili's HLLN Pays Homage to
Father Gerard Jean Juste
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