Dessalines Is Rising!!
Ayisyen: You Are Not Alone!

The Two Most Common Storylines about Haiti and Haitians ********************
Media Lies and Real Haiti News
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U.S. Patterns in Haiti
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Dessalines' Law
Jean Jacques Dessalines

APPEAL FOR AID
The Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) reports that their appeal for help (carried in this column two weeks ago) was successful in getting enough water purification tablets to stave off the emergency in that area for the giant slum of Cite Soleil (Site Soley) but that people still need food. You can contact the HLLN directly at http://www.margueritelaurent.com/. Marguerite Laurent is the president of the HLLN. (Designated Scapegoats and Bogeyman by John Maxwell, Nov. 25, 2007)

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The nearly naked and almost dead by John Maxwell, Nov, 2007

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Haiti storm survivors say government has abandoned them, AP, Nov. 6, 2007

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*****************In this post**********************
- Haiti storm survivors say government has abandoned them, AP, Nov. 5, 2007 | http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=8207043


- HLLN Action requested to help the victims of Storm Noel in Site Soley,
The people of Site Soley, are asking for our help, through the human rights organization AUMOHD DWA MOUN/CCDH, headed by Attorney Evel Fanfan.....
HLLN Action Alert to Assist Storm Noel Survivors in Site Soley, November 6, 2007

- AUMOHD-CCDH | ALERT CITE SOLEIL
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Haiti storm survivors say government has abandoned them, AP, Nov. 5, 2007 http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=8207043

International Herald Tribune
Haiti storm survivors say government has abandoned them
The Associated Press
Monday, November 5, 2007

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti: Residents of a notorious Haitian slum lashed out at local authorities Monday for abandoning them in the recovery from Tropical Storm Noel, and said U.N. troops and Haitian officials failed to protect one shelter from marauding gangs.

Protesters blocked roads and burned tires on the outskirts of Cite Soleil to demand the government clean up after Noel, whose heavy rains and flooding killed 148 people in the Caribbean and left tens of thousands homeless.

Evacuees who spent four days in the overcrowded National School under U.N. protection said international troops abandoned the school Friday, leaving them defenseless against outside criminals who robbed them in the dead of night.

U.N. spokesmen said the shelter was turned over to Haitian authorities shortly after sundown, and that Friday's incident was a fight over food by evacuees who had not been fed until that evening.

But evacuees said Haitian authorities never arrived, that they were left alone in the school without a generator and that the attackers came from outside the shelter. A spokeswoman for the Haitian civil protection department did not return numerous phone messages Monday.

"It was pitch black, and a bunch of men ran in. I was lucky. I just took my daughter and ran out," said Sheila Jean, 29, who said the men stole a blanket she had been given by soldiers.

Peniel Darius, 17, was nearly trampled when men wielding sticks burst into the classroom where he and his mother had been sleeping and dragged a mattress out from under them.

"Everybody was yelling. Everybody was trying to hide," he said.

The 7,000-member U.N. force was installed to break gangs and stabilize the country after a 2004 rebellion ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
But after Noel, the force found itself doing disaster relief instead — filling in for a year-and-a-half-old government neither equipped nor organized to handle the crisis.

Paraguayan snipers soothed frustrated mothers and Brazilian infantry passed out blankets with one hand while cradling assault rifles in the other. Supplies ran thin, with soldiers and evacuees alike complaining about a lack of blankets and food.

On Monday, the anger was directed at Cite Soleil municipal officials, who protesters said were pocketing aid for themselves and ignoring outlying areas hit hardest by flooding. One group pumped their fists and shouted, "The mayor is a liar!"

"In the state that the country is in now, the government can't help us," said Joseph Bernard, a leader at a church sheltering more than 400 people since Tuesday. "We're asking all the international organizations to give us whatever aid they can."
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AUMOHD-CCDH | ALERT CITE SOLEIL
Action requested to help the victims of Storm Noel in Site Soley

The people of Site Soley, are asking for our help, through the Haitian human rights organization, AUMOHD DWA MOUN/CCDH, headed by Attorney Evel Fanfan.

More than 130 are reported dead in Haiti as a result of Storm Noel. Thousands have been left homeless, children separated from parents, entire families have lost their lives in the floods, mudslides and ravages of tropical storm Noel.

As indicated in a November 5, 2007 AP article, storm survivors say the government and UN authorities has abandoned them and they are without help. ( http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=8207043 ) Some of the people of Site Soley who have contacted Ezili's HLLN are asking us for assistance.

AUMOHD's "Alert Cite Soleil", posted on our website, outlines a list of items that can immediately provide this population with some relief.

If you or your organizations can donate any of these items please write to erzilidanto@yahoo.com, or call HLLN (203 829 7210) immediately.

We are especially in need of portable water, water treatment equipments and medicines like aquatabs to treat the water.

The folks also need blankets, non-perishable foods, first aid supplies, toothpaste, soap, toothbrushes, shoes (sneakers), sandals, undergarments - both for men and women.

Hoever, the most urgent need we are hearing about, from the people of Site Soley, over and over again, is for food and for water treatment (acquatabs) tablets.

WATER: This is new to us, so help with this if you have better info. But HLLN has spoken to the folks at acquatabs ( http://www.aquatabs.ca/ ) and they agreed to provide us with a few emergency packs at their cost.

We'd like to purchase as many Emergency Packs of Acquatabs as we can raise the money for.

The cost, we were quoted, for each Emergency package is $350Canadian dollars, not including freight costs. Each tablet treats 20 liters or 5 gallons. Each emergency package contains 14,000 tablets.

So, if you'd like to help us with the cost of the water treatment tabs, make a donation at our (HLLN) paypal account: http://www.margueritelaurent.com/donate/donate.html and email us to let us know (erzilidanto@yahoo.com, or call HLLN at 203 829 7210 ) TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE. If anyone knows an organization willing to DONATE acquatabs, that would obviously be even more appreciated.

FOOD:
Those who wish to send food directly to the people of Site Soley may do so through CAM (Caribbean Air Mail - http://www.camtransfer.com/index.jsp) and indicate you are sending the food donation to Me. Evel Fanfan, AUMOHD DWA MOUN, Phone: 509-754-8022 ), CAM in Haiti will call Mr. Fanfan and his people immediately, as soon as the packages are paid for and AUMOHD-CCDH will make direct distribution to Site Soley families who are hurt, hungry, homeless and without homes.

You can buy packages of foodstuff at $100, $200, $300 and up, in the United States or, on the Internet from (8 to 5p.m) anywhere in the world, and it will be packaged in Haiti and distributed to the receiver the same day. CAM will deliver the food package to whatever location Evel Fanfan/Aumohd should request. This is the way most Haitians use to help their families in Haiti. And, the manner that will assure the food goes DIRECTLY and IMMEDIATELY to the intended victim survivors of SITE SOLEY.

If you do sent anything through CAM 1-800-934-0440 (Haiti Division), whether it is a money or food transfer, let them know that you are working with the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network and that you want verification that the items you purchased was given directly ONLY to Evel Fanfan/AUMOHD DWA MOUN, Phone: 509-754-8022. Then verify with AUMOHD by calling 509 754 8022 to confirn that your purchases or money transfer was duly delivered.

Please note, our work at HLLN is overwhelming so, verification and tracking is up to you to do. And CAM transfer is the organization RESPONSIBLE for making sure your transaction is duly tracked and processed without incident, not HLLN. If you cannot take the responsibility to send the food and verify its due delivery, then don't send it.

We extend our heartfelt thanks to all of you who answer this call to make this most urgent and direct donation of necessary assistance to the storm survivors of Site Soley. Mesi anpil.

Men anpil Chay Pa lou

Ezili Dantò/Marguerite Laurent
HLLN
November 6, 2007
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Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 14:49:06 +0100 (CET)
From: "evel fanfan" <fanfanmel@yahoo.fr>
Subject: Action de solidarite avec Cite Soleil- projet- Evel FANFAN
To: "zili danto" <erzilidanto@yahoo.com>

AUMOHD-CCDH
ALERT CITE SOLEIL

Bonjour Marguerite
voici le plan plus.-

La population haïtienne, notamment les plus vulnérables viennent de nouveau frappé par L’ouragan NOËL qui a fait plus de 130 morts en Haïti. Contrairement en République dominicaine où l’Etat a déclaré l’état d’urgence pour les zones sinistrées, l’Etat Haïtien est encore très lent et n’a pas pris jusqu'à date de mesures adéquates pour voler au secours des sinistrés.

La Commune de Cite Soleil, particulièrement, dans la plainte du cul de Sac, première et deuxième section, zone de Blanchard, Bidivier, Terre Noire, Village rapatrier, Fontaine Duvivier, Martial, Barrière Fer, Larousse, Jamo, Bois neuf et Cite Gérard pour ne citer que cela. Selon les dernières informations, plus de 5880 familles sont sinistrées, alors que seulement 3000 sont déclarées.

Le vendredi 3 Novembre, une délégation de AUMOHD a été a Bois Neuf pour une première action de solidarité a plus de trente (30) familles sinistrées ( voir la liste en bas) , des kits contenant du riz, d’huile, du bonbon, du pain, de saumon, de baleine, d’allumette ont été distribuées a ces familles.


Samedi 4 Novembre, après avoir visité les lieux ci-dessus mentionnés, une rencontre extraordinaire a eu lieu avec les responsables du Conseil Communautaire pour les droits Humains de Cite Soleil, CCDH- Cite Soleil. Il a été décidé dans cette rencontre qu’une action de mobilisation visant non seulement a accompagner les sinistrées de façon immédiate mais surtout a sensibilisation les familles a prévenir les épidémies qui pourraient attaquer ces familles déjà en difficulté.

Comme besoins.-
Pour arriver à cette campagne d’accompagnement et de sensibilisation, il faut :
I.-
a) Pour la sensibilisation
- matériels de son
- véhicule et du carburant
- Banderoles de sensibilisation
- autres

b) pour la prévention (traitement de l’eau)
-4VHT
- aquatabs
- récipient (gallons)
- gobelets
- gifle


II.- Pour l’accompagnement (distribution)
-Produits alimentaires
- couvertures (draps)
- produits hygiéniques
- médicaments.


Remerciements-
AUMOHD, tient a remercier au nom des victimes tous ceux qui vise participer et/ou qui ont participés a cette action de solidarité a ces familles. AUMOHD se fait le devoir de remercier d’une façon spéciale :
◊ Hurah Inc.
◊ Haïti Solidarity NetWork from NewJersey
◊ Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network ("HLLN")
◊ Monsieur Gesner Pierre

Remerciement aussi a vous qui comptent participer dans cet action de solidarité.



AUMOHD DWA MOUN
Me. Evel FANFAN
Président
Phone: 509-754-8022
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Forwarded by the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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Thanksgiving - There can be no peace, justice, closure or lasting harmony without accountability

"...From the viewpoint of the discoverers, terror is only terror when it
terrorises them, their descendants or their friends."
-- Africa: In Solidarity with Site Soley by Jacques Depelchin

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"I don't know why it is...but since the beginning of time Haitians have
been suffering" --- Haitian migrant, 2009

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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)

["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)]

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Thanksgiving - There can be no peace, justice, closure or lasting harmony without accountability

Today HLLN remembers the indigenous people’s to the Americas and the holocaust denial that is at the heart of the Thanksgiving holiday. We do not celebrate this thanksgiving or the national mythology around manifest destiny at Ezili's HLLN. But today, we herein extend love and respect to all, especially the original inhabitants to the Americas the European invaders exterminated to create the United States, including the Black autochthones forgotten in history.
We re-member the dismembered. There can be no justice, peace or wholeness without truth and accountability.

We re-member the dismembered. There can be no justice, peace or wholeness without truth and accountability. (See- Black Indians - An HLLN Appeal for equity and justice ; Black Indians and Thanksgiving; A message from the Choctaw- Black Indians, original indigenous peoples of the Americas on July 4, 2008).

Remembering the history of Thanksgiving, HLLN give thanks for our families, the Network, our friends. We give thanks for the strengths of all the indigenous peoples to the Americas, especially the Tainos of Haiti; for the mission they left in our care, for AYITI and our purpose - for our history and legacy of struggle as the human rights pioneers of this Hemisphere since their "New World" began. (See articles below and The End of Thanksgiving)

In love, respect and towards more harmony,
Ezili Dantò/HLLN
November 26, 2009

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Recommended HLLN Link:
Thanksgiving: The National Day of Mourning - Text of 1970 speech by Wampsutta, An Aquinnah Wampanoag Elder

[ezilidanto] Join us! for the 40th National Day of Mourning on Nov. 26, 2009

(In Kreyòl) Thanksgiving by Sanit B.

Give Thanks No More
A National Day of Atonement

Haiti's Holocaust and Middle Passage Continues
and The Haiti Forum

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- (In Kreyòl) Thanksgiving by Sanit B. | Source- email November 25, 2009 2:16 PM

Thanksgiving
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 2:16 PM
From: Sanit

Bonjou kanmarad,

Demen se "Thanksgiving" nan peyi meriken. Pandan anpil nan nou pral manje, fete vant deboutonnen, nou pa konnen oubyen nou chwazi pou n pa konnen ki sa ki te pase premye jou fèt sa te pwoklame nan eta Massachussetts. Jounen sa, se jounen dèy pou natif yo.

An nou louvri yon paj listwa pou ka sonje si n te bliye, e pou n ka konnen si n pat konnen. Nan lane 1637, yon group blan kite Massachussetts ale nan eta Connecticut. Lè yo rive nan yon kontre ki rele Mystic, yo asasinen 700 natif fanm, gason, grandèt ak timoun piti.Gouvènè Massachussetts la, Wintrop, si tèlman kontan bèl travay ke asasen yo te fè nan Mystic, li proklame jou sa, jou aksyon de gras pou remèsye bondye ki pa janm sispan bwè san inosan yo. Depi lè sa preske tout lòt pèp ki ap viv nan peyi meriken selebre fèt lanmò sa chak ane an gran jan menm jan ak "Columbus Day."

Jou nou va apran pou n selebre zansèt nou yo tout bon vre nan respè ak diyite, na sispan patisipe nan fèt lanmò epi na selebre lavi nèt al kole. Si nou ap manje ak fanmi nou demen, tanpri souple, pran yon ti moman silans pou memwa pèp premye nasyon yo. Sipremasy blan an selebre tout zak malonèt ki bay lòt pèp kè plen. Poutan, chak gren dat ke zansèt nou yo kite dèyè, se dat ki kraze tèt lanmò pou lavi boujonnen. Si nou pat pèdi memwa, ala bòzò nou ta bòzò.

Sanit B!

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Thanksgiving: The National Day of Mourning - Text of 1970 speech by Wampsutta, An Aquinnah Wampanoag Elder

*********************** When Frank James (1923 - February 20, 2001), known to the Wampanoag people as Wampsutta, was invited to speak by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts at the 1970 annual Thanksgiving feast at Plymouth. When the text of Mr. James’ speech, a powerful statement of anger at the history of oppression of the Native people of America, became known before the event, the Commonwealth "disinvited" him. Wampsutta was not prepared to have his speech revised by the Pilgrims. He left the dinner and the ceremonies and went to the hill near the statue of the Massasoit, who as the leader of the Wampanoags when the Pilgrims landed in their territory. There overlooking Plymouth Harbor, he looked at the replica of the Mayflower. It was there that he gave his speech that was to be given to the Pilgrims and their guests. There eight or ten Indians and their supporters listened in indignation as Frank talked of the takeover of the Wampanoag tradition, culture, religion, and land. That silencing of a strong and honest Native voice led to the convening of the National Day of Mourning. The following is the text of 1970 speech by Wampsutta, an Aquinnah Wampanoag elder and Native American activist. ***********************

I speak to you as a man -- a Wampanoag Man. I am a proud man, proud of my ancestry, my accomplishments won by a strict parental direction ("You must succeed - your face is a different color in this small Cape Cod community!"). I am a product of poverty and discrimination from these two social and economic diseases. I, and my brothers and sisters, have painfully overcome, and to some extent we have earned the respect of our community. We are Indians first - but we are termed "good citizens." Sometimes we are arrogant but only because society has pressured us to be so.

It is with mixed emotion that I stand here to share my thoughts. This is a time of celebration for you - celebrating an anniversary of a beginning for the white man in America. A time of looking back, of reflection. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People.

Even before the Pilgrims landed it was common practice for explorers to capture Indians, take them to Europe and sell them as slaves for 220 shillings apiece.

The Pilgrims had hardly explored the shores of Cape Cod for four days before they had robbed the graves of my ancestors and stolen their corn and beans. Mourt's Relation describes a searching party of sixteen men. Mourt goes on to say that this party took as much of the Indians' winter provisions as they were able to carry.

Massasoit, the great Sachem of the Wampanoag, knew these facts, yet he and his People welcomed and befriended the settlers of the Plymouth Plantation.

Perhaps he did this because his Tribe had been depleted by an epidemic. Or his knowledge of the harsh oncoming winter was the reason for his peaceful acceptance of these acts. This action by Massasoit was perhaps our biggest mistake. We, the Wampanoag, welcomed you, the white man, with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end; that before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a free people.

What happened in those short 50 years? What has happened in the last 300 years? History gives us facts and there were atrocities; there were broken promises - and most of these centered around land ownership. Among ourselves we understood that there were boundaries, but never before had we had to deal with fences and stone walls. But the white man had a need to prove his worth by the amount of land that he owned. Only ten years later, when the Puritans came, they treated the Wampanoag with even less kindness in converting the souls of the so-called "savages." Although the Puritans were harsh to members of their own society, the Indian was pressed between stone slabs and hanged as quickly as any other "witch."

And so down through the years there is record after record of Indian lands taken and, in token, reservations set up for him upon which to live. The Indian, having been stripped of his power, could only stand by and watch while the white man took his land and used it for his personal gain. This the Indian could not understand; for to him, land was survival, to farm, to hunt, to be enjoyed.

It was not to be abused. We see incident after incident, where the white man sought to tame the "savage" and convert him to the Christian ways of life. The early Pilgrim settlers led the Indian to believe that if he did not behave, they would dig up the ground and unleash the great epidemic again.

The white man used the Indian's nautical skills and abilities. They let him be only a seaman -- but never a captain. Time and time again, in the white man's society, we Indians have been termed "low man on the totem pole."

Has the Wampanoag really disappeared? There is still an aura of mystery. We know there was an epidemic that took many Indian lives - some Wampanoags moved west and joined the Cherokee and Cheyenne. They were forced to move.
Some even went north to Canada! Many Wampanoag put aside their Indian heritage and accepted the white man's way for their own survival. There are some Wampanoag who do not wish it known they are Indian for social or economic reasons.

What happened to those Wampanoags who chose to remain and live among the early settlers? What kind of existence did they live as "civilized" people? True, living was not as complex as life today, but they dealt with the confusion and the change. Honesty, trust, concern, pride, and politics wove themselves in and out of their [the Wampanoags'] daily living. Hence, he was termed crafty, cunning, rapacious, and dirty.

History wants us to believe that the Indian was a savage, illiterate, uncivilized animal. A history that was written by an organized, disciplined people, to expose us as an unorganized and undisciplined entity. Two distinctly different cultures met. One thought they must control life; the other believed life was to be enjoyed, because nature decreed it. Let us remember, the Indian is and was just as human as the white man. The Indian feels pain, gets hurt, and becomes defensive, has dreams, bears tragedy and failure, suffers from loneliness, needs to cry as well as laugh. He, too, is often misunderstood.

The white man in the presence of the Indian is still mystified by his uncanny ability to make him feel uncomfortable. This may be the image the white man has created of the Indian; his "savageness" has boomeranged and isn't a mystery; it is fear; fear of the Indian's temperament!

High on a hill, overlooking the famed Plymouth Rock, stands the statue of our great Sachem, Massasoit. Massasoit has stood there many years in silence. We the descendants of this great Sachem have been a silent people. The necessity of making a living in this materialistic society of the white man caused us to be silent. Today, I and many of my people are choosing to face the truth. We ARE Indians!

Although time has drained our culture, and our language is almost extinct, we the Wampanoags still walk the lands of Massachusetts. We may be fragmented, we may be confused. Many years have passed since we have been a people together. Our lands were invaded. We fought as hard to keep our land as you the whites did to take our land away from us. We were conquered, we became the American prisoners of war in many cases, and wards of the United States Government, until only recently.

Our spirit refuses to die. Yesterday we walked the woodland paths and sandy trails. Today we must walk the macadam highways and roads. We are uniting We're standing not in our wigwams but in your concrete tent. We stand tall and proud, and before too many moons pass we'll right the wrongs we have allowed to happen to us.

We forfeited our country. Our lands have fallen into the hands of the aggressor. We have allowed the white man to keep us on our knees. What has happened cannot be changed, but today we must work towards a more humane America, a more Indian America, where men and nature once again are important; where the Indian values of honor, truth, and brotherhood prevail.

You the white man are celebrating an anniversary. We the Wampanoags will help you celebrate in the concept of a beginning. It was the beginning of a new life for the Pilgrims. Now, 350 years later it is a beginning of a new determination for the original American: the American Indian.

There are some factors concerning the Wampanoags and other Indians across this vast nation. We now have 350 years of experience living amongst the white man. We can now speak his language. We can now think as a white man thinks.

We can now compete with him for the top jobs. We're being heard; we are now being listened to. The important point is that along with these necessities of everyday living, we still have the spirit, we still have the unique culture, we still have the will and, most important of all, the determination to remain as Indians.

We are determined, and our presence here this evening is living testimony that this is only the beginning of the American Indian, particularly the Wampanoag, to regain the position in this country that is rightfully ours.

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Give Thanks No More
A National Day of Atonement
By ROBERT JENSEN, November 21, 2009, Counterpunch

One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.

In fact, indigenous people have offered such a model; since 1970 they have marked the fourth Thursday of November as a Day of Mourning in a spiritual/political ceremony on Coles Hill overlooking Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts, one of the early sites of the European invasion of the Americas.

Not only is the thought of such a change in this white-supremacist holiday impossible to imagine, but the very mention of the idea sends most Americans into apoplectic fits -- which speaks volumes about our historical hypocrisy and its relation to the contemporary politics of empire in the United States.

That the world's great powers achieved 'greatness' through criminal brutality on a grand scale is not news, of course. That those same societies are reluctant to highlight this history of barbarism also is predictable.

But in the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin -- the genocide of indigenous people -- is of special importance today. It's now routine -- even among conservative commentators -- to describe the United States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently benevolent one. Because all our history contradicts that claim, history must be twisted and tortured to serve the purposes of the powerful.

One vehicle for taming history is various patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving at the heart of U.S. myth-building. From an early age, we Americans hear a story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a new and harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 following the Pilgrims first winter.

Some aspects of the conventional story are true enough. But it's also true that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of polite society.

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers.

The first president, George Washington, in 1783 said he preferred buying Indians' land rather than driving them off it because that was like driving 'wild beasts' from the forest. He compared Indians to wolves, 'both being beasts of prey, tho' they differ in shape.' Thomas Jefferson -- president #3 and author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to Indians as the 'merciless Indian Savages' -- was known to romanticize Indians and their culture, but that didn't stop him in 1807 from writing to his secretary of war that in a coming conflict with certain tribes, '[W]e shall destroy all of them.'

As the genocide was winding down in the early 20th century, Theodore Roosevelt (president #26) defended the expansion of whites across the continent as an inevitable process 'due solely to the power of the mighty civilized races which have not lost the fighting instinct, and which by their expansion are gradually bringing peace into the red wastes where the barbarian peoples of the world hold sway.' Roosevelt also once said, 'I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.'

How does a country deal with the fact that some of its most revered historical figures had certain moral values and political views virtually identical to Nazis? Here's how 'respectable' politicians, pundits, and professors play the game:
When invoking a grand and glorious aspect of our past, then history is all-important. We are told how crucial it is for people to know history, and there is much hand wringing about the younger generations' lack of knowledge about, and respect for, that history. In the United States, we hear constantly about the deep wisdom of the founding fathers, the adventurous spirit of the early explorers, the gritty determination of those who 'settled' the country -- and about how crucial it is for children to learn these things.

But when one brings into historical discussions any facts and interpretations that contest the celebratory story and make people uncomfortable -- such as the genocide of indigenous people as the foundational act in the creation of the United States -- suddenly the value of history drops precipitously and one is asked, 'Why do you insist on dwelling on the past?'

This is the mark of a well-disciplined intellectual class -- one that can extol the importance of knowing history for contemporary citizenship and, at the same time, argue that we shouldn't spend too much time thinking about history.

This off-and-on engagement with history isn't of mere academic interest; as the dominant imperial power of the moment, U.S. elites have a clear stake in the contemporary propaganda value of that history. Obscuring bitter truths about historical crimes helps perpetuate the fantasy of American benevolence, which makes it easier to sell contemporary imperial adventures -- such as the invasion and occupation of Iraq -- as another benevolent action.

Any attempt to complicate this story guarantees hostility from mainstream culture. After raising the barbarism of America's much-revered founding fathers in a lecture, I was once accused of trying to 'humble our proud nation' and 'undermine young people's faith in our country.'

Yes, of course -- that is exactly what I would hope to achieve. We should practice the virtue of humility and avoid the excessive pride that can, when combined with great power, lead to great abuses of power.

History does matter, which is why people in power put so much energy into controlling it. The United States is hardly the only society that has created such mythology. While some historians in Great Britain continue to talk about the benefits that the empire brought to India, political movements in India want to make the mythology of Hindutva into historical fact. Abuses of history go on in the former empire and the former colony.

History can be one of the many ways we create and impose hierarchy, or it can be part of a process of liberation. The truth won't set us free, but the telling of truth at least opens the possibility of freedom.

As Americans sit down on Thanksgiving Day to gorge themselves on the bounty of empire, many will worry about the expansive effects of overeating on their waistlines. We would be better to think about the constricting effects on the day's mythology on our minds.

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the board of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center. He is the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race, Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (both from City Lights Books). He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.

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Forwarded by Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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Giving Thanks

Remembering the history of Thanksgiving, HLLN give thanks for our families, the Network, our friends. We give thanks for the strengths of the Tainos/Arawaks, for the mission they left in our care, for AYITI and our purpose - for our history and legacy of struggle as the human rights pioneers of this Hemisphere since their "New World" began. (See excerpt and links below and go to, The History of Thanksgiving by the Black Commentator http://www.blackcommentator.com/254/254_co
ver_end_of_american_thanksgivings.html ).

HLLN gives special, special thanks to all who assisted in helping with the Site Soley storm Noel victims, including without limitation:

John Maxwell

Dr. Antonio M. Pinchinat, PHD

Serge Pierre Pierre

James St. Furcy

Dr. Carl J. Gilbert

Ghislaine Gilbert

Amalia Vidas

Richard Vanden Heuvel

Tom F. Driver

Anne L. Barstow

Bruce Bergquist/The committee on Social Justice and Peace of the Rutgers Presbyterian Church in New York City

Chantal Laurent,

Madanm Fanon,

Alma Girondo,

Gesner Pierre,

Roseline Delorge, and

Hewoll J.

Thanks to the people above listed and our Site Soley Committee at HLLN, we've met our immediate water purification goal and the bulk, emergency packed AQUATABS® water purification tablets, have been shipped to Haiti. Some of the food, emergency kits and other staple items requested by our collaborators in Haiti, have already arrived. We are still in need of more donations for food, first aid kits and other emergency items and shall continue to run this Site Soley fund through the Christmas season, if there is an interest in helping these folks via the HLL Network in Haiti.

The best way to assist right now is through a financial donation, so that the necessary items may be bought in Haiti and distributed to the folks in need without shipment delays. (Those interested may use paypal account on the HLLN website - http://www.margueritelaurent.com/donate/donate.html or, to make a direct wire transfer, write to erzilidanto@yahoo.com for details.)

A report will follow as soon as our Ezili Danto Witness project folks in Haiti provide us with pictures of the distribution and an itemization of the more than 3,400 folks you have helped to give more life to in this time of storms. (Action requested to help the victims of Storm Noel in Site Soley
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/p
ressclips/StormnoelSiteSoley.html#stormAppeal ).

Words of appreciation are woefully inadequate. But please - souple - accept, our heartfelt thank you. Mesi anpil.
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network ("HLLN")
November 22, 2007
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(history of the US's Thanksgiving Day...)
"....Another common practice among European explorers was to give "smallpox blankets" to the Indians. Since smallpox was unknown on this continent prior to the arrival of the Europeans, Native Americans did not have any natural immunity to the disease so smallpox would effectively wipe out entire villages with very little effort required by the Europeans. William Fenton describes how Europeans decimated Native American villages in his 1957 work "American Indian and White relations to 1830."

From 1615 to 1619 smallpox ran rampant among the Wampanoags and their neighbors to the north. The Wampanoag lost 70 percent of their population to the epidemic and the Massachusetts lost 90 percent. Most of the Wampanoag had died from the smallpox epidemic so when the Pilgrims arrived they found well-cleared fields which they claimed for their own. A Puritan colonist, quoted by Harvard University's Perry Miller, praised the plague that had wiped out the Indians for it was "the wonderful preparation of the Lord Jesus Christ, by his providence for his people's abode in the Western world."

Historians have since speculated endlessly on why the woods in the region resembled a park to the disembarking Pilgrims in 1620. The reason should have been obvious: hundreds, if not thousands, of people had lived there just five years before. In less than three generations the settlers would turn all of New England into a charnel house for Native Americans, and fire the economic engines of slavery throughout English-speaking America. Plymouth Rock is the place where the nightmare truly began. (The Black Commentator, The History of Thanksgiving) http://www.blackcommentator.com/254/25
4_cover_end_of_american_thanksgivings.html

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"Associations between Haitians and infectious disease are currently particularly strong in the U.S. popular press. This, too, is nothing new. Writing in 1920, National Geographic journalists noted that "it is estimated that 87 percent of the entire population were infected with contagious diseases." AIDS is merely the most recent in a long series of plagues attributed to Haiti. In the sixteenth century, Europeans insisted that syphilis originated n Haiti, and was brought back by Columbus' sailors. (the converse now appears to have been the case.)"Excerpted from: The Uses of Haiti (1994, updated 2005) --by Paul Farmer

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Coincidence or Intentional? - Is there an International plan to depopulate
and exterminate a large portion of Haiti's population? by Ezili Dantò,
November 4, 2006 |
http://www.margueritelaurent.co
m/pressclips/conspiracy.html#neocolon

See also Vaccinate Haiti! and Defamed! - Page 1, - Page 2, Pg. 3 and Pg. 4 )
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pre
ssclips/defamed4.html#vaccinateHaiti

Defamed!
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/defamed.html ;
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/defamed1.html ;
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/defamed3.html ;
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/defamed4.html ;
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/defamed5.html ; and
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/defamed6.html

Warning (Please listen): A Genocide by Vaccination?
Editorial - Occupied Haiti To be Vaccinated ! Franklin Ellis, Nov. 11, 2007
Fanmi Lavalas Emission (Mp3 - 12:41| in French)
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/edit
oryalfranklin11-11-07.mp3

Possible Media Bias on coverage of Gilbert/Worobey report
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pres
sclips/defamed1.html#media

Haïti/Propagation du Sida : Les erreurs du professeur Michael Worobey
http://www.alterpresse.org/spip.php?article6579

- "...In the annals of human history, no country, no settlers in the Americas,
killed more people, shed more BLOOD than the English, French, Spanish - than
the European tribes and their white settlers. Period, no comma. So, how does
Haiti get to be the one "doomed?" Why? Because the blood shed and people
eradicated out of Haiti where said whites, who had annihilated the Amerindians
all over the Americas and then kidnapped and enslaved Africans to come work the land of the Tainos so that the European's coffee at home would be sweet? Right? The kidnapping of Blacks, spreading of lies about black inferiority and
savagery continue as we see with this article and the abduction out of Haiti of
President Aristide... (From Hochschild's Neocolonial Journalism: Response to Adam Hochschild article in SF Chronicle by Marguerite Laurent, May 30, 2004 ).

-Editorial - Occupied Haiti To be Vaccinated! Franklin Ellis, Nov. 11, 2007 Fanmi Lavalas Emission (Mp3 - 12:41| in French)

Genocide and the UN's deliberate depopulation of Site Soley, a prime oceanfront property of the poor, under pretext of controlling crime ang gangs in Haiti
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/declarationAr.html#depopulate

Haiti Remittances top US $1.6b , March 2007
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/laborvalue.html#diaspora

No other national group anywhere in the world sends more money home than Haitians living abroad
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/laborvalue.html#noother
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Forwarded by the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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Become an Ezili Danto paid subscriber:
Remember, in this season of thanks and gift giving, if you've found our work of importance, please give thanks and show your support, by financially supporting the work of Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network. To make a simple donation to HLLN, or to become a paid subscriber, go to: http://www.margueritelaurent.com/donate/donate.html

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"Asylum, Amnesty and Justice denied our kind" (See, "Breaking Sea Chains" )

- RBM Video Reel

Carnegie Hall

Miami Live! - RBM

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"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)

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The Story of Janjak: The Greatest Hero who ever Lived(45- minutes Storytelling Theater Dance presentation) by Ezili Dantò, inspired by:Haiti’s Founding Father - The Women who Influenced him, his Ideals and Legacy

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It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom. --Emma Goldman

"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)

“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

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Hitler merely applied to Europe colonialist procedures --Aime Cesaire

"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