| ***********************
October
17, 2006 marks the bicentennial of the assassination of Haiti's
revolutionary hero and founding father
- Join HLLN, throughout the month of October 2006, in celebrating
the life, triumphs, achievements and three greatest ideals and
philosophical contributions of Jean Jacques Dessalines for a more
humane and unted world ,
an October 17th Event|
The Free Haiti Movement,
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network,
September 19, 2006
**********************
Onè e respè
la sosyete,
Hello folks,
President Preval is now in office in Haiti. Some of the most recognized
political prisoners have been released and through the Leadership
Network's international agitations and the ceaseless sacrifices
of the people of Haiti, the truth about the neo-liberal agenda
that led to the 2004 coup d’etat is more readily visible
and in the news than it was at the beginning of the 2004 occupation
and dictatorship years.
But we still have many basic human rights, as outlined in HLLN's
FreeHaitiMovement
2006 Haiti
Resolution that have yet to be fully realized, including
release of all the political prisoners, the de-militarization
of Haiti, the equal application of DDR, full investigation of
the bi-centennial coup d’etat, justice for its victims,
respect for Haiti’s independence, sovereignty and its February
7th vote; a stop to the UN killings of Haitian civilians, and
a stop to the coup d’etat killings, rapes, arbitrary arrests
and political persecutions in Haiti. (For the full text, see,
the 2006 Haiti
Resolution at http://www.margueritelaurent.com/law/res2006.html
.)
HLLN appreciates all of you, worldwide, who have supported and
joined the Free Haiti Movement over the years and helped Haitians
press forward these most basic of freedom goals. We believe there
is no nobler a cause than to defend the most powerless against
the atrocities, tyranny and ravages of the most powerful nations
and military powers on earth.
October 17, 2006 will mark the last of HLLN's four yearly events
for the FreeHaitiMovement
in 2006.
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/solidarityday/infoforsponsors.html
Consider sponsoring, as a show of solidarity with the struggling
peoples of Haiti, or, if you're Haitian, to honor Haiti's founding
father, an October 17th FreeHaitiMovement
event, activity or essay/article on Jean Jacques Dessalines' achievements.
All creative ideas are encouraged.
HLLN will gather all the "Dessalines is Rising" events,
essays and contributions to promote and circulate them through
our international network. The best essays and creative contributions
on Dessalines’ achievements shall be published on our website.
To endorse and/or sponsor, write
to Erzilidanto@yahoo.com
with your contributions, and any flyers and announcements dealing
with Dessalines events in the month of October, 2006 (See last
year’s commemoration: Oct
17 – “Day of Heroes In Haiti” http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/papadesalin.html
)
You may also support the work of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership
Network by making financial contributions to this work. Go to:
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/donate/donate.html
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
The FreeHaitiMovement
- Dessalines is Rising Worldwide
Haitians were the first Blacks to be brought, in chains, to the
Western Hemisphere.
After more than 300 years of European enslavement, Haitians were
also the first and only captives, in world history, to gain their
independence in combat with their enslavers.
General Jean Jacques Dessalines is Haiti's founding father.
When, in 1802, the
French kidnapped and spirited away to torture and death
Haiti's first revolutionary hero, General Toussaint Louverture,
Jean Jacques Dessalines would rise up to lead the struggle which
would defeat the white settlers and create the nation called "Ayiti,"
meaning "land of mountains" in the Taino-Arawak Amerindian
language. It was General Jean Jacques Dessalines' victory over
French General, Rochambeau, in Vertieres that forced Napoleon
Bonaparte to abandon his bid for the control of Louisiana and
eventually, the rest of the 'New World'.
Dessalines was assassinated on October 17, 1806 by political rivals
allied to Haiti's foreign enemies, notably France. This was Haiti's
very first coup d'etat. One month from now, on October 17, 2006,
Haitians will mark the bi-centennial of Dessalines' assassination
by the mulatto sons of France.
For its part, HLLN will honor the achievements of one of the modern
world's greatest heroes - Haiti's brilliant founding father, Jean
Jacques Dessalines, by underlining the greatest of Dessalines
philosophies and ideals.
We shall do this by bringing, on-line, to our Ezili Danto Listserve,
on October 17, 2006, an HLLN “To-Tell-The-Truth" About
Haiti Forum centering on the achievements of Jean Jacques Dessalines.
By then, those interested will know a bit more about:
1. The
three most important philosophies and ideals of Jean Jacques Dessalines;
2. Haitian Culture: The Symbolic and Archetypal nature of Vodun;
3. How the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) empowers
Haitians, encourages Haitians to network with one another, be
self-reliant and address their grievances people-to-people;
4. The biggest problems facing Haitians in the Diaspora;
5. Why Haiti is so poor;
6. Why the 2004 Coup D’etat, and
7. Why Haitians are the most hated and discriminated against peoples
in the Western Hemisphere.
The post on these issues will be taken directly from interviews,
workshops, writings or the "To-Tell-The-Truth"-About-Haiti
forums held by HLLN since the February 2004 coup d’etat.
We begin by outlining what Ezili Dantò/HLLN teaches are
the three most important philosophies and humanitarian contributions
of General Jean Jacques Dessalines, Haiti's founding father:
1. Dessalines ideal #1 - Black is the color of liberty.
All Haitians, - Ayisyen yo - "shall
hence forward be known only by the generic appellation of "Blacks."
(See, Dessalines' 1805 Constitution).
Thus, in Dessalines' Haiti, "Black,"
is deracialized. We all now know that race is purely a social
construct with no scientific grounds. The truth is there is just
one race, the human race. But back at its creation, the country
of Haiti was based on this truth.
For, Dessalines defined those who fought for the abolishment of
chattel slavery in Haiti and against colonialism, including the
few whites that did fight on the side of the Africans, as "Blacks."
To study Dessalines' life, achievements and first Constitution
is to come to know that a "Black" is a person (no matter
his/her skin color, European or African) who stands for freedom,
human dignity and against slavery, colonialism and imperialism.
No ideal in this modern world so directly confronts and conquers
the biological fatalism of white privilege. In Dessalines' 1805
Constitution, all Haitians are "known only by the generic
appellation of "Blacks." And "Blacks" included
even the Polish and Germans who fought with the African warriors
on the side of liberty and equality, not slavery, plunder and
profit. Black people in Dessalines' Haiti are "lovers-of-liberty"
who are willing to live free or die. To reiterate, there is no
modern philosophy or ideal that has so directly provided the world
with an ALTERNATIVE to the manufactured "race game,"
based on skin color, as this Dessalines ideal.
Haiti is a nation of Blacks, of lovers-of-liberty. That is the
ideal Dessalines established at the creation of the nation of
Haiti.
This Dessalines philosophy directly and humanely defeats the socially
manufactured white/black “race” dialogue of the US/Euro
powers that Dessalines and his peoples in Haiti confronted and
is one of the primary reason why the spread of Haiti's revolution,
was, and still is, so feared by the US/Euro slave owners, colonizers
and their descendants who depend on "white" as code
to designate, in contrast to "Black," what's "good,"
"civilized" or "superior" in order to unify
the European tribes and divide and conquer peoples of color worldwide.
Dessalines did not only defeat European slavery and colonialism
in one fell swoop in physical combat with the greatest European
armies of the time, but he also ideologically decimated the basis
for white privilege, by designating "Ayisyen" as "Blacks"
not based on skin color, but as all persons who took arms or positive
action against tyranny, oppression, slavery.
Also, in defining Blacks as "Ayisyen" this way, Dessalines
systematically codified a customary practice or belief held and
commonly extended in daily life by the amalgamated Africans who
then formed Haiti's enslaved masses and had gathered together
as a family against colonialism and slavery. These Haitians always
saw "whites" and "blacks" who were despots
or tyrants as strangers, the foreigners, the colonists, the
imperialists, or, collectively, as white(s) - "blan"
or "blan-yo." And definitely not good and acceptable
"family" members of the community, no matter the person's
actual skin color. Dessalines simply codified this African concept
of universal fraternity and brotherhood that is based on moral
action in Haiti's founding Constitution. To Haitians, "Black"
is family. Black is Ayisyen. But "blacks" who are tyrannical
or act as agents for the white settlers' oppression are not Ayisyen,
or family, but "white" - blan. When Dessalines
designated "Black" as the appellation for Haiti's liberators,
no matter the persons skin color, the masses who freed themselves
from all the blan, or blan-yo, understood this well,
and still do.
Combining Dessalines'
Law with Dessalines
Three ideals, the Haitian poet, Feliks Moriso Lewa,
once wrote, in his famous poem Blan
Mannan that "Dessalines who is
my history teacher tells me the only good white is the white that
shoots the bad white."
Dessalines' Zero
Tolerance for despots was expressed thus: "We will detonate
and burn Haiti down and all rather die before we are returned
to slavery and colonialism."
In Kreyol - Desalin di: "Depi teritwa
nou an menase, koupe tèt, boule kay" paske Ayisyen
pap retounen lan esklavaj." (See
also, The
Revolutionary Potential of Haiti, its creeds, values and struggle).
2. Dessalines ideal #2 - What's in a name?
The name “Ayiti” or "Haiti" honors the spirit,
calls forth the force, of the original inhabitants of Haiti who
suffered complete genocide at the hands of the white settlers.
When it came to naming the island the African warriors had freed
from the white settlers' tyranny, it took a great humanist to
remember the original inhabitants, the Taino/Arawaks, who had
been brutally decimated by the white settlers. Dessalines is that
great genius who would name the country that defeated white privilege
and imperialism "Haiti" - Ayiti- an Amerindian term.
Though the original inhabitants are no more, the country called
"Ayiti" lives, still exists through the African peoples
who defeated the slaughterers of the original Ayiti. Taino/Arawak
bloodlines and culture live in African bloodlines in Haiti and
in Haiti’s syncretic Vodun culture. Through the living of
Africans who name themselves in their language, they did not die
out.
To name the country "Ayiti" is to honor the spirit,
the memory of these native Taino/Arawak Amerindians who owned
the land before the white settlers arrived. This too also unnerves
the imperialists. Hence, in 1930, under the US occupation of Haiti,
the United States Geographic Board (U.S.G.B.) unilaterally renamed
the Island of Haiti back to the Spanish colonizer’s appellation
of “Hispaniola” - Little Spain! Supposedly this was
"to avoid confusion between the name of the Republic of Haiti
and that of the entire island." (See, En
Memoires Des Arawaks et Tainos D'Haiti
and, "Rename the Island: Quisqueya, not Hispaniola 'Quisqueya'
honors Taino culture whereas 'Hispaniola' recalls the Amerindian
genocide" By Odette Roy Fombrun and The
Haitian Arawak Movement) The US had no right whatsoever
to abridge Haiti's revolution in this manner. Of course, Haitians
in Haiti and Haiti's textbooks still refer to the island by its
proper name -"the Island of Haiti." That, of course,
doesn't stop the offense most knowledgeable Haitians feel every
instance the mass media refers to the Island of Haiti as "Hispaniola"
in their reportings and particularly on TV during the hurricane
season. For us at HLLN, the Island will always be the Island of
Haiti. But, to push back Dessalines' revolution is the reason
for all the imperialist interventions in Haiti since Haiti's independence.
Once we learned how the Island was renamed "Hispaniola"
by the US, once given the facts of the matter, there is no choice
but to remember how Dessalines wisely taught us to say NO to all
despots and tyrants. The name of the island cannot arbitrarily
just be renounced by the US! Se pa kado blan yo te fè nou.
Se san zansèt nou yo ki te koule.
This serious error and assassination of the Island of Haiti's
Amerindian past cannot be carried forward by Haitians and must
be consistently and relentlessly renounced. HLLN's To-Tell-The-Truth-About-Haiti
Forums teach that, “To say “Haitian” –
Ayisyen – is a profoundly important utterance. For to say
“Haitian” - Ayisyen – is to immortalize, raise
up the souls of the Amerindians destroyed through the Spanish
colonizers genocide in Haiti. To rename the Island back to "little
Spain" or to vilify a Haitian because of his/her revolutionary
legacy and desire for independence, is to stand against all that
Haiti is. It is to stand against the courageous Amerindian spirit
Haitians animate with each breath of existence. It is to undermine,
not only the former owners of the land called Ayiti, but also
the amalgamated African tribes and the few European freedom lovers
who were the first to put liberty into application since the coming
of Columbus to the Americas.
(See also, En
Memoires Des Arawaks et Tainos D'Haiti,
Defamed! - In
memory of the Arawaks and Tainos of Haiti, the Island's name is
Haiti, not 'Hispaniola' as the newscasters' insist every time
they report on tropical storms and in the hurricane seasons. Also,
in term of diseases on the Island of Ayiti, Columbus' sailors
brought syphilis to the Island and decimated the Amerindians population,
not the converse...The
same for the HIV/AIDS of these times, devastating Haiti and Africa
originating from the U.S./Euro travelers and their scientists'
laboratories and injected into chimps in Zaire, now renamed the
Congo.
See also: "....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...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) - (See also: Vaccinate
Haiti! and
Defamed!
-Page 1,
- Page 2,
Pg.
3,
Pg.
4,
Pg.
5 and,
Pg.
6 ;
La
Conspiration Du Silence:Genocide
in Haiti by mass vaccination while Haiti is occupied by Dessalines'
enemies and other such white savior missionaries/ mercenaries...).
***
Black are the original peoples on
planet earth, including the Americas and
shared core cultural, social and religious
values with the Blacks brought to the Americas as slaves
Within the Western Hemisphere,
Haiti is a focal point of an African-Indian cultural, Vodun and
blood fusion.
The world is just starting to learn that the Africans were the
original peoples of the Americas. A "large percentage of
the Aboriginal First People of the Americas were Ethnic Black
Indians affected by foreign invasion...Indian removal, as well
as impacted by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and the Black Holocaust."
(See, Black
Indians United Legal Defense Fund - Thanksgiving Day Message).
Does this also explain why Jean Jacques Dessalines chose to re-establish
the Indian - perhaps the Black
autochthones’ name - “Ayiti,” to
the new African nation he had freed and founded? Is that also
another reason, knowing that Black
were the original trustees of the land, were original
to the Americas before all the invaders, including the Siberian/Asian
Native Americans, that reaching back for Black, Dessalines decreed
“all citizens in Haiti shall be known by the appellation
"Black?" ( See, Some
of the oldest remains found so far in the Americas;
Black
Indians - An HLLN appeal for equity and justice by
and Black
Indians United Legal Defense Fund - Thanksgiving Day Message).
Did the indigenous Haitian army of Jean Jacques Dessalines' era
understand the term "Black" in the "autochthones"
manner – that is that the Blacks, those descendants of ancient
Alkebulan who are today socially and politically labeled and identified
as “Africans” where living in the Americas since time
immemorial; where there in the Americas eons ago, as the original
peoples on earth, before the one landmass on the earth was broken
during the ice age and separated into continents?
From what schools teaches and from the images we see on TV, it
appears the Native Americans are clearly of Asian/mongoloid descent
and seem to have colonized the entire American continent from
one end to the other as well as the Caribbean islands.
But the hard proof reveals the oldest remains found in the Americas
is African and dates back at least 3,000 years earlier than the
Asian-like Native American remains found. Still, it may be impossible
to know more for quite sometime because the Native Americans understandably
don't want to lose the legal and social standings they enjoy over
the Black Indians within their nations and the Black autochthones
elsewhere in the Americas. Officialdom is vested in this divide
and conquer and upholding its arcane ideas. Non-white cultures
(African-Americans, Autochthons, Caribbeaners, Latinos, Asians
and Native Americans) in the Americas still haven't matured into
the cogent idea that they don't need to assimilate into each other
to have a successful political movement that serves all their
interests. So, this information that Africans were "first"
threatens not only the "great discover" American narrative
but the non-white ethnic groups in the Americas who take succor
from not being at the "very bottom" of the American
"race"-strata. Not to mention that the hegemony of white
supremacy shall end the day all Blacks, African-Americans, Autochthons,
Caribbeaners, Latinos, Asians and Native Americans in the Americas,
unify to systematize their same struggles against RACISM. For
each have a historic, if not ownership, stake to the Americas,
the planet. Each have a history that is older than European colonization.
Thus, white officialdom does not want to re-write its - American
narrative, its black vs white (evil vs good) - history. So, it
censors mass exposure of the scientific evidence reported and
currently available in the public domain that goes against what
the school textbooks teach, while actively re-burying - hindering,
discouraging research, further DNA and other more accurate re-testing
of - newly unearthed remains or previously found remains in the
Americas. But does it matter? Some say it does, if Africans are
to take their rightful place in history. And, that it is quite
within the realm of possibilities that the traveling Black warriors
and maroons who came to fight the white settlers with Dessalines
in Jean Jacques Dessalines' era understood that Blacks to the
Americas were not all imported slaves from Africa. To support
this we note that, besid |
