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Amy Wilentz Profile
Amy Wilentz

@amywilentz

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Contributing editor @TheNation | National Book Critics Circle winner for memoir | Guggenheim fellow. I write about Haiti, Middle East, & CA. UCI LitJ prof.

Los Angeles, CA
Joined February 2009
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
7 years
Clever display at Barnes and Noble. Check out top titles...
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
2 years
Haiti is burning! Where is the internat’l media? NYTimes Ransom writers: get your colleagues there. Haitian journalists are being killed. They need the support of the big guns. Are you waiting for State Dept to tell you to go? @deanbaquet @WSJ @washingtonpost @latimes @CNN @CBS
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
4 years
Come on, @JoeBiden !!!! Haitian-Americans voted for you and for @KamalaHarris because they trusted you to work for the right things in #Haiti and not treat it like a “shithole.” Let’s see some positive change in US Haiti policy!! 🇭🇹
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
2 years
via @NYTimes : reading this, I feel that I and so many others, especially Haitian writers & historians, have been working for decades in a small dark closet & now the NY Times has walked in, shining a powerful beam of light on a subject too long obscured.
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
3 years
US spends past 11 years supporting violent & corrupt regimes in #Haiti after 2010 earthquake there. Then, confronted w 1000s of valiant Haitian refugees at its Texas border, it chooses to send them back to the place it’s worked so hard to destroy. Only SOME Black Lives Matter!
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
2 years
New President of Harvard, Claudine Gay, daughter of Haitian immigrants. She takes office in July.
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
4 years
In 1987, always ahead of the curve, Haitians pulled down #Columbus 's statue in Port-au-Prince harbor. The proud conqueror now sits on the ground, Cross-less, armless, in #Haiti 's Museum of Ethnology, surrounded by Vodou spirits, as Laurent Dubois has written. #StatuesMustFall
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
4 years
Kanye West arrived at Cap Haitien in #Haiti today for one day of tourism. He was greeted in VIP reception by Pres. Jovenel Moïse, who took West on a leisurely boat tour of sights in the north, while in the south, hunger, chaos, & assassination rule the streets of Port-au-Prince.
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
3 years
Hey INS, Homeland Security: Instead of flying desperate Haitian refugees back to the mess the US has made in Haiti, how about asking State to help fix damage done by US there? Start w truth & reconciliation, disarming gangs, finding stolen $$. Let Haitians run their own country.
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
In #Gona ïves, #Haiti , protesters who looted schools have been bringing back what they took, having decided it was a mistake to have taken such materials in the first place. Some of the most remarkable news videos I've ever seen, and that show again Haiti's amazing originality.
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
4 years
@CaitlinPacific on inequality in education sums it up: Schools for the richest American kids have gates & security guards; message: you're precious to us. Schools for the poorest kids have metal detectors & police officers; message: you're a threat to us.
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
2 years
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
4 years
What will it take to move @JoeBiden ’s State Department to take a more humanitarian view of the criminal Moïse regime in #Haiti ? More arrests of prominent members of the opposition? More insecurity in the streets & kidnappings? More assassinations & shootings of journalists? What?
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
3 years
It's a sad day for the Haitian people. The loss of #Paul Farmer, one of their truest advocates, is enormous, even for the many who never knew him. But as he would say, it's the work, not the man. We should all take heart from that... though it's hard right now. Really hard.
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
2 years
via @NYTimes The US paper of record gives us the scoop on Haitian revolutionary history and French and US financial abuses circa 1804 and onward! It’s about time and it’s great. Shows what can be done in journalism….
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
Shocking news seems to be that the great, kind, & brilliant #PaulFarmer , old friend of the Haitian people and watchdog for their health, has died at 62. We came up together in Haiti, as he liked to say. Great man, great soul. I miss him already.
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
6 months
Haitian police need bolstering. Haitian fire dept needs hiring, bolstering, training. People need housing. Works project program needs to be instituted. Where's the Clinton-Bush fund for #Haiti now? Where are all the caring Americans? Remember: Haitians are as real as Ukrainians.
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
When Haitians say Haitians should run #Haiti , they don’t mean Joseph Lambert, Ariel Henry, Claude Joseph, Michel Martelly, Laurent Lamothe or other corrupt negligent figures from the past decade who’ve been tried & found wanting, to be kind. They mean something new & true & fair.
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
The problem for #Haiti is that the int’l community has been an ongoing disaster, yet Haiti is by now so immersed in poverty, political infighting, & gangsterism that it’s dependent on those same outsiders to help move out of its quagmire. This is the dilemma, the trap.
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
So many Americans, private citizens & members of the media, have declared that images of Texas cowboys whipping & herding unarmed Haitians migrants & refugees do not represent "who we are as a nation." They should read up on US foreign policy in #Haiti over the last century.
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
3 years
The battle in Haiti between Moïse’s two prime ministers is a battle between two wings of the same Martelly/Moise business mafia that’s now still in power, with internat’l heavy hitters directing the show. Only group left out of this “democratic”picture? The Haitian people.
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
Haiti is in desperate condition. After the torrid summer of coverage & international concern: nothing. Eclipsed by the stupid, deathly clash of the old hegemonic imperiums, Haitians are dying in battles between smaller overlords also warring for territory & profit streams.
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
A friend just sent me this picture of Michel Martelly and his wife Sophia—at a costume ball, but these could have been their daily outfits, given how they ruled Haiti. Good to see this after NYTimes series this week on French plunder of Haiti’s early fortunes.
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
I don't really want to know who was the first person the Colombian mercenaries called after they left #Moise 's house, even if it was this shadowy Dr. Sanon. I want to know who Dr. Sanon called.
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
via @NYTimes : I am reminded yet again of the Graham Greene quote from his Haiti novel, The Comedians: “It is astonishing how much money can be made out of the poorest of the poor with a little ingenuity.”
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Amy Wilentz
4 years
Haitians keep trying to dig out of the hole, viz Sunday's giant protests. But some obstacles stand in the way of the country's achieving its own homemade democracy, notably the international community. @USEmbassyHaiti @BINUH_UN @ABlinken @OAS_official
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
#Haiti is in a moment of dangerous upheaval and yet Ariel Henry, de facto Prime Minister, says nothing. @JoeBiden says nothing. Maybe Henry has nothing to say. After speaking & igniting this, words elude him. He knows he can’t put out the fires.
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
What Christmas in #Haiti looks like, or looked like: Xmas houses, or "fanal," on the side of the road up from Port-au-Prince.
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
Hey Homeland Security: the humanitarian crisis Haitians face is in HAITI not at the gathering at the US border. Send your planes to Haiti to bring them HERE. Those Haitians at the Rio Grande right now have never seen clean water like that in their lives!
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
If the international community has any courage left, it must help #Haiti NOW w/whatever it takes to secure release of the port at Varreux from gangs, & allow fuel to flow into the country’s veins again. Schools, hospitals, banks, businesses, markets shutting down. Do it now!
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Amy Wilentz
1 year
Haitians seeking shelter in front of the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince after being chased from their homes by armed arsonists, rapists, and kidnappers — were then pushed away from the refuge of the embassy by police wielding water hoses and tear gas. Now where are they to go?
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
If Ariel Henry can go forward with a Carnival (Mardi Gras) in Port-au-Prince without violence it will seem to prove that he and his people are party to the terrible situation there now.
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
The view is obscured by day to day outrages, but in #Haiti civil society is literally being eliminated thru violent crime & kidnapping to pave the way to unopposed rule by the mafialike govt currently in power. Religious figures, doctors, nurses, lawyers, all have been attacked.
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Amy Wilentz
4 months
Garry and Hillary, 2012. Sans commentaire.
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
Yay! NYTimes seems to join those who understand "why Haiti is the way it is." Let's not say "poorest country in hemisphere." Rather: "most degraded, most exploited, most repressed, least respected country in the hemisphere." Thanks, Chris Cameron:
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Amy Wilentz
5 years
Out on the streets in Haiti: How outright thievery and incompetence that verges on a human rights violation sparked a huge, ongoing popular movement:
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
Montana accord's ongoing democratic consensus-building, while buffeted by political pressures, is essentially a challenge to the Biden admin to decide whether it has the courage to work to accompany Haitians toward democracy, rather than control (& again wreck) the whole process.
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
People dying in #Haiti ’s prisons without water and food, in the heat, with no family to help them because families can’t get there because there’s no gas, and tuberculosis is also rampant, and no medical care. #letthemout .
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Amy Wilentz
4 years
Do you actually trust @moisejovenel to organize honest elections? Why would he... since he himself was elected in a controversial and manipulated vote? If “regular & timely elections are essential in a democracy” then what we have in Haiti is not a democracy.
@WHAAsstSecty
Brian A. Nichols
4 years
Regular and timely elections are essential in a democracy. We urge all parties to commit to organizing overdue legislative elections as soon as possible. Free and fair elections are the sole path to restoring to Haitians the right to choose their leaders. 3/3
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
via @NYTimes : I have a feeling of deja vu. Reading this is like reading my own books on Haiti, but published in the New York Times! A real victory for telling the truth about “why Haiti is like that.”
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
My son found this piece by Gianni Lee on Bleeker St. and sent it to me. Anyone want to respond to the question? I have some ideas…..
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
Thanks to Daniel Foote for saying to @POTUS what all decent supporters of Haitian sovereignty and dignity have been saying for a decade and more! Finally truth spoken by power to power!
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
8 years
Darlings in white on croquet lawn as Grandpa's ICE rounds up immigrants. Great moment in #Trump Tastelessness, for Kate Middleton audience.
@IvankaTrump
Ivanka Trump
8 years
Sunday in Palm Beach!
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
Haitian businessman Samir Handel has been arrested in… Turkey. Perhaps there’s a Turkish connection to the assassination?Not long before it, Pres. Moise made an extremely unprecedented state trip to Turkey. In 30 years working in Haiti I never heard Turkey mentioned. Comments?
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Amy Wilentz
4 years
The US Embassy in Port-au-Prince today began edging away from #JovenelMoise , questioning his firing of three Supreme Court judges and suggesting that the Haitian government organize the legislative elections it hasn’t bothered with for two long years.
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Amy Wilentz
4 years
After 11 years as editorial page editor of the LA Times, my husband, Nick Goldberg, is stepping down. He's had a good, long, satisfying run. For his next act at LAT, he'll become an associate editor and a regular op-ed columnist.
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Amy Wilentz
4 years
Reports from #Haiti that Moïse government has carted off to prison those arrested on Sunday on false charges of plotting a coup d’état, including Supreme Court judge Yvickel Dabrésil.
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
What we know is that the de facto prime minister of #Haiti , installed by fiat of the US a year ago, and a very bad year, has now asked for an international military intervention to solve his profound problems. No terms, no parameters—thus far.
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
Foote's letter: US Embassy in Port-au-Prince in a panic!
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
Nice quote from Michael Gerson's defense of Dr. Fauci today: "Watching Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) debate science with Fauci during committee hearings is like watching Albert Einstein being disputed by his dry cleaner."
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
Most of the violent gangs in #Haiti remind me of François #Duvalier ’s Tontons Macoute, but much better armed & crucially without the well understood goals & centralized direction of that death squad, so everything now feels capricious & without purpose or reason to the victims.
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
Over the shocking dystopia that Moise & Co. have created in #Haiti looms the specter of the international community. Will the Core Group finally do the right thing?
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
@wordofthedayeng Don’t listen to any app that tells you to use “rural” instead of “very rude”: “That guy was so drunk. His behavior was RURAL!!” Please.
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
If you were a head of state making list of drug traffickers in your country: 1. Would you write it on a piece of paper? 2. would you have it sitting around at home? 3. Would there be only one copy, thus: that destroyed, the criminals are safe? See @MoiseJovenel : not THAT stupid!
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
via @NYTimes : What I’ve always said: never marvel at the glories of Paris without see the blood of Haitian slaves.
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
In #Haiti , roadblocks everywhere in the capital. No airport access. 16 US hostages threatened w/execution. These are moments when even strong governments in the US orbit can be made to fall. Military intervention can happen. Haitians await the next chapter with both fear & hope.
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Amy Wilentz
7 months
Thank you for your clarity on U.S. Haiti vacillation, Thomas Shannon. The U.S. didn't beg Aristide please to resign; they forced his hand. Why does the intransigent, unelected Ariel Henry seem to have the U.S. over a barrel?
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Amy Wilentz
6 months
As I have said repeatedly: as you watch the situation in #Haiti unfold, try to remember that Haitians are real people. They are like YOU. Try to empathize with Haitian mothers & children under fire as you would with Ukrainians. Your inability to care adds fuel to their disaster.
@ralphonse76
Roberson Alphonse
6 months
Haitians are human beings. Our blood is red, like all human beings. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights should take our rights into account. #Stop the cynicism.
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Amy Wilentz
4 years
Kidnappings continue in #Haiti today. #JovenelMoise cannot distance himself from the rule of these outlaws. No Supreme Court, no legislature. No adequate normalized governance can be expected from this president.
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
Interesting point. But the NYT announcement of this history that so many of us have written, taught, and talked about for decades + more is nonetheless important even if they didn’t credit every person they spoke to and every book they read.
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Dr. Keisha N. Blain
2 years
I regret sharing the NYT article on Haiti yesterday. So many scholars are noting their egregious editorial practices. The writers of the article did not properly credit their sources. I’ll drop a few threads below for further context.
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Amy Wilentz
4 years
I read that Defense Department has refused D.C. mayor's request to deploy the National Guard to the Capitol. So if true, that is a coup. Trump's defense department refuses to defend the Capitol and the legislature. Again, if true.
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
Safe to say that it is making many people, including journalists who've worked for years on this particular story, very happy to see the barriers of entrenched systemic American racism against #Haiti coming down, & coming down hard, in favor of the truth.
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
Foote's letter, annotated: The great reporter Jonathan Katz does publicly what Haitians and #Haiti watchers have been doing since the Special Envoy's resignation letter was sent in: @KatzOnEarth
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
Now we see ugly images of border patrol capturing Haitian refugees like escaped slaves in the old days. With lassos, the officers in cowboy hats, on horseback. Have they no shame? Did Trump order this or the Biden administration? I’m confused. Only some Black Lives Matter!
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Amy Wilentz
6 months
The foreign military intervention in #Haiti is already under way, even without Kenya et al. It’s comprised of .... the Haitian gangs, who, we now know, are in regular phone conversation with former US ambassador Pam White. Does she speak for the US, or has she gone rogue?
@jamesnorth7
James North
6 months
Americans should be shocked. Pamela White, our ambassador to #Haiti (2012-2015), is not ashamed to reveal her friendly familiarity with 2 leading #Haitian criminals: Guy #Philippe and #Barbecue Chérizier. She just spoke to Philippe "yesterday"! @Velina @jmakala @melindayiti
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
Watch Haitian-American cellist Leyla McCalla's brilliant performance of songs from her new album with her excellent band—at and on #NPR . She's amazing.
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
2 years
So many have written stories like this one over the years. Still it's important that the NYTimes reported this and put it on its front page and gave it a section. Believe me, many who never read you or me on the subject are hearing this for the first time. That matters!
@JStPaul1
DrSaintPaulHayti #MostHighMyRock
2 years
1/1. I have dedicated my academic life to tell the truth on Haiti, long before The New York Times. “Understanding Haiti Through The Power of the Social Forces in Interaction,” originally published on June 15, 2021
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Amy Wilentz
7 years
On the eighth anniversary of the disastrous Haitian earthquake, my response to Trump's latest:
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
2 years
Amid all the commentary and the understandable anger at the NYTimes for its longtime reluctance to address these issues, let’s remember what a good job the reporters did and how hard they worked this time around to tell the truth!
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Amy Wilentz
1 year
The NYT’s news report today on ongoing disaster in Haiti calls the govt there “fragile.” Wouldn’t it be better to say “immovable, negligent, irresponsible and criminal”? In midst of chaos and killings, inexcusable #Haiti govt has had unwavering support from US. @SecBlinken .
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Amy Wilentz
4 years
@Noah__Goldberg Media is pre-defunded. So that’s done.
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Amy Wilentz
7 months
State Dept's Brian Nichols: “It's urgent. Every day matters. There's no humanitarian crisis worse than Haiti's right now.” First, there is (Gaza). And 2nd, Nichols should know abt Haiti, since he & US sat on their hands for more than 2 years, just watching the situation unfold.
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
Sean Penn is back in Haiti: “O Wind, if earthquakes come, can Sean be far behind?”—to paraphrase Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
Sad irony that #JoeBiden , whose biggest problem is that the legitimacy of his election is under attack by authoritarians, heads a govt that insists on supporting #ArielHenry in #Haiti —an unelected, illegitimate, & unpopular leader. Cynical—& racist?
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Amy Wilentz
4 years
@USEmbassyHaiti @POTUS Does the @USEmbassyHaiti have ANY IDEA how this sounds to Haitians right now??? Are they tone deaf?
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
Once you’ve destroyed an economy, as the gangs in #Haiti and their masters have done, to whom are you going to sell the stuff you’re taking? Or do you just keep it for your new stolen homes amid the ruins of your brothers’ and sisters’ homeland?
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Amy Wilentz
4 years
Twenty years ago on April 3 in Port-au-Prince, my friend #JeanDominique , the great Haitian journalist & outspoken defender of the Haitian people, was gunned down at his office at Radio #Haiti Inter. I’ve missed that angry, catlike voice and glittering presence ever since.
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
First we deinstitutionalized the Haitian state and provided an umbrella for gangs, says the OAS today. Now you MUST have us and our money and personnel and savvy to get you out of this situation! We created the #failedstateofHaiti ! Now we alone can fix it. Height of hubris.
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
4 years
So happy to have just discovered that I've received a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship!
@GuggFellows
GuggenheimFoundation
4 years
On April 8, 2020, the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation approved the awarding of Guggenheim Fellowships to a diverse group of 175 scholars, artists, and writers.
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
If you were an important American diplomat working in #Haiti for several years alongside DEA, would you need an actual physical list from the PRESIDENT of the country to find out who the drug traffickers were there?
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Amy Wilentz
3 years
Haitian Creole comes to Duolingo. Maybe this means I will finally discover what Ambassador Dan Foote’s last name means to Haitians!
@duolingo
Duolingo
3 years
Say bonjou to our newest course: Haitian Creole! 🇭🇹 Learn the revolutionary language of the first Black independent nation that is spoken by over 12 million people worldwide. Vin jwenn ak nou (that means "join us") and start learning today! 💙 ❤️ 💚
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Amy Wilentz
6 years
@realDonaldTrump Tiny man destroys great nation.
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@amywilentz
Amy Wilentz
1 year
“Li fe katrè” Thus Liliane Pierre-Paul began her afternoon news show every day during my first years in Haiti in the mid 1980s. Chapo-ba pour cette journaliste courageuse. Friend, colleague, respected mentor in those days. Rational but also fearless. She will not be forgotten.
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Amy Wilentz
2 years
I can't help imagining that the NYTimes is scratching its head and saying "no good deed goes unpunished" about Haitian and other reactions to its big takeout on the vampirelike "independence debt" Haiti was forced to pay to France. This will be a learning moment for the paper.
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