Contributing editor
@TheNation
| National Book Critics Circle winner for memoir | Guggenheim fellow. I write about Haiti, Middle East, & CA. UCI LitJ prof.
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
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!! 🇭🇹
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
@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.
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?
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.
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….
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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
#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.
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!
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!
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?
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.
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.
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:
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.
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
.
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.
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
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.”
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!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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?
@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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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!
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?
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.
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!
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
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!
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
.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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! 💙 ❤️ 💚
“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.
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.