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Report from Haiti: Where’s the Money?
Broken and collapsed buildings remain in every neighborhood. Men pull oxcarts by hand through the street. Women carry 5 gallon plastic jugs of water on their heads, dipped from manhole covers in the street. Hundreds of thousands remain in grey sheet and tarp covered shelters in big public parks, in between houses and in any small pocket of land. Most of the people are unemployed or selling mangoes or food on the side of every main street. This was Port au Prince during my visit with a human rights delegation of School of Americas Watch – more than a year and a half after the earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands and made two million homeless.
What I did not see this week were bulldozers scooping up the mountains of concrete remaining from last January’s earthquake. No cranes lifting metal beams up to create new buildings. No public works projects. No housing developments. No public food or public water distribution centers.
Everywhere I went, the people of Haiti asked, “Where is the money the world promised Haitians?”
The world has moved on. Witness the rows of padlocked public port o lets stand on the sidewalk outside Camp St. Anne. The displacement camp covers a public park hard by the still hollow skeleton of the still devastated St. Anne church. The place is crowded with babies, small children, women, men, and the elderly. It smells of charcoal smoke, dust and humans. Sixty hundred fifty families live there without electricity, running water or security.
I talked with several young women inside the camp of shelters, most about eight feet by eight feet made from old gray tarps, branches, leftover wood, and pieces of rusty tin. When it rains, they stand up inside their leaky shelters and wait for it to stop. In a path in front of one home, crisscrossed with clotheslines full of tiny children’s clothes, a group of women from the grassroots women’s group KOFAVIV told us Oxfam used to help administer the camp but quit in May. When Oxfam left, the company that had been emptying the port o lets stopped getting paid and abandoned the toilets. Some people padlocked them and now charge a couple of cents to use the toilets, money most residents don’t have. There is no work to earn the money for pay for toilets. The Red Cross has just visited the camp that morning telling them they would be evicted October 17. Where will they go, we ask? We have no idea they told us. Jesus will provide, they told us.
Where has the money raised for Haiti gone? What about the Red Cross? What about the US government? What about the money raised in France, Canada and across the world? What about the pledges to the UN? Where is the money? The people of Haiti continue to be plagued by the earthquake of more than 20 months ago. They are our sisters and brothers. They deserve answers. They deserve help.
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14 Comments so far
Show AllSurely American privatization will save the day!
Good article from Professor Quigley. It reminds me of something that has been happening in New England in response to the recent hurricane. The Red Cross dissappeared. Cots and blankets were needed for an evacuation center. They had to be gotten from the National Guard and a local hospital. Red Cross was 'not available'. FEMA arrived. Maybe did some good? Mostly FEMA was pushing paper. It was like the attack of the paper churners. Forms, booklets, more forms, telephone calls, more forms, duplicate forms, triplicate forms... No help for victims. Many, many FEMA people sitting comfortably behind desks, staring blankly into space, while elderly and disabled people worked in the mud and tried to make it on their own after being denied any help. Some financial help was given to those with catastrophic damage - more could have been given if only the FEMA beaurocrats had NOT been here and the money was granted directly to victims of the floods and hurricane.
FIRE FEMA - help victims of disaster. (Yes, I know some administration is needed - but no one should profiteer on the backs of flood victims and taxpayers.) Some places in Vermont are a bit like Haiti.
FEMA is a federal organization hijacked by the current occupiers of the House, Senate and White House, to feed the monkey of privatization. No? No really. Just like the Pentagon.
This is why the 99%ers have finally gotten tired of it all. We know exactly what's going on and we are disgusted.
Haiti, you didn't get the money because you have no natural resources and are an island of slave decendents. Sorry, but that's the truth. Only Haiti can change and fix Haiti, money will do you no good.
That was my question, too - where's my money? I remember that MADRE chose the week of the Haiti earthquake to hold an awards dinner for women of accomplishment (on their terms). It is my opinon that in the face of such a disaster, MADRE shoud have cancelled the dinner and used the funds to help Haiti. From what others have said, no one from the major organizations was actually doing anything substantial in Haiti, but merely going around with a clipboard "collecting data". Apparently, the most helpful people were connected to small Xian congregations rather than the big NGOs. Add to that the fact that the US blocked delivery of the necessary funds, sent in military to "protect American business interests" in Haiti, i.e., supporting agricultural slavery and sweatshop labour, the situation quickly turned into a huge disappointment. NGO navel-gazing and disaster capitalism have deepened the crisis and discouraged real help. At the bottom of all this is Wall Street / WTO / IMF globalization, greed, opportunism enforced by the US military - a reminder to those who forget the connection. Wall Street is where the money is.
Where's the $?
Clinton Stole it and spent it on his daughters wedding!
The US military stole a quarter of it for 'defense'. The rest went to bribe the new government so he could let foreign corporations steal the land, import foreign workers instead of Haitains to repair there own country.
Clinton used the money to buy those contaminated FEMA tralers. Trailers in a hurricane area?
Face it, Haiti got a blow job from Clinton.
All the organizations from the Red Cross to the Komen one, are crooked. The person who runs Komen is paid $200,000 a year. Then there are the opersting costs. They are all scams.
My favorite is Wounded Vets. I called and asked if they gave any of the money to the Iraqis that the vets blew up.
They hung up on me.
Yeah, Hillary. Where's the cash-ola? Why not pony-up some of that cash you and the Billster have made on the backs of the People for so long?
Weasels.
I am truly very cynical. I figured maybe 30% of the money pledged would show up. Of that, a good percentage would be wasted and pocketed.
But this sounds like NOTHING. And cynicism aside, there have always been numerous small do-gooder church groups trying to help Haiti.
I'm actually a bit surprised. Is it THIS bad?
-- Zagone
"Where has the money raised for Haiti gone? What about the Red Cross? What about the US government? What about the money raised in France, Canada and across the world? What about the pledges to the UN? Where is the money?"
It has gone to join all the billions sent to Haiti for previous calamities and now resides in numbered accounts in Switzerland.
Who are the CIVILIZED of this world? Are they the privilaged who proclaim it their right to all that is of worth to a heart and hearth that is tripping over things that leave nothing for humanity or morality? Is it not obvious to all who "can see" that the civilized of the world are the ones that are the barbarians at the gates of the rest of the world so that they may accuire (steal) anything and everything possible? Haiti is a very visible example of the civilized of the world in action. And, yet, not the biggest example. Shame, thy name is civilization! Tony
Can anyone tell me what Clinton's Global Initiative actually does besides attempt to make a war criminal and architect of the financial crisis look like a decent human being and to provide employment for his equally unprincipled, almost Oxford educated, offspring? He and HW had lots in common besides not caring at all about Haiti.
Another turgid and off-the-target essay by yet a slow-witted activist. Mr Quigley is not asking the relevant question. The relevant question is: "Where is the effort on the part of the Haitian people?" Nothing in what Mr Quigley wrote indicates he has a clue about the Haitian people, the dynamics of Haitian society, even the physical state (utilities, economy, demographics) of Haiti. If Mr Quigley is not conversant in both creole and french, he is at the mercy of dishonest interpreters.
I hear no talk about relocation of the refugees outside Port-au-Prince which cannot sustain the current number of people. Water works run sporadically (1-2 hours daily for a given section); public sewer system is on its deathbed (most homes in Port-au-Prince are not connected to a sewer system and have to have its own septic tank). All this can be done within the resources of the Haitian government but then the bureaucrats will just wait for foreign money to come in and be redirected to foreign bank accounts.
The relocation of people hits the obstacle of property rights which are poorly protected outside of Port-au-Prince. The grounds of the St Ann Church belongs to the Episcopalian Church and that small tent camp may stay a little bit longer but Mr Quigley does not ask the question if the Haitian Government had meetings with property owners (most of them of very modest means) about how to best accommodate the refugees in areas like north of Croix des Bouquets. I can elaborate but I want to see the likes of Mr Quigley to do their homework.
So far, all the essays on Haiti on this website have been half-a@@.
Haiti will only continue to get raped & abused by the US, France, Canada, etc [Its been an on-going action for 200yrs now]... They need to kick-out that US puppet Martelly [who they didn't really vote in anyway] & his controller Ole Slick Willie, - reinstate Pres Aristide's Lavalas -&- appeal to Cuba, Venezuela, UnaSur, [possibly but cautiously Russia & China] etc- for help.