SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Haiti: Horsemen and Hoarse Women
It's already bitterly ironic that Bill Clinton is the United
Nation's special envoy to Haiti, after the economic policy he imposed
there to transform it into the Caribbean's sweatshop. Now, President
Obama has asked George Bush to lead fundraising efforts for relief in Haiti. After Bush took part in an international coup to overthrow Aristide. It's like sending in the horsemen of the apocalypse to negotiate peace.
There are, however, more sensible ideas.
Jan 17, 2010
It's already bitterly ironic that Bill Clinton is the United
Nation's special envoy to Haiti, after the economic policy he imposed
there to transform it into the Caribbean's sweatshop. Now, President
Obama has asked George Bush to lead fundraising efforts for relief in Haiti. After Bush took part in an international coup to overthrow Aristide. It's like sending in the horsemen of the apocalypse to negotiate peace.
There are, however, more sensible ideas.
First, as poet activist Shailja Patel has posted, there's a progressive action plan for Haiti:
Haiti: 10-point action plan
1) Grants, not loans.
2) Keep corporations and corporatist policies OUT. Stop disaster capitalism in its tracks.
3) Cancel ALL Haiti's debt to the Inter-American Development Bank.
4) Let Aristide return to Haiti.
5) Lift the ban on Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas political party.
6) Rip up the neoliberal pre-earthquake Clinton-Obama program for Haiti: tourism, sweatshops, privatization, deregulation.
7) Do not allow US military or UN "peacekeepers" to point guns at desperate Haitians.
8 ) Allow all Haitians in the US to work, and remit money home.
9) Release all 30,000 Haitians held in US jails for deportation, and grant them Temporary Protected Status.
10) Demand that France start repaying the $21 billion it extorted from
Haiti in 1825, to "compensate" France for loss of Haiti as a slave
colony."
Then, a question about what to send to Haiti...
Formula for Disaster
Finally, the question of who to send your money to...
After the Quake, Depend on Women
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Raj Patel
Raj Patel is an activist, academic and author of "Stuffed and Starved" (2012) and more recently "The Value of Nothing" (2010). His current project is called the "Generation of Food Project, a documentary and book about the future of the food system.
It's already bitterly ironic that Bill Clinton is the United
Nation's special envoy to Haiti, after the economic policy he imposed
there to transform it into the Caribbean's sweatshop. Now, President
Obama has asked George Bush to lead fundraising efforts for relief in Haiti. After Bush took part in an international coup to overthrow Aristide. It's like sending in the horsemen of the apocalypse to negotiate peace.
There are, however, more sensible ideas.
First, as poet activist Shailja Patel has posted, there's a progressive action plan for Haiti:
Haiti: 10-point action plan
1) Grants, not loans.
2) Keep corporations and corporatist policies OUT. Stop disaster capitalism in its tracks.
3) Cancel ALL Haiti's debt to the Inter-American Development Bank.
4) Let Aristide return to Haiti.
5) Lift the ban on Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas political party.
6) Rip up the neoliberal pre-earthquake Clinton-Obama program for Haiti: tourism, sweatshops, privatization, deregulation.
7) Do not allow US military or UN "peacekeepers" to point guns at desperate Haitians.
8 ) Allow all Haitians in the US to work, and remit money home.
9) Release all 30,000 Haitians held in US jails for deportation, and grant them Temporary Protected Status.
10) Demand that France start repaying the $21 billion it extorted from
Haiti in 1825, to "compensate" France for loss of Haiti as a slave
colony."
Then, a question about what to send to Haiti...
Formula for Disaster
Finally, the question of who to send your money to...
After the Quake, Depend on Women
Raj Patel
Raj Patel is an activist, academic and author of "Stuffed and Starved" (2012) and more recently "The Value of Nothing" (2010). His current project is called the "Generation of Food Project, a documentary and book about the future of the food system.
It's already bitterly ironic that Bill Clinton is the United
Nation's special envoy to Haiti, after the economic policy he imposed
there to transform it into the Caribbean's sweatshop. Now, President
Obama has asked George Bush to lead fundraising efforts for relief in Haiti. After Bush took part in an international coup to overthrow Aristide. It's like sending in the horsemen of the apocalypse to negotiate peace.
There are, however, more sensible ideas.
First, as poet activist Shailja Patel has posted, there's a progressive action plan for Haiti:
Haiti: 10-point action plan
1) Grants, not loans.
2) Keep corporations and corporatist policies OUT. Stop disaster capitalism in its tracks.
3) Cancel ALL Haiti's debt to the Inter-American Development Bank.
4) Let Aristide return to Haiti.
5) Lift the ban on Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas political party.
6) Rip up the neoliberal pre-earthquake Clinton-Obama program for Haiti: tourism, sweatshops, privatization, deregulation.
7) Do not allow US military or UN "peacekeepers" to point guns at desperate Haitians.
8 ) Allow all Haitians in the US to work, and remit money home.
9) Release all 30,000 Haitians held in US jails for deportation, and grant them Temporary Protected Status.
10) Demand that France start repaying the $21 billion it extorted from
Haiti in 1825, to "compensate" France for loss of Haiti as a slave
colony."
Then, a question about what to send to Haiti...
Formula for Disaster
Finally, the question of who to send your money to...
After the Quake, Depend on Women
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.