The devastating outbreak of cholera in Haiti has brought the small, impoverished country back into the international spotlight. After the tragic earthquakes that shook Port-Au-Prince and surrounding cities in the beginning of the year, millions of people from around the world responded by donating money, medicine and other relief resources.
Despite the initial overwhelming support, there has been too little follow through. Our inability to turn from emergency relief to long-term reconstruction has left Haitian citizens susceptible to disease, further disaster, and despair.
The cholera epidemic compounds the state of emergency and requires international mobilization, led by the United States, now. Many donors have not honored their commitment to Haiti, and the crisis is deepening. We need a full time czar and a plan for reconstruction.
Haiti must have a higher place on our priority list. It is our promise, our history, our neighbor.
Doctors have confirmed there are over 3,000 cholera patients and another 259 have died due to the disease. A year after the earthquake, the shanties, tents and open sewers are preventing even minimal standards of health and welfare for the people.
In July, a CNN investigation revealed that since the quake that left thousands of children orphaned and up to 1.5 million people living on the streets and in makeshift camps, much of the aid promised to the country has yet to be delivered. Most governments that promised money to help rebuild the country have not delivered any funds at all.
Donors promised $5.3 billion at an aid conference in March, just two months after the earthquake, but less than 2 percent of that money has been handed over so far to the United Nations. The United States pledged $1.15 billion. It has paid nothing, with the money tied up in the congressional appropriations process.
I hope that former President Clinton, the United Nations and the World Bank refocus on reconstruction of Haiti and fulfill the promises that were made at the beginning of the year.
The time is overdue for us to demonstrate our commitment to the long-term emergence of Haiti, not simply its short-term survival.
Follow Rev. Jesse Jackson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/revjjackson
Our children in the Haitian Diaspora and our African-American brothers and sisters, whose civil rights struggles have facilitated our own development and growth in the US over the past 40 years, must bring down that " Berlin wall" of racism and ignorance that makes up the artificial borders that have divided and isolated our communities for the past 200 years.
This new paradigm represents an extraordinary opportunity today to reinvent and redefine the Haitian Identity. And, if done intelligently and successfully, the consequences will be as liberating and as crucial as 1804 itself. Let us seize the moment!
Haiti belongs to all of us...our victory in 1804 has no greater meaning... Our HOME is your HOME !
The Haitian Revolution provided us all, brothers and sisters of African descent in the Americas, with an oasis of universal freedom and justice to protect our bodies and souls in a very strange and different world. Let us build, today, that new HOME that Toussaint Louverture had dreamed for all of us, serve and protect our fellow Africans in the Americas, especially our brothers and sisters within the wall of their artificial borders in Haiti, enjoy and develop with pride and dignity this sacred land that our ancestors and liberators have entrusted to all of us... we know you're going to do us proud.
Yes we can and together, we shall overcome!
I am counting on my tax dollar contributing to Haiti. All 24% they have taken in Income Tax plus Property tax and Gas Tax. Amazing how much of the Banksters, Military, CIA, Insurance Companies, etc. stockpile should and could go to such causes.
I am out of work. I could give them an IT systems
From - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/29/haiti-still-waiting-for-p_n_743002.html -------
State Department spokesman Charles Luoma-Overstreet said the department expects to start spending in the coming weeks and months. He added that $275 million in "bridge" funds were released in March and have gone toward agriculture, work, health and shelter programs – not long-term reconstruction.
Jean-Claude Bajeux of the Ecumenical Center for Human Rights in Port-au-Prince said this phase was supposed to be about building semi-permanent houses.
"Where are they? We haven't seen them," he said. "There is not much money that is being used."
One possible piece of confusion is that CASH is not arriving, but pre-funded projects are supposedly under way.
The inevitable has become a reality: Disease & Fear. This population has even become fearful of those there to help."
It does appear that the old axiom "the Cart before the Horse" is also on display.
Post-quake Haitians were encouraged to leave the camps of Port-au-Prince for the rural areas that were less crowded and offered more hurricane protection than some low-lying areas in & around the Port-au-Prince camps that are prone to flooding in "Hurricane/Rainy season.
You name it: Envoys, Ambassadors, government, NGO's were all calling for & advocating "decentralization". Infact, "decentralization" is a common thread throughout the "Haitian Recovery & Reconstruction Plan".
While "decentralization" of the population is an honorable goal for the future of Haiti to reliever overcrowding in the city of Port-au-Prince, it was a "premature" and "inadvisable" & "tragic" solution. The "wizards" in their "wisdom" FORGOT the basic human needs of:
BASIC SERVICES of WATER & SANITATION let alone FOOD.
So, the "People" relocated or "decentralized", they boarded boats, cars & buses to the "Promised Land", central Artibonite River District on the central plateau of Haiti at St. Marc and surrounding area. It has been estimated that half a MILLION Haitians relocated there.
WITH NO SERVICES. No "outhouses", no "clean water" only the RIVER. No portable filtration systems, no purification salts or tablets, no delivery of clean & safe water.
No sanitation means the RIVER they depended on became TOXIC with BACTERIA.
UN forces were confronting angry Haitians in Saint Marc Tuesday. The protesters were upset about plans by an aid agency to set up a cholera treatment center near a school. http://www.newslook.com/videos/261129-un-forces-confront-haitians-over-cholera-camp?autoplay=true
Meanwhile the Haitian people lined up orderly waiting for "rations" & "water" all the while SINGING.
Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
A tiny blog of 54 comments with 11 comments withheld.
In amongst the comments are 2 "professionals" working the HAITI circuit. One an NGO self-declared as operating opusa.org, the other Michael Seager with Sun Mountain International, who did NOT disclose and in the business of PESTICIDES in HAITI and a contractor for USAID.
Like the Governor General of Canada & UNESCO Special Envoy to Haiti, Michaelle Jean said so eloquently: HAITI is NOT a laboratory for NGO's and Aid Groups.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-seager/dear-wyclef-do-business-g_b_737418.html
And, don't DENY my civil rights to ensure FREEDOM of SPEECH.
but help the under dog, the underprivileged and to certain countries done more harm then good.
The time has finally come when the United States must help one its greatest allies,
and we all know who that is: The United States itself.
With 25 million unemployed, the poverty level, higher then it’s been in decades,
some have not received any source of income in more then six months,
I find it impossible to care about any country other then my own.
The dream ended, long before December 2007, while the greedy blind were
leading the average blind, down the road to total destruction.
We are now in a rebuilding phase and the thought of helping any other country
other then our own is a preposterous mind set!
How low do we have to sink before people like Reverend Jackson
realize the truth about, where we have been and what we have become?
Adrianna Huffington hit the nail directly on the head, with the title of her book
“Third World America” I have long felt this but she has put it into words that we now
must live by more then ever!!!! What can be said about a country that puts others before its own?
WE HAVE ARRIVED.
And, the question: What could you buy for $1.00 a day to survive?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/jan/14/haiti-quake-aid-pledges-country-donations