Why Countries Like Haiti Matter to the Well-Being of Everyday Americans

Haiti is the poorest country in our hemisphere.

• It is a country of 8.2 million people.
• 6.2 million of them live in poverty.
• One out of eight children die before the age of five.
• Seventy percent are unemployed.
• Life expectancy is 54 years.
• It has been deforested and environmentally degraded for years.
• 7.2 million Haitians do not have access to reliable energy.

Of course we've heard these kinds of statistics many times before -- about Haiti and the other desperately poor developing countries of the world.

This week an international donors conference meets in Washington, DC that will have an enormous impact on the future of Haiti. But at a time like this, when our own economy itself is a basket case, what's wrong with a little "donor fatigue"? Why shouldn't we wait to focus on countries like Haiti until we've taken care of our own problems?

The reason is simple: because what happens to the people of Haiti affects us in at least four critical ways.

1) Our own long-term economic well-being. The world economy is not a zero sum game. For us to be richer, someone else doesn't have to be poorer. In fact just the opposite is true.

If you think of the earth as a huge space vehicle -- or a ship at sea -- it just doesn't make sense that a big proportion of the crew isn't able to pull its weight because they are undereducated, unproductive and constantly in need of handouts from the rest of us. The Navy wouldn't tolerate it, neither should the world community.

The more skilled, the more educated, the more productive, the more efficient every one of us is, the more successful we will all be in our common mission of forging a better life for future generations.

Every kid in Haiti who grows up to be a surgeon or an engineer instead of a stoop laborer contributes to the common store of our wealth. If a woman is sentenced by the accident of her birth to spend hours each day cleaning clothes in a Haitian stream instead of going to school, all of us miss out on the possibility that she might contribute to finding a cure for cancer. Millions of minds are indeed a terrible thing to waste.

And the effect of this waste plays itself out in the terms of pure economics. Several years into the Great Depression, the New Deal began to close the gap between supply and demand in the American economy. Roosevelt began to use public sector demand to fill the demand gap and move the economy toward full employment. But Emperor Hirohito's attack on Pearl Harbor was necessary to give America the political will to fully utilize the tools of the New Deal - to stop worrying about short term deficits - and create full employment. After all, it was do or die.

There was great concern at the end of World War II that demobilization would result in a precipitous new economic downturn. One of the major factors that prevented that downturn - and fueled world economic growth for the next 20 years -- was the Marshall Plan. America invested massively in rebuilding Europe. In the short term, that created a huge new market for American products. In the longer term it allowed the rebirth of an economically prosperous Europe that contributed to the store of our common productive capacity.

In the same way today, long-term economic growth in the developed world will require a massive investment to jumpstart the economies of countries like Haiti and the entire developing world. And like the Marshall Plan, we will all benefit.

2) Our own national security. The bottom line is that an island of relative prosperity can't exist forever in a sea of poverty. Ask Louis XIV of France how that works out. Kids who grow up in poverty in countries like Haiti don't see the "good life" in American commercials and movies and then resign themselves to suffer quietly. A recent survey showed that 75% of the people in Haiti want to leave the country. Many of them will try -- even if they risk their lives in a leaky wooden boat. Many will try to come illegally to the United States.

People have never left their homes and families to immigrate to foreign lands unless they felt they had no choice. The millions of immigrants at our borders are the waves crashing over the seawalls of our island of relative prosperity. If you want to do something serious about illegal immigration, you need to help create economies in countries like Haiti and Mexico that allow people to believe they have a future there -- everything else is a band-aid.

Without economic development in Haiti, other children will grow up to join criminal gangs that promise them a relative fortune of a few thousand dollars to transport drugs to the United States.

In other parts of the world kids like them will resort to strapping on bombs in the vain hope of giving their lives some meaning. Or they'll hijack ships. Or they will join revolutionary movements to challenge the wealth and power of those who have it.

A recent report made public by our own CIA described world poverty as the greatest single long-term threat to world stability and our own national security. There has never been a time when the old Catholic Worker slogan was more correct: "If you want peace, work for justice."

3) It is our moral responsibility. Well-being is not just a matter of the number of rooms in our houses or the quality of our vacations. People -- especially young people - want meaning in their lives. They want to commit themselves to other people -- not just for the sake of the other people -- but because it fulfills them -- it makes them feel that their lives matter. Our well-being as individuals and as a people is not simply measured by our GDP. It is measured by whether we can be proud of ourselves.

Unfortunately, with a few brief exceptions, the government of the United States has actually prevented the development of Haiti for much of its history. In fact, too often American policy has treated Haiti as one giant sweatshop -- available for exploitation.

Over much of the last 50 years, the U.S. supported two vicious dictators -- "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his son, "Baby Doc." These regimes, and the tiny group of elites that constituted their political base, systematically exploited and terrorized the island's population.

Much of their power was exercised through the Army -- which was created during the U.S. occupation of the country in the early 1900s. In its history, the Haitian Army never fought a foreign foe. It was used exclusively to enforce domestic social control.

In 1990, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a progressive priest and hero to the country's poor, was elected President by 70% of the vote. Within seven months he had been ousted by a military coup backed by his country's elite and their foreign backers. Aristide was returned to power in 1994 after President Clinton threatened to send American troops to re-establish democracy in Haiti, which is only 600 miles from Florida.

After Aristide returned, he abolished the Haitian army, but economic progress was slow and difficult. Over its history, Haiti has been almost entirely deforested. The border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, with which it shares the island of Hispaniola, is a stark line. On one side there are forests. On the other side there are none.

Aristide became the first president in Haiti's history to peacefully hand over power to another elected civilian, René Préval, in 1996.

Four years later, Aristide was re-elected. Unfortunately for Haiti, so was George W. Bush. The Neocons hated Aristide. They used purported election irregularities in the election for the Haitian Senate (and not for the Presidency) as the premise for an aid embargo to the fragile government, including $500 million in aid from the International Development Bank.

In 2004, The Boston Globe reported that the aid cutoff ravaged the economy of the nation, already twice as poor as any other in the Western Hemisphere:

The cutoff, intended to pressure the government to adopt political reforms, left Haiti struggling to meet even basic needs and weakened the authority of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.... Today, Haiti's government, which serves 8 million people, has an annual budget of about $300 million -- less than that of Cambridge, Massachusetts, a city of 100,000... Many of Aristide's supporters, in Haiti and abroad, angrily countered that the international community, particularly the United States, abandoned the fledgling democracy when it needed aid. Many believe that Aristide himself was the target of the de facto economic sanctions just as Haiti was beginning to put its finances back in order.

In fact, the U.S. may have done even more to undermine Aristide. In early 2004, a small group of well-equipped personnel from the former Haitian Army entered the country and marched on the capital. The exact role of the U.S. is unclear. But the International Republican Institute (IRI) spent $1.2 million of the U.S. taxpayer's money funding Aristide opposition.

We have a moral obligation to help Haiti be successful. Luckily, that now seems increasingly possible.

4) Success is possible. This is a turning point time for Haiti. A relatively small amount of money could make a huge difference in finally jumpstarting serious development. The UN mission there, and new government, have begun to give the country some stability and security.

The international community, the election of Barack Obama, and the volatile Haitian political scene may have finally aligned to allow for real progress.

Haiti needs $3 billion to execute the development plan that has been designed by the government and international community. That is the equivalent of the price of about ten F-22 fighters.

In a world where hundreds of billions of dollars are spent to bail out big banks, $3 billion from the international community to recreate the future of 8.2 million people would be a quite a bargain -- for them, and for us.

Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and strategis,t and author of the recent book: Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win, available on Amazon.com.

Comments

[demockracy]

Listen to this Real Audio lecture about Haiti's history: http://web.mit.edu/webcast/tac/pugwash-haiti-22feb02-16k.ram. It includes some background about Haiti's colonial background. Western Europe and the U.S. bears considerable responsibility for the poverty and culture of corruption in Haiti. The self-righteous "pick up the garbage" comments are really shameful.

[JXJASON]

I had another thought, Bob.

I visited Samana, Dominican Republic and Marguerita Island, Venezuela in October 2008. I spent one day on each island on a tour. What stood out was the poverty and the garbage. There was garbage, lots of it, on the residential streets and on the roadways where we traveled. What does it take for people to pick up garbage???

If you feel so sorry for people in other countries, Bob, then you should go to, say, Haiti and work to teach the people how to govern themselves, practice good sanitation, practice birth control and grow food.

In doing this, Bob, you will teach the people how to solve their own problems.

[demockracy]

Dear JXJASON,

Please play this Real Audio file, a lecture called "The Uses of Haiti": http://web.mit.edu/webcast/tac/pugwash-haiti-22feb02-16k.ram

This is a recording of some lectures, one delivered by Paul Farmer, one of the true saints of the modern world. Farmer has founded clinics in Haiti, Rwanda, etc.

It begins (at about 9:50) with Noam Chomsky's account of the history of Haiti, a previously rich island which has experienced genocide and brutal colonial exploitation at the hands of the West.

As a person who has lived in Haiti on and off for years Farmer calls Chomsky one of the few American intellectuals who tells the truth (as Creamer does).

So listen to this -- everyone should -- then tell me you want to tell the Haitian people to pick up garbage. That remark is...well, so *American*. Farmer calls it "yelling at the poor."

The egregious cultural insensitivity, and arrogance of this kind of remark makes me ashamed of my country, and frankly ashamed of you.

[JXJASON]

Dear Bob Creamer,

I disagree with you, Bob.

Haiti has been poor for as long as I can remember...I am 66 years old.

All the money that the world has donated to Haiti has been wasted.

I have seen huge problems in homelessness on Oahu, Hawaii, crime in Philadelphia and Phoenix, Arizona, roads in Pennsylvania that need to be fixed, a lack of funds for our National Parks, water pollution in Chesapeake Bay... I can go on and on and on.

We in the US are constantly being told to help people around the world. We need help here in our own country, Bob.

I have wondered for 40 years why our government concerns themselves with problems in other countries while problems here at home are ignored?

[desmo4]

The root of a lot of these problems is unfettered capitalism. Milton Friedman and his policies have destroyed the world. The neocon philosophy dovetails directly into it and the Bush dictatorship was the final straw in the destruction of civilized society. So many elegant, kind social democracies were attacked so that big multinational companies could profit from them. Hundreds of thousands of teachers, scientists and philosophers were murdered to accomplish this. But no one wants to remember this horrid chapter in our history.

[JXJASON]

There is nothing wrong with capitalism as long as people are honest. Our economy in the US is in trouble because of stupid,dishonest and greedy people.

On Forbes.com, today ( April 17 ), there is an article about trading credit default swaps. These things are what caused the failure of AIG.

Credit default swaps should be made illegal. Write or call Congressman Paul Kanjorski, 202 225 6511 or Barney Frank and tell them to make credit default swaps illegal.

Capitalism, if properly taught and managed, provides a better standard of living than a dictatorship or communism.

[demockracy]

Sorry, JXJASON, not even this is true. The highest standards of living are now provided by the democratic socialist governments in Western Europe. Capitalism, as typically promoted, is a false idol, with too many externalities to produce the wealth it promises.

You may also be interested in the Chris Martenson "crash course" as a different perspective on the future of capitalism: http://www.chrismartenson.com/crash-course

[RobinSeattle]

Sorry Bob, but unless you can devolve it down to a sound bite or start a food fight with it, the media just won't stand for well thought out pieces such as this. You also could have passed it on to a Hollywood celebrity and allowed them to put it under his/her name. Then maybe the media will have paid attention to it (re: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie).

[RobotRockRod]

infrastructure
infrastructure
infrastructure

My god if you've been/live in the country or have family there, if there's ONE thing Haiti needs "Pronto", its infrastructure; The crumbling roads, electrical grid(lack there of), public schools hospitals... those are the most pressing investment Haiti needs now. The UN and alot of the NGO mission are complete waste of money.

I also think for a country like Haiti, the French Parliamentary Government System sucks, they need something a bit more streamlined, constantly having Gov't coalitions collapsing is not healthty. And not having enough government oversight, and the rich few/privite sector's hands on politicians does'nt help either.

[JeffKolakowski]

Why don’t we try letting Haiti govern itself democratically and see if they are able to straighten things out themselves. I am not against aid in the short term because things are so horrible there but continuous aid is not the answer. Haiti used to be a net exporter of rice until globalization policies helped flood their market with subsidized rice from the U.S. and killed Haiti’s ability to produce rice for itself. This is similar to what is happening in Mexico with corn.

So the U.S. can start by recognizing the sovereignty of other nations, and it they deem it necessary to protect their markets for the long term security of their people, so be it. The ouster of Aristide was a coup orchestrated by the U.S. because Aristide was not liked by the elite of the U.S. because he did not represent what was best for corporate interests — he actually cared about the well-being of this people, like Chavez of Venezuela and Morales of Bolivia, leaders demonized by the U.S.

The simple fact is that the U.S. government hates democracy in its truest forms, where the population actually has a say in how it governed. And this goes for the current government, as well as those of the past. If the U.S. would let true democracy succeed, there would be much less of a need for foreign aid, for people would be able to take care of themselves.

[RobinSeattle]

Thanks for that, Jeff. Enlightening comment, though I'm not as much a fan of Chavez as you are. But I still learned something. Cheers.

[JXJASON]

What I read about Aristide, in Haiti, was he and his people were corrupt.

Any corrupt government takes care of no one but themselves. It doesn't make any difference if it is a republic, a democracy, a monarchy, a dictatorship, socialist or communist .

[Rubyslippers]

Thank you. You've just gone to the heart of the issue.

Unfortunately the funding being requested for Haiti will probably end up where it always does, in the hands of everybody but the Haitian majority poor.

Someone needs to investigate the "NGO's" and the UN mission in Haiti, the current recipients of "aid" moneys. Despite all the millions being given to "Haiti" by the international community Haitians are hungrier and more desperate than ever.
If the money actually went to the majority poor a difference might be made. Haiti's ready for a change.
They want human rights. They want education. They want democracy. They want respect. They're our neighbors -a one hour flight from our shores. You'd think we'd be more down with the Haitian spirit. Instead we're largely ignorant of everything Haitian and end up repeating platitudes that serve the Haitian elite who repress the Haitian poor in very crass and violent ways.

[Ghost803]

Wuts up with the phrase, "Everyday American"?. Is there such a thing as a biweekly or monthly American?

[Mariam Alkazemi]

I hope that the attempt to improve the quality of live in Haiti succeeds, and that this may be an example for the rest of the world.

[missyme]

Haiti: waiting to exhale. Who will come to the rescue? Will it be the US Government? Will it be the Haitian Government? Will it be the Haitian people living abroad?or the Haitian people living in Haiti? Will it be God? Obviously, the oxygen needed for Haiti to survive will have to come from somewhere in order for Haiti to go from ancient forgotten beauty to a new age beauty. In addition, Haiti needs a high dose of collagen to remove all the ugly wrinkles that have taken residence in its bosom. The first investment will have to be the education of the Haitian people at home, the love of country and not the love of self, reciprocal respect between the rich and the poor, jobs for all who can work and fair pay for workers, a healthcare system similar to that of Canada, construction of new roads and repair of old ones and restoration of tourism, a vital asset that will allow foreigners to go and enjoy the beautiful sandy beaches that skirt the vast blue ocean and the expansive skies during the day and the cool starry mountain tops at night. Until such time that the plug is pulled or that someone starts pumping the oxygen, Haiti remains on DNR.

[Haitiana4Obama]

While I think there's a lot that the Obama Administration can do to help Haitians as well as Haitian Americans succeed in this new century, we need to ask ourselves when is enough...enough? When will the Haitian people become tired of being Orphans to the Western Hemisphere? That is what we've become in a sense, hands out, ready to receive donations.

[zaz33]

I don't know of any time in US history when we have supported the majority poor over the minority ruling class.

Especially in Latin America, Central America, and the Caribbean.

Anyone ?

[saturnine maniac]

Exactly. "Bitter Fruit" and "School of Assassins" are two excellent books to read on this.

[Haitiana4Obama]

Couldn't fit in one post: I'm very familiar with the plight of Haiti. Statistics are acute in some ways I think some are misleading as well. For instance elderly Haitians live way past 54 years of age, I don't know where those numbers came from but Haitians especially in rural villages live longer then the teens to 30-somethings who run with the chimes in the streets. Violence, malnutrition, and corruption are major issues in Haiti which need to be address, so is education. While we follow the French style, it is an enriched and broad education system. Unfortunately there is no such thing as "public school" in Haiti; there's missionary, private and some government funded school programs. The one constant is that families often end up paying about 500 Haitian Gourdes ($12) a week to send a child to school, and provide meals as well as transportation. On top of that no one works, no one has a job unless it's government for the most part...and musicians seem to thrive due to our cultural appreciation of all things artistic. The corruption is difficult to understand, it mostly stems from (the obvious) greed, desperation, and a sense that this semi-stable government will be followed by unrest the next election. My native country is one which is rich in culture, beautiful scenically, and complex in identity. I think it's good of the Obama Administration to renew efforts in developing Haiti, but the change has to come from within.

[Haitiana4Obama]

One of the main things I've argued for years is that Haiti needs to rely less on it's French roots, and moreso on its relation to Latin America and the Caribbean as a whole. We are the only sovereign nation which is part of Latin America with the exception of Brasil which doesn't use Spanish as an official language, yet we are surrounded by Spanish speaking neighbors! Similarly we also have to embrace our Arawak as well as Afro roots and stop trying to emulate the French in all aspects. The emphasis on Europeanisation is largely in part to the elite minority and a revolution on their part against the early Afrocentrism during the Duvalier and Trujillo "war" on the entire island of Hispanola. There is a deep rooted effort on the part of the often lighter skinned Bourgeoisie to maintain control of the island, and they are usually safe in the mountains in their guarded chanteuses There is gross disparage between the classes, and a lack of push to close the gap. These are the problems of my country, and while humanitarian aid is welcomed, it will take people like WyClef Jean, Garcelle Beauvais, and other notable Haitians as well as everyday people like myself to change Haiti. The world can not change Haiti, until the Haitian people and our politicians are willing to change as well.

[OneTop]

The government(s) of the US could care less about Haiti and other have nots.
Let us have a hard look at the "results" versus "intentions"

One could only imagine how just a small slice of the US military budget could change the world for the better. But alas, that's just not in the cards.