Saving Haiti
Locals do their part to help earthquake victims survive
By André Coleman , Jake Armstrong 01/21/2010
When Pasadena resident Dr. Roseline Dauphin Baptiste got word from her brother that her Haitian homeland had been struck by a magnitude-7.0 earthquake, she immediately began to worry about her cousin Guy, who teaches at College Catts Pressoir in now-ravaged Port- au-Prince.
For hours Baptiste and her family waited for word. Finally, a cousin in Canada reported that Guy was at a doctor’s appointment when the temblor struck. Unable to drive through the chaos, Guy walked for miles through rubble to get back to the school to check on the students.
Guy found the children were OK, but part of the school — as well as most homes nearby — had collapsed. Unable to reach many of the students’ parents, and with many homeless people wandering the streets, Guy turned the school into a shelter and is providing refuge for dozens waiting for aid, Baptiste said.
“I knew it was bad right away,” she said. “I knew that if the 1994 quake in Northridge did a lot of damage here, where we build to code, that it would be bad in Haiti.”
She had no idea just how correct she was until the images began appearing on cable news. Centered near Léogâne, 16 miles west of Port-au-Prince, the devastating quake destroyed the capital city, leaving countless people trapped in rubble and 1.5 million homeless. About 70,000 bodies have been buried in mass graves, according to the Associated Press, and authorities fear that the death toll could reach 200,000. Thousands more could die from their injuries if substantial aid does not reach them, officials have cautioned.
But getting aid delivered remains a challenge. Although aid has started trickling in, looting has erupted in parts of the country, prompting police to open fire on some pillagers Sunday, Agence France-Presse reported. Additionally, thousands of Haitians began leaving rubble-strewn Port-Au-Prince on Saturday to find food or shelter with friends and relatives in undamaged areas outside the city.
“The country has been in chaos for many, many years. A lot of our parents left due to the political instability — they were the brains,” Baptiste said. “The ruling economic elite, a lot of them are foreigners that came in years ago and have good training in commerce. They have several families that have control of the economic well-being, then the lower economic group that has been deprived of everything. The money comes in and it never seems to get to the people that need the help.”
Some hope to change that.
Grammy Award-winning artist Wyclef Jean’s Yéle Haiti charity received more than $2 million in donations via $5 text messages from concerned supporters. The charity also came under fire over claims of past record-keeping defects and IRS documents revealing that funds donated to the nonprofit organization have gone towards rent, production services and appearance fees.
But that hasn’t stopped locals from doing their part.
The board of directors of the Pasadena Latino Employee Association appealed to city employees to donate the cost of at least one lunch to the Red Cross relief effort before today.
The Red Cross held a fundraiser Friday at the Rose Bowl, where dozens of local residents dropped off cash donations. The Red Cross had already raised $3 million.
Pasadena Black Males Forum member Gary Moody said he would be asking members of the New Guiding Light Missionary Baptist Church on North Fair Oaks Avenue to donate.
“It’s devastating,” Moody said. “And you look at our economy here, for Obama to still reach out is a great thing and it’s a great opportunity for us to come together and cross all color lines.”
Additionally, a fountain of relief sprang up in the shadows of the downtown LA skyline.
A steady stream of money and disaster relief supplies poured in from customers at TiGeorges’ Chicken in Echo Park during a fundraiser for Yéle Haiti organized by owner-chef Georges Laguerre, who came to America from Haiti 40 years ago.
But even as the United States dispatched thousands of troops and relief planes began touching down, it was clear more permanent assistance is needed, as it has been since the country’s founding, Laguerre said. “I don’t see how they are going to get back on their feet without real help. Haiti is a country that has been suffering for 200 years,” he said.
Continuing assistance after the media’s short spotlight moved on was one theme of a packed meeting at a small Southwest LA church Sunday organized by Congresswoman Maxine Waters and the Coalition in Solidarity with Haiti. Noting that Haiti’s problems were dire and chronic before the quake, Waters advocated ongoing commitments by churches, individuals and community groups to “adopt” some Haitian families.
“Yes, we have our problems here,” said Waters, “but we still throw away a lot on tennis shoes, and committing $1 a day or $25 a month for a year might be more useful than a big check to the Red Cross now.”
The Obama administration was saluted at the meeting for its quick reaction to supply aid and its compassionate 18-month suspension of immigration enforcement against Haitian nationals, so that they can continue to send monies home from their US jobs. “Maybe this was God’s way of sayin’ ‘You didn’t understand how to do it in New Orleans, we’ll give you another chance,’” said one attendee.
One thing that’s not helping is the media constantly describing his homeland as the poorest country in the world, Laguerre said. Making charity cases out of the country’s 9 million people can diminish the hope of those who will ultimately pull the country from the brink — Haitians, he said.
“That dismantles the strength of Haiti,” he said.
Laguerre’s effort to contact his relatives there has been difficult since many depend on spotty cell phone service for communication. One of Laguerre’s brothers remained unaccounted for, he said.
“Let’s pray for a miracle and hopefully something good will come of it,” Laguerre said.
Copy Editor John Seeley contributed to this report.
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This is what happens when you have Washington-approved and installed dictators (i.e. Papa Doc, Baby Doc) looting your nation for a couple of decades or so. After the despots have finally been moved on by their co-sponsoring masters to "First-World" living locations on the Riviera or some-such (with their ill-gotten loot secretly warehoused in the Caymans and Switzerland), then the U.S. directed IMF will then peretuate that poverty-sustained location's horror-way-of-life by demanding that an already impoverished nation of little dark brown people must yet continue to repay (along with a perpetually mounting interest) all the international loans that had been taken out in their name (Haiti) by their previously residing, U.S. sponsored dictators.
Ultimately, until those obscenely burdensome loans are payed back, the IMF then unilaterally imposes literally torturously severe "austerity" measures against whatever any targeted third-world nation (and Haiti is the "gold" standard) that has been chosen for continued devastation by Western banking's massive weapons of economic warfare (which has, time and again, been backed up by American Weapons of Mass Destruction).
Most of Haiti's building infrastructure was -- quite literally -- terminally below "modern-world" earthquake standards mostly because that national gathering of the "negro race" undeniably was never allowed any "human-rights" opportunity to afford -- even since before its own national beginning of time -- even attempting to buy any significant amount of earth-quake survivable, building materials.
OF SPECIAL NOTE:
For the last decade at least, it's been projected that Haiti has buried beneath its realm, potentially as much oil reserves as Venezuela (a next-door neighbor that has been severely lusted after by both BP and Standard Oil) possesses. In the meantime, you still think that those 20,000-plus American Military personnel that have only just invaded that tragedy-stricken location are strictly there for "humanitarian" relief?
Well, if history has any lessons, the only thing that the Haitians are going to be relieved of in both the short and long term (as is prevalently happening in Iraq) is any internationally nagging burden of a poverty-relieving, national petrolium reserve.
In the meantime, as they are prevalently doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military will also start targeting the Haitian population for weapons development, target practice.
DanD