[News] Solidarity with Haiti and the SF 8

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Solidarity with Haiti and the SF 8
by Ben Terrall
Wednesday, 28 November 2007
http://www.sfbayview.com/20071128639/News/This_week/Solidarity_with_Haiti_and_the_SF_8.html

Pack the courtroom at 850 Bryant for the SF 8 Monday: 8am rally, 9am court

On Saturday, Nov. 10, at the Berkeley Unitarian 
Universalists Hall, the Haiti Action Committee 
and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement hosted a 
program of solidarity with Haiti. The event was 
co-sponsored by the BFUU Social Justice Committee 
and Africans United to End the Occupation of Haiti.

Haiti Action Committee co-founder Pierre 
Labossiere thanked the delegation reporting back 
from their July 2007 visit to Port-au-Prince, 
stressing the importance of such visits. "The 
people of Haiti have been isolated. It's been a 
specific system set up around Haiti, to create a 
murkiness. So when you don't know each other, you 
don't connect with each other. And the most 
outrageous things could be happening, but ... 
people don't have any connection or hear about it."

Delegation participant Nia Amara projected her 
photos from the July visit. Amara said, "because 
of the situation ... that the United States and 
France have put Haiti in, most children, most 
people, are living a hand to mouth existence and 
they aren't able to live to their fullest potential.

"Since the beginning of the revolution in 1791, 
the Western white world, basically the United 
States and France ... have had their feet on 
Haiti's neck and have not allowed it to live to 
the fullest, or to fulfill its potential. Despite 
all of these odds, [the Haitian people] continue 
to fight with dignity and determination and 
fearlessness, and they're going to keep doing so 
until [ousted President Jean-Bertrand] Aristide 
is returned, until political prisoners are freed, 
until there's an end to the occupation." She 
added, "I hope these images convey some of that 
fighting spirit, some of the beauty, and some of 
that determination that we encountered while we 
were there." They did, and then some.

Amara also showed footage of a protest at U.N. 
headquarters. In translating, Labossiere 
explained, "This was a demonstration in 
commemoration of the 92nd anniversary of the 
first occupation of Haiti by the U.S. Marines in 
1915. During that occupation, the U.S., similar 
to what they did in Nicaragua, the administration 
at the time created a new Haitian military ... 
not to defend the population of Haiti and to 
protect the Haitian people and to help build the 
nation, but ... to be an extension of the 
occupation, so that 19 years later when ... the 
marines left, the Haitian military received their 
money from the U.S. and continued to repress the masses of our people."

Labossiere explained that at the protest, 
activist Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine "was making a 
parallel between that occupation from 1915 to 
1934 and the current occupation that started in 
2004. And he was saying that the people elected a 
president democratically and the U.S., again, and 
France and Canada joined forces and they 
overthrew that president and now we have an 
occupation in the country similar to what happened in 1915."

Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine was kidnapped on Aug. 12 
and is still missing. Labossiere described 
Lovinsky: "As a young psychologist, he started 
several projects. One of them was to work with 
mothers, adolescent mothers; another one was to 
work with street children, to help put together 
some institutions to respond to their needs and to provide schooling to them.

"Lovinsky was himself a teacher, teaching 
homeless kids, kids on the street ... and right 
after the first coup d'état, he founded an 
institution called the 30th of September 
Foundation, and it took its name from the date of 
the first coup d'état against President Aristide 
on Sept. 30, 1991. Their goal was to work with 
survivors of torture, people who had been put in 
jail, people who were tortured."

Dr. Akinyele Umoja, an associate professor at 
Georgia State University at Atlanta, and a 
founding member of both the New Afrikan People's 
Organization and of the Malcolm X Grassroots 
Organization, also shared thoughts about 
Lovinsky. Dr. Umoja recalled: "Meeting that 
brother, I got the sense, you know, we actually 
were sitting and talking to somebody who is 
linked to that history that I learned about. It 
was a link to this history that inspired a revolution to overthrow slavery.

"I was connected to that culture of resistance 
that exists there, just talking to that brother, 
who had a very clear political analysis of what 
was going on there, a very clear understanding of 
the culture. I learned later that he was ... the 
primary organizer who organized the 
demonstrations this year around Aristide's 
birthday, where 12,000 people came out in Port-au-Prince."

Dr. Umoja gave people he met in Haiti information 
about a Louisiana tribunal on U.S. government 
crimes committed during and after Katrina. He 
recalled that Lovinsky not only immediately 
signed on his organization as an endorser of the 
tribunal, but wanted to participate in it. Dr. 
Umoja observed: "Lovinsky was somebody who was 
concerned about international solidarity. He 
wanted support for the Haitian struggle, but he 
also was reaching out to our struggle here in the 
United States, and was about reciprocating."

Dr. Umoja also distributed information in Haiti 
about the San Francisco 8. As San Francisco 8 
defendant Richard Brown, now out of jail, thanks 
to an unrelenting support network, explained when 
speaking at the report back, "We were attacked 
viciously by the counterintelligence program 
COINTELPRO just for serving the people, just for 
having the audacity to tell Black people that 
they had the right to determine their own 
destiny." Brown and his co-defendants in the over 
30-year-old case, a murder charge based on 
confessions extracted through torture, need the 
same solidarity that Lovinsky continues to require.

On Monday, Dec. 3, at 850 Bryant, there will be 
an 8 a.m. demonstration before the 9 a.m. hearing 
for the SF 8 case. For more information, visit 
www.freethesf8.org/; for more on Haiti, go to www.haitisolidarity.net.




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