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<font size=3>Solidarity with Haiti and the SF 8 <br>
by Ben Terrall <br>
Wednesday, 28 November 2007 <br>
<a href="http://www.sfbayview.com/20071128639/News/This_week/Solidarity_with_Haiti_and_the_SF_8.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.sfbayview.com/20071128639/News/This_week/Solidarity_with_Haiti_and_the_SF_8.html<br>
<br>
</a><b>Pack the courtroom at 850 Bryant for the SF 8 Monday: 8am rally,
9am court<br><br>
</b>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. <br><br>
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." <br><br>
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. <br><br>
"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. <br><br>
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." <br><br>
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." <br><br>
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. <br><br>
"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." <br><br>
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.
<br><br>
"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." <br><br>
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." <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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
<a href="http://www.freethesf8.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.freethesf8.org/</a>; for more on Haiti, go to
<a href="http://www.haitisolidarity.net/" eudora="autourl">
www.haitisolidarity.net</a>. <br><br>
<br><br>
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