#309 – Dick Bernard: Prelude to Bells for Haiti, 3:53 p.m. CST January 12, 2011

One year ago today – it was Sunday, January 10, 2010 at the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis MN – I was privileged to hear one of the most powerful messages for justice I have ever heard.
The event is described in a blog post I did at the time. You can access it here, and it speaks for itself.
The speaker, a Catholic Priest long serving in Cite Soleil, arrived in Minneapolis late the previous day, and left early the next, and was back home in Haiti when the earthquake took its awful toll.
I have thought often of Fr. Tom since that extraordinary Sunday one year ago; and the following Tuesday when he escaped serious physical injury, but not so the residents he served, nor the facilities of his ministry.
Someone has said that he’s now back home on leave, the stress of the past year having taken its toll.
We live in comfort as the Haitian continue to struggle. We all have our stories about where we were when we heard about the devastation of the Haiti earthquake, or our personal connections. We each can continue to do our part.
Bells will ring at Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis Wednesday afternoon.
I hope to be there for those 35 seconds.
More about the Bells for Haiti observance Wednesday, January 12, 2011, here.

#303 – Dick Bernard: A Christmas Message "what's in a word"

We attended Christmas morning Mass at Minneapolis’ Basilica of St. Mary, where the celebrant was Archbishop John Nienstedt of the Diocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis.

Basilica of St Mary, Minneapolis MN, Christmas 9:30 Mass, 2010


The Archbishop’s homily was on the theme of the importance of words: “what’s in a word”. I was particularly struck by a story he related at the end of his sermon.
He had recently read, he said, a story about a woman in New York City who was shopping. She came across a couple of kids who were warming themselves over a grate on the sidewalk, and she noted that their shoes were particularly tattered, in need of replacement. She went in a store and purchased new shoes for the boys, and a pair of warm socks as well.
On presenting the boys with the gift, one said “you must be God’s wife”. She replied, “No, but I am one of God’s children”.
It was a neat story.
I thought, as the Archbishop was relating his story, about another story I’d heard on public radio some years ago.
The subject being interviewed was a minister in some evangelical denomination who had built a large congregation in a southern state, and earned a national reputation. His specialty was hellfire and damnation sermons. He was very descriptive. He described hell as he and his congregation and followers thought it was.
Sometime during the 1994 Rwanda genocide he related that he was watching a TV news clip about the flight of men, women and especially children from the ravaged nation. That instant, he said, he changed his concept of hell: that those innocent Rwandan children were living in hell on earth.
He came back to the pulpit a changed man, and it was a change with consequences: his flock was not interested in his new reality and he went from relative fame to near obscurity.
He had defined heaven and particularly hell, and he had attracted people who believed as he had believed. When the message changed, they left his congregation, and took their financial support with them.
He had to start over.
As Christmas Day continued, I remembered a personal experience in Haiti on December 7, 2003.
I had never been in Haiti before, and I had not yet been in the country for 24 hours when we went to Sunday Mass at St. Clare’s parish in a poor neighborhood in Port-au-Prince. We six ‘blans’ (whites) were seated in a pew, and a young boy and his Dad were seated next to me.
It became pretty obvious that the boy was angling for a handout, and I was tempted, but I remembered a bit of advice from before I left: be careful with this kind of generosity. Once the word gets around it will be more troublesome than it’s worth. I followed the advice, and while I wasn’t happy, it was probably prudent.
The Pastor, the charismatic Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste, gave a spell-binding sermon, especially riveting when he switched from Kreyol to English to remind we whites in the pews of the immensely wealthy country from which we came, and our obligations to the poor.
Collection time came and a few people came forward with random coins. This was, after all, a poor parish.
Mass over, we filed out of the church with the congregation, and facing us in the choir loft was a mural of an imploring Christ.

Christ at St. Clare's Port-au-Prince Haiti December 7, 2003


I happen to believe in God. I have no idea who, exactly, God might be, or what God might think of this, or that. No one does, regardless of how learned. I rather expect, though, that God is not as usually portrayed: a powerful White Man.
Perhaps God is really those kids for whom the lady bought the shoes in New York City, or is that kid who sat next to me in the pew at St. Clare’s in Port-au-Prince, or especially those kids in Rwanda.
Just perhaps.

#297 – Dick Bernard: Bells for Haiti, January 12, 2011

UPDATE JANUARY 12, 2011:
My post for today re Haiti.
January 10, 2011 post on Haiti

UPDATE JANUARY 11, 2011:
Twin Cities focus News Release
for the Bells for Haiti Committee:
Honoring Haiti, One Year Later:
Bells to Sound Across Minnesota on Wednesday, January 12th
City Halls, Churches, and Schools to Toll their Bells at 3:53 PM: Honoring Lives Lost in Haiti—and Recognizing Minnesotans who Helped

Contact: Therese Gales, American Refugee Committee
tel 612-221-5161; ThereseG@archq.org
Minneapolis, MN (January 11, 2011)—One year after a massive earthquake devastated Haiti, churches, schools, universities, and city halls across Minnesota will toll their bells in unison on the one-year anniversary of the earthquake—Wednesday, January 12, 2011, at 3:53 PM CST—for 35 seconds, the duration of the Haiti quake.
The Bells for Haiti initiative—started by an ad hoc group of Haiti advocates from Minnesota—has garnered participation from around the country and Haiti. With support of Mayors Chris Coleman and R.T. Rybak and the Archdiocese of Minneapolis / St Paul, churches and schools in communities both small and large throughout Minnesota will toll their bells. Some participants include: Minneapolis City Hall, the Cathedral of St Paul, Luther Seminary, St Mark’s Episcopal, the Basilica of St Mary, Hamline University, St Olaf College— as well as small communities like the Visitation Monastery in north Minneapolis which is home to six Visitation sisters. Trinity Lutheran Church in Hovland, MN, on Minnesota’s North Shore is participating—the bells are caked in ice and snow today…if the church bells are unusable tomorrow, participants will bring their own bells to toll. Communities in Oregon, Chicago, Vermont, Florida, and Haiti are also participating. A full list of participants can be accessed here.
“In just 35 seconds, thousands of people in Haiti lost everything,” said Jacqueline Regis, a Haitian-American attorney and author who is also a member of the group organizing the “Bells for Haiti” effort. “Through Bells for Haiti, we want to bring people together a year after the quake to honor those who lost their lives, recognize the millions of people who still struggle to find hope—and also recognize people from all across Minnesota who stepped forward to help the people of Haiti.”
The earthquake took the lives of 250,000 people and left more than 1.3 million people homeless. A hurricane and cholera outbreak have also worsened the situation. At the same time, thousands of Minnesotans—concerned parents, doctors, school children, architects, teachers, nurses, and many more—stepped forward to help.
“We want Bells for Haiti to be a reminder—that we are stronger together than we are alone,” added Regis. “We want to tell the world that we remember… and will not forget.”
The Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network and the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers are co-sponsoring the Bells for Haiti effort.
EVENTS
Two Twin Cities community events are known, which relate directly to Bells for Haiti:
Wednesday evening, Jan 12, at 6:30 p.m., a simple rice and bean memorial dinner will be offered at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, 46th and Colfax Ave S in Minneapolis. The dinner will be followed by a memorial service at 7:30 p.m. All are welcome.
Thursday evening, 7 p.m., Ruth Anne Olson will read from her book Images of Haiti: Stories of Strength. The reading is at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 1917 Logan Avenue South Minneapolis (north end of Lake of the Isles.)
UPDATE JANUARY 7, 2011: Interest/Momentum is building. Note Facebook entry. Please share with others you know who may have an interest.
UPDATE JANUARY 5, 2011:
A general news release describing Bells for Haiti which can be adapted for use anywhere is accessible here.
Visit the Bells for Haiti Facebook page, here.
Map comparing size of Minnesota and Haiti here.
Nearly a year ago, January 12, 2010, at 4:53 p.m. Haiti time, indescribable horror descended on Port-au-Prince and the mountains south of Haiti. Estimates vary, but as many as 300,000 lives were lost, and more than 1.3 million were, in an instant, left without homes. Government buildings, including the iconic Presidential Palace, were destroyed.
The catastrophe followed a season with four tropical storms which devastated Haiti in 2008; and was succeeded by a Cholera outbreak still raging.
Haitians are an indomitably hopeful people, impossible to defeat. But the events of the past eleven months can seem almost insurmountable.
After the quake, on April 26, 2010, 35 individuals representing 25 organizations with long term interest in assisting Haiti met in a Minneapolis church.
The sole purpose of the meeting was to begin to get to know each other.
Out of that initial event came a simple e-mail contact list. It was agreed to call the group KONBIT-MN/HAITI, essentially, a group whose sole purpose is to keep the conversation going between groups of diverse interests. Konbit-MN/Haiti has no meetings, no Bylaws, no Dues, no Fund Raising. Some would say that means it has no purpose, either. Why “Konbit” (pronounced “cone beet”)? The Kreyol definition Here.
It is through the idea of one member of KONBIT-MN/HAITI, and the joint effort of a working group of a dozen members of the alliance, that an idea, Bells for Haiti, came forth for remembering in some significant way the one year anniversary of the devastating Haiti earthquake, January 12, 2010.
“Bells for Haiti, January 12, 2011” is now on the web. Fliers in English and Kreyol are below. Click on either flier to enlarge it.


The details as now known are on a Facebook events page, where individuals including you, the reader, are invited to not only indicate your attendance at this virtual event, but also to help make others aware of the event wherever they live. The guest list is beginning to build, and with your help it can build exponentially over the next 28 days.
The Konbit Committee realizes that not every gathering place has bells. There is room for virtual bells; there is room for 33* seconds of silence at church services and other gatherings in the days immediately preceding January 12. Etc.
Different cultures have different traditions. For example, in Haiti an alternative may be beating on pans, bot teneb (defeat darkness). Individual groups can plan their own activities to mark January 12.
But the essential idea is call attention to an anniversary of an awful event in Haiti, and at the same time, enroll the entire community of humankind in working together for our mutual betterment as a world society that cares for each other.
You and/or your group are invited to join with KONBIT-MN/HAITI wherever you live, whatever you do.
Make the 33 seconds on January 12 a personal call to action for yourself.
KONBIT-MN/HAITI IS THE ORIGINATING GROUP FOR THIS ACTIVITY.
THE GROUPS REPRESENTED BY 39 PERSONS ON KONBIT-MN/HAITI. Listing of an organization does not constitute an endorsement by that group of this activity, even though the representatives of Konbit are in agreement with this activity. Other groups are invited to join KONBIT-MN/HAITI. Simply respond to the author of this post (see about page for e-address)
Annunciation Catholic Church, Minneapolis; American Refugee Committee; Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis;Church of the Risen Savior, Burnsville MN; COFHED (Christian Operation for Health, Education and Development); El Milagro Lutheran Church, St. Paul; Fonkoze; Haiti Justice Alliance, Northfield MN; Haiti Justice Committee, Minneapolis; Haiti Outreach; Healing Hands for Haiti; Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, Minneapolis; Messiah Episcopal Church, Minneapolis, No Time for Poverty; Rotary International “City of Lakes” Club, Minneapolis; St. Albans Episcopal Church, Minneapolis; St. Clements Episcopal Church, Minneapolis; St. James Episcopal Church, Minneapolis; St. John the Baptist Episcopal Church, St. Louis Park, MN; St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church, Maple Grove MN; St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Minneapolis; St. Matthews Episcopal Church, Minneapolis; Spare Hands for Haiti; World Wide Village.
Other initial endorsers (co-sponsors) of this activity:
Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN)
Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers (MAP)
* – Estimates vary on the duration of the initial shock in the earthquake: 33 seconds is one estimate; 35-40 is another…whatever the actual duration, the devastation happened in hardly more than an instant.

#273 – Dick Bernard: Haiti. Some thoughts, 10 months after the earthquake.

Alone in the vast universe
I froze hell over
And walked on its ashes
To create my own history.”
(The Haitian struggle – the greatest David vs Goliath battle being played out on this planet.)

Ezilidanto November 8, 2010
Last week we attended a very impressively organized Festival for Haiti. People there, cared about Haiti and Haitians.
The venue was a hotel alongside Interstate 35-W in Minneapolis. Three miles down I-35 is the Freeway bridge that collapsed during rush hour, August 1, 2007, killing 13 and injuring many.
One of the speakers noted that bridge, in context with the ten months that have elapsed since the cataclysmic earthquake that devastated Haiti January 12, 2010. He noted that ten months after the bridge collapse all of the rubble had been cleared. Twin Citians all know that an attractive new bridge has long been in service, replacing the collapsed structure.
The Festival was ten months after the earthquake. The same recovery after the bridge collapse cannot be said for restoring Port-au-Prince and other areas devastated ten months ago. Hurricane Tomas has just raged through Haiti, and cholera has added a new fear.
Ezilidanto’s quote, above, came today. It is most appropriate for this time in Haiti’s history. Here’s a recent video from the Haitian perspective, also via Ezilidanto.
While I was listening to the assorted speakers at the hotel, I began jotting some notes on the back of the program. Beginning two days before the earth quake, when a well known Cite Soleil Priest preached at our church (he arrived back in Port-au-Prince just in time to get caught in the quake – he lived), I could count at least a dozen events I/we had attended in the last ten months which focused on Haiti.
There has been an immense outpouring of human and financial resources, particularly in the early weeks after the quake. Our church alone raised over $70,000.
But ten months later, even with an estimated over 10,000 NGOs in Haiti, the idea of recovery for Haiti is still a dream.
Building Back Better” was voiced as a theme for the Festival we were attending Recent photos still showed immense numbers of Haitians living under what can only very loosely be described as “tents”.
It has been seven years since I returned from my first journey to Haiti – a place I hardly knew existed. It was my great fortune, then, to become acquainted primarily with people who supported President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. I learned the other side of the story – the story never told by the U.S. government, the source of information on which I had relied. Till then, I didn’t know there was another side of the story.
Less that three months later, February 29, 2004, Aristide was spirited out of the country in a coup d’etat engineered by the United States, with assistance of France and Canada. Democracy for Haiti’s peasants was apparently too risky for supposed democracies like the U.S to tolerate.
When I arrived home, in mid-December, 2003, I made a decision to work to learn the geopolitical relationships between Haiti and the United States. It was a good decision. It has yielded troublesome insights.
Few would disagree with this statement: “Haiti is a tragic mess”. I have heard this said in countless ways by most everyone.
But then comes the interpretation of those words. With many variations, some blame the Haitians for their own fate. Pick your own words, you’ve heard them. Haitians need to be saved from themselves: so goes the narrative in many ways.
Another point of view, which I share, also conveyed in many ways, subscribes to the idea that the big sin of the Haitians was to have the audacity to break free of the shackles of slavery in 1804. This audacity terrified the leaders of our fledging slave-holding nation; it angered the French and the white Euro-centric world, and the rest is history. (The linked timeline has an error: 1919 should be 1915, but otherwise I think the facts are reasonably accurate.)
The guest speaker at the Festival, a Haitian minister from Port-au-Prince, laid out Haiti’s history in a very clear way, from the Haitian point of view. Then he recited some statistics now, ten months after the quake (my apologies for any inadvertent transcribing errors). In Haiti there is 85% unemployment, 48% illiteracy, 66% use candles as primary light source, 76% use charcoal for fuel, 80% have no potable water, 85% of products imported, 70% live on less than $2 per day, 1 million families (1.2 million people) homeless, 75% of homes need to be repaired.
This, ten months after perhaps the greatest outpouring of human and financial aid ever.

Powerfully, the minister said “Instead of giving us fish, teach us to fish. Empower us.“.
The continuing disaster ten months out is NOT the Haitians “fault”.
Keep seeing Haiti.
Related: here and here.

#266 – Dick Bernard: Moving towards Rationality, Civility and Dialogue…or mired in Contempt?

I walked away from a TV commentary show a few hours ago. The host is someone I like and respect; his guests were four leaders from a few of the infinite number of different organizations that claim to be of like minds, but really have very narrow, poorly thought out, and often opposing agendas.
The talk was about whether or not Social Security and Medicare were “socialist”. Three of the four guests had anti-socialism as a key tenet of their anti-government rant. Of course, none would touch Social Security or Medicare, always going back to their tried and true ‘talking points’. It ended with the usual result, which I first saw in the old “Crossfire” days of the 1990s, where NO ONE was LISTENING to ANYONE ELSE, DEFENSIVE and TRYING TO SHOUT EACH OTHER DOWN. The good idea of debate ended up very badly. Personally, I learned nothing.
Life is far too short….
Right before that, Cathy and I had been to an Interfaith Forum on the topic of denominational beliefs on Life after Death. Five panelists, friends and clergy all, took on the topic. They were Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Lutheran and Congregational. It was a great pre-Halloween topic and it seemed there were about 200 of us in attendance. The Pastors talked, then there was opportunity for table talk, then then there was Q&A from audience to panelists. If I was to boil it down to its essence, it was respect personified. We all have our beliefs; we are sitting together seeking to understand; we were not throwing rocks at each other, as would have been the case in those vaunted “good old days” before tolerance was cool.
Two days earlier, nine of us had gathered at an office conference room in suburban Maplewood MN to watch a recent film about Haiti, and then to discuss what we’d seen.
The film, Poto Mitan, has five narrators. With a single, brief, exception, they are the only ones who speak, and they speak one at a time, telling their powerful stories. They are “Poto Mitans”, all poor women in Port-au-Prince who talk of survival against all odds. They speak in Kreyol, subtitled into English. The segments are separated by brief but beautiful and powerful prose read in English by Haitian author Edwidge Danticat, backgrounded by film of a woman braiding another woman’s hair.
Poto Mitan is a powerful film which our discussion leader, Jacqueline Regis, said brought her to tears when she first saw it. It was so mindful of her own mother and her own growing up years in Duvalier’s Haiti.
After the film we viewers dialogued with each other about what this film meant to us. There was nothing profound said, but the evening was profound. There was lots of respect among we diverse folks whose only commonality was an interest in Haiti. Our conversation reached no conclusion: it didn’t need to. When we walked out the door, the conversation was our conclusion: food for thought. Out of the gathering did come a proposal to a larger institution to use the film as centerpiece for a program on the first anniversary of the January 12, 2010, earthquake in Haiti, but that was just a proposal for someone else to implement, or not.
Oh if only we could re-learn the almost disappeared skill of dialogue.
So…What is “dialogue”?
I often go back to a great quote I found in Joseph Jaworsky’s 1996 book, “Synchronicity, the Inner Path of Leadership“. Preceding the chapter on “Dialogue: The Power of Collective Thinking“, Jaworsky includes the following from David Bohms “On Dialogue”:
From time to time, (the) tribe (gathered) in a circle.
They just talked and talked and talked apparently to no purpose. They made no decisions. There was no leader. And everybody could participate.
There may have been wise men or wise women who were listened to a bit more – the older ones – but everybody could talk.
The meeting went on, until it finally seemed to stop for no reason at all and the group dispersed. Yet after that, everybody seemed to know what to do, because they understood each other so well. Then they could get together in smaller groups and do something or decide things.

#216 – Dick Bernard: "Wherever you go, you must find your own Calcutta"

Sunday one of my favorite Catholic Priests, Fr. Joe Gillespie, was recalling a 1994 visit to Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity in Calcutta.
At the time, he was a university professor in the United States, and he came by unannounced during a heavy monsoon rain. He knocked on the door and a Nun answered. “Would it be possible to see Mother Teresa”, Father Joe said. “Yes, she’s been expecting you.”
So, off the street he came, and face to face with Mother Teresa for a 35 minute conversation, puzzling all the while at the “she’s been expecting you” comment.
Visit nearing an end, she said to him, you should come here and work. “I can’t”, he said, “I’m under contract at the University”.
She understood, but as he departed, she said, “wherever you go, you must find your own Calcutta”. No more needed to be said.
This particular Sunday we had a visitor, a Priest from the Parish of Ste Catherine d’Alexandre de Bouzy, about 60 miles and four hours west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on the north side of the long peninsula. We had expected this visitor, Fr. Claude-Renel Elys’ee.
After Mass Fr. Elys’ee met with those of us who were interested, talking about the usual things one would expect when talking about Haiti: their infrastructure was damaged, not destroyed, needed to be replaced. What they need is actual money – they can get the materials and they have the people who can do the work. They need medicines and school supplies. It was good to have him there, as it was a chance to reconnect directly with Haiti which has, six months after the quake, essentially gone invisible to most of us.

Fr. Ely'see at Basilica of St. Mary Minneapolis July 25, 2010


“Wherever you go, you must find your own Calcutta” came to mind often during his talk (in French, with interpreter).
We each can do much. We just need to exercise our imagination, and have the will and determination to follow through.
The question kept nagging at Fr. Joe after he left Mother Teresa. “How did she know I was coming, when I had done nothing beforehand to announce my visit?”
Back home in St. Louis he asked an older colleague about this.
“Oh”, he said, “she tells everybody that.”
But what a neat, neat, neat idea of a welcome.
And what a doable concept: “Wherever you go, you must find your own Calcutta”.

#210 – Dick Bernard: A Farm Freezer, Haiti, the Oil Spill and US

Monday, July 12, was the six month anniversary of the catastrophic earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and area in Haiti.
That same day, I spent a few hours helping my Uncle and Aunt, out at their now-empty North Dakota farm. (They’ve lived in a nearby town for several years – an option they don’t like, but the only reasonable option they have. They are at an age, and their medical conditions are such, that they could no longer survive independently on this place where they lived as brother and sister for over 80 years. My uncle is 85, his sister, my aunt, turns 90 a week from today. Their house remains much as they left it, but they don’t live there, only frequent visits.)
One of Monday’s tasks was to empty their freezer which included frozen produce from their garden, some of it ten years old. They knew it had to be done: my uncle, in fact, brought up the idea. That produce in that freezer would never be used by anyone, including themselves. But the notion of wasting this food was reprehensible to him. He was nine years old during the worst year of the Great Depression in ND, 1934, and he knows what it is like to have nothing.
We unloaded the freezer, and put its contents on the back of his old pickup truck, and drove down to the family garden – a one acre plot, used by the family for many years. The garden is still used by the couple, but only a tiny portion of it is planted. They don’t have the energy to garden more, and even if they did, the produce would go to waste: for them, it is unusable.
During the Depression and other bygone years, there were eight people or more who depended on that garden, but the prospects of even a small crop to harvest and process for the winter were not always good. Once experienced, one tends not to forget such experiences.
Those bygone years, the normal process was to pressure cook and can the food, in sealed glass jars. There was no electricity and thus no freezer; there were no plastic bags – a product of the petroleum industry. Kids now-a-days would be hard-pressed to even imagine the planting/growing/harvesting/preserving process which people of my generation grew up with. Forced to live that way again, most of us would not survive, literally.
Down at the garden we emptied the plastic bags which had held the frozen produce of the farm: spinach, corn, beans, peas, broccoli, onions, apples, and on and on and on. Considering it was ten years worth, it really wasn’t a lot of, as my uncle would say, “wasted food”.
While he was sitting on the tail gate of the truck, opening and emptying the bags, he was lamenting the waste, here, while so many people were starving elsewhere. No, he didn’t think that frozen bag of kernel corn should be sent to Haiti; more so, the notion of waste was on his mind. He wants to help, but how? People his age get endless appeals for funds from all manner of agencies. My advice to him: throw them away unless you know the group is good. So many are simply scams.
I doubt that he – or I, for that matter – thought about the amount of electricity that had to be consumed to keep that food frozen….
Haiti, and that waste at the farm unexpectedly came together for me a little later in the day. Back at my temporary home in the local motel, I flipped on the television, and happened across a CSPAN program recorded earlier that day: a panel discussing Haiti six months after the earthquake. The program is well worth watching. It had not occurred to me till that moment that July 12 was indeed the six months anniversary of that humanitarian disaster.
Back home in the Twin Cities the next day, there were several e-mails with varying perspectives six months after the quake in Haiti. Mostly, though, Haiti is out of sight, out of mind, even for people like myself who have a great interest in Haiti.
More on our minds, currently, is the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico: hundreds of millions of gallons of crude oil befouling the Gulf: oil which was to be used for the fuel that got me out to that North Dakota farm, and back; and which was used for to manufacture those plastic bags we had just emptied.
Mostly, for most of us, life goes on. “Don’t worry, be happy”. We’ll always have it all.
Don’t count on it.

From the garden, back to the garden


The farm garden, before an acre, presently only a small plot.

#190 – Dick Bernard: Four Films

Someone looking for me would not start at movie theaters: movies are an infrequent destination.
Still, in the past seven days I viewed four films in four very different venues. Each of the films had (and have) diverse messages…beyond the films themselves.
Last Sunday, the destination was The Minneapolis Film Festival showing of a documentary, “The Unreturned” by a couple of young filmmakers. Nathan Fisher, one of the two who made the film, was in attendance. The film covers a topic essentially untalked about: the fact that 4.7 million Iraqis, largely of the middle class, and representing perhaps a sixth of Iraq’s population, were displaced by the Iraq War, mostly to neighboring Syria and Jordan. (Iraq, before the war, was roughly the population and geographical size of California.)
The Unreturned views the world through the lens of several of these refugees, who didn’t want to leave Iraq, and would have wanted to go home to Iraq, but cannot for circumstances beyond their control. At the end of the film, one person in the audience noted that 4.7 million refugees was essentially equal to the population of Minnesota (5 million). This is a huge number, with equivalent impact: like the entire population of Minnesota uprooted and ending up in Wisconsin….
I think the 200 or so of us in the theater last Sunday would agree with the later assessment of this film, ranked among the best in the entire festival.
Monday night, a friend and I hosted a meeting at a south Minneapolis church for 30 representatives from 22 twin cities groups which have an active interest/involvement in Haiti. We showed the film “Road to Fondwa“, which can be watched on-line for free. Road to Fondwa was filmed a couple of years ago by university students. Its theme is rural life in Haiti. Since it was filmed before the earthquake of January, 2010, it shows how life was before Fondwa was devastated (Fondwa is near the epicenter of the quake). I was particularly taken by the notion of “konbit”, a Kreyol work meaning gathering, cooperation, working together. We could use a lot more of that!
Friday afternoon I attended a showing of another Minneapolis Film Fest entry, Poto Mitan, yet another young film makers entry. The Director of this film, a young professor at New York University, concentrates on five Haitian peasant women struggling to survive Haiti’s harsh economic realities. Each of the five women tell their own stories in their own language. Filming began in 2006, and the film was released in 2009. Like all of the other films, this one is subtitled. At this showing, the Director, Dr. Mark Schuller, was with us, and led a discussion afterwards. He’s a very impressive young man.
Then there is the fourth film, actually a 12 hour documentary over a period of weeks on the History Channel. It is called “America: the story of us“, and I was really looking forward to it when the first episode played a week ago Sunday night. My anticipation turned rapidly to disappointment (though I intend to watch the whole thing) because it became obvious that the intent of the film was to portray America’s history in the image of some old conservative politicians and big business and entertainers. The politicians have, so far, been regular on-screen “experts”, and the production apparently is underwritten by a major U.S. bank. It is too early to judge the entire production, but my guess is that this America will be portrayed as a heroic place with few warts, won by free enterprise, guns and military prowess. So be it. I’m waiting to see how the Iraq War will be spun, and the Obama era. Google America the Story of us and find lots of reviews of this epic….
The first three films do one thing that the fourth film does not: they allow the real people to do the speaking about the reality. In the last one, so far, it is only the experts that have the say.
If the youth of this country are represented by the first three filmmakers, we stand a chance.

#186 – Dick Bernard: Haiti today and tomorrow, as viewed by Dr. Joia Mukherjee of Partners in Health

Less than two months after the devastating January 12 earthquake, Haiti has become old news.
Dr. Joia Mukherjee, native of Bengal and graduate of the University of Minnesota Medical School, and for 11 of her 17 years as a physician part of Partners in Health, brought Haiti back in sharp focus before a large audience at St. Paul’s Macalester College Tuesday evening. Here is a recent commentary about Haiti written by Dr. Mukharjee. Her remarks on Minnesota Public Radio on April 6, 2010, are here.
The awful remains obvious in Haiti: according to Dr. Mukherjee, 250,000 died in the quake, roughly one of every ten Haitians in Port-au-Prince and area. 300,000 more were injured, mostly orthopedic and neurological injuries requiring surgery. And 1.7 million Haitians were displaced, one of every five Haitians.
Some of the worst problems – basic mental health issues as a consequence of the Quake and displacement, and the upcoming rainy season – are less obvious now, but are major. Haitians are resilient, but this catastrophe stretches the national and individual psyche to the breaking point.
In a country with essentially no government, and no funds, with the rainy season fast approaching, and hurricane season not far behind, it is hard to see any silver lining behind the abundant misery in Haiti.
But Dr. Mukherjee conveyed a message of hope, most dramatically through the voice of an old woman who told her not long after the tragedy, near neg maron, the statue of the free man in the ruined Presidential Palace area, “The free man will never be defeated”. Through all of the tragedy which came along with independence when Haiti’s slaves threw off their shackles in 1804, Haitians have an enduring pride and resilience and it is that spirit which holds them in good stead even when hope seems an impossible dream.
We were given a brief lesson about Haiti, and with the lesson an encouragement to learn more about this place and its people. Kreyol is thought to be primarily French, but the richest parts of the language come from its African Bantu roots.
There are immense challenges ahead for the Haitians, Dr. Mukherjee said, but with assistance they are equal to the task.
Given the immensity of the disaster, and the slowness of recovery efforts, it is remarkable how little violence there has been. Encampments have quite effectively organized themselves into communities with de facto leaders, “mayors” in a sense. Partners in Health believes that true accompaniment – walking with the people – is absolutely essential in the recovery efforts. Rather than telling, ask the people what they need. They know. Work with the people and with the Government as it exists, then do what can be done to help the people fulfill the needs, and have them rebuild their own society. Basic rights for all people are education, medical care, water, food and shelter.
Partners in Health, which began in Haiti, but now works throughout the world, has an important sense of what works for Haitians in Haiti. The vast majority of PIH’s staff is native Haitian.
A particular and perhaps paradoxical dilemma in Haiti is the massive number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). In Rwanda, we were told, there are 200 NGOs; in Haiti, about 10,000. And these are countries roughly similar in size and population. NGOs are essentially governments unto themselves, and represent their own particular problems. They are a mixed blessing.
Haiti’s government essentially ceased to exist after the quake, and recovery has been slow and difficult. The government has no money. Of every dollar in aid, only one cent goes to the Haiti government. The standard excuse for this is “fear of corruption”. The doctor retorted that this is a misplaced fear. If we wish to view corruption, all we have to do is to look at the Wall Street collapse of 2008. Most corruption occurs long before the money reaches any one in Haiti.
Dr. Mukherjee feels we all have a very useful role to play in Haiti’s recovery and future. We need to keep seeing Haiti, and there needs to be a movement of solidarity for Haiti. Such movements against Apartheid in South Africa and more recently the AIDs initiatives resulted from people working together over a long period of time. In all the many ways that we can, we need to make our own government aware that we are watching, and we are concerned.

Dr. Mukherjee at right, visits with Joelle Vitello and Laura Flynn Apr 6 10


After-talk conversation April 6, 2010


NOTE: My personal website on Haiti is here.

#164 – Dick Bernard: Haiti, an Anniversary

Six years ago today – actually it was February 29, 2004, Leap Year – Haiti’s President was loaded on a United States aircraft and removed from Haiti. The United States called it a “resignation” by Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Aristide – who should know – said it was not a resignation. Whatever the case, President Aristide was history, and the six subsequent years have not been kind to Haiti, not the least of which have been the natural disasters visited on Haiti by four hurricanes in 2008, and the earthquake of January 12, 2010.
Whatever problems Aristide and his government supposedly had were not solved by the coup/resignation. Haiti’s continued problems and even acceleration of those problems the last six years have simply been “disappeared” by our government and the media.
In a very sad way, the collapsed Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince symbolizes Haiti today. Places like the Palace are symbols. Haiti’s symbol is in ruins….

Presidential Palace, Port-au-Prince, December 7, 2003


Elections which were supposed to be held in February or March, 2010, have been postponed, and in any event, the major party, Lavalas, which was Aristide’s party, was to have been kept off the ballot due to some technicality or other. Lavalas represented the poor constituency in Haiti. The poor apparently deserve no representation or right to select their own candidates. That is my “spin” of how elections are managed in Haiti..
Two personal insights come to mind this day:
1) In November, 2003, a month before I left for my first trip to Haiti, I was seated next to a Catholic Priest from Port-au-Prince at a dinner in Minneapolis. I knew next to nothing about Haiti at that point, and made the (apparent) mistake of commenting favorably about what I had heard about Aristide. The Priest, who I did not know, “bobbed and weaved” his way out of having to comment. He was very uncomfortable. It struck me as curious, then, but not for long. I entered my experience with Haiti, trusting U.S. Government sources for honest information about Haiti. Within a year I completely lost that trust. I came to find that I was either lied to, or ignored, when I asked questions.
2) Most recently, within the past two weeks, I was at a session where an American survivor of the quake spoke. The speaker had arrived in Port-au-Prince just a few hours before the quake, and a few days later was evacuated from the country. The individual had stayed in the U.S. Embassy prior to departure.
During the session, I asked about that new United States embassy in Port-au-Prince, which is a new structure, and is by all accounts one of the largest U.S. embassies anywhere in the world. It was observed by someone in the audience that photographs of the embassy are all but forbidden around the Embassy; further that while the Embassy was built to withstand earthquakes, and in fact was basically undamaged, everything in the vicinity of the Embassy, outside its walls, had been severely damaged or destroyed in the quake.
It was then I remembered an exercise in frustration during 2004-2006, when I tried to find out where a purported $50 Million in U.S. Aid for Haiti had gone. It was listed in a December, 2003, news release on the U.S. State Department website, and I had simply asked the question “who got the money?” I thought it would be an easy question to answer. But two years and a Freedom of Information Act request later, I had gotten no further than learning that the people who could answer my question were at U.S. AID and Department of Defense. It became very clear that neither one wanted to answer my question, and in the summer of 2006 I finally dropped the quest.
I wondered, sitting in the meeting room a couple of weeks ago, if some of that money – that supposed “Aid” to Haiti – had gone to build that Embassy in Port-au-Prince, that edifice that neatly survived the 2010 quake that killed well over 200,000 of its neighbors.
I don’t know.
Keep seeing Haiti.
RESOURCES: Perhaps the most comprehensive and thoroughly documented book I’ve read on the recent history of Haiti is Peter J. Hallward’s “Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide and the Politics of Containment” (Verso, 2007). Another is “Mountains Beyond Mountains”, by Tracy Kidder, the biography of Dr. Paul Farmer, long-time physician to the poor in Haiti and currently Deputy U.N. Envoy to Haiti.
My web reference to Haiti is here.