#159 – Dick Bernard: "We are the World"; the "Kin[g]dom of God is yours…." Luke 6:17, 20-26

It’s Valentine’s Day 2010.
Overnight came the new release of the 25th anniversary version of Michael Jackson and Lionel Ritchie’s We are the World. This years rendition, recorded after the earthquake, is dedicated to the people of Haiti (Ayiti). It is powerful. Do watch it.
Back home, today’s Sunday paper had not a single word about Haiti – at least none that I could see. It is now 32 days since the earthquake, and as I anticipated, Haiti has officially been disappeared from the radar screen for most Americans, even though the task of survival will remain job one for Haitians, and the matter of long-term recovery is far in the future.
It is how it is. With the exception of 9-11-01, which is still flogged into our conscious memory at most every opportunity to keep us fearful about the enemy, the ordinary life span of a life altering event is, roughly, a month. And a month has now passed since the earthquake.
It has been decreed that it is time to move on, or so it seems. Except for Haiti, where moving on will take lots and lots and lots of years, and continuing outside support.
This morning at Catholic Mass, the Gospel for the day was the scripture text noted in the title of this post. This text is Luke’s version of the Beatitudes (“Blessed are the meek”, etc.)
The Priest this morning, retired, a frequent visitor to our Parish, highly respected, invariably says “kindom” when the text says “kingdom”, and his error is very intentional. As he explained the story a year or two ago, on the Feast of the Three Kings: when he was pastor of an inner city parish that had, and still has, very active ministries to the downtrodden, particularly the homeless, his assistant once typed something for him, and misspelled the word “kingdom”, leaving out the “g”, resulting in “kindom” on his piece of paper. He noted the mistake, but he liked the alternate word, and has used it instead of Kingdom ever since. So, in the Lord’s prayer, an every Sunday part of Catholic Mass, while we read and most of us say the “official” version, “thy Kingdom come”, our Priest is saying “thy kindom come”.
And so, today, we heard about the kindom of God….
Lent begins on Wednesday for those so inclined. Father suggested a good opening exercise would be to read the 6th chapter of Luke in its entirety.
As he was talking, I thought of the front page of my reflections when I came back from Haiti in 2003. You can view it for yourself here.
So far, the data shows that the average American has contributed about $2 per man, woman and child to relief efforts for Haiti. Our government has supplied a bit over a dollar more per person thus far. While this is a vast outpouring of generosity for us, the vast majority of that money will simply recycle right back into the American economy through sale of goods and services, and salaries for people like the military or aid workers. Yes, we’re helping Haiti; we’re also helping ourselves, far more.
Now the time for the serious heavy lifting in Haiti begins. Maybe Lent is a good time to contemplate the meaning of another part of that Gospel of Luke read this morning: “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolations. Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry….” Whatever our personal circumstances, if we live in America, we’re rich.
Keep seeing Haiti, and all the other places which have less of the riches of the world than we. It’s the least we can do.

#157 – Dick Bernard: Haiti et al, a little arithmetic lesson in caring and sharing

Thursday of this week we showed a few photos from what, in retrospect, were better times for Haiti kids at SOPUDEP School in Petion-ville in December, 2003. Our audience was about 100 2nd graders at an elementary school in a nearby twin cities suburb. Kids relate to kids everywhere, and this audience of young persons paid close attention to the photos of their peers far away, and they enjoyed participating in a small lesson in Kreyol words I was able to teach them.
SOPUDEP school is no longer useable; many of its students were casualties of the earthquake. It has temporarily died, but will rise again with the help of places like that elementary school in the twin cities which is considering helping SOPUDEP recover with part of their relief efforts. It helps to be able to make a personal connection with a person or a place.
The day we were at the school this past week, they were collecting quarters from whoever wished to participate. It was a small amount, but a very intriguing idea.
The school was devoting a week, I gathered, to participate in some way in relief efforts, and was involved in various efforts to better understand Haiti.
Someone(s) had come up with a neat idea: on Monday, the collection began by collecting pennies; on Tuesday, nickels; Wednesday, dimes; Thursday, our day, quarters; and Friday, dollars. If you do the math, that’s $1.41 – a small sum, granted, but coins put together accumulate to real money quickly.
The teacher noted that the trip to the bank with the coins involved a bit of heavy lifting, so to speak.
The fundraising strategy has stuck with me, and this morning at coffee I did a little paper and pencil arithmetic.
IF a person did the same routine as the kids were doing at the school, and repeated the routine every five days over the course of a year, that $1.41 would grow to over $100 by years end.
Of course, one need not stop at a dollar. How about going to six days, and adding a $5 bill; or seven days, adding a 10; or eight, $20? And doing it repetitively, week after week? A seven day cycle would come out to about $850 a year; an eight day cycle, almost $1500…all this for
one cent +
five cents +
ten cents +
twenty-five cents +
$1 +
$5 +
$10 +
$20.
Let’s say that a single percent of Americans – only 3,000,000 people, 1% of a total of 300,000,000 – adopted the elementary schools five day plan, and followed through every day for an entire year. That would come out to over $300,000,000 dollars – all for $1.41 every five days. That’s serious money that could do a whole lot of good in a place like Haiti where a dollar a day is hard to come by, even for adults.
Give it some thought. And action.

Children at SOPUDEP School, Haiti, December 9, 2003

#155 – Dick Bernard: Haiti, a plea….

December 8, 2003 – it was my second full day of my first trip to Haiti – we had spent a powerful and draining morning being briefed by ordinary Haitians, women and men, about the atrocities of the 1991-94 coup in Haiti. There were six of us. I had nothing to say. I was there to listen and to learn.
Our group leader had arranged for lunch for the entire group, and before we left we went around the circle of perhaps 20-25, simply to shake hands and thank the group for their hospitality. About two-thirds of the way around I extended my hand to a man, and he refused the handshake.
Experiences like that tend to stick with me. I have no idea why he singled me out (I was the only one of the group of four men and two women so treated). Perhaps I reminded him of someone, some white American, some terrible experience. I’ll never know.
Similarly, I remember a poolside luncheon later the next day at one of those fancy hotels in Petion-ville. We were being briefed by a supporter of then-President Aristide, who later took us around to a school and to a television station to meet other people. At the hotel, I noticed a solitary white man sitting quietly in a deck chair reading a book. I wondered who he was and why he was there. I didn’t ask and I’ll never know. I gather, though, that a white face in Haiti is a suspect face, with good reason.
So it is.
Years have now passed, and I’m far better informed than I was then, and I happen to be at the intersection of lots of electronic communication about what is happening in post-January 12 Haiti. I’m also ice-bound in the middle of the U.S., trying to help as best I can from here.
I know lots of people with lots of points of view, from total ignorance of Haiti (as was true with me seven years ago) to Haitians who are trying to find ways to work together within whatever system exists in the U.S., to others who, like that guy who refused to shake my hand that December day, just want US the hell out*.
I wish there were simple “one-size fits all” solutions. There aren’t.
A short while ago I started one of these blog posts with a sentence that we had raped, looted and pillaged Haiti for its whole 206 year history. Pretty harsh indictment, but not at all unreasonable. Someone I know responded and seemed miffed with my indictment of US (as in U.S, and we Americans): he really didn’t know any of the back story, apparently. I tried to inform him.
On the other side of the equation, I expressed “disappointment” about something sent by a prominent Haitian leader with a large list, and was told that I “insulted” the person (who I respect.) The rage is palpable and we probably deserve the rage. (My work career found me frequently in the position of being yelled at by one side or another, so I’m used to harsh comments. But, do bitter and angry comments help anything, any more than willful ignorance and misplaced trust? I don’t think so.)
The voiceless ones, represented by that guy who wouldn’t shake my hand, have desperate needs, and the needs will be very long-term.
Somehow we need to accept the fact that the U.S. is key to solutions to this catastrophe, and that there will be all manner of well-meaning and malicious attempts to help (or “help”, as in profiteering from the crisis.)
I think “boots on the ground” folks like Dr. Paul Farmer are in an excellent position to do some good, and know the political system very well. To me, Dr. Farmer has earned his credibility.
The guy in the circle that day in 2003 has also earned his credibility with me.
We need to listen to both sides, and to do what we can to make for a better Haiti, one that is founded on Justice, not dependent on Charity (there is a big difference.) My definition, from December 2003 is found at page 17 of my reflections when I returned.
* – there is more than a little logic behind the resentment of Haitians towards the U.S. See my short commentary at page 7&8 on White Rice, Pigs and Chickens, from my 2006 reflections after coming back from Haiti.

#154 – Dick Bernard: Haiti…and Power

Two weeks ago today, 4:53 p.m. Haiti time, Port-au-Prince (Potoprens in Kreyol) and area were devastated by a massive earthquake. Today, two weeks later, coverage of the disaster is decreasing; finding fault or blame is increasing; and the attention of the world and U.S. body politic is shifting back to more mundane things, like the Super Bowl.
It will take years for Haitians to recover and the international community will be central to their recovery, but how long will people care? It’s an important question.
Long before the latest catastrophe struck Haiti, I’ve been thinking about what I believe is a pertinent and basic “conversation” in, particularly, westernized society…and that is the conversation about Power.
Boiled to its essence, I believe there are two classes of people: those with Power, and those without. Those in Power presume they have the right to control agendas and conversations. They do this in sundry ways: controlling information, money, and on and on and on. You can be born into Power, work to get into Power, or be identified as useful to Power. But it’s a club entered by invitation only.
The official Haiti conversation is almost totally dominated by traditional Power.
Power isn’t a partisan deal, and it isn’t Republican or Democrat either. It can be cliques who through one means or another control access or agendas. It can be seemingly out of Power people who have a following. Power is ubiquitous. One way to stay out of the Power circles is to diss Power…. Power people prefer followers.
In Haiti, most of the people are about as Power-less as any people are anywhere in the world. Most are illiterate (I’d maintain this is far more by design of the Powerful rather than lack of motivation of the Powerless). Educated people can be troublesome. The language of the ordinary Haitian is Kreyol; the official and international language of Haiti is French…. Even language disenfranchises the ordinary Haitian.
Of course, there are decent Power people, and indecent ones. It is a complicated process to identify the difference, so usually everyone in a particular class is typecast in various ways, as “good” or “bad”. Such simplicity is not helpful.
The out of Power people far, far outnumber the people in Power, and the Powerful know this: thus the strategies to disempower those not in the inner circles, by disinformation, or discipline or otherwise. If one’s neighbor ends up in jail for no good reason, one notices.
There’s a way out of Powerlessness and that is by no longer being willing to play by the rules established by Power. If the folks in the neighborhood were challenged to play a National Football League team, using NFL rules and criteria, one knows the result…but if the NFL rules and criteria were thrown out and replaced with the neighborhood rules, the results could be very different. But one first of all has to believe that there are other rules of engagement than those mandated by the Powerful.
I’ve long been enchanted by the mantra I hear at demonstrations: “Ain’t no Power like the Power of the People, like the Power of the People, say WHAT? There ain’t no Power….” The chant is delivered with gusto, but I have come to believe that the chanters really don’t believe their own message. And they leave their power on the street, unrealized.
The ordinary Haitians, the ones who will disappear soon from the media screen, but are there in the neighborhoods, will be the salvation of their country. All one can hope is that the commitment of the Powerful will be a bit more towards Justice than the traditional Charity*.
Stay engaged. If you feel you have no power, try to look at your Power a bit differently.
It’s 4:53 p.m. Haiti time. Time to click on Publish.
* My own very brief interpretation on Charity vs Justice was written on return from Haiti in December, 2003. It is accessible at this link page 17.

#153 – Dick Bernard: Haiti. Hope is on the Way?

It can fairly be said that the place called Haiti, and the people called Haitians, have been raped, looted and pillaged by my “civilized” world for the entire 518 year history since Christopher Columbus and his men landed there (in the vicinity of today’s Cap Haitien) in 1492. An excellent primer on this history for me was Dr. Paul Farmer’s book, “The Uses of Haiti*“. (I initially thought that this book was still in print. Apparently it is not. The link provided here is to a discussion and critique of the book by someone I early became acquainted with and respect. Take a look, and read the review* all the way through.)
(Today, Dr. Paul Farmer is the most prominent “point person” for the U.S. and the United Nations on Haiti. He was appointed some months before the earthquake; and he has a long history in Haiti and among the Haitians. His Partners in Health is easily considered one of the very best destinations for donations to Haiti. His more recent book, Pathologies of Power remains available, and worth a look.)
It can be fairly said, I believe, that everyone of us in the developed West have grown up with an official and almost exclusively negative narrative about why Haiti is so poor. The essence of the narrative is that Haitians are incapable of running their own affairs: that their problems are their own fault, and that we in the developed world need to rescue them from their own incompetence. We are “the Great White Fathers”.
Historical narratives are developed and shared by people of influence, like leaders, or academics, who are in a position to convey their influence down to the commoners who are the pawns of history. The official story is the story written by the one in Power**. We are told what to believe, and tend to believe what we are told by people more “important” than we are. That is an elemental fact of life. Even Black Americans and Native Americans have absorbed a negative story about Haitians. It is a fiction which has come to be accepted as reality.
When my friend Paul Miller finally convinced me to travel with him to Haiti in 2003, I knew almost nothing about the place and its people. I came back committed to learn about the geopolitical relationship between the U.S. and Haiti. It has been an eye-opening and troubling experience.
Today, January 23, 2010, I feel for the first time since I darkened Haiti’s door December 6, 2003, that hope is truly on the way for Haiti, and along with the hope, some potential for long-term justice for the Haitian people.
There are a boat-load of serious problems beyond the earthquake: I read about them every day in commentaries never seen by the ordinary news consumer in this country. And you don’t undo over 500 years of exploitation overnight.
To those who look only backward at the abuse of a beautiful country and its beautiful, determined and tenacious people, I urge: don’t turn your back on the future and in effect walk only backwards with your eyes only on the awful past.
To those of my country men and women, especially those who share my whiteness, who believe only the official narrative, consider the possibility that you’ve been lied to, deliberately, and often, by most everybody. Crucial information has been tampered with, or left out of, the stories you’ve heard. Open your eyes as you walk forward, trying to help.
To both, consider the possibility of true dialogue, and a willingness to understand the other. Without such an intersection, all of the huge outpouring of money and caring and good intentions engendered by the earthquake of January 12, 2010, will be for naught…and we’ll slide back into the dismal reality that has prevailed over Haiti’s entire history.
Post note: Within the last few days the Twin Cities Daily Planet published a post of mine about the current situation in Haiti.
I have a website concerning Haiti which includes a comparative map and a timeline of significant historical events.
* The review relates to the original edition of the book, 1994; the book I read was the 2003 revised version which very likely dealt with some of the concerns Bob Corbett had with the first edition. To my knowledge, neither edition remains available.
** Quite by accident I was able to document one such occurrence with Haiti. Click on “Anatomy of an Official Lie” here .

#151 – Dick Bernard: Start Seeing Haiti

I have watched the news about Haiti until I can’t watch much of it any more.
I ask you to be very, very attentive to Haiti long after the TV cameras leave and the fundraising appeals end, and we move on to other things, as we always do. Collectively, we Americans have a very short attention span.
This is truly a time to Start Seeing Haiti.
Here is a good graphic map of Port-au-Prince which was in Sunday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune. The neighborhood where my driver in 2003 lived, and in whose home we had our evening meal, is in the “shantytown” above Petionville. (If you follow the faultline till it is directly south of downtown Port-au-Prince, you’ll be in the approximate location of the hotel in which we stayed at the end of our trip to Haiti in 2006.) To get to that hotel, we travelled perhaps 10 miles more or less along the top of the mountain range beginning above Petionville. The hotel was, in Haitian terms, a luxury hotel. I would guess that hotel was severely damaged or destroyed a week ago. On that trip, we saw farmers working fields that were down slope, and passed villages perched on the mountain sides. We’ll probably never hear what happened there – it was just a place out in the country. Then, it was an idylllic if primitive pastoral scene – people in the fields with hoes…. Today?
I have been to Haiti twice: 2003 and 2006. In between, especially 2004-2007, I made a very strong effort to get very well informed about U.S. policy and our impact on Haiti over Haiti’s entire history as an independent Republic (206 years, beginning 1804). That trip to becoming informed was a troubling one…when one’s eyes are opened, sometimes you see uncomfortable things about yourself. That happened with me.
I am considered to be someone who knows something about the untold story about why Haiti has suffered for so long, and continues to suffer. I particularly resonate with this column by a long time and highly respected journalist here in the twin cities.
None of us know enough, at the moment, to be truly knowledgeable about what is going on, on the ground in Haiti. We see only fragments, and hear only bits and pieces.
We do know about the past. Suffice to say, U.S. history with Haiti goes back as far as President Thomas Jefferson and the 1804 U.S. Congress, and centers on slavery, and fear of a country, Haiti, whose slaves had successfully thrown off their chains and defeated France. We were, of course, a slave-nation then, and for many years later. (In too many ways, we still harbor these attitudes. They are an unfortunate part of what we are as a people.)
France, which held Haiti at the time of the slave revolt, has had its fingers in the destruction of the country since 1696 (it bankrupted Haiti as punishment essentially by extortion in the 1800s), and the Spaniards controlled Haiti before that (a guy named Christopher Columbus was first on the scene in 1492.) For a number of years I’ve had a timeline concerning Haiti-U.S. on my own website (there is one error: 1915-1934 should be the time we occupied Haiti). (My basic Haiti website, needs updating, but still includes much useful information.)
We Americans have much to be very ashamed of when it comes to our treatment of Haiti over the very long term. Haiti has been a human and physical resource to be exploited. That aspect is not, and will likely never be, talked about in the media that we Americans rely on for our daily news. (Frankly, I pay as much attention to what the media does not say, as to what it does. For example, I think there are hundreds of Cuban medical personnel now helping in Haiti, many who were there at the time of the quake; I hear not a word nor see a single image about them on our media. It is a forbidden part of the narrative, apparently.)
If you wish to learn more about Haiti and the US a good place to start is with American Dr. Paul Farmer’s books “The Uses of Haiti”. and “Pathologies of Power”, and visit his Partners in Health website, and read his biography, Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder. There are mountains of other pieces of information, but these are good places to start. Another heavily researched and recent book is Damming the Flood by Peter Hallward. IJDH (Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti) is an excellent website to visit and get familiar with.
Partners in Health is an excellent and reliable destination for relief $$’s. Cathy and I are most involved in Fonkoze , a major Haiti micro-finance institution. Fonkoze has branches through Haiti, but it is headquartered in PaP, and it too has suffered severe setbacks in all the ways other Haitian institutions have been damaged or destroyed. EVERYONE has suffered in this tragedy.
60 Minutes on CBS on Sunday had an excellent segment on Haiti.
The Haiti government, fragile to begin with, was essentially destroyed in the quake. Medical facilities and their personnel: destroyed and many dead. There is one major airport, and it has a single runway. Thank God the runway wasn’t damaged. Cap Haitien in the north has an airport, but too short a runway for the big planes, and (compared with our freeway travel) the relatively short trip between the two cities takes forever. To my knowledge there is a single direct motor route between the Dominican Republic and Port-au-Prince. We have ridden on a good part of this road in the pre-quake times: it took three to four hours to go about 60 miles and this was on a good day. It is heavily travelled and poorly maintained – it takes money to keep up infrastructure. Many roads are still blocked with debris and even bodies, and heavy equipment will really not come in until the ships bring it – the harbor facilities were damaged in the quake. Fuel is hard to come by.
It is impossible for us to imagine the desperate situation on the ground.
Most of the people of Haiti will be alive when this is all over, but what are they facing in the short and long term? Ultimately, the urban population will likely have to be largely evacuated, at minimum displaced, and Port-au-Prince essentially completely rebuilt. It is the world community, led by us, that will have to do the rebuilding. Image starting over with a city of 2,000,000 (the twin cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul and suburbs is 3,000,000.) It will be a gold mine for the unscrupulous, and one hopes that disaster capitalism will be kept better in check than it was in Iraq. But it will be a place where lots of money will be made – and not by Haitians. (Another useful and troubling book: The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.) We can do right by Haiti this time. I hope we will, and then allow Haitians to build and restore their society and be full partners within the world community.
As I write, we know a lot, but we know only a tiny bit of the long-term implications of this disaster. Some of the best insights I’ve heard came from a Haitian kid who appeared to be in his 20s at a meeting we had on Saturday. Haitians are networked world wide. They are resourceful and inteligent, but they are going to need lots and lots of help and they’re going to need it for a long, long time.
Be with them in any way that you can.

#150 – Dick Bernard: "We're off to see the Wizard…."

Last night, we listened to the magnificent Minnesota Orchestra as the front band for the 1939 classic film “Wizard of Oz”. It was a wonderful evening. I felt a bit guilty being there, given what has happened in Haiti in the last few days; on the other hand, we had these tickets for almost a year.
I did watch the film with new eyes last night. It remains a wonderful film with lots of positive messages for one who chooses to look for them. (In the lobby, at intermission, I noticed a poster borrowing from Robert Fulghum’s “everything I need to know I learned in kindergarten“: “everything I need to know I learned in the Wizard of Oz“. A lot of simple truth there, I thought.)
I don’t remember when I first saw Wizard of Oz, but it was long after it was made. Even though I was born a year later than the film, in 1940, movies were a rare treat in my growing up life in the country.
Last night coincided closely with Martin Luther King’s birthday, and last night I looked at the casting for Wizard of Oz. I looked pretty intently. I do not recall a single face that looked unlike mine. The cast was, best as I could see, totally white.
That is how it was, then. If African-Americans had any roles at all, as in the famous Civil War epic Gone With the Wind produced about the same time, Negroes were kept in their proper subservient place, invisible or inferior; and if their role was important, whites in black face filled in just fine, if I remember rightly.
I describe a deeply ingrained American attitude. And, yes, it has played out in Haiti for its entire 206 year history as an independent Republic, right up until today.
Coincidentally, this past week I listened to a talking book, The Hornets Nest, Jimmy Carter’s first novel, an account of the Revolutionary War in the South, in the years 1770-1790. (The audio book was excellent, worth my time.)
Carter’s book outlines the tension and violence in the south often relating to whether or not there should be slaves, and how to deal with the native population. (One doesn’t need to read a book about what happened, but Carter effectively develops how the grass roots embrace of slavery and eradication of the native Indians evolved and became institutionalized.)
This afternoon I finished the fifth and last CD of the book, and in Carter’s epilogue, the final sentences recounted Thomas Jefferson’s reluctant but firm embrace of slavery as the only way to assure white dominance and continuation of the “American Way of Life.”
Carter in his last words also notes the official continuation of American slavery till the Civil War, and the separate-and-unequal prevalence to the present in our country.
It was Jefferson who was U.S. President in 1804 when Haiti’s slaves defeated the French and declared their independence from France, only the second free Republic in the western hemisphere. A free Haiti was an intolerable threat to our own United States, ourselves a slave state; meanwhile, the vanquished France successfully starved the infant Haiti Republic almost to death, with the U.S. standing by, and so it has gone for Haiti until the present day.
No wonder, some Haiti advocates wish us to be gone.
Our racial climate is different now, than it was in the time of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, but not so much.
The conversation about Haiti, spoken and unspoken, is dominated by racial attitudes that we have been brought up with.
There is an opportunity, in this time of horrible crisis in Haiti, to slowly begin to change the conversation.
I wonder who, or how many, will actually try to do so….
A bit more on Thomas Jefferson and his own personal attitudes here.
At my own website is a timeline of Haiti-American relations. (There is on error there; the U.S. occupied Haiti in 1915-34, rather than 1919). My general Haiti web address is here.

#149 – Dick Bernard: Fr. Tom Hagan; A Horrible Tragedy in Port-au-Prince, and a message to us all.

UPDATE: Sunday, January 17: It was reported today that Fr. Hagan, who was back in Port-au-Prince at the time of the earthquake, was injured. His office and guesthouse destroyed, and school damaged. Just one of endless fragments of information coming out of Port-au-Prince.
Saturday afternoon we went to early Mass at Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. This is not our usual time. I had agreed to set up a table for my favorite Haiti cause, the micro-finance group Fonkoze, to go along with the guest speaker for the weekend, a Priest from Port-au-Prince, Fr. Tom Hagan, long-time of the group Hands Together.
Fr. Tom had apparently just arrived on the plane, not long before Mass. There seemed to have been no time to get acquainted with the visiting Priest, and some awkwardness at how or whether to introduce this guy from out of town. There had apparently been too little time to coordinate such – from the plane to the pulpit. Sitting in the pew, I wondered what was to come.
But all that that was a very small hurdle, and Fr. Tom gave his homily, one of the most unusual and most powerful I have ever heard from a mission representative. People don’t applaud sermons at our parish, even though we almost always have gifted homilists. This day, somebody in the back started to applaud, and everyone joined in.
The response was the same at all the remaining Masses, five more on Sunday.

Fr. Tom Hagan, Hands Together, preaching at Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis, January 10, 2010


Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis, January 10, 2010


Monday, Fr. Tom flew back to Port au Prince, and was on the ground Monday afternoon and back in his long-time Cite Soleil mission. I heard that the second collection for Fr. Toms’ work set a record for the Basilica. He raised a lot of money in that day in Minneapolis. Since I had a table next to his, we had an opportunity to chat between Masses. He inspired, in an understated yet profound way, just by being who he was.
Then came Tuesday, about 24 hours later, the deadly quake in Port-au-Prince. It’s now Wednesday and we just got word that Fr. Tom is okay; his house has been destroyed. As for the rest of the population of Port-au-Prince, including his community of Cite Soleil, I know no more than anyone else. It is horrific. All that remains, over the coming months, will be the details of the carnage.
Fr. Tom gave a powerful message, which led to applause and to [over $30,000 that] weekend*. This gentle man from Philadelphia, my age, now 14 years in Haiti, got into our hearts.
His message? I keep struggling with how to summarize it other than it was very powerful, from the heart.
Basically, I guess, he “gave we Americans hell” for our self-absorption, and he did it in a way that stuck to the wall without offending too many. He acknowledged tough economic times; he didn’t ask us to contribute a thing; all he wanted us to do was to consider what it was we all take for granted, even in these times of recession, and the daily reality of the people that he served, who have nothing. He burrowed into our souls. He gave his homily with good humor and with understated passion.
So…without intending last weekend, I had something of a front row seat to the soon-to-unfold tragedy in Port-au-Prince. Fr. Tom came to Minneapolis to share Haiti with me.
Now I have to decide how best to respond. Lots of us are in the same position, I would guess.

Fr. Tom with Janice Andersen, Mary Rose Goetz and unidentified lady after Mass January 10, 2010


[* – in all, I heard, a total of over $70,000 was contributed through Basilica to Fr. Hagan’s work between January 10 and January 17, 2010.]

#130 – Dick Bernard: "the gods must be crazy"

December 13, 2003, I arrived back from Haiti, all imbued with idealism, but pretty certain that Haiti’s democratically elected government would be deposed, though not sure how or by whom. I had met a lot of people who were standing by President Aristide, even though it was clear that his government was being starved out of existence, unable to really accomplish any of his goals for lack of resources. He and his government had been marked for extinction.
January 11, 2004, the St. Paul Pioneer Press printed a column of mine, which Common Dreams still archives, and which speaks for itself here.
As time went on, it became more and more clear to me that the United States, in alliance with Canada and France, was out to get rid of Haiti’s elected leader and his entire Lavalas party. This ultimately happened late at night February 29, 2004.
A week before the coup was accomplished in Haiti, distinguished Knight-Ridder senior military correspondent Joseph L. Galloway wrote a column appropriately headlined “If U.S. returns to Haiti, get the job done“. Essentially he endorsed the 1915 U.S. “solution” for Haiti, in which the U.S. Marines began their occupation and control of the country for 19 years “Good men and true, and they took and pacified the entire country with a loss of only three Marines killed and 18 wounded” was the essence of his story. He appeared to support the Bush administrations decision to restore democracy by (effectively) destroying the existing democracy (which he referred to as a dictatorship – interesting how words can ‘sing’.)
Haitians of course have a different spin on the reality of those 19 years from 1915-34, and all the years before and after, including the coup d’etat of February 29, 2004, and its fore- and after-effects. But who cares about that? Old news…. Most recently, Aristide’s Lavalas has been denied standing as a political party in upcoming elections for supposedly technical reasons.
The 2004 coup did not bring peace and prosperity to Haiti. Less than a month after President Aristide was safely out of the country, Haiti disappeared as news in the U.S.
In May, 2006, Mr. Galloway and I had a brief e-mail correspondence about the current situation in Haiti. He had just retired from Knight-Ridder, and said, after defending his earlier comments, that “I’ve been going to America’s wars for 41 years…from Vietnam 1965 to Iraq January, 2006. I am not going to study war anymore. Instead, I shall study peace.”
About Haiti, he said “what I said and meant [in the February 22, 2004, column] was that if we went in again we should be prepared to stay and help rebuild a nation and educate a new generation of Haitians to a different kind of politics and governance than they have endured for centuries now…nobody seems willing to invest what is needed to make Haiti something other than a nation of poor people ruled by a very tiny oligarchy.
Truth be told, U.S. troops scarcely touched Haitian soil during and after the 2004 coup. Nation-destruction was accomplished by U.S. Aid to anti-government de-stabilization folks, while the legitimate Haitian government was economically starved to death.
After the coup, the United Nations, through “Peace-keeping” forces, became and remains the U.S. surrogate in Haiti. It is far too early to tell what changes in direction will come from the Obama administration after eight years of a Bush foreign policy. I have heard that there is now an immense embassy in Haiti, an enduring symbol of American pre-eminence in that still desperately poor country.
I bring this up, now, since most recently Mr. Galloway has argued against U.S. continuing engagement in Afghanistan (here). He is now extolled as a hero of sorts on the Left.
I would like to believe that his motives are pristine and sincere, that he ‘beat his sword into a plowshare” and “won’t study war no more”, but like the Kalahari Bushman who found an empty Coke bottle in the desert, and couldn’t conceive of what in the world it could mean, I’m not sure where (or if) what he says and what he means intersect. I feel like the Bushman and that Coke bottle on the desert floor: “the gods must be crazy”*.
What I see, now, as the “gods” are the “chattering class” – talking heads of all ideological stripes – who are attempting to establish their own version of reality. Left, Right, makes no difference whatsoever.
For now, Mr. Galloway is my sample worthy of study. And he’s not coming across as very real. He is highly respected, deservedly so. I’m hoping that he truly had a conversion of heart in 2006. (I tried to meet him in person in D.C. in May, 2006, but it was a close call…didn’t happen. I’ll hope to get this writing to him where he now resides.)
Meanwhile, I stand by my comments in my blog post on December 1, 2009. The ice is thickening here….
* – Some video clips from the 1980 film “The gods must be crazy” are available on YouTube, for anyone interested.

#126 – Dick Bernard: Haiti, a look back, and forward

Six years ago today – it was a Saturday in early afternoon – I first breathed Haitian tropical air, outside the airport at Port-au-Prince. For the next week, six of us were immersed in background sessions on Haitian policy and politics, present and past. By the time we left, on December 13, 2003, it was becoming quite obvious that the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide would soon fall. That happened February 29, 2004, in the middle of the night.
A couple of weeks after I arrived home I wrote my reflections on my experience in Port-au-Prince (here). I really wouldn’t change anything I said then, but my education about Haiti really didn’t begin until after those reflections had been written.
Rather than allowing the trip to be just an instant event, I decided to learn what I could about the geo-political relationship between Haiti and the United States. At first, it was simply curiosity; then it became interesting, then troubling.
My “college course” about Haiti and the United States began completely innocently, in January of 2004.
I had looked at the U.S. Department of State website, under Haiti, and noticed a brief news release announcing U.S. aid to Haiti – as I recall, it was for $50,000,000. I wrote a brief letter to the Haiti desk at the State Department just inquiring who in Haiti was getting that money. A couple of weeks later I got a surprise phone call at home…from the guy at the Haiti desk at State. He was polite, but I got no answer to my simple question.
Over the next two years I pursued that question about the $50,000,000. To this day I have received no dispositive answer. What became obvious, however, is that the funds were not intended to help Haiti, rather were designated to destabilize and ultimately remove the democratically elected government of the country. Even the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had its fingers in the drama of getting rid of Aristide and any vestiges of his Lavalas party. Some of the money, probably a lot, was part of the U.S. Department of Defense…no humanitarian focus in those days. (State referred me to USAID and DoD). The issue, quite certainly, was not democracy at all; it was power and control.
I don’t spend as much day-to-day time on Haiti these days as I did those first couple of years, though I continue to be very actively engaged in many ways. Haiti and Haitians are never far from my mind and heart. We travelled with Fonkoze in central Haiti in March, 2006, but since then most contact has been through people we have met or heard from. Some recent developments are actually quite positive and actually hopeful, it appears, including this recent story from Fonkoze; but on the other hand the U.S., France and their allies have dug a hole so deep for the Haitians, over Haiti’s entire (over 400 year) history, that it is hard to imagine any meaningful long-term progress, even when intentions are good. To be Haitian, in Haiti, is a continuing struggle. I’d rather have hope, than be hopeless.
Among the world’s 192 nations, Haiti remains among the most poverty stricken…a legacy of being almost literally a slave state, even though it has been a theoretically independent Republic since 1804.
In the process of my learning, I’ve become acquainted with a wide array of people and organizations which do great advocacy work such as the wonderful micro-finance organization Fonkoze; the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network; Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti; Sasha Kramer’s SOIL; Margaret Trost’s WhatIf? Foundation; Sopudep School; Partners in Health; Friends of the Orphans; Comprehensive Development Program; St. Joseph’s Home for Boys; Haiti Outreach; and on an on and on. For those who care about Haiti, there are people who care to become better acquainted with.
A couple of good books I’d recommend to get a sense of what was Haiti, and what actually happened in the 2004 coup, are Randall Robinson’s “An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President”, and “Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment” by Peter Hallward.
Paul Farmers “Pathologies of Power”, and Margaret Trost’s “On That Day Everybody Ate” are also of interest.
Mesi to everyone who has contributed to my understanding of Haiti over the years. R.I.P. to Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste, Fr. Michael Graves and all of the many victims, physical and otherwise, of U.S. and allied United Nations misconduct over the many years of oppression.