Solidarity, Not Charity: Profs, Students Back Haiti’s Workers

NEW YORK CITY, February 19 — More than 180 CUNY professors, staff members and students packed the union hall tonight for an “Evening of Solidarity with the People of Haiti.” The event kicked off with a delicious dinner of Haitian food, and continued with traditional Haitian folk music performed by a classical guitarist. Members of the union’s International Committee distributed a sheet of brief commentaries on Haiti from radical historians and novelists like Jacques Stephen Alexis.

The evening had two goals: to raise thousands of dollars for relief work in Haiti (which it did) and to provide a critical explanation of why the January 12th earthquake resulted in so many deaths, injuries and homelessness. Two CUNY professors, both from Haiti, explained how the earthquake was not a natural but rather a social disaster, or as one speaker termed it, a “poverty disaster.” It was largely the poor who perished when their poorly- constructed homes, schools and workplaces collapsed. The small but wealthy Haitian elite, residing in their mansions on the hills above Port-au-Prince, went relatively unscathed.

One of the professors noted how the U.S. media has emphasized Haitian poverty but neglected to mention the country’s inequality — how 5% of the population controls 46% of the wealth. The media also neglect to mention how the backbreaking labor of Haitian slaves once enriched French plantation owners and bankers, and how in recent years U.S. companies like Sears, G.E. and Wal-Mart profited handsomely from Haitian sweatshop labor. The speaker explained how U.S. trade policy had impoverished Haitian farmers, who then swelled the shantytowns of Port-au-Prince, which were devastated by the earthquake.

The second speaker, a long-time Haitian activist, was in Haiti when the earthquake struck. He met a friend whose mother died in the quake, but his friend put off mourning until he finished organizing shelter and food for the survivors. It is this spirit of collectivity and courage on the part of ordinary Haitians that draws this professor back to the island.

Both professors warned that the U.S. and capitalist institutions like the International
Monetary Fund and the World Bank will use the disaster to restructure the Haitian economy to benefit U.S. corporations. The 20,000 heavily-armed U.S. troops in Haiti are there to mainly ensure that Haiti remains a neo-colony of the U.S., a haven for U.S. sweatshops, and will allow the U.S. to build military bases in this strategically-located Caribbean nation.

A union leader quoted William Blake’s line that “Pity would be no more, if we did not make somebody poor” to emphasize how important it is for people to understand the social causes of disasters like Katrina in New Orleans and now Haiti. She emphasized that our goal is not charity but solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Haiti. Later, another professor made clear that it was racist capitalism, not the earthquake, that had caused the deaths of 250,000 Haitians and left a million homeless. He argued that true solidarity would be to build an international movement aimed at overthrowing the monstrous system that has impoverished most Haitians and billions of other workers around the world. He cited the union’s past support for striking teachers in Mexico and Colombia as positive examples of international labor solidarity and urged the union to demand “U.S. Marines Out of Haiti!” today.

This evening of solidarity ended with people suggesting having forums on many campuses, so that thousands of students and faculty can learn the truth about Haiti.