Call for Solidarity and Funds for the Working People of Haiti!
Joint statement from Miami autonomy and solidarity and the Batay Ouvriye Haiti Solidarity Network
[Français], [Castellano], [Italiano], [Ελληνικά]
Money Orders/checks:
Payable to Miami Workers Center (in memo write MAS)
Miami Workers Center
6127 Northwest 7th Avenue
Miami, FL, USA
33127-1111
01/14/09- A natural disaster has descended upon Haiti whose scope we only are seeing the surface of at this time. The Haitian people will be struggling to rebuild their lives and their home possibly for decades in light of unprecedented collapse, both physical and social. Yet despite the unpredictability of earthquakes, this disaster is unnatural, a monstrosity of our time. The extent of the damage of the earthquake is part of the cost of unrestrained exploitation which at every step put profit above the health, safety, and well being of the Haitian people. While the world watches on ready to help, power is being dealt an opportunity. The Haitian workers and peasants have been fighting for their rights to even the most basic level of existence for decades, while the UN-occupying force, the state, and the ruling elites maintain the social misery without relenting. Now as Port-Au-Prince is in rubble, new opportunities arise for rulers to rebuild Haiti in their own interests, and likewise for the Haitian workers and peasants to assert their right to their own Haiti, one where they will be not be forced to live in dangerous buildings, and work merely to fill the pockets of elites, foreign or domestic.
As we move from watching in horror to taking decisive action, progressives can offer an alternative. There is a strong and beautiful desire to do something, to help others in this time of need. Our actions are strongest when we organize ourselves, and make a concerted effort in unity. Right now we can have the deepest impact by committing ourselves to act in solidarity with the autonomous social movements of Haiti directly. They present the best possible option for the Haitian people, and are in the greatest need. At the same time, we are in the best position to help them out our common interest as people engaged in struggling against a system that works to exploit us all. We are calling for solidarity people-to-people engaged in common struggle. It is not only a question of money for AID but also an autonomous and independent act of international solidarity that illuminates the bankruptcy of the occupying forces, multinational corporations, and Haitian elites that are primarily responsible for the decayed state of Haiti. There will be aid flowing and money given as a form of charity until the next disaster. Our act of solidarity should, in no shape or form, be solely an act of humanitarian aid. It should not be an apolitical act, and we shouldn't give the green light to those that wish to capitalize on the suffering of others. It should be an act of solidarity to the struggling people of Haiti and their organizations while at the same time rejecting the totally inept Haitian elites and their state apparatus for bankrupting Haiti. The earthquake is a natural disaster, but the state of Haiti, the abject poverty of the masses and the vile injustice of the social order, are unnatural.
We have a relationship with one organization, Batay Ouvriye, and are putting our resources and time into helping Batay Ouvriye to help rebuild from the catastrophe and maintain the struggle for a better Haiti and a better world. Batay Ouvriye is a combative grassroots worker and peasant?s organization in Haiti with workers organized all over Haiti, especially in the Industrial sweatshops and Free Trade Zones.
We have set up a means to send money to Batay Ourviye.
Money Orders/checks:
Payable to Miami Workers Center (in memo write MAS)
Miami Workers Center
6127 Northwest 7th Avenue
Miami, FL, USA
33127-1111
email: miamiautonomyandsolidarity@yahoo.co
Hmmm, an unknown U.S. organization raising money to help the victims of the earthquake in Haiti via another questionable organization in Haiti ("Batay Ouvriye" - spelled two different ways by their Miami colleagues...) - sounds lovely! Would sound even better if the long litany said one word about U.S. responsibility for the situation in that suffering country.
But then, perhaps that would jeopardize some of the questionable U.S. financing ($100,000 from the National Endowment for Democracy) received by these people in the past. Here is a statement in which they admit (proudly) receiving such funds, and going on to say that:
I think I'll pass.
Unionist! So nice to see you!
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Unionist, I think it's absolutely disgusting that you choose to repeat the years old smears against Batay Ouvriye, a genuine grasstroots workers organization that has struggled in Haiti since 1996 under perilous conditions, in the wake of the devestation of the earthquake.
If there was ever a time to put aside such sectarian pettieness and support our sisters and brothers struggling against the capitalist class in Haiti it is now.
As for the "Unknown" U.S. organization, Miami Autonomy and Solidarity is a new organization, but I have personally met Miami Autonomy and Solidarity members (some of whom were members of B.O. before migrating to the USA). The Miami Workers Center has been established for 10 years in the Liberty City area of Miami.
Here is a reply to a similar post on another message board from one of the comrades from MAS on a similar concern.
As for the four-year-old accusations themselves, they are not worth responding to again but I would refer people to the following webpage which has many of the documents and letters relating to that shameful smear campaign.
On the payroll? Debate on the accusations to Batay Ouvriyé
I would like to offer you the opportunity to do the decent and honourable thing and withdraw your disgusting attack on Batay Ouvriye in this time of crisis and need. I am assuming your attack was based on ignorance but if you do not withdraw it I will have to call it malicious.
Here is a qoute from Batay Ouvriyé's October 2008 statement on the relation between their organization and the Solidarity Center.
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Help Batay Ourviye, a workers and peasants organization in Haiti, co-ordinate a grassroots relief effort and oppose renewed exploitation by the capitalist class. Donation Online: http://tinyurl.com/BatayOurviye
Excuse me, Mick, but I linked to and quoted "Batay Ouvriye"'s own reply to the "smear" - in which they admit taking the NED money through the AFL-CIO, and indeed express their pride. I guess you're not denying that?
They also seem to attack every other workers' organization in Haiti and proudly state they will not unite with them. And you accuse me of "sectarian pettieness" [sic]!?
Besides anything else, I think the aftermath of a devastating earthquake is a bizarre time to be raising money to "rebuild" an organization rather than just helping the survivors, as stated in your OP:
And by the way, I never attacked Batay Ouvriye. I know nothing whatsoever about them, except the materials you posted and their reply to the "four-year-old accusation". I also understand that they don't like Aristide, and that is their business and the business of the Haitian people. I also understand that their Miami friends attack everyone except the U.S. for the ills of Haiti. They may be a wonderful organization, but I won't be giving their U.S. benefactors a dime.
Good to see you Unionist. Your writing really helps me. Thanks very much, it reaches people.
Unfortunately, reading about this does no good. A few tears today.
I've read through the links and from what I understand Batay Ouvriye accepted the money but that in accepting the money they feel that they are in no way reflecting any hidden agenda that is often associated with accepting the money, perhaps that is true but sadly by accepting the money they are tainted with the reputation of the organization they received it from. IMO this was an error on their part, assuming that what Baday Ouvriye state is true then those who seek to undermine them have done so very cheaply.
I think there are lots of organizations, real and phony, who are asking for money in the wake of this human disaster. There are better places to put one's charitable donations at this time than organizations which are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and the AFL-CIO, and who spend more time attacking Aristide than the U.S. If it walks like a duck...
It is a strange and distorted reply to read from someone with the username "unionist" attack a workers' organization in Haiti on the flimsy and sectarian argument that they briefly accepted funds from an AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, which they have since cut all ties to for a number of years.
The smear that is implied that because of this brief funding from the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center that Batay Ouvriye is somehow in bed with US imperialism. That implication is unequivocally false and a smear. It is an attack as it seeks to undermine an urgent appeal for solidarity funds from a workers organization in Haiti. If you simply did not want to donate that would not require you posting your objections publicly, by doing so you are undermining international worker solidarity in a time of great need for the people of Haiti. That is what is so disgusting and sectarian about your attack, especially at this time.
Unionist then adds a new smear by saying Batay Ouvriye's "Miami friends attack everyone except the U.S. for the ills of Haiti". Again implying that MAS is somehow supportive of the UN / US / Canada occupation. The comrades in Miami, a city with a very large Haitian community with lots of expatriate Haitian activists, are Miami Autonomy and Solidarity (MAS) and the Miami Workers' Center. MAS wrote the call on urgent notice from Batay Ouvriye in light of an urgent situation. It is an urgent appeal for solidarity and funds, not a history of imperialism in Haiti. If you are interested in MAS's position on imperialism you can read it at length in their Points of Unity.
In contrast, "unionist" raises no mention of Artiside's and the Lavalas party's accepting of millions of dollars in funds from the US and IMF and the establishment of the infamous "Free Trade Area" sweatshops, which is one area that Batay Ouvriye organizes workers in against name brand US companies such as Disney.
I think that this is a crucial time to raise funds for grassroots workers organizations in Haiti, as the Haitian working class needs organizations like Batay Ouvriye to combat the disaster-capitalist "rebuilding" and aid" that will be done in the wake of this tragedy.
The capitalists and imperialists will be rebuilding the sweatshops, it is up to us as workers to help rebuild the workers' organizations in Haiti that resist that super-exploitation. There has been literally hundreds of millions of dollars donated to apolitical aid organizations like the Red Cross and the imperialist states such as Canada, the US, and France have already sent millions of dollars of "aid" and many troops.
In my opinion, unionists' and progressives' money is better donated to aiding the workers organizations on the ground that have received none of this "aid" funding but desperately need our solidarity as sisters and brothers in the class struggle. They do not need our charity, they need our class solidarity.
I can personally assure you that there are no "US benefactors" in this appeal, the organizations that are coordinating the appeal are long time independent, left, community, and labour activists with direct ties back to Haiti and have a long-standing working relationship with Batay Ouvriye. This appeal is not connected with the AFL-CIO Solidarity Centre. All money donated will be sent directly to Batay Ouvriye!
Babblers and other readers, please do not let the debate around brief funding by Solidarity Centre cause any hesitation to donating to this important grassroots workers' and peasants' organization. They have no funding from the US unions or government and are respected activists with a long history of organizing some of the poorest and most exploited workers on the planet against major multinational companies. They need and deserve your support!
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Help Batay Ourviye, a workers and peasants organization in Haiti, co-ordinate a grassroots relief effort and oppose renewed exploitation by the capitalist class. Donation Online: http://tinyurl.com/BatayOurviye
Perhaps unionists' reading is "selective" and he did not see the quote from the 2008 statement above;
As for Batay Ouvriye's activities, they are concentrated on organizing the Haitian working and peasants class against their class enemies, both foreign and domestic. It is sad that a 'unionist' cannot see in these class terms and seeks to undermine this appeal for international class solidarity.
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Help Batay Ourviye, a workers and peasants organization in Haiti, co-ordinate a grassroots relief effort and oppose renewed exploitation by the capitalist class. Donation Online: http://tinyurl.com/BatayOurviye
Hello,
I would concur with Mick's sentiments.
That said, I think most of us share our critical feelings about BO's brief relationship with the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center. Although the progressive leadership of BO should have known better, I think the heat of the struggles around GRUPO M and CODLEVI struggles http://www.ituc-csi.org/spotlight-interview-with-yannick.html?lang=en and around and Disney http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43a/277.html
created a space for things to go somewhat awry. Struggles which were supported by a wide array of mainstream progressive and trade union organizations such as the United Students against Sweatshops (USAS), Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), International Labor Rights Foundation (ILRF), National Labor Committee (NLC), Unite Here !, United Steelworkers (USW), Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN) Clean Clothes Campaign / Hollande, Vêtements Propres / Belgique, Sweatfree, U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP), People and Planet, Labour behind the Label, Solidarity Center, International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation (ITGLWF), Global Exchange, Labor and Religion Organization, Blue Green Alliance, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Writers Guild of America, TransAfrica Forum, SustainUS,
That said, I don't think this is the first time in the history of the progressive workers movements that errors were made and temporary allies made that might not have normally been made. If this is the only major error BO has made in its history, I think we can be critical and trust that the problem has been rectified (as BO has publicly stated) and move forward.
Does it come as ant surprise that BO is criticized here? Probably not. Nearly all of the unions supporting this site have a relationship with the Confederation_des_Travailleurs (CTH). The CTH being the main trade union "competitor" of BO. While one should be critical of AFL-CIO funding, one need not forget that unions who help fund this site also receive funding from Canadian International Development Agency to aid their international activities. CIDA.is an arm of the Canadian government. I would say that
These unions and their international allies are more creative in how they package the overall funding, but government funding is involved.
The bottom line in all of this is really a political dispute between the BO and those forces supporting the former Lavallas government. BO claimed the right to working class independence (in both action and word), while the CTH and others did not. http://www.batayouvriye.org/English/Positions1/clarificationithp.html It is
Clear that while being critical of Lavallas BO did not align itself with reactionaries who sought to impose a right-wing and reactionary agenda. Sometimes working class interests will conflict with those who claim to be friends of the working class (note recent political and economic battles in South Africa for instance).
I would think we need to ask a question: Should BO have remained silent as Airsides screwed the Haitian working class? Was the anti-imperialist rhetoric matching up to the implementation of a pro-IMF.WB austerity programs? At what point does a workers movement, with a progressive agenda, stop being critical of even a rhetorically anti-imperialist government when it's screwing the working class?
As Haitian people fall deeper and deeper into crisis and despair, I would suggest that
trade unionists, progressives and those of us on the left simply call a "time out" in the battle over political positions and posturing. If comrades have no desire to support the aid work of one organization over another, well, there surely are enough organizations fitting many political and trade union perspectives to support. For the moment international help and solidarity (as long as it is without strings) should be the priority, not the trashing of one trade union over another. There will be plenty of time to re-engage in the battle of ideas and organization with the workers' and poor peoples' movements.
Thanks for your passionate and thoughtful responses, Mick and Syndicalist. Unionist is one of our resident sceptics. We pay him good money to stay that way.
BO's statement, linked above, says it was not an error, and they will accept money from anyone in the future. Have you seen them state that accepting $100,000 in NED money was an error? If so, please cite a source.
At what point? How about at the point where the government is overthrown and the leader exiled at the behest and with the aid of U.S. imperialism? The anti-Aristide statements cited above were made three years after his overthrow. And they are not just anti-Arisitide - they are explicitly anti-anyone-who-supports-Aristide. Yet, and I reiterate and underline: Not one single word explicitly criticizing the U.S. How would you explain this?
Exactly. That's why I was curious to see this rather bizarre plea for financial support - not for the victims of the earthquake - but rather, for one rather controversial organization out of many - an organization which hasn't updated its website (moreover) for about 18 months - and not even directly through that organization, but rather through the intermediacy of some U.S. organization.
To my point of view, that's about on a level with opening a thread asking for people to send money to the SEIU in the U.S. (or the UAW or the USW...). Can't stop you from donating, but it's at best open to skepticism and indeed criticism. I'm not sure whether it's consistent with babble policy either.
This quote from "The People's Voice.org" about Disaster Capitalism [maybe deserves it's own thread?] -
"Bush, Clinton and Obama Unite to Raise Money for Haiti"
After the December 2004 tsunami struck East Asia, the Bush administration spearheaded a similar campaign, raised over $1 billion, and used it for corporate development, not people needs. Obama backs a similar scheme (Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund) in a show of contemptible indifference to human misery and chose two co-conspirators for his plan.
The Bush administration engineered the February 2004 coup ousting Aristide, established police state rule, and immiserated nine million Haitians. For his part, Clinton kept an iron grip throughout his presidency instead of supporting Aristide's political, economic and social reforms.
He's now UN Special Envoy to Haiti heading an Obama administration neoliberal scheme featuring tourism, textile sweatshops, sweeping privatizations and deregulation for greater cheap labor exploitation at the expense of providing essential needs. He orchestrated a plan to turn northern Haiti into a tourist playground and got Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines to invest $55 million for a pier in Labadee where the company operates a private resort and has contributed the largest amount of tourist revenue to the country since 1986.
More still is planned, including a new international airport in the north, an expanded free trade zone, a new one in Port-au-Prince, now delayed, various infrastructure projects, and an alliance with George Soros' Open Society Institute for a $50 million partnership with Haitian shipper Gregory Mevs to build a free-trade zone for clothing sweatshops.
In addition, the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) has $258 million in commitments, including the Better Work Haiti and HOPE II projects, taking advantage of duty-free Haitian apparel exports to America to encourage greater sweatshop proliferation.
According to TransAfrica's founder Randall Robinson:
"That isn't the kind of investment that Haiti needs. It needs capital investment. It needs investment so that it can be self-sufficient. It needs investment so that it can feed itself." It also needs debt relief, not another $100 million the IMF just announced adding more to a $1.2 billion burden.
Unionist, I tend to agree with you on this.
Was actively involved in Central American trade union support work in the 1980's. Once met with the head of AIFLD in El Salvador...what a fucking creep. I would be highly suspicious of any trade union organization that takes money from such a well-known agent of U.S. imperialism (and I don't say that lightly or rhetorically) as NED.
This is such an interesting discussion and debate. I'm learning a lot - thanks so much for having it here.
Thought babble readers would be interested in reading about some of Batay Ouvriye's recent activity.
The major campaign that they were involved in within the last year was the minimum wage campaign. A comrade in BO Haiti Solidarity Network wrote:
"Most recently, last summer, Batay Ouvriye was the leading organizing and mobilizing force in the struggle for a fair adjustment to the minimum wage in Haiti, which led to massive protests and walk-outs by thousands of factory workers. Although workers demands were eventually defeated because of the sell-out policies of the Préval administration and massive repression by the MINUSTAH occupation troops, this mobilization was the largest autonomous worker protest in the country's history, an important step in the continuing struggle, and a significant marker in building consciousness for the need for not just reforms, but for an entirely different state."
Here's some info on it:
Factory Occupations in Haiti & a march August 19th
August 09, 2009
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/14018
Update on Haitian Minimum Wage Struggles
August 10, 2009
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/14020
[Haiti] After the minimum wage increase, heightened exploitation!
Port-au-Prince, October 16th, 2009
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/14748
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Help Batay Ourviye, a workers and peasants organization in Haiti, co-ordinate a grassroots relief effort and oppose renewed exploitation by the capitalist class. Donation Online: http://tinyurl.com/BatayOurviye
Also, I have to note the contradiction with criticizing Batay Ouvriye former acceptance of money from the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center (which yes is funded in part by NED) and using that as an argument against this fund-raising appeal from grassroots left-wing labour and community activists in Miami (and is spreading internationally through largely anarchist-socialist activists and organizations).
What you're saying is that because B.O. once accepted some money from the AFL-CIO people should not donate an appeal for solidarity funds that's independent of the AFL-CIO that doesn't have any strings attached to its use. That's a contradictory position and doesn't address at all the very real material needs of funding fighting workers and peasants organizations in Haiti.
If organizations expected to turn down funding from problematic sources such as the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center, which is the current position of Batay Ouviye, they will need to have alternative sources for funding the work. If we want organizations like B.O. to reject working with US labour unions funded by the US state we have be prepared to try and provide worker-to-worker solidarity funds like the one in the above appeal.
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Help Batay Ourviye, a workers and peasants organization in Haiti, co-ordinate a grassroots relief effort and resist renewed exploitation by the capitalist class. Donation Online: http://tinyurl.com/BatayOurviye
Well, I never heard of BO before you opened this thread - but I've read enough of their own statements to draw some conclusions:
1. Anyone involved with labour - especially on this hemisphere - would have to have been dead or deaf not to know of the AFL-CIO's involvement in undermining democratic and anti-imperialist regimes for decades, with or without its hip-link with the NED. Here is a piece by Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! in 2005 recalling their dirty deeds in the overthrow of Allende in 1973 and the attempted coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002.
2. BO never renounced their grant - they proudly stated that they would do it again. These are their words. That means it wasn't an error - it was a policy.
3. In line with their financing by the U.S. government and its agencies, BO continues to condemn Aristide and his supporters, and refuses to unite with them. That's their choice. But that makes them the ally of U.S. intervention and domination in Haiti.
To suggest that we should send them money so that they won't need to rely on grants from the U.S. state is one of the more convoluted arguments I have ever heard. It is the Haitian workers and people who will have to judge them, not you or I. But when it comes to solicitation of funds in Canada, I will definitely advise my colleagues in the union and peace movements to steer clear of these dubious characters.
To be honest I have difficulty believing that you actually have read the statements from Batay Ouvriye. If you have then you are either in need of basic reading comprehension lessons or are deliberately distorting what they say. I won't re-post the entire responses from BO here, but I would encourage babblers to go to the following link and read the BO statement for yourself.
ONE LAST NOTE CONCERNING THE SOLIDARITY CENTER (Oct. 2008)
I don't disagree, and niether does BO.
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Help Batay Ourviye, a workers and peasants organization in Haiti, co-ordinate a grassroots relief effort and resist renewed exploitation by the capitalist class. Donation Online: http://tinyurl.com/BatayOurviye
The online donation system is now set up
http://tinyurl.com/BatayOurviye
Would one of babblers good moderators please add this information to my OP? Thank you.
Since I last posted, I see Mick has been doing a good job in trying to layout the critical facts on the anti-BO campaign.
In my next posting i would like to come back to some of the trade union background to BO and their struggles since the 1990s.
For the moment, I would be interested in folks opinions on the current Solidarity Center's mission and trade union reach out in Haiti. And I'll pose this question: should the mainly pro-Lavalas unions take direct assistance from the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center?
Note no mention of Batay. yet supporters of the CTH, for example, who lead the charge against the BO are now posed with a similiar, yet perplexing, problem as BO when it was enagegd in struggle: to accept Solidarity Ceneter money or not.
" The Solidarity Center has been able to contact the following union and NGO representatives: Rétes Réjouis of Unity for Constructive Action by Haitian Unions (UACSH), a Haitian federation of formal and informal workers in both private and public sectors; Loulou Chery and Gina Apollon of the Confederation of Haitian Workers (CTH); Evel Fanfan of the Association of University Students Committed to a Haiti with Rights (AUMOHD); and Patrick Numas of the General Independent Organization of Haitian Workers (OGITH). The Solidarity Center delegation in Haiti continues to seek contact with key members of the Coordination Syndicale Haïtienne (CSH). http://www.solidaritycenter.org/content.asp?contentid=1009
Report on Haiti: January 15, 2009The CTH confirmed the tragic loss of its secretary of finance. "
Read report from January 14
http://www.solidaritycenter.org/content.asp?contentid=1007
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While I am not a member of the Grassroots Haiti Solidarity Committee (NYC), I thought their statement, issued at the time of the initial attackas against Batay, of significant and of relevance. I'm pasting their statment here in full.
On Solidarity----Statement by the Grassroots Haiti Solidarity Committee---February 20, 2006
In September 2005 a graduate student from California, Jeb Sprague, reported that the Haitian labor group Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle") had received funding from the AFL-CIO's American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS, better known as the Solidarity Center). As the Solidarity Center draws funds from a number of sources, including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), itself a US government-funded operation, Sprague's report set off a significant debate among progressives in North America about funding sources, about Batay Ouvriye and about ousted Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his Lavalas Family (FL) party.
The Grassroots Haiti Solidarity Committee is concerned that a number of issues in this debate have been misrepresented.
Members of our committee made statements which argued the issues based on an initial $3,500 grant from the Solidarity Center. Batay Ouvriye received these funds in the summer of 2004 in response to an open appeal for funds to support fired workers in the Ouanaminthe Free Trade Zone. Our members' arguments were based on the information that was available to us at that time. Batay Ouvriye has since acknowledged that it has accepted additional funds from the Solidarity Center originating from the NED and that it is willing to receive still more, as much as $100,000. We recognize that the disclosure of additional funding casts doubt on the validity of some of our arguments, and we regret any assertions that the $3,500 contribution to the strike fund was the only money involved.
There is a range of opinions within our committee and among our collaborators on Batay Ouvriye's acceptance of these funds. Some of us support Batay Ouvriye's justifications based on the urgency of its organizing needs; others are concerned that the funding lends weight to arguments raised by Batay Ouvriye's detractors and has the potential to isolate the organization from other progressive forces internationally.
For the record, Grassroots Haiti has never received any US government funding and will not knowingly accept any such funding.
But after years of experience working with Batay Ouvriye, our members are united in rejecting the simplistic line of argument that the organization has somehow been bought off by the US government. In fact, we feel this episode reflects less on Batay Ouvriye than on inherent weaknesses in the international left and especially in the US progressive movement, where solidarity too often focuses on charismatic leaders with access to state power while overlooking the struggles of actual workers and others on the ground. The international left would be in a better position to criticize if it had been providing a meaningful level of concrete support to Batay Ouvriye and other grassroots organizations over the years.
We also feel that current Solidarity Center practices should not be mechanistically equated to the practices of the AFL-CIO's old American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD). While certainly both agencies have acted as proxies for US government intrusions in international labor struggles (most recently the Solidarity Center's support for anti-Chavez unions in Venezuela), there seems to be a greater level of internal contradictions in the Solidarity Center's current operations than in AIFLD's practices. The Solidarity Center's efforts to protect Colombian unionists under a death sentence from rightwing paramilitaries is a case in point. At the same time, it is also reasonable to assume that any program receiving NED funds is viewed by the State Department as favorable to US interests-rightly or wrongly-and this clearly makes any acceptance of such funds problematic.
We also note with great concern the distortions of Batay Ouvriye's work by Aristide's partisans-distortions which contribute, at the very least, to an ongoing campaign to break an organization that has played and continues to play a vital role in the promotion and defense of working-class interests in Haiti.
To characterize Batay Ouvriye as complicit in Aristide's overthrow is simply a misrepresentation of the facts. As its detractors know, Batay Ouvriye played no role in the movement calling for Aristide's resignation or removal. What Batay Ouvriye did do, over the years, was denounce forcefully the practices and the class orientation of both the Lavalas government and its bourgeois opposition.
Batay Ouvriye itself was a victim of the Aristide government's repressive anti-worker policies. This repression resulted in the death of several Batay Ouvriye organizers, most notably in Cointreau's Guacimal orange plantations. This repression also resulted in the jailing of many organizers and the destruction of their homes and meeting places. While this repression was going on, factory owners and rural landlords enjoyed total impunity for their illegal and violent attacks on workers and peasants. Batay Ouvriye rightly denounced the Lavalas regime and its betrayal of the people's demands.
Unknown to most US progressives, Aristide's government was a leading architect of the current occupation of Haiti-although not one of its beneficiaries. From its signing on to the 1994 US-United Nations occupation and the various accords with the Organization of American States (OAS) granting an ever-increasing foreign oversight of Haitian affairs, to its last-minute appeals for a military intervention on its behalf, Aristide's government built up a record that can hardly be viewed as popular, progressive or anti-imperialist. While we denounce the US role in Aristide's removal as an attack on the sovereignty of the Haitian people and a furthering of the imperialist domination of Haiti, we also denounce the complicity of the Lavalas government in deepening Haiti's dependence and vulnerability.
Who are the real anti-imperialists, the Lavalas government with its sellout anti-worker policies, or the workers and grassroots organizations leading the struggle against these very policies?
Big country chauvinism is not to be confused with solidarity work. Solidarity activists can voice strong criticisms but must also respect the reasoning and decisions of the people who are actually carrying out their own struggles on the ground, often with knowledge and insight that we can only envy. Despite reservations about Batay Ouvriye's decisions on funding, we support its struggle to develop class-based, independent and democratic organizing among the masses based on the people's own demands. That support is especially important at a time when despite occupation and increased repression, grassroots and trade-union organizing is experiencing a resurgence in Haiti.
Some forces want to use the current debate to bring an end to Batay Ouvriye's organizing. We are confident, on the contrary, that the attention this discussion has brought to the issues will instead help build more meaningful international solidarity for Batay Ouvriye's important work.
New York City, February 20, 2006
Well, Mick, from Syndicalist's post above, it seems even BO's supporters have dissociated themselves from BO's enthusiastic acceptance of massive funding from the NED (I trust you'll agree that $100,000 in the Haitian context qualifies as "massive"). I accused BO of nothing other than that plain true fact, when you asked me to withdraw my "disgusting attack". Perhaps you'll now reflect on your demand, in light of the facts.
$100,000 is coffee money. Divide $ by # of people.
I would suggest you look at price of a fleet to take over the port.
Yeah, E.P.Houle, the $100,000 was not an aid donation - it was given to a trade-union type group a few years ago, long before any earthquake. So I'm not sure why you're talking about ports, fleets, and numbers of people.
Dear "mostly harmless"',
Along time ago I learned that to search for human misery is to follow the bucks. I think that's common sense and Karl Marx. I can tell the difference between $100,000 and a million and a thousand of those is a billion,,,,a thousand of those is part of the USA military budget. Thats not a rescue mission.
Thanks for telling me that BO is a funder to? It might have been a funder to an opposition to some Cuban types or hit money, I don't know. Thanks for your open-minded view of the plight.
E.
Ha right. Aristide said in the 90's that Haiti's military elites were skimming ~$200 million a year from Colombian cocaine routed to the mainland through Haiti. The CIA's dope delivery servicemen are connected.
Unionist,
I talk about Ports, and fleets and People because I care and if you haven't learned to do book keeping by now I think your mother would be ashamed.
E
Unionist my ass