MISCELLANEOUS POSTS OF INTEREST
Why Diasporic PanAfroCentrists and Our Allies Should Make Wyclef Jean the De Facto International Leader in Haiti…
Wyclef Jean is already under attack. We must stand by and with our Brother. He is seen as a threat to the inside aid establishment because he reportedly raised 2 million dollars in as many days. Keep donating to Yele Haiti!
The criticism of Yele Haiti and Wyclef Jean, himself, comes primarily from The Smoking Gun, a celebrity gossip website which trafficks mostly in DUI mugshots and divorce settlements of the rich and famous. Jean held a press conference in New York where he responded head-on to the allegations as soon as he returned from pulling bodies from the rubble in Haiti. A YouTube video of Jean’s remarks has been circulating on the internet for a few days now. Why this sudden controversy about Yele Haiti when other longstanding aid organizations like the Red Cross have faced outright scandals and are still being billed as safe places to donate? Who is afraid of what might happen if Wyclef Jean’s organization continues to raise a million dollars a day? What might Yele Haiti accomplish in the coming days, weeks, months and years if the money keeps coming in?
Organizations like Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the Red Cross have much more experience in dealing with immediate emergency situations, but their goals right now don’t reach much past keeping people alive. Haiti needs this kind of help. Of course Haitians need food, water, shelter and medical supplies right now. Right. Now. And perhaps it is legitimate to point out that that’s not what Yele Haiti does. It’s not a charity that feeds X number of people in X number of days. But relief for Haiti is not about rebuilding what got destroyed in the earthquake. It’s not about getting back to normal. It’s not about simply putting back what was there before last week, like one might do for an earthquake in Los Angeles or San Francisco.
Any project or program or aid that goes to Haiti must be coordinated with real targets for the future, like reversing topsoil erosion or securing clean water infrastructure. Only a Native Son like Wyclef deeply understands this, not the benevolent Americans or Europeans who want to give a drink of water to the thirsty, congratulate themselves and return to The X Factor. I’m grateful for those benevolent ones, as too many really don’t care to be interrupted at all when they’re watching TV. All of those people need to grab their cell phones and send 5 bucks once, once a week, or once a month. Will MSF and the Red Cross be there next month or next year or only next earthquake?
Yele Haiti is an organzation already on the ground in Haiti that works on a structural level with long-term goals. Another organization has arrived on the ground in Haiti that works on a structural level with long-term goals. It’s called the US military. The US is launching a real, full-scale military invasion and Wyclef Jean is in the best position to lead the non-violent PanAfrican resistance to yet another military occupation of Haiti. We need to elevate this Brother, not just as a celebrity, an example, a poster child, but to actively organize to give him what a leader needs. How do we empower, feed, water and grow a leader? What is more useful to him at this moment than our admiration?
1. Cash Money: If you’ve got it, give it. Five dollars a week or $5 a month. Give what you can. We are very busy people directing limited resources to crucial projects all over the world, from Gaza to Gitmo, from the Congo forests to the Polar ice caps. If you don’t have it to give, recruit 2 people who do.
2. Strong Bodies: Boots on the ground, roll up the sleeves and do that project that you know how to do.
3. Bright Minds: There is nothing new under the sun. Africa’s children have already invented everything we could ever possibly need. We had refrigeration before electricity. Black people crossed continents before cars. Aboriginals had long distance conversations before telephones. Have you heard of the theory of The Advantage of Backwardness? One is free to implement the latest technology on the cheap if one is not saddled with trying to convert an aging, ever less useful infrastructure. San Franciscans spent billions of dollars and decades of labor retrofitting buildings to prepare for future earthquakes. Haitians can anchor and assembly geodesic domes in a matter of months for hundreds of thousands of dollars and carry on through the next hurricane. The Elite Power Brokers are learning how to think outside the box, forgetting that our exclusion means we’ve been living outside the box. Flip the script and we’re ahead of the curve. We need to remember the simplest things we’ve let ourselves forget.
4. Let the Ink Spill: Black People have a right to tell Black stories in Black words from Black vantage points. We have the right to define, to describe and to delinate our own priorities, our own visions and our own goals. People of Color have the right to control our own images and the obligation to call out the mainstream media when they are wrong.
5. Anatomy of a Lynching: When the Enemy Imperialists come at a Revolutionary Brother, we know how they do. They bind his hands behind his back. They tie his feet. They cut off his penis and they stuff it in his mouth. They wind a rope around his neck. They hang him from a tree. When the Disaster Profiteers come at Wyclef Jean, it may be symbolic, financial, structural, legal and/or psychological, but it will be a lynching. Pay attention. He’ll need our protection.
We need to be proactive about what the Imperial Forces are going to try to do to Wyclef Jean as an international face and voice for Haiti. We scattered people need to choose him, raise him up and keep him up. A leader needs a constant flow of money, sweat and ingenuity. We need to be vigilant in our journalism, protecting the truth and protecting the mission and protecting the man. Haiti will not recover through development industry scams, aggressive colonial occupation, coporate looter conditional aid packages, GMOs, suicide gene seeds and privatization schemes.
Yele Haiti needs a million dollars a day.
This is part of an email that was sent to me by a Living Legacy member Ty Grey-EL
http://yele.org/earthquake-relief/
On 29 January 2010 08:28, KING KING <king@mixitme.tv> wrote:
http://www.slepton.com/slepton/viewcontent.pl?id=2369
Haiti: Guns or Food?
As aid starts to trickle in, and the extent of the horror becomes known, decisions are already being made that will affect the Haiti that emerges from this. Ansel Herz reports live from Port-Au-Prince on the role that the deployed US troops are playing, while author Peter Hallward weighs in on the role that the US has played in Haiti’s recent history and shares his concerns that post-earthquake Haiti will further cement the domination of the Haitian people by foreigners.
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I don’t usually reply to posts but I will in this case. WoW