{"id":45003,"date":"2011-09-29T07:37:53","date_gmt":"2011-09-29T11:37:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/?p=45003"},"modified":"2011-09-29T07:43:33","modified_gmt":"2011-09-29T11:43:33","slug":"haiti-needs-us-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/homepage\/features\/commentary\/haiti-needs-us-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Haiti needs us now"},"content":{"rendered":"![\"\"](\"http:\/\/dominicanewsonline.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/07\/commentary2.jpg\" "\\"commentary\\"")
\u201cWe may have come on different ships, but we are all in the same boat\u201d. That is a most picturesque and succulent saying for which the Rev. Dr. Jesse Jackson has become well known. In it he asserts the common destiny and responsibility of all the American people. Winston Calliste, better known as The Black Stalin, in his celebrated calypso classic The Caribbean Man, reminds the people of the region that our destiny as a single people is not unrelated to the fact that we, descendants of slaves and indentured labourers, may have come on the \u201csame ship\u201d and are on the \u201csame trip\u201d!<\/p>\n
Even a cursory reading of our modern Caribbean history beginning with the Columbus event indicates that ships, boats and boat-people are a common feature of our culture and personality.<\/p>\n
In the wake of the recent turmoil and agony of the Republic of Haiti, however, there has been an unprecedented number of people who have taken to the seas in small, un-seaworthy craft, some making it to Cuba, Jamaica, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and Dominica. If the estimates are correct, it could mean that there is a level of human carnage finding watery graves around Haiti, which, could constitute a major tragedy in our regional history.<\/p>\n
The US Administration\u2019s position is based upon a comparatively recent United Nations reclassification of refugees which has created a category of \u201ceconomic refugees\u201d. Interestingly enough, Haitians continue to be the ones who automatically qualify most consistently, for this status. The thousands who fled Cuba through Mariel did not. On the contrary, they were given red-carpet treatment in Florida. Neither did the thirty thousand Nicaraguans who were received in the US in the space of one month, nor of the tens of thousands from Eastern Europe who continue to arrive.<\/p>\n
An earlier administration had argued that it could not take in refugees from Haiti while its government remained friendly with the US. Surely the present conditions represent a change in that status quo! The present Haitian administration has been unable to function for at least the last three months! Does it also have to be communist for charges of ungovernability to be believed?<\/p>\n
To be sure, grinding poverty and widespread hunger have become endemic in Haiti and many would want to flee.<\/p>\n
In a moment of national crisis the prophet Isaiah (chapter 51) admonished his people to \u201clook to the rock from which they were hewn, the quarry from which they were digged\u201d. For him, it is in the recognition of our pedigree that real physical and spiritual creative energy is derived.<\/p>\n
Stalin\u2019s allusion to the slave-ships crossing the dreaded Middle Passage reminds us that we are all boat-people ourselves and that it could very well be that if some of our fore bearers had not landed here, they could well have been taken to Haiti. Let us recall, further, that on January 1st 1804, Haiti became the first Black Republic in the western hemisphere, freeing themselves from the clutches of some other boat-people under the command of Napoleon\u2019s brother-in-law, General Leclerc. One of their earliest legislative enactments declared that once a slave set foot in Haiti he or she was automatically free! And a flood of boat-people converged upon Haiti from all round the Caribbean especially from Jamaica, the Bahamas, and the Southern USA. So how do we Caribbean people go about saying and doing \u201cNO\u201d to Haitians today?<\/p>\n
And how do we turn our backs upon those, the courage of whose heroes inspired ours to wrest freedom and to struggle for justice, peace and self-determination? How about using our boats (Coast Guard Vessels) and ourselves plucking out of the Caribbean waters those who are ethnically, historically, culturally and spiritually our kith and kin, opening our arms and hearts to them, and offering them, with the help of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the temporary relief that they are seeking?<\/p>\n
And finally, when will our Caribbean and CARICOM governments be less self-depreciating and more proactive in relation to this challenge? Our co-operation in the Organization of American States and the United Nations are commendable. But Haiti is our challenge and we need to be in the vanguard of confronting it, informing ourselves and our people, consulting each other, coming up with creative solutions and acting together with help from outside to deal with it.<\/p>\n
You see, there is another sense in which we are in the same boat: some thirty-three years ago, when Rev. Allan Kirton assumed office as General Secretary of the CCC, he signaled then that there was a process afoot which he called then the Haitianisation of the region. Probably there is no reason today to change that judgement since the economic and social situation throughout the Caribbean has worsened.<\/p>\n
The \u201csmell\u201d of Haiti intensifies. If we think that by plugging our nostrils, covering our eyes and numbing all our other senses the problem will go away, we are sadly mistaken. Our silence and inactivity, far from distancing us from the challenge is bringing us closer to it or it to us:
\n\u201cThere is a destiny that makes us brothers;
\nNone goes on his way alone.
\nFor what we send into the lives of others
\nComes back into our own.\u201d
\n\u201cFor in as much as you did it .. did it not \u2026 to one
\nof the least of these brothers (and sisters)
\nyou did it \u2026 did it not \u2026 to me.\u201d Spoke Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe may have come on different ships, but we are all in the same boat\u201d. That is a most picturesque and succulent saying for which the Rev. Dr. Jesse Jackson has become well known. In it he asserts the common…","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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