Ottawa Initiative 2009

[bcholmes]

So, like, I mentioned that this past weekend I went to Ottawa. This event was called The Ottawa Initiative 2009, and there are two prior events that are important to understand to fully get the point of the conference.

The more recent of the two events is that, five years ago, on February 28th/29th, 2004, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was forced out of Haiti.

But more importantly, in the last week of January, 2003, Canada hosted a gathering of policy-makers. This gathering is the original Ottawa Initiative. L'actualité reported:

The last weekend of January, a secret meeting was held in Ottawa and on the edges of Meech Lake in Gatineau Park. Canadian Secretary of State for Latin America, Africa and La Francophonie, Denis Paradis, invited representatives of the Organization of American States (OAS), the European Economic Commission (EEC) and the Agence intergouvernementale de la Francophonie to a "brainstorming session" on the Haitian tragedy. France had delegated Minister for Cooperation Pierre-Andre Wiltzer, the American Secretary of State had sent two high-ranking officials, and El Salvador, its foreign minister, Maria Da Silva.

The group convened by Denis Paradis (and which is currently code-named the "Ottawa Initiative on Haiti") is not prepared to wait for the 2005 elections to see regime change. In fact, the international community would resolve this issue before January 1st, 2004 and the bicentennial of the oldest republic in the Caribbean.

No members of the Haitian government were invited to this summit, it's worth noting. And shortly after this article appeared, the Canadian government denied that the summit discussed overthrowing Aristide. Linda McQuaig later noted in her book, Holding the Bully's Coat, that despite the denial, the Canadian government kept close tabs on public response to the L'actualité article. And, shock of shocks, regime change did come to Haiti very close to the originally-predicted schedule.

So now, five years later, a group of Haiti activists in Ottawa decided to host a summit to talk about Canada's complicity in the 2004 coup. The Ottawa activists are part of the same network of Haiti solidarity groups that I belong to here in Toronto, so it was easy for me to hear about the event.

One woman who seems to play the den mother role in THAC encouraged a few of us to get together to head to Ottawa. And so, after work on Friday, we drove for hours and hours. There were four of us going up and five for the return trip. We arrived in Ottawa around midnight, and crashed overnight. It occurred to me, as we were driving the streets of the capital, that I don't think I've been there since polycon, over ten years ago.

I was up around 6:30 the next morning to get ready for the day. It was brutally cold that morning, and the coffee available to me was nasty. But we went to the university and found a place to park.

The event was scheduled to be an all-day thing. It was scheduled to start at 9:00 am, but the organizers fussed with technology for a good 45 minutes.

One of my big disappointments with the Toronto Haiti group is that it's primarily a group of non-Haitians talking about Haiti as one battle in a larger neocolonial movement.

So one of the first things that made me very excited was that about 2/3rds of the attendees of this event were Haitian. And the majority of the speakers were Haitian. I think that this really mattered. Ottawa and Montreal apparently have very engaged Haitian populations -- perhaps that's not so surprising, given the distribution of the Haitian diaspora in Canada. But it makes a difference.

The event was conducted in English, French and kreyòl, and there wasn't a whole lot of translation that was happening. You'd think that that would be a barrier for a lot of people, but it didn't really seem to sway attendees in any large numbers. At lunch, I spoke to some of the people that I knew from Guelph and Toronto -- even the unilingual folk agreed that the conference was amazing, despite the parts that they were missing.

The day started off with an excerpt from Aristide and the Endless Revolution -- mostly focussing on the 2004 coup, and Aristide's request for $21.7 billion in reparations relating to France's demand that Haiti reimburse France for the "property" that they lost in the Haitian Revolution.

And then we were in to the program proper. Patrick Elie, a former member of Aristide's cabinet, Skyped in from Pòtoprens and talked about the events of the coup. He responded to the first question: it's 5 years later; how have things changed? Patrick replied that it was really like things have been turned back 50 years in terms of the political gains that Haiti had made.

Michel Chossudovsky, an academic, talked about his research about the role of US Ambassador James Foley in the coup, and how this seemed to mirror Foley's role in Kosovo.

In the second section, speakers talked about the psycho-social impact of the coup. Jean Candio, a refugee to Canada and another former member of Aristide's cabinet, spoke about both times he had to flee the country: in 1991 and 2004. In both cases, family members were killed, and his house burned. Jean Candio currently lives in Canada, and his Lavalas connections have made immigration difficult for him.

Peter Hallward had a few brief words (via Skype) but I can't recall anything specific.

Edwidge Danticat Skyped in and told one of the most emotionally potent stories about her uncle who helped to rear her. This story informs her most recent book, Brother, I'm Dying The uncle lived in Haiti until MINUSTAH used the roof of his house in Bel Air as a base for an attack. The uncles neighbours turned against him, thinking that he must be complicit with MINUSTAH, so the uncle fled to the United States. Unfortunately, the uncle died while in the custody of the US Immigration Service.

Edwidge mentioned that she's been to Bel Air since then. And she mentioned that growing up in a neighbourhood of Haiti, you know your neighbours. You know whole families. And that history makes it difficult to see the neighbours who turned on her uncle merely as evil. Looking at people as "good" people or "evil" people was a luxury, she said.

The third section spoke about Socio-economic and political impacts. Marguerite Laurent, a Haitian-American woman started the event reading extracts of her poem, "Open Letter to the Little Girl in the Yellow Sunday Dress". I particularly liked the ending:

The Ibos have kept your soul, your spirit, your divinity, dignity and integrity
safe in a Kanari since before their "New World" began.
Use your key. Keep your innocence little Haitian girl.
Be smarter than me. Don't let them see. Smile.
Be who you are without wanting to set them to the fires they lay you in, eternally.
Don't hit your head against Satan's iron will little Haitian girl.
Let me.

She would subsequently go on to say a really useful (for me) statement: "the idea that Haiti has nothing is a colonialist narrative." In many ways, the discussion about US and Canadian aid to Haiti is a distraction from the discussion of what has been taken from Haiti. And everything from France's demand for payment to today's mining exploration by Canadian companies like Eurasian Minerals represent the taking of resources from Haiti.

The Canadian government's response is to say, "we're spending a lot of aid money on Haiti." Which does kinda translate to, "we're hiring a lot of Canadians to buy Canadian food and goods, and getting them to take those things to Haiti to give to give to the people and organizations that we like."

Marguerite Laurent is quite a force of nature. On many occasions, she seemed to act as the conduit to give voice to Haitian anger in a really effective way. In 2007, during the delegation to Haiti, it happens that I roomed with her sister Chantalle. I remember how, everywhere we went, people would introduce Chantalle as Marguerite's sister. "I have a name," I recall Chantalle muttering under her breath once.

My kreyòl, sadly, wasn't up to following Raymond Dubuisson's discussion about the current political situation and the current brain drain phenomenon. But later, someone challenged him on the question of corruption in the Haitian government. Corruption is an interesting topic. In Bad Samaritans, for example, they talk about how corruption is the standard explanation for why Freidman-esque economics aren't working as advertised. Michel Chossudovsky asserted that the most corrupt government in the world was the United States and the second most is Canada. I find myself pondering how much I agree with those statements. To be clear, I don't think they're far from the truth. But more corrupt than Russia? I don't know.

Finally, we broke for lunch, only about 20 minutes late. There were also room complications, and we had to do an emergency room change. Haitian food for lunch. Not the best I've had, but a good meal nonetheless.

After lunch, we had a moderated conversation between three speakers: Carlo Dade of FOCAL, Marguerite Laurent of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network and Michael Keefer (whose Skype connection was pretty flaky).

This was one of the most awkward panels of the conference. The question posed was whether Canada was a "friend" or "foe" of Haiti. Carlo Dade started off talking about how Canada doesn't have friends or foes. It has interests, and it has competitors. And he asserted that Canada doesn't really have any interests in Haiti -- that Canada's involvement in Haiti is purely humanitarian.

Now, it's probably worth noting that FOCAL is not an organization that most people in the room particularly respect. If you were to go to the FOCAL web site, you'd find that:

[FOCAL] is an independent, non-partisan think tank dedicated to strengthening Canadian relations with Latin America and the Caribbean through policy dialogue and analysis. By providing key stakeholders with solutions-oriented research on social, political and economic issues, we strive to create new partnerships and policy options throughout the Western Hemisphere. FOCAL promotes good governance, economic prosperity and social justice, basing our work on principles of intellectual integrity, racial diversity and gender equality.

(There's a Haitian organization called FOKAL, but it's not related).

Carlo Dade is the Executive Director of FOCAL, and I'm given to understand that he's quite the fan of Milton Freidman. He's a proponent of privatization, and made recommendations to the Martin government about hoopy froods that should be entrusted with Haitian business initiatives following the 2004 coup. Its goals are pretty unapologetically neoliberal.

So, to some extent, it's kinda surprising that Carlo Dade came to this event. I mean, he wasn't talking to many people who agreed with him. In fact, the opposition to his comments was near-total. During the question-and-answer period, several people posed some blunt, challenging questions (sometimes, really insults in the form of questions) to Carlo Dade.

And I found myself a little uncomfortable. And I don't know why. I mean, FOCAL represents exactly what's wrong with Canadian policy toward Haiti. FOCAL helped to ensure that federal funding went to Haitian opposition parties, for example. But I kept sitting there, thinking, "You dump on the guy this much, and he's not going to want to ever talk to us again." The part of me that values dialogue was deeply uncomfortable.

But I'm also confused by my own discomfort. I mean, the guy is complicit in the problem and he needs to hear that in direct language. So that discomfort, I think, is something I need to get over.

At one point, in response to an angry stream of questions, Dade said, "The truth of the situation is that Haiti needs to start pulling its own weight. If it wants to get out of the hole it's in, it needs to generate revenue, and private enterprise is the only way to do that." Aaaaaaaagh! I stab you!

The debate between Laurent and Dade was a bit stilted; Dade was good about talking directly to the points, but he kept the conversation on small items. Hey, we've organized this food program in the Artibonite. Thousands of kids get food. How can you say that's a bad thing?

Laurent, unfortunately, is American, and didn't have a lot of the Canadian facts at her disposal, but I think she came close to making the central counter-argument: why is it that companies like Gildan Activewear and Eurasian Minerals are able to suck so much wealth out of the country, and yet those kids don't have food? There's a system in place that's keeping the wealth in the hands of foreign powers, and little food programs aren't fixing that -- they're further entrenching that.

Marguerite Laurent, as I said, is a powerful speaker, and the audience really responded to her words. But there was a bit of her using oratorical power in place of specific, cogent counter-points. She was out of her area of expertise, talking Canadian specifics; on the other hand she had very detailed things to say about what the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network wanted from the Obama administration.

The technical glitches were keeping Michael Keefer mostly out of the conversation -- he'd have had a fair bit more to say directly about Canada, I'm sure. He was forced to mostly confine himself to one speech to set out his thesis.

At one point, he commented about Lovinsky, using him as an example. Keefer remarked that Lovinsky had organized protests to oppose Harper's visit to Haiti in July, 2007 (which I hadn't known). Several of the leaders of that protest were arrested before the protest took place, and remained in jail for weeks. Then, Keefer commented, during a delegation, Lovinsky disappeared and has never been seen again. "Canadian activists," Keefer said, "who were on the delegation went to the Canadian embassy to get their assistance, and were told, in no uncertain terms, that the Canadian embassy wasn't interested in helping." Me, I sat there thinking, this is weird. Someone is describing to me events that I took part in. Huh.

Juan Galindez had a presentation in which he talked about the type of relationship that Cuba had with Haiti -- and how its relationship with other countries was very different than that of Canada and the US. Cuba has 600 doctors working in Haiti, plus 150 other professionals. Cuba also took hundreds of Haitians over to Cuba to provide them with medical training after MINUSTAH closed Haiti's medical university (they needed the building to house soldiers, you see).

His presentation included this quote, which I enjoyed:

At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love.

— Ernesto "Che" Guevara

By this point, of course, we were at the scheduled end of the day, but there was one more agenda item. Fortunately, in my experience, Haitians have a high tolerance for chaos when things don't go according to plan.

(Also, as an aside, there was a fun example that came up during the session. Jean St. Vil, the guy who was running most of the event, misplaced his headset, which he used to set up things Skype. I guess when we changed rooms, it got misplaced. So he put out an appeal: does anyone in the room have a headset he could borrow. And someone did. "See," he said, "this is how Haitian konbit works.")

Jean did the major presentation for the last agenda item, in which he talked about racism and how that plays a role in Canada's treatment of Haiti. So much of Canada's policy is, in his eyes, "You people are stupid, and I'm going to come in and figure out what you need and then you'll have a reasonably good life." Jean's thesis was: really the best thing that could happen is for Canada to just leave. Cancel the debt, and Haiti will figure out something on its own. Better yet, repay the $21 billion dollar reparations. But stop with the so-called aid, and stop interfering. Even as an activist, I find myself wanting to second-guess that position, but I suspect that he's right.

A big part of the final session was talking about the launch of the Akasan project, and ways in which they were trying to use technology as a way to facilitate Haitian and international solidarity.

Some really interesting stuff came up during the question-and-answer period. One of the Toronto members asked about how one manages to get the message out to the media or government officials. Jean's response was an interesting one. He said, "been there; done that." He followed that up with, saying that after five years of talking to the media and government officials, the problem wasn't one of lack of information. They know the information; they just don't care. He also pointed out that when the coup was being discussed in question period, it wasn't the Conservatives who insisted that the event not be referred to as a coup -- it was the Bloc. (One of my colleagues is fairly scathing of the NDP -- he feels that there's no way that the NDP was ignorant of Canada's role during the coup, and they chose not to call the Martin government on that because they'd rather enjoy their power in parliament than support Haitian sovereignty).

One labour activist asked about what would make a good labour campaign: is it "Boycott Gilden" or "MINUSTAH out of Haiti"? Jean's response: it's more important to go to Haiti and talk to Haitians. Stuart Neatby (himself a labour organizer) had a good response, suggesting that campaigns like that might not be the most effective thing that labour groups could do. He thought that the one thing that labour hasn't really tried is twinning. Developing long-term relationships with Haitian counterparts and letting that relationship inform action.

All-in-all, it was an amazing event. It went two hours over schedule, and (as activists do) there was a lot of informal gabbing at the end of the day. With dinner in the mix, we weren't getting on the road before 9 pm.

As we were finally getting ready to get back in to the car for the long drive to Toronto, one of my colleagues asked me my opinion of the event. I said, "I loved it. I thought it was one of the most important events that's taken place." I thought a bit more, and then started talking about something that I haven't really been too vocal about in the past.

"Y'know, I hang out with a lot of people involved in various ism-politics: racism, feminism, queer issues. And one of the things that has often disappointed me about Haiti activist crowds is how poorly versed they seem to be in those topics. I've often wanted to hear more conversation about those items in Haiti activist communities, much like I'd like see more conversations around globalization and neo-liberalism in feminist circles. I really feel like this was the first time that topics of race and racism were discussed in terms that seemed familiar to me. That's got me really excited."

"The thing is," my colleague said, "a lot of people who come to Haiti work, come from other anti-Imperialist activism. That's usually a pretty Marxist-Leninist background. And in that school of thought, issues like racism and homophobia are merely byproducts of Imperialist culture. So they're not the primary concern. Other-Important-Speaker, for example, probably wouldn't agree with what Jean was saying.

And I can't say that I didn't know that. But the precise wording did cause a bit of an a-ha moment. I had a lot of thoughts bubble up to the surface. Leslie Feinberg and hir talk about class. My film teacher talking about her experiences as a young commie activist. And that jarring bit that stood out in No Logo, when Naomi Klein talks about how the shift in business practices was effected without anyone really noticing because activists and academics were distracted by identity politics and political correctness. I usually associate that kind of dismissive reference with right-wing attitudes, and I couldn't reconcile that with Klein's other material.

As I was pondering all of this, we were crowding in to the car. One of the people in the back seat was happily being Mr. Chatterbox, and he kept the other back seat person engaged in conversation so I could just ponder for a while on my own. Me, I think the Toronto group has some pretty big weaknesses in some of these areas. I've seen the whole, "Color Me Blind" thing play out (painfully) at meetings when Haitian folks show up. And sometimes people say things that I wince at.

It's not that the group is full of white people: just over half of the really active members are non-white. But there's a whole bunch of "making room" things that happen in places like WisCon, and I don't ever perceive those things happening in the context of Toronto Haiti events.

I don't know what I'm making of all that. But it did make me aware of a gulf between me and the THAC group. I'm not gonna drop out -- the man's not gonna overthrow himself, after all -- but it give me pause.