Audience / Energy / Activism

[bcholmes]

The Canada Haiti Action Network is commemorating the five-year anniversary of the overthrow of Aristide with, among other things, a conference tomorrow in Ottawa.

I've been skeptical of this movement, in part because it seems to use Haiti as an example to prove a point about the evils of U.S. interference in the world. I've made the same criticism of Gerald Caplan's comments about Africa. My reaction is: Yes, and...? They criticise the Canadian government for financially supporting the police in Haiti, but how are we supposed to help improve institutions of governance in places like Haiti and Afghanistan otherwise? The Haiti-solidarity movement is connected to the anti-globalization movement (one of the speakers tomorrow is Michel Chossudovsky, the organizer-contact for the conference is Stuart Neatby, and Yves Engler is perhaps the most vocal critic of Canada's Haiti policy.)

— "Haiti conference in Ottawa tomorrow", Kate Heartfield

As it is clearly indicated in our press release, this was a Haitian-led and managed initiative. Whereas we invited non-Haitian speakers and supporters to join the conference, we made sure that contrary to the subversive and racist gathering held in 2003 at Meech Lake, that Haitians spoke for themselves at the 2009 event. I don't know if you came to cover the event. But, I would be interested to read what the Citizen's journalist think after having seen the event unfold. With former Deputy Jean Candio, who came from Windsor to witness about the murder of his family members by the foreign-sponsored coup regime. We also had Marguerite Laurent, a fierce African-American of Haitian roots who provided ample detail about the machinations of the Bush administration against our people. Raymond Dubuisson spoke about the brain drain phenomenon. Patrick Elie joined live from Port-au-Prince. Author of numerous best-sellers, our beloved Edwidge Danticat joined via Skype teleconference, live from Miami. Haitians were not invited to the conference. Haitians organized the conference and invited some non-Haitians to join in.

It may be that as we have become so accustomed to the "Tarzan" or "Bono" model, where some individual of European decent is automatically ascribed the role of leadership when seen in a gathering with participants from varying background, that you assumed that Yves Engler and Stuart Neatby were "organizer-contact for the conference". We addressed that issue during the conference. The narcissism involved here is a pathology that must be cured.

[...]

So, all that to say, if you want to know about Haiti's struggle, ask us Haitians. We speak for ourselves.

— comment by Jean St. Vil

There was a moment in Wednesday night's event... we had Jean Candio, a member of Lavalas who is seeking refuge status in Canada, talking about his experiences with the coup. Jean doesn't speak English, so we had a translator. I think that the dynamic of non-Haitians doing all the speaking about Haiti is a danger that we need to be conscious of, and I was glad that we were able to get Jean to travel to Toronto.

But unfortunately we lost most of our audience during this part of the night. There's something about going through the translation process that seems to change the energy. The information intake slows down. It's suddenly easier for audience members to get a bit bored. It's one of those strange "right" versus "effective" negotiations. Hm.

Comments

[morganxpage.livejournal.com]

I very much enjoyed hearing Jean Candio speak at the event. The man near the front who kept being disruptive (dubbed by me "crazy white dude") really diminished it, though. It's nice to go to an activism event and not have it be just a bunch of self-important white folk being the voice for everyone (and thus silencing everyone).

~Morgan