Ideas I like

[bcholmes]

I had an event the other night, where I was inchoately talking about Haiti and my recent delegation. During the Q and A, several people raised interesting points of conversation. I think my favourite point came from one woman who talked about the need to change the discourse on Haiti. The ongoing narrative of the poor, downtrodden Haitians who are the victims of economic, political and natural disasters is part of the problem. That point has probably been the foremost thing in my head for the last few days.

The first speaker we had at our event was a man named Ronald -- a Haitian guy who I'd never met before, but who I'd love to chat with more. He took the floor and made a point of saying that the Haitian Revolution is the dominant story of Haitian lives, and it doesn't matter how much difficulty or hardship the Haitian people endure, they will not live under the rule of any masters. Any.

Two days later, I went down to Crisis Camp Toronto, and listened to a U of T disaster specialist tell us that there were two disaster response groups in Haiti: the US and the UN, with various NGOs operating in concert with one of those two groups. When I took the podium after him, I made a point of suggesting that a third disaster response group had been overlooked.