Report from Haiti: Where’s the Money? by Bill Quigley

Oct. 9, 2011

Report from Haiti: Where’s the Money?

By Bill Quigley

Special Commentary

Squalid conditions shown here in Haiti's Camp St. Louis Gonzague are just a small example of the suffering that continues despite millions of dollars in relief money that's been donated. PHOTO: TransAfrica.org

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Broken and collapsed buildings remain in every neighborhood. Men pull oxcarts by hand through the street. Women carry five gallon plastic jugs of water on their heads, dipped from manhole covers in the street. Hundreds of thousands remain in grey sheet and tarp covered shelters in big public parks, in between houses and in any small pocket of land.

Most of the people are unemployed or selling mangoes or food on the side of every main street. This was Port au Prince during my visit with a human rights delegation of School of Americas Watch – more than a year and a half after the earthquake that killed hundreds of thousands and made two million homeless.

What I did not see were bulldozers scooping up the mountains of concrete remaining from last January’s earthquake. No cranes lifting metal beams up to create new buildings. No public works projects. No housing developments. No public food or public water distribution centers.

Everywhere I went, the people of Haiti asked, “Where is the money the world promised Haitians?”

The world has moved on. Witness the rows of padlocked public port o lets stand on the sidewalk outside Camp St. Anne. The displacement camp covers a public park hard by the still hollow skeleton of the still devastated St. Anne church. The place is crowded with babies, small children, women, men, and the elderly. It smells of charcoal smoke, dust and humans. Sixty hundred fifty families live there without electricity, running water or security.

I talked with several young women inside the camp of shelters, most about eight feet by eight feet made from old gray tarps, branches, leftover wood, and pieces of rusty tin. When it rains, they stand up inside their leaky shelters and wait for it to stop. In a path in front of one home, crisscrossed with clotheslines full of tiny children’s clothes, a group of women from the grassroots women’s group KOFAVIV told us Oxfam used to help administer the camp but quit in May. When Oxfam left, the company that had been emptying the port o lets stopped getting paid and abandoned the toilets. Some people padlocked them and now charge a couple of cents to use the toilets, money most residents don’t have. There is no work to earn the money for pay for toilets. The Red Cross has just visited the camp that morning telling them they would be evicted October 17. Where will they go, we ask? We have no idea they told us. Jesus will provide, they told us.

Where has the money raised for Haiti gone? What about the Red Cross? What about the US government? What about the money raised in France, Canada and across the world? What about the pledges to the UN? Where is the money? The people of Haiti continue to be plagued by the earthquake of more than 20 months ago. They are our sisters and brothers. They deserve answers. They deserve help.

Bill Quigley is a law professor and human rights lawyer at Loyola University New Orleans and with the Center for Constitutional Rights. He volunteers with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and the Bureaux des Advocats in Port au Prince. You can reach him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

NAACP, Civil Rights Leaders Mourn Loss of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth by Denise Rolark Barnes

Oct. 9, 2011

NAACP, Civil Rights Leaders Mourn Loss of Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth

By Denise Rolark Barnes

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth/Courtesy Photo

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Washington Informer

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Civil rights icon the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth has died, leaving few remaining living leaders of the U.S. civil rights movement. Shuttlesworth was co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He passed away on Oct. 5, at Princeton Baptist Medical Center in Birmingham. He was 89.

Condolences have been issued by leaders who admired the life-long commitment Shuttlesworth gave to civil and human rights.

"I will never forget having the opportunity several years ago to push Reverend Shuttlesworth in his wheelchair across the Edmund Pettus Bridge – a symbol of the sacrifices that he and so many others made in the name of equality," President Barack Obama said in a statement. "America owes Rev. Shuttlesworth a debt of gratitude, and our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, Sephira, and their family, friends and loved ones."

A lifelong member of the NAACP, Chairman Rosalyn M. Brock reflected on Shuttlesworth's "sustained belief in nonviolence," She said in a statement that Shuttlesworth maintained those beliefs even after attempts on his life and physical attacks by white supremacists and police.

"His legacy is reflected in the organizations he helped shape, and in the protests that continue to inspire generations of young civil rights leaders," Brock said.

NAACP Chairman Emeritus Julian Bond recalled Shuttlesworth as a warrior."He was among the most fearless of the nonviolent soldiers in the freedom army, a leader who never got his just due."

"Today, we lost a true pillar of the civil rights community," stated NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous. "During the civil rights era, Rev. Shuttlesworth fearlessly confronted all manners of segregation. His leadership during that time was critical in helping knock down the barriers to equality."

In the 1950s, Shuttlesworth, pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham and founder of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, challenged the practice of segregated busing in Birmingham. A year later, he, along with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and others, founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He served as that organization's secretary from 1958-1970.

Shuttlesworth also participated in lunch-counter sit-ins and helped organize the Alabama Freedom Rides, where African-American activists rode buses into segregated states in order to challenge segregation laws.

In 2001, President Bill Clinton awarded Shuttlesworth a Presidential Citizens Medal for his leadership in the "non-violent civil rights movement. He is honored in the International Civil Rights Walk of Fame at the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site. Finally, the Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport is named in his honor.

Shuttlesworth is survived by his wife, Sephira Shuttlesworth, and his four children.

Rick Perry Rebuked for Association With Racial Slur

Rick Perry Rebuked for Association With Racial Slur

By Hazel Trice Edney

Gov. Rick Perry

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Texas Gov. Rick Perry is being rebuked by civil rights leaders and a fellow Republican presidential candidate as he defends himself against allegations that he invited people to a hunting camp that even recently was nicknamed the racial epithet, “Niggerhead.”

The Washington Post broke the story about a West Texas hunting camp that Perry once leased with his father in the early 1980s. Perry, who has often referred to himself as a Confederate since his entry into the Republican presidential race, now finds himself trying to shake the image.

“The Washington Post story revealing that Texas Governor Rick Perry hunted and hosted lawmakers at a hunting camp called Niggerhead is alarming and displays a new height in racial insensitivity in national politics,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton in a statement. “Mr. Perry should immediately fully explain how he could have gone to a ranch and hunted [in a camp] that is named after such an obvious racist term or he should withdraw from the race. He is either blindly insensitive or hopelessly unaware of where he spends his time. Either way it makes one wonder if he is ready for prime time and certainly whether he is ready for the White House.”

The report said the offensive term was painted in block letters across a large rock at the gate of property. Perry has said he agrees that the term is “offensive” and said his father actually painted over the word shortly after leasing the land. But, the Post story cites at least seven sources who indicate the epithet remained visible in recent years – even as recent as this summer through a thin coat of paint. The Post has stood by its story.

Meanwhile, Black GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain made rounds on Sunday morning talk shows criticizing Perry and accusing him of tolerating the sign.

Cain said on Fox, “There isn’t a more vile, negative word than the n-word … And for him to leave it there as long as he did before he painted over it, it’s just plain insensitive to a lot of Black people in this country.”

The Post quoted Perry’s communications director Ray Sullivan as agreeing with Cain’s description of the rock, but denying that the rock went uncovered. “Mr. Cain is wrong about the Perry family’s quick action to eliminate the word on the rock, but is right the word written by others long ago is insensitive and offensive,” Sullivan said. “That is why the Perrys took quick action to cover and obscure it.”

A Tale of Eviction by Nicole C. Lee

Oct. 9, 2011

A Tale of Eviction
By Nicole C. Lee

Special Commentary

haiti-campst.louisgonzague

Families still living in thousands of tents since the earthquake in Port-au-Prince now suffer the tyranny of abusive landlords. PHOTO: TransAfrica.org

haiticamp2

Camp Riviere Grise PHOTO: TransAfrica.org

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Despite the lack of attention in the media, the situation in Haiti remains dire. Despite money donated by international organizations and regular people, real relief has not reached the people who need it the most. The blue tarps that blanketed the city, reminiscent of the early reporting by Anderson Cooper, are still there – an obvious sign that things have not returned to normal.

Twenty months after the earthquake, most inhabitants of Port-au-Prince are living in an unbearable hell. Communities of people have formed, the refugees of destroyed neighborhoods, to offer each other support under the desperate circumstances that define daily life. Their possessions remain meager and unprotected from either weather or thieves. Without enough safe open land available, many Haitians have moved their communities to under-utilized open spaces. Almost two years later, although they still have no where else to go, impatient landlords have taken to violent means to kick the poor off their land. During these evictions, the families lose what’s left of their belongings and are forced to find another place to squat, not knowing when they might be evicted again.

Two months ago, Danny Glover and I traveled to Port-au-Prince, as we have many times before, to meet with community groups and see firsthand the progress in post-earthquake Haiti. We traveled with experts on economics and health, to investigate the pressing needs on the ground. For some time we have been supporting a Haitian organization that helps poor families deal with access to basic necessities and helping communities have a voice in the decisions that affect them and we wanted to see the work ourselves.

While traveling to meet with some VIPs, we got a call about an eviction taking place in Barbancourt 17. We made a quick turn and went to investigate. There we found an enraged rich landowner screaming at families, women and children loudly in Creole demanding that they leave “his property”. He had already beaten a small, but grown man and personally destroyed several tents. Bulldozers and construction equipment stood by and ready. And oddly, so did the UN peacekeepers.

A lot has been said about the UN peacekeeping mission in Haiti.Haiti’s President has stated that the mission was absolutely necessary to ensure peace despite calls by many Haitians for the force to go. Members of the international community have suggested that the peacekeepers are there to keep order and help rebuild. Civil society organizations have demanded accountability for the alleged rape of an 18-year-old Haitian boy in Port Salut and the common occurrence of “fraternization” with under age Haitian girls by UN forces. It was telling that in all the chaos we personally witnessed, the UN did nothing to comfort the vulnerable. Their presence seemed only to validate the violence and the chaos that ensued.

I asked the UN soldiers who called them to this location what was their purpose. I noticed how the people watched the UN soldiers. Even the children, so clearly traumatized by the prospect of being uprooted, knew that the peacekeepers were not sent to Barbancourt 17 to protect them. They were there to ensure the landlord was protected.

Our presence did not deter the landlord. “If you like them so much, you take them back to Washington with you,” he callously and repeatedly remarked. What did deter him was a Haitian human rights lawyer who came with legal documentation stating the landlord could not evict the families without the proper paperwork. While that day was a victory for those people, we knew that it would only be a matter of time before the landlord got his ducks in a row.

A few days ago he did. The inhabitants of Barbancourt 17 were evicted from the only home they have had in the past two years. They were allegedly put on buses by the International Organization of Migration, perhaps to give the appearance they were going to a relocation site. But they were soon dropped off in front of a police station, without anywhere to go.

The international community continues to fail Haiti. Regardless of our humanitarian rhetoric, we continually and willfully make decisions that cause more misery in Haiti. We can be repulsed by the individual landlord, but it was an international force that supported him. This year, the UN peacekeeping mission costs almost one billion dollars. I have no idea where those children and their parents are sleeping tonight, but I do know that a billion dollars would go a long way in providing those families and many others with housing and basic necessities.

Nicole C. Lee is the president of TransAfrica.

Obama Pushes College Graduation in Annual Back-to-School Speech by Alyssa McLendon

Obama Pushes College Graduation in Annual Back-to-School Speech

By Alyssa McLendon

presidentbanneker

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Howard University News Service

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - President Barack Obama delivered his third annual back-to-school speech to high school students, but college students might also want to take notes from his message.

"Just getting into college isn't enough," Obama said earlier today at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington, D.C. "You need to graduate."

Obama said that the United States is ranked 16th in the world with the number of young people with college degrees. He urged students to continue their education after they graduate high school.

"The fact of the matter is that 60 percent of jobs in the next decade will require more than a high school diploma," he told the students. "That's the world you're walking into."

Education Secretary Arne Duncan joined the president on stage, and Washington Mayor Vincent Gray sat in the audience. Banneker's principal, Anita Berger, enjoyed Obama's speech and agrees that getting into college isn't enough. Her high school has a 100 percent college acceptance rate.

"It's not only about being accepted to college, but being able to finish college," Berger said. "And we need to make sure that happens."

Most college dropouts leave school because of financial burdens, according to a 2009 report by the Public Agenda. Having to work and make money while in school is the top reason young adults leave college, the non-profit research organization found. The second largest reason given is that they couldn't afford tuition and fees.

Obama mentioned his efforts at making college affordable only one time during his speech. Instead of talking about a student's financial obligations, Obama discussed the student's academic responsibilities.

His speech focused on encouraging students to work hard, ask questions, take risks and persevere. Obama also told students that they should strive to be the best and that they should not to be embarrassed if they aren't good at something right away.

The president admitted that he wasn't always the best student and that he wasn't too enamored by his ethics class.

Kendra Hazel, a senior at Banneker, can relate. "I kind of feel the same way about my math class," Hazel said.

Hazel is taking the SAT in November and plans to graduate high school next spring. She hopes to attend Temple University, Pennsylvania State University or St. John's University and go on to medical school to become a pediatrician.

The 17-year-old already feels the pressure of working while in school. She works part time at the National Capital Coalition to Prevent Underage Drinking after school and on the weekends. She enjoys her job and says it is more for the experience than the money. However, she admits it's hard to stay focused sometimes. "But you gotta do what you gotta do," Hazel said.

Obama highlighted other students who, like Hazel, are trying to make a difference in the world. He gave examples of students who are raising money for charity and even researching how to kill cancer cells.

"Nothing inspires me more than knowing young people are already making their marks," Obama said. "You don't have to wait to make a difference."

Obama closed his back-to-school speech pushing students to reach their potential and increase their skill sets while in school to help the country and its struggling economy.

"With all of the challenges that our country faces today, we don't just need you for the future," Obama said. "We actually need you now."