HOW HAITI SOLIDARITY IS FALSIFIED AND KILLED

Clash! Collective
Clash!
Published in
9 min readMay 24, 2024
A demonstrator throws a stone during #PetroCaribeChallenge protest in Port au Prince, February 2019. Many proclaim solidarity with Haiti while instructing the Haitian people to put down their stones and make peace with hierarchical government and party politics. Who fears the self-organization of the Haitian people?

Solidarity with Haiti should provide a model for designing a new society and bringing it closer. If anti-imperialism is not that, in the name of self-determination, it is a fraudulent activist campaign to bring aspiring rulers to power above ordinary people. This is a grab for power at any cost. The cost is the popular democratic forces and sovereign people of Haiti.

Power is in the Streets. But now why is power in the UN or the State Department?

Many activists will shout “power is in the streets” but, when power actually spills onto the road, look for it instead in the United Nations or U.S. State Department. Power is still in the streets today. That is where the new society must be arranged.

Haiti solidarity is failing because prominent voices in the Jaspora insist that we live in an epoch of retrogression where all Haitians and Caribbean people are defeated. At the same time, these voices insist they are far from defeated as they rack up speaking engagements and book deals in the process. The masses and their aspiring rulers are not the same.

All Haitian and Caribbean lives do not matter. Those who cast their lot with Empire, those who convene protests and forums in the name of Haiti but never speak one word about the popular democratic forces in Haiti, those who proclaim solidarity with Haiti but can only raise their fingers to write petitions to those in Washington to be kinder and gentler imperialists, they have all already died in spirit. We will not help resurrect those who wish to be a jack-in-the-box for empire, get wound up, and pop up when permitted.

Haiti solidarity must clarify not simply the popular self-directed democratic future for one nation in the Caribbean. It must do so for all Caribbean nations and imperial centers as well. Otherwise, those who selectively apply principles to different territories, all over the world, are clearly in cahoots with the empire of capital and wish to advance only their party and power.

Everybody likes to talk about “the people,” but if they don’t make it clear their vision for how everyday people will directly govern, they are employees of new forms of hierarchy and domination. They may even be funded and employed by the old decaying forms of government everyone loves to hate.

How to Make Demands on the US While Being Funded By Their Empire

Anti-imperialism, however, it is defined is supposed to make central objection to global US domination. There seems no doubt about that. Then we need to pay close attention to those activists placing forward flyers and circulars with such huge ethical and political holes that one can drive a tractor through it.

Those educating our people in politics, not simply playing around with consciousness raising and stirring awareness, should have concerns about anyone that places forward the following demands:

  1. Stop using U.S. Tax dollars to fund the brutal Haitian police and affiliated death squads
  2. Stop the flow of weapons from U.S. to death squads in Haiti
  3. No more foreign intervention — end the occupation.
  4. Stop attacking and deporting Haitian refugees
  5. Sovereignty and Self-Determination for Haiti.

Is it Magic? Or Radical Political Literacy?

We will now, for entertainment purposes, say “abracadabra!,” wave our magic wand, saw a lady in half, and suspended upside down, get our freedom movement out of the straight jacket some wish to hang us upside down over the Caribbean Sea.

Can we identify a single moment where these projections have worked and empires have been convinced through letters, petitions, and demonstrations to be better and more responsible imperialists? Why do so many who speak of Haiti solidarity seek solidarity everywhere but Haiti itself? If not to get out of this straight jacket, we must remember all projections have a historical and contemporary context.

  1. Are there any aspiring rulers and representatives of Haiti taking U.S. tax dollars for anything besides brutal Haitian police and affiliated death squads?
  2. Are there any aspiring rulers and representatives of Haiti who want the flow of U.S. weapons to go to some other forces they would more prefer? Perhaps like those who would do security for their own decrepit regimes?
  3. Are there any aspiring rulers and representatives of Haiti saying “end the occupation” but have in fact publicly endorsed the occupation (such as the loyal figureheads of Fanmi Lavalas or Pitit Desalin)? Is occupation the only means of foreign intervention? If the UN occupies is that independent from the US? Why do some say “end the US/UN occupation of Haiti” and then stop and appear to forget these words?
  4. Who is attacking and deporting Haitian refugees? What governments are doing so? Why are they not named?
  5. Is self-determination and sovereignty for Haiti autonomy (self-organization) of Haitian toilers, or recognition by the forces of empire itself? Is the fight for self-determination and sovereignty a matter of elevating one’s preferred party as the preferred partner of U.S. empire? Is the fight for a redux of 1994, when U.S. warships escorted the “socialist” and “liberation theologian” Jean-Bertrand Aristide back to power in Haiti? How can this be a demand made when no foreign intervention is desired? Do imperial foreigners grant independence? Are we supporters of US empire or its fiercest enemies?

The Haitian transitional presidential council (TPC) forged in Jamaica, defined the terms of a future order where any council member must agree to US/UN intervention. Some of these parties continue to harbor fake activists, who support this fraudulent Haitian government funded by the US State Department, but put on a show of saying “U.S. out of Haiti.” Anyone who continues to support the member parties of the TPC while shouting against US empire is a fool or a mercenary.

How the Dastardly Take the Empire’s Money and Rally Us Against Empire

a) These dastardly individuals believe that some police and military, in the name of national security, are not brutal. These avaricious capital accumulators like to pretend there is ‘national capital’ so their armed forces can continue to extract wealth from Haitian toilers and call it “freedom.”

b) They believe that US tax dollars can go to funding a hospital and a university in Haiti, and that these can be maintained in the midst of unimaginable chaos. This somehow is not categorized as foreign intervention. These U.S. tax funds are not rejected or even named.

c) The governments harassing Haitian refugees are the exact governments, imperial and peripheral, that are taking part in the invasion of Haiti. These include the U.S. (including at Guantanamo Bay), Jamaica, and The Bahamas.

d) The Caribbean Regional Security Service, based in Barbados, with a long history of subverting mass democratic development and rebellion in the Caribbean, is directly funded by and trained by the U.S., Canada, and Europe. And that is who is the real basis of the invading army, not Kenya, Benin, or Rwanda — though Africans are taking part. Note fake Haitian solidarity activists place forward no principles for the Caribbean and condemn U.S. SOUTHCOM exercises while keeping their own “hands off” the Caribbean-led RSS.

e) We must make this very clear. There is no grassroots movement in Haiti that knows it is openly funded by the U.S. and also wishes to denounce the U.S. tax money or foreign intervention. This is to present the Haitian masses as politically inept, unethical, and foolish. This is actually how aspiring Haitian rulers think of ordinary people.

Whoever Has Grassroots Ties in Haiti Have Failed to Show It Has A Political Movement Beyond Worship of Aspiring Rulers Above Society

There is no political movement educating its people in liberation politics in Haiti saying we are against US imperialism but we will take its money and military assistance to establish popular sovereignty. This is to insult the intelligence of everyday people in Haiti.

While we understand the limits of street gangs who do not take responsibility for the senseless violence they have meted out on ordinary Haitians, and a social force that cannot explain itself politically cannot be trusted as a democratic force, something else is also true.

‘US Out of Haiti’ Says the Fake Activists Taking Money from the US

Any political party that has collaborated with US empire before, and is still doing it, while talking “US Out of Haiti” condemns itself as a disinformation and misinformation campaign of the empire itself. Of course, there are aspiring Haitian rulers who say even less. Many who supported US intervention in Haiti in 1994 claim to oppose it today. But liberation can only come from clarifying the fraud of progressives, their lack of democratic minds, authoritarian and elitist formulations. They love the Haitian grassroots so much they have made common cause with those who have been living delightfully at the expense of ordinary Haitians for generations.

Now it may be true that communists for capitalism, activists for the left block of capital, people who wish to deliver milk and water to everyday Haitians and call this “socialism,” while they pave some roads, while offering a dose of liberation theology and fashionable vodou/noriste talk, are central to spreading this confusion.

The Silence of Those Caught Red Handed

If so, they have heard the criticism Clash! and others have made. They cannot demonstrate that they are not affiliated with US imperialism exactly because they are. Further, we were patient in dialogue only for them to show a basic lack of integrity and transparency.

Many like to mobilize in the name of the poor and powerless, they think this can be a sufficient banner for the last refuge of the Haitian and Caribbean national bourgeoisie. Further, these aspiring rulers are organically disloyal to even the pretense of national sovereignty. And those who like to talk about “misleaders” have really been put in a corner by their decadence. For one can only propagandize for corpses so much before the stench rubs off on their cheerleaders.

Why We Are Not For National Sovereignty? Why We Are Not The Last Refuge of the Haitian and Caribbean bourgeois?

Clash! does not encourage a struggle for national sovereignty exactly because we know it can only be a coalition with those who some like to call misleaders on Tuesdays while they are collaborators with aspiring rulers in imperial centers and peripheries every other day.

Clash! advocates a Caribbean federation from below of toilers across the entire region with nobody who has ever been a functionary of a Caribbean state or electoral party taking part. For that is the grassroots multitudes. And with our utopian sensibility, we make the following projection. Our social forces will make a genuine federation of the entire Caribbean before anybody who is funded by or works for the empire does it.

Everyday Haitian people are not poor and powerless. In fact Haitian commoners are far more powerful than the aspiring rulers who dance with the carnivores and claim to be vegetarians. It is of tremendous disrespect to Haitians to talk out both sides of one’s neck and suggest grassroots Haitians want a people’s transitional government composed of honest and democratic forces while collaborating with the US empire. They don’t even lie well.

What will the role of Self-Directed Commoners Be in Haiti’s Future?

Nobody makes it plain what will the role of Haitian commoners be in economic planning, judicial affairs, foreign relations, and all education and cultural matters. This is a result that the conception is Haitian toilers will have no part.

But we now have seen how the empire creates and sponsors Caribbean leaders and activists who make demands that appear to denounce US empire, when they privately set terms for which they will accept US tax dollars for military and police training, the building of schools and hospitals, and allow Haitian refugees to be disrespected by the governments they collaborate with but they cannot name, and call this self-determination.

Educating Our People in Politics

Clash! educates our people in politics not merely because we wish the grassroots to be angry or have a sense of outrage at aspiring rulers and fake activists for the empire. This can be valuable in proper measure. But we wish to illustrate that the grassroots can be substantially self-directed in politics (not elite brokerage and imperial patronage) by reading and listening carefully to what is passed off as the ‘demands’ by those organizing Haitian solidarity. These hesitant apologetics can be reframed and discussed in a manner that exposes and confronts not simply Haiti’s enemies that pose as their rulers in waiting. But also a big part of politics is deciding the terms we will associate and place forward perspectives, proposals, and programs of our own. Those who have hid behind the poverty and trauma of ordinary Haitians have failed to model this and have miseducated about their actual relations with the empire of capital.

There will be no steps toward real solidarity and action led by people who work for and are sponsored by the empire. No social and economic conditions of everyday people can convince us otherwise. All power to the Haitian grassroots who can think and act for themselves!

--

--

Clash! Collective
Clash!
Editor for

Clash! is a collective of advocates for Caribbean unity and federation from below.