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Only a true, organized movement working in accordance with those back home will free us. 

Just days before Election Day 2020, then presidential hopeful Joe Biden ventured to Florida’s Little Haiti for a last-minute campaign stop. Right before the event, he released his “commitment to Haitian Americans” which stated that he, as president, would review and reverse many of Donald Trump’s policies geared towards Haitian-American communities and Haiti itself, including TPS, deportations and a pathway to citizenship.

Watching Biden’s remarks, I remained unmoved. In fact, all my alarms went off. 

The event read as a desperate attempt to secure the Black vote in a state that a judge declared is “never prepared for an election.” Biden even mused during the event, “wouldn’t it be an irony, the irony of all ironies, if on election eve it turned out Haitians delivered the coup de gras in this election.” 

So far, the Biden Administration has all but forgotten about their “commitments.” Within his first 100 days, President Biden has deported more Haitian immigrants than Trump did last year, while Haiti continues to struggle under the callousness of a dictator who employs gang alliances to silence any dissent through rape, kidnappings and assassinations — a dictatorship which the U.S. government continues to uphold. 

This all begs the question – where are the Haitian-American leaders who can truly organize us into an effective and mighty power bloc? 

Kote moun yo?

In an hours-long phone conversation, my mother walked me back to a time where Haitians were organized and ready to defend themselves here in the States and their loved ones abroad. A time where they didn’t fall so easily to pandering, but searched and demanded accountability for any slight committed against the community. For example, in 1986, a racist-driven physical assault of a a Haitian woman customer, Ghiselaine Felissant by Korean shop owners sparked the Red Apple Boycott, an 18-month long boycott and protest of Korean owned stores thanks, in part, to local Haitian leaders in the city. 

I’ll admit, some things my mother told me sounded so fantastic, that I couldn’t believe them. Yet, according to my research, everything checks out. Manmi was right…and then some! 

According to Francois Pierre-Louis’ paper, “Haitian immigrants and the Greater Caribbean of New York City: challenges and opportunities,: 

Haitians did not protest only in support of the Haitian refugees. Political and community leaders linked the plight of the refugees to the brutal regime of Baby Doc in Haiti. These leaders used previous contacts and networks they had in the United States to isolate the regime. Activities such as demonstrations in front of the United Nations, lobbying trips to Washington to prevent the regime from obtaining any aid to pay government employees, radio programs to expose the excesses of the government were common. Although the number of Haitians in New York in this period was small, they nonetheless had an impact in the City. 

In fact, from the 1950s to the 1970s (or even later, depending on who you talk to), New York served as the epicenter of the Haitian community for both domestic and international political organizing. Pierre-Louis writes: 

As the community took shape in Brooklyn, several leaders created neighborhood organizations to address the humanitarian, social and economic conditions of the population. They created organizations that serve dual purposes by being community centers to address humanitarian needs and business concerns to assist in filling immigration forms, filing income taxes for a fee, providing translation services, etcetera. Leaders of these centers tended to focus primarily on homeland politics. Wilson Desir, a former military official who tried to overthrow Duvalier in 1970, for example, founded the Alliance des Immigres Haitiens (Alliance of Haitian immigrants). This organization offered paid translation and immigration services to the population while on weekend, it served as a political hub that mobilized the population against the Duvalier regime. 

And when immigration to Florida took off, Haitians in South Florida and New York created sophisticated networks with those fighting in Haiti to defend the rights of migrants while working to topple the Duvalier regime. 

In his dissertation paper, “Refugees and Resistance: International Activism for Grassroots Democracy and Human Rights in New York, Miami, and Haiti, 1957 to 1994,” Carl Lindskoog details: 

The uprisings of 1985 and 1986 that toppled the Duvalier dictatorship transformed Haitian politics at home and abroad, enabling an expanded and tightened network of activism connecting New York, Miami, and Haiti, which grew from 1987 to 1989. The years 1990 and 1991 were the pinnacle moment for the linked popular movements in New York, Miami, and Haiti, though Haitian activists were soon forced to pour their energy into the overlapping campaigns aimed at reversing the coup against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and defending the new wave of refugees that the coup produced. 

So, all of this begs the question – where are these networks now? Where are the leaders who can lead nuanced campaigns properly linking the U.S.’ domestic and foreign policies to the situations in ICE detention centers and in Haiti simultaneously. 

Reviving What’s Been Lost 

To be clear, our community is not entirely leaderless. There are amazing men and women working right now in the States to shed light on our current situations and push the Biden Administration to do the right thing. For example, the Haitian Bridge Alliance and Guerline Jozef have been incredibly brave in their work in educating the public on the fight for TPS and the harm the Trump-era Title 42 policy has and continues to cause. 

However, these select few leaders cannot do this work on their own. 

Biden has appointed several Haitian-American women like Karen Andre and Karine Jean-Pierre to high-profile positions in his cabinet, and yet, we as a community have yet to create a full-on accountability campaign to ask them to explain themselves. To demand that these women advocate for the people, the language and the culture that has afforded them the privilege to hold the seats they occupy. To remind them that Biden is supporting and promoting the very inhumane climate that forced their parents and so many others to flee not knowing what awaits them on the other side. 

Haiti’s situation is dire. The diaspora cannot separate itself from it. We cannot turn a blind eye to it. We cannot call for a return of blood-thirsty dictatorships for those left behind, while we march and chant “Black Lives Matter” in America’s streets. Haiti’s state and those in ICE detention should be a political litmus test for all us – Who are we? What do we stand for? 

May is Haitian Heritage Month and so many of us, the dyaspora, will throw the blue and red up, post up paintings of Dessalines and Toussaint, and poetically lament on the desire to return “home” to open our respective businesses.

But Black capitalism isn’t going to save Haiti. Only a true, organized movement working in accordance with those back home will free us. 

I am writing this as I grapple with my own emotions here, working to continue learning how best I can be of service to the Haitians being harmed in detention centers and by the U.S.-backed regime on the island. 

However, as my politic continues to develop, and as I focus on getting a clearer vision on all that’s  happening, I would be seriously remiss to not ask the dyaspora to join me in unpacking our histories of revolution and political struggle both at home and abroad, and learn how we can build on them. To see ourselves less as individuals who are hellbent on jumping through the hoops of white supremacy bred capitalism to prove our worth, with dreams of building and enjoying lavish homes back in Haiti in violently neglected towns. To see ourselves as a collective, united by our history, united by our fights for liberation wherever we may land, to know that we are all interconnected, whether it is the mother fighting for a phone call in a detention center in Texas or the machann struggling to put food on the table in Leogane. This, after all, may be the truest way to honor the legacies of those whose names we continue to take in vain in empty acts of national and ethnic pride. Because we, after all, deserve to be more than just a group of people who “ironically” deliver a White House win to an aging white supremacist. 

Photo via NY Daily News

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