Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Haiti Needs Freedom, Not Tears
Mireille Fanon Mendes France
16 Aug 2023
🖨️ Print Article
Haiti Needs Freedom, Not Tears
Banner reads, We are people we have to live like people." (Photo: Marvens Compere for The Haitian Times)

The people of Haiti are once again facing attack, now with the use of Black nations as a cover for an impending invasion and occupation. Haitians are still resolute in fighting for their freedom.

Originally published in Fondation Frantz Fanon.

Is it enough to meet the Haitian people, to affirm a political solidarity far, far removed from compassion and morality, to forget the obligation to live the luminous beauty of their suspended lives in the rendered-ugly streets of Port-au-Prince?

The torrential rains carry the detritus abandoned by the privileged inhabitants of the heights to the port and the dreaded CitĂ© Soleil. If structural racism is indeed present, it is expressed in the metaphor of compartmentalized garbage management.

Beyond the near-impossible management of household waste, there remains the refused arrival of a multinational force led by Kenya. The West delegating its dirty work to the African brothers of the Haitians who, in their time, had inspired their brothers in chains to free themselves from the horrors of the oppressor. Their only quest was DIGNITY.

Stunned and alienated by the idea of progress brought about by the white hegemony, the African brothers refused to understand that what they were going to impose on their brothers in blackness would be applied to them the very next day. In so doing, they are writing INDIGNITY in blood.

The Haitians who bear in their flesh the struggle of their heroes announce, with pride and courage, their refusal of this violent servitude.

Never a knee to the ground!

Never bow your head!

Resist, prepare to fight, fight, fight for the emancipation of peoples, for the right to self-determination and sovereignty of black people.

Haiti stands firm in the face of plans to systematically plunder its land.

But Haiti stands alone, ignored by its Caribbean neighbours, their backs to the wall, thinking they can avoid imperialist fury.

We have to understand: today Haiti, tomorrow one of the CARICOM states that has agreed to armed intervention will be next on the list of the financial system that feasts on the remains of murdered states.

The Haitian people, against their bankrupt leaders, against the long teeth of the WB and IMF, are preparing to resist.

The Haitian people are on their feet.

Will we leave them alone?

Will we warn our eyes from a foretold massacre?

Will we assume solidarity by simply weeping over the fate of Haiti?

Will we continue to praise Haiti's poets and art when we've contributed to its extinction?

What is the beauty of the freedom offered by the Haitian people worth if today we participate in re-chaining them?

With the Haitian people, let's save our Dignity.

Haiti needs Freedom, not tears.



Mireille Fanon Mendes-France is founder and co-chair of the Frantz Fanon Foundation. She served as former United Nations expert chair of the Working group on People of African Descent. Mireille works on issues of International law and has worked as professor at different levels of the National Education, at Unesco and as legal adviser at French National Assembly. Mireille Fanon Mendès-France is the daughter of the world renowned revolutionary, psychiatrist and political author, Frantz Fanon.

Haiti
Haiti Occupation

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • Bolivia Coup is Rooted in White Racist Backlash
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Bolivia Coup is Rooted in White Racist Backlash
    13 Apr 2020
    Last year’s “coup has to do with the racist backlash against President Evo Morales and the whole process of indigenous revalorization and empowerment,” said Dr.
  • Whites See Black Kids as “Disturbing the Peace”
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    Whites See Black Kids as “Disturbing the Peace”
    13 Apr 2020
    Sky-high rates of suspension of Black students are caused by a pervasive “system of anti-Blackness” rooted in slavery and Jim Crow, said Dr.
  • San Francisco Sends 40 Percent of Jail Inmates Home
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    San Francisco Sends 40 Percent of Jail Inmates Home
    13 Apr 2020
    Chesa Boudin, the leftish district attorney for San Francisco, claims to have reduced the jail population by nearly 40 percent since the onslaught of the epidemic.
  • US Could Safely Release Three Out of Four Prisoners
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
    US Could Safely Release Three Out of Four Prisoners
    13 Apr 2020
    Although Illinois has responded to the Covid-19 epidemic by releasing about 500 state prison inmates, “the scope of the releases is way too small and way too slow, said Alan Mills
  • Resistance Growing to Covid-Capitalism
    Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
    Resistance Growing to Covid-Capitalism
    09 Apr 2020
    Covid-19 has laid bare a fundamental truth: that capitalist healthcare is a contradiction in terms, since capital – like the killer virus -- cares for nothing but reproducing itself.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us