Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
No nation helps more people around the globe. Our deep generosity is given so freely that it is simply expected, by others and by ourselves. From Ethiopia to Haiti to Japan where there is tragedy, famine or disaster, we lead the way with private and public help.
In Haiti, it - people seemed - in my experience in Haiti, people are so open to photographs and journalism. And there doesn't seem to be the same sort of restrictions or wariness about the press that you would experience in Washington, for instance, on many levels.
Defenders of Wilson are correct to beg for context when considering his legacy. But it is they who ignore the context: the role Wilson played in using war, including Haiti's racist counterinsurgency, to nationalize white supremacy, militarism, and Christian evangelism.
Coming from a Haitian-American home, I thought it was necessary to give back to the country in which my parents were raised. That is why I believe in Project PlayWorld's efforts to to provide secure playing spaces for the children of Haiti with the Live Civil Playground.
One of my most memorable moments serving the community was after I built the Live Civil Playground in Haiti, and I visited an orphanage and gave away shoes to all the kids. I also sat with them and helped them design their shoes. The smiles on their faces were priceless.
This election marks a significant moment in Haiti; it not only serves as the basis of hope along the road to democracy, but also serves as a testament to the resolve and character of the Haitian people during their long struggle for peace, reconciliation, and prosperity.
For the better part of two centuries, outsiders have been offering explanations that range from racist to learned-sounding - the supposed inferiority of blacks, the heritage of slavery, overpopulation - for why Haiti remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
Once I was walking with teammate Joy Fawcett in a hotel in Haiti. We were barefoot, and the lights went out to save electricity. Joy felt something crunch beneath her feet, and she felt the need to shine her flashlight on the floor. It was, I swear, a five-foot cockroach.
When I left Haiti, I was eight. I went to the Congo where my father was working. The only images that I had were the images of Tarzan. That's what I thought Africa was. Of course, the first day I arrived there, I thought I would see a lot of savages dancing on the tarmac.
I never consider myself a minority. I see people who look like me in Barbados, in Trinidad, in Haiti, in London, and in Brooklyn. So I don't know what the heck anyone means when they call me a 'minority.' There's something about that word to me. It just minimalizes people.
A neoliberal disaster is one who generates a mass incarceration regime, who deregulates banks and markets, who promotes chaos of regime change in Libya, supports military coups in Honduras, undermines some of the magnificent efforts in Haiti of working people, and so forth.
The State should have made sure the money given to the NGOs was used according to a global plan for Haiti; not doing whatever they want. They should be supervised and have to report and make sure the money is being used properly. They are here, but we are seeing no results.
I never have my CNN off, it's on the whole day. I don't want to be out of range of television. I'm constantly bombarded by information - Somalia one second, Haiti the next - I need that constant pounding. I couldn't write without television. I need to have the world in my room.
Haiti is always talking about decentralization and nothing has been so obvious, perhaps a weakness, as the centralized nature of Haitian society as being revealed by the earthquake. I mean, they lost all these medical training programs because they didn't have them anywhere else.
But I think it's very key that there's a plan for Haiti. And we have to begin to - as progressives and people who are concerned about Haiti and have been concerned about Haiti, we have to begin to build some sort of consensus, a movement around the Haiti that the Haitians envision.
I got quite annoyed after the Haiti earthquake. A baby was taken from the wreckage and people said it was a miracle. It would have been a miracle had God stopped the earthquake. More wonderful was that a load of evolved monkeys got together to save the life of a child that wasn't theirs.
Both of my parents were college-educated within the curriculum in Haiti. When they came to the United States, both had to learn English. My mother worked in retail and continues to do so today, working as the lead sales representative in a fine-jewelry store. My father became a machinist.
Haiti and the Dominican Republic don't just share an island, Hispaniola, but a history, one that includes all the signal events that went into creating the modern world: Columbus, conquest, genocide, slavery, imperial war, revolution, and U.S. counterinsurgencies and military occupations.
One of the things you don't have in Haiti is you don't have anybody on crack doing something completely out of - that's unpredictable. Even at the worst times in Haiti, the violence that had happened, the lack of security that happened, was largely predictable because it was politically tied.
If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera, it was Haiti - and we knew it. And in retrospect, more should have been done to prepare for cholera... which can spread like wildfire in Haiti... This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti.
Haiti, if you've ever met a Haitian person, they are just really positive, and literally, if you're friends with them, then they will do anything for you. So I think that's something that is, like, a really good trait, and I'm really happy that my grandparents and my dad's side of the family is like that.
The reason there's not a dictatorship in Chile and that there's a democracy in South Africa and Portugal today - and that Haiti has a nascent democracy - is that the world community as a whole felt outraged. This is the reason Milosevic sits in a jail in The Hague. It's because the world has said, 'Enough.'
I am an abolitionist. What does this mean? Abolitionist resistance and resilience draws from a legacy of black-led anti-colonial struggle in the United States and throughout the Americas, including places like Haiti, the first black republic founded on the principles of anti-colonialism and black liberation.
Even in Haiti, I saw John Wayne movies. American cinema has always been the dominant cinema throughout the world, and people tend to forget that. People aren't just seeing these films in California or Florida. They're seeing them in Haiti, in Congo, in France, in Italy and in Asia. That is the power of Hollywood.
I never considered myself as somebody in exile because, different to my father who, yes, was in exile because he left Haiti as an adult, for me it was just to be somewhere else. I carried Haiti with me everywhere, but I also carried, you know, my youth in a public school in Brooklyn. It's part of who I am as well.
I actually happened to be in Haiti right before the earthquake in 2010. I was there already with the organization I work with now, Artists for Peace and Justice, visiting the primary school that I had adopted, the Academy for Peace and Justice in Port-au-Prince. I came back, and within days, the earthquake happened.
I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy, and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age, he wanted to be an Episcopal priest, because he so admired his priest, a black man from someplace called Haiti.
Being from Miami, you're used to the fact that your home is a vacation spot. But that's what makes Miami one of the best places in the world. We're so rich in different cultures, being so close to Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico, and then you've got people who travel from all over the world just to come visit.
The spirit of Ubuntu, that once led Haiti to emerge as the first independent black nation in 1804, helped Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador attain liberty, and inspired our forefathers to shed their blood for the United States' independence, cannot die. Today, this spirit of solidarity must and will empower all of us to rebuild Haiti.
My dad was born in Haiti, and my mom was born in Tunisia. She is the daughter of a white French woman and a black, half-Guadeloupian, half-American man. My mom traveled the world a lot. She went through Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. She just got to experience a lot of different cultures, and that came through my childhood.
Sometimes people who want to understand Haiti from a political perspective may be missing part of the picture. They also need to look at Haiti from a psychological perspective. Most of the elite suffer from psychogenic amnesia. That means it's not organic amnesia, such as damage caused by brain injury. It's just a matter of psychology.
I feel I should do everything I can to make a difference in Haiti. My main goal to help the people of Haiti is to give them homes, food, and jobs. It is heartbreaking to see little children sleeping on the ground in tents made of trash bags. I hope that we can put an end to this type of poverty not only in Haiti, but in the entire world.
I came back to Haiti after the earthquake not to shoot a film, but to help and be a part of the rebuilding process, like all my fellow compatriots. I didn't come to shoot a film, but I became frustrated when I realized that my help was kind of useless. We all felt lost and helpless. And it's out of that frustration that I decided to shoot a film.
