Organizing Amidst the Wreckage
Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees uses radio in Haiti support work
On January 12, a catastrophic 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck Haiti, killing over 230,000 people. One of the worst natural disasters in the Western Hemisphere, the massive earthquake came on the heels of four deadly hurricanes in 2008 and decades of natural catastrophes and political upheaval.
An estimated 800,000 Haitians live in the United States today, many driven from their homeland by sustained political oppression and economic hardship. Founded in 1992 to respond to the refugee crisis faced by Haitian immigrants, Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, a RESIST grantee, has provided support to hundreds of families who sought asylum in the United States after being persecuted in Haiti. The organization has coordinated disaster relief and provides comprehensive programs that include community education, supportive services and community organizing.
RESIST interviewed Ninaj Raoul, the director of Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, soon after she’d returned from visiting Haiti. She spoke of using radio, video and music in organizing efforts, and how the earthquake’s aftermath is affecting the Haitian community here in the United States.
RESIST: You just returned from Haiti, your third trip since the massive earthquake struck on January 12. You’ve been doing work around Haiti for many years, and you are of Haitian descent. What has it been like to personally to witness the aftermath of this devastating earthquake?
NINAJ RAOUL (NR): It’s overwhelming. We’ve worked in several disasters before. I was there in 1998 and again in 2004 and 2008 where there were floods in Haiti, but nothing to this degree. The damage is so much larger. On this trip, we were mostly in a town called Leogane. [The epicenter of the earthquake, Leogane lies about 18 miles west of Port-au-Prince.]
RESIST: Has Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees been collaborating with other groups around your relief efforts and organizing work?
NR: Yes. One of the groups is called MUDHA [Movement of Dominican-Haitian Women]. It’s a movement of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent located in the Dominican Republic. We’ve worked very closely with them for many years. We also work together here with a group called Lakou New York, which has a radio show, and with Kongo, which uses cultural music in healing workshops and as an organizing tool.
RESIST:How has your organization, Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, provided direct earthquake relief?
NR: The day after the earthquake, Sonia Pierre, the director of MUDHA, called and asked if we wanted to collaborate with them. We said absolutely. MUDHA organized volunteers—groups of youth in particular—and some of their regular staff to go to Haiti. They set up in what used to be an orphanage in Leogane. The orphanage was totally destroyed, as was most of the town.
MUDHA brought food like rice and beans in large amounts. They also brought mattresses and tents. What we bring from New York is over-the-counter medications, a lot of first aid supplies, personal hygiene goods and things like cereal and nutritional bars that are easy for people to eat if they don’t have the ability to cook, if their homes have been destroyed.
RESIST:Haitians living in the United States have been organizing support for earthquake survivors and around immigration issues affecting the Haitian community here in this country. How do you work to reach the Haitian community in New York?
NR: One of the groups we collaborate with, Lakou New York, has a daily radio show, Monday through Friday from 1 to 2 PM. It’s like having a daily community forum on the radio—people are not just listening to the radio but are participating in movements.
RESIST: Radio played a really critical role in providing information and helping people find loved ones after the earthquake struck. Does community radio have a long history of importance in the Haitian community?
NR: In this community, radio is really key for organizing; in Haiti, that’s how people are able to communicate. It’s common that a lot of community forums are on the radio. So if you listen to the radio in Haiti, there are all these discussions and political forums. People call in; it’s a regular thing. Part of it might be the literacy issue [the literacy rate in Haiti stands at 50 percent], but it’s also a cultural thing. The radio is the place where everybody gets to meet. A lot of people don’t have TVs or electricity but still have a radio with batteries. It’s a way that people connect and can participate in movements.
It’s the same thing here in New York; culturally people really do connect on the radio. Lakou New York is based in Brooklyn, and they try to keep the community connected with movements on the ground (not just in New York, because a lot of people listen through the internet). This allows all listeners the chance to get involved.
RESIST: How has Lakou New York’s radio show affected your recent work in Haiti?
NR: I met people in Haiti that came to the orphanage in Leogane because they heard about it on the radio and wanted to see it themselves, firsthand. When I was there on the first trip, the radio host from Lakou New York called. He caught me off guard, because I was carrying a 10-year-old girl who’d had both legs amputated; she was heavy! I gave a report, and I told the listeners about the young girl. She said hello and talked to the host. I said, “By the way, if anyone has a wheelchair, this girl needs one.” Right away somebody called the station with one. Volunteers from Lakou took it to the girl on their trip down a week or two later. It made a huge difference. To this day she uses that wheelchair.
RESIST: Does Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees use other tools or forms of media in your organizing work?
NR: We started using video in 2005. Before that, we didn’t like to work with video on our trips. We felt like it was an invasion, when you do solidarity work and you show up with these video cameras. MUDHA felt the same way, too, but in 2005 there was widespread violence against Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent in the Dominican Republic, and MUDHA said to us, “You’ve got to come down and document this. They just deported 11,000 people.” I went down with my video camera and got testimony of folks who’d just been deported on Friday, and this was on Monday.
It was really important to document this because no one would believe how bad it was. And the folks were anxious to give their stories. They were just hoping that someone was going to see it and hear it. We bring the videos back and use them to raise awareness in the United States. I think the people that see the videos, they believe the stories more when it’s the people who are going through it that are talking.
We also work with Kongo, an organization that uses cultural music as an organizing tool. They do it with youth here in the public school system. Kongo was there for two months after the earthquake. Their workshops give people healing energy while they’re cleaning up and working on recovery efforts (and it keeps the kids busy too).
RESIST: In March, fomer President Clinton apologized for his economic policies towards Haiti, specifically around encouraging subsidized US food products, mainly rice, to be shipped into Haiti and sold there, in the process pushing so many small farmers off the land and destroying much of the agricultural base.
NR: It’s clear that President Clinton apologized in response to criticism and for no other reason. The one positive thing that has come out of this earthquake is a lot more awareness about such policies. I don’t think [Clinton’s apology] is going to stop the agenda in any way. In fact, this disaster puts the US government in a better position to go forward with their agenda.
Haitian people are clear that the US has always had plans for Haiti. And the US hasn’t been able to impose them as easily as some thought they would have. I think that this earthquake will make it easier for them to do so, under the pretense of humanitarian aid. Haiti doesn’t have the resources to recover from this huge disaster alone.
RESIST: It seemed like the immediate response of the US government to the earthquake was focused primarily on security.
NR: There was a large international military presence, and it was so unnecessary. You know there’s no military in Haiti. I was staying at the orphanage in Leogane, and I would see the Canadian military come in with long guns, every single one of them. One day they came and distributed dolls to the kids, and they each had a gun. That’s just amazing to me. Why do you need guns to come into an orphanage?
RESIST: President Obama granted Temporary Protected Status to Haitians living in the US shortly after the earthquake hit.
NR: There were some immigrant advocates from different communities that had been pushing for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) a couple of years prior to this. We didn’t really support it because it’s temporary and uncertain, and we didn’t know if TPS was going to be a way the government would be able to deport more people in the future, once they’d come forward. We were concerned about that, and I felt we should have been pushing for something stronger, like what we did for the Haitian Refugee Fairness Act that gave permanent residency back in 1998. But clearly TPS has helped a lot of people who were out of status before the earthquake.
Although it was granted because of the earthquake, ironically, earthquake victims are not eligible for it. You have to have been in the US before January 12, 2010. That’s the main requirement.
RESIST: What are the best ways that progressive people can be helping right now?
NR:I think raising awareness about the reasons why Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. We need to take advantage of this situation and continue to raise awareness on the issues that perpetuate the poverty in Haiti. In particular we need to go back to the history, how Haiti was rich before and why it’s become poor.
RESIST: What keeps you going these days, despite the horrific suffering you have been witness to?
NR:The best thing I got out of this experience, which is what you always do when you go down to Haiti, was just developing relationships with people. And that’s what the solidarity is about: developing relationships.
Read more about Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees at haitianwomen.wordpress.com. This interview has been edited and condensed.
