At a demonstration July 28 in front of U.N. headquarters, Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine denounces the U.N.-U.S. presence in Haiti. The protest marked the 92nd anniversary of the first U.S. occupation of Haiti in 1915. Photo: Nia Imara

On Saturday, Nov. 10, at the Berkeley Unitarian Universalists Hall, the Haiti Action Committee and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement hosted a program of solidarity with Haiti. The event was co-sponsored by the BFUU Social Justice Committee and Africans United to End the Occupation of Haiti.

Haiti Action Committee co-founder Pierre Labossiere thanked the delegation reporting back from their July 2007 visit to Port-au-Prince, stressing the importance of such visits. "The people of Haiti have been isolated. It's been a specific system set up around Haiti, to create a murkiness. So when you don't know each other, you don't connect with each other. And the most outrageous things could be happening, but ... people don't have any connection or hear about it."

Delegation participant Nia Amara projected her photos from the July visit. Amara said, "because of the situation ... that the United States and France have put Haiti in, most children, most people, are living a hand to mouth existence and they aren't able to live to their fullest potential.

"Since the beginning of the revolution in 1791, the Western white world, basically the United States and France ... have had their feet on Haiti's neck and have not allowed it to live to the fullest, or to fulfill its potential. Despite all of these odds, [the Haitian people] continue to fight with dignity and determination and fearlessness, and they're going to keep doing so until [ousted President Jean-Bertrand] Aristide is returned, until political prisoners are freed, until there's an end to the occupation." She added, "I hope these images convey some of that fighting spirit, some of the beauty, and some of that determination that we encountered while we were there." They did, and then some.

Amara also showed footage of a protest at U.N. headquarters. In translating, Labossiere explained, "This was a demonstration in commemoration of the 92nd anniversary of the first occupation of Haiti by the U.S. Marines in 1915. During that occupation, the U.S., similar to what they did in Nicaragua, the administration at the time created a new Haitian military ... not to defend the population of Haiti and to protect the Haitian people and to help build the nation, but ... to be an extension of the occupation, so that 19 years later when ... the marines left, the Haitian military received their money from the U.S. and continued to repress the masses of our people."

Labossiere explained that at the protest, activist Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine "was making a parallel between that occupation from 1915 to 1934 and the current occupation that started in 2004. And he was saying that the people elected a president democratically and the U.S., again, and France and Canada joined forces and they overthrew that president and now we have an occupation in the country similar to what happened in 1915."

Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine was kidnapped on Aug. 12 and is still missing. Labossiere described Lovinsky: "As a young psychologist, he started several projects. One of them was to work with mothers, adolescent mothers; another one was to work with street children, to help put together some institutions to respond to their needs and to provide schooling to them.

"Lovinsky was himself a teacher, teaching homeless kids, kids on the street ... and right after the first coup d'état, he founded an institution called the 30th of September Foundation, and it took its name from the date of the first coup d'état against President Aristide on Sept. 30, 1991. Their goal was to work with survivors of torture, people who had been put in jail, people who were tortured."

Dr. Akinyele Umoja, an associate professor at Georgia State University at Atlanta, and a founding member of both the New Afrikan People's Organization and of the Malcolm X Grassroots Organization, also shared thoughts about Lovinsky. Dr. Umoja recalled: "Meeting that brother, I got the sense, you know, we actually were sitting and talking to somebody who is linked to that history that I learned about. It was a link to this history that inspired a revolution to overthrow slavery.

"I was connected to that culture of resistance that exists there, just talking to that brother, who had a very clear political analysis of what was going on there, a very clear understanding of the culture. I learned later that he was ... the primary organizer who organized the demonstrations this year around Aristide's birthday, where 12,000 people came out in Port-au-Prince."

Dr. Umoja gave people he met in Haiti information about a Louisiana tribunal on U.S. government crimes committed during and after Katrina. He recalled that Lovinsky not only immediately signed on his organization as an endorser of the tribunal, but wanted to participate in it. Dr. Umoja observed: "Lovinsky was somebody who was concerned about international solidarity. He wanted support for the Haitian struggle, but he also was reaching out to our struggle here in the United States, and was about reciprocating."

Dr. Umoja also distributed information in Haiti about the San Francisco 8. As San Francisco 8 defendant Richard Brown, now out of jail, thanks to an unrelenting support network, explained when speaking at the report back, "We were attacked viciously by the counterintelligence program COINTELPRO just for serving the people, just for having the audacity to tell Black people that they had the right to determine their own destiny." Brown and his co-defendants in the over 30-year-old case, a murder charge based on confessions extracted through torture, need the same solidarity that Lovinsky continues to require.

On Monday, Dec. 3, at 850 Bryant, there will be an 8 a.m. demonstration before the 9 a.m. hearing for the SF 8 case. For more information, visit www.freethesf8.org/; for more on Haiti, go to www.haitisolidarity.net.

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