NEW YORK CITY, March 24—“I come from Haiti, a country Donald Trump calls a ‘shithole.’ What he leaves out...is that Haiti was a rich and green island when Christopher Columbus arrived.” Thus spoke a Haitian immigrant at a fundraising dinner of over 100 guests. “But after the Spanish, French and U.S. came and went, Haiti looked totally different. Channeling Trump, maybe what I should have said was ‘after the shitheads came and went,’ Haiti was left in debt and had been stripped of its natural resources and left in misery. No resource was more affected than its forest cover: two-three percent of Haiti is green today; compare that to its nearest neighbors, the Dominican Republic at 28 percent and Cuba at 31 percent.”
Solidarity since 2010
A Haitian community group and a local church organized the fundraising dinner. It’s been eight years since the 2010 earthquake devastated the working class in Haiti. Every year since, we break bread and talk about building solidarity between workers in Haiti and those in the U.S. All funds raised go towards reforestation projects in small communities in Haiti.
Pointedly attacking the racist results of imperialism, we were a group of Black, white, Latin, Arab, U.S.-born and immigrant working-class people who mingled, sang inspiring songs in Creole, English and French, and laughed together, showing in word and deed how multi-racial and international unity can fight the bosses’ plans for our class.
More similar than different
One participant spoke about the current war in Yemen, supported financially by billions of U.S. arms dollars, and called on the audience to come out to oppose the visit of the Saudi Prince to get more money for bombs (see page 4). An Arab worker spoke poignantly about the cholera epidemic, showing how people from Yemen and Haiti, two countries in different parts of the world, are united in their common oppression by the profit system, whether by so-called “natural” disasters or expressly by war. “There is more that unites us than separates us,” he said, pledging an additional donation to fight the effects of deforestation in Haiti.
This event had a more political character than in the past, in part because of the reality of world events and the racist-in-chief in the U.S. White House, but also because of the influence of PLP’s ideas inside these organizations.
We have fought for our friends to understand why Haitian workers and other immigrants are forced to leave their homelands in an attempt to escape the super-exploitation of the capitalist system, whether looking for jobs or to get away from wars, as the imperialists fight among themselves to divide up the world for their own class interests.
We are clearly one working class, and should have no allegiance to anything but our class, our flag and the Party that represents it. On to May Day!