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Don't Know this America...But I'm Most
Happy to Meet It
by Marguerite "Ezili Dantò" Laurent,
Haitian Perspectives,
November 5, 2008
(Background
Essay - The America I know)
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WI
NOU KAPAB - YES WE CAN!
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Reactions
Around The World
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The
Dream No Longer Deferred: Today I Woke Up A Black Man, Inspired
By President Barack Obama, Written By David E. Talbert
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An Open Letter to Barack Obama
By Alice Walker, The
Root,
November 5, 2008
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Haiti
Pinch Me ...a message from Michael Moore
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Michelle
Obama, the New First Lady: A Powerful Perspective
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What
Haitian Americans Ask of the New US President
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Pointing
Guns at Starving Haitians: Violent Haiti is a myth
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HLLN Campaign 6:
Mission: Mobilize
the Haitian--American vote (See, Ezili's
HLLN Endorses Barack Obama ; Obama-mania
is Unnerving
; and HLLN
Recommended Links on "critical" support for Obama.)
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"Asylum,
Amnesty and Justice denied our kind"
(See,
"Breaking Sea Chains" )
-
RBM
Video Reel
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Dessalines
Is Rising!!
Ayisyen: You Are Not Alone!
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Sam Cooke-It's
Been A Long Time Coming...But Change Gonna Come
CLICK TO STOP MUSIC
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What
Immigrants Must Learn from the Black Civil Rights Movement
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HLLN
Urgent Action Alert: Help the people of Gonaives, Haiti directly - Also,
ask for TPS for Haitians nationals
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HLLN
SAMPLE LETTER Asking President Bush to Assist Haiti's Recovery Efforts
by Granting Haitian Nationals TPS
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Black
is the Color of Liberty
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write to erzilidanto@yahoo.com |
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 Carnegie
Hall
Video Clip |
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No
other national
group in the world
sends more money
than Haitians living
in the Diaspora |
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The
Red Sea |
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Ezili Dantò's master Haitian dance class (Video clip)
Ezili's
Dantò's
Haitian & West African Dance Troop
Clip
one -
Clip two |
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So
Much Like Here- Jazzoetry CD audio clip
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Ezili Danto's
Witnessing
to Self
Update
on
Site Soley |
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Video Reel
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Haitian
immigrants
Angry with
Boat sinking
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group of Haitian migrants arrive in a bus after being
repatriated from the nearby Turks and Caicos Islands,
in Cap-Haitien, northern Haiti, Thursday, May 10, 2007.
They were part of the survivors of a sailing vessel crowded
with Haitian migrants that overturned Friday, May 4 in
moonlit waters a half-mile from shore in shark-infested
waters. Haitian migrants claim a Turks and Caicos naval
vessel rammed their crowded sailboat twice before it capsized.
(AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
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Dessalines'
Law
and Ideals
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Breaking
Sea Chains |
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 Little
Girl
in the Yellow
Sunday Dress
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| Anba
Dlo, Nan Ginen |
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Ezili
Danto's Art-With-The-Ancestors
Workshops - See, Red,
Black & Moonlight series or Haitian-West African
Clip
one -Clip
twoance performance |
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In
a series
of articles written for the October 17, 2006 bicentennial
commemoration of the life and works of Dessalines, I wrote
for HLLN that: "Haiti's liberator and founding father,
General Jean
Jacques Dessalines, said, "I Want
the Assets of the Country to be Equitably Divided"
and for that he was assassinated by the Mullato sons of France.
That
was the first coup d'etat, the Haitian holocaust - organized
exclusion
of the masses, misery, poverty and the impunity of the economic
elite
- continues (with Feb. 29, 2004 marking the 33rd coup d'etat).
Haiti's peoples continue to
resist the return of despots,
tyrants and enslavers who wage war on the poor
majority and Black, contain-them-in poverty through neocolonialism'
debts, "free trade" and foreign "investments."
These neocolonial tyrants refuse to allow an equitable division
of wealth, excluding the majority in Haiti from sharing in
the
country's wealth and assets."
(See
also, Kanga
Mundele: Our mission to live free or die trying, Another Haitian
Independence Day under occupation; The
Legacy of Impunity of One Sector-Who killed Dessalines?;
The Legacy of Impunity:The
Neoconlonialist inciting political instability is the problem.
Haiti is underdeveloped in crime, corruption, violence, compared
to other nations,
all, by Marguerite 'Ezili Dantò' Laurent |
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other national group in the world sends more money than Haitians
living in the Diaspora |
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| Two
American moments, which one will we extend and sustain?
"I know the America on the left.
I am so glad to meet the America on the right. I will never forget the
historic victory of November 4, 2008." Ezili Dantò
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I Don't Know this America....But I'm most happy to meet it by
Ezili Dantò, Nov. 5, 2008, Haitian Perspectives
I grew up with the picture on the left. That's the America that lynched
Black soldiers in their uniforms after World War II. It's the America
I was taught. It's the America unfortunately I've lived through. It's
the America that killed the Dreamer.
Yes, I grew up with the picture on the left. I know that America. But
yesterday, on November 4, 2008, I was most happy to actually meet the
America that chose to make the picture on the right its new dawn....
Honestly, as someone raised in post-Civil Rights America, I don't know
this America. I didn't think it was possible.
I am most happy to meet this America and I am most thankful for President-elect
Barack Obama's unyielding audacity of hope. Most happy to have taken
part in it because he envisioned what could be. I am glad
to meet this America of new possibilities, this America of November
4, 2008. I want to be part of this America where I don't feel an outsider
to Officialdom because I work for human rights, social justice and equality,
workers rights, reciprocal trade, respect for Haitian democracy and
constitutional rule. I hope that that America won't again turn away
from this hope for the poor and disenfranchised all over this planet,
and go back to promoting the special interests of the corporate elites,
valuing profit over people.
Senator Barack Obama's victory has introduced me to the possibility
of that America. That's a stunning feat. I hope all of us rise up to
meet this America we all took a glimpse of on November 4th. Change would
truly have come if we actually ACT to extend the November 4th values
and broad, inter-generational coalition, across the races, transcending
political party, class and creeds that was forged to elect Barack Obama.
And extend it each and everyday of our lives.
I didn't believe it existed or could be pulled forth in my lifetime.
That I've lived to see it, to know it's there and not just the ephemeral
dream; that I have lived to see a Black man, this man of integrity and
enormous vision and competence, this son of an African, with an aunt
who is still an "illegal alien" about to call home, a White
House built by the forced labor of African captives, that this America
exists and was pulled forth for the world to see, makes me more thankful
than I can say.
I pour libation for all the Ancestors who did not live to see that the
color line has been crossed. I weep for all the American lives and Iraqi
lives in Iraq and elsewhere around the world that paid the ultimate
price for this day to come so simply. I pray the children in the Congo
will benefit from this new day. I hope this means Haitian lives will
also be more valued and a new US-Haiti partnership is on the horizon.
I pray that a new dawn of American leadership is at hand and hope that
President Barack Obama will work with us as we've outlined in "What
Haitian Americans are Asking of the New US President."
Four years ago, part of HLLN mission, as articulated in Campaign
Six was to help to elect a President that would not extend
the tyranny and disenfranchisement of the Black masses that Bush Regime
change brought to Haiti in February 2004. We hope to retire that campaign
now and have a working relationship with this new Congress and this
new President. Yes we can - Wi nou kapab.
I thank and am so deeply grateful to all those who worked to get out
the vote and so blessed to meet this America I don't know but want to
get to know, sustain, belong to and have a relationship with. It's been
a long time coming...
Marguerite Laurent/Ezili Dantò
Founder and President, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
November 5, 2008
(See Background Essay -
The America I Know)
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Forwarded by Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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Two
American moments, which one will we extend and sustain?
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Background essay:
The America I Know
Nothing that I know or have lived, especially after Bush's bloody regime
change in Haiti on February 29, 2004, prepared me for the momentous
election of a tolerant, compassionate, (seemingly people-over-profit)
Black man - who stands for a more equitable world - to the presidency
of the United States.
The US I knew had disregarded the laws, so at least I thought if Obama
won, the election would be stolen or at least there would be some haggling
for a week, at the minimum. I was not prepared for the unanimous acceptance
of a Black man as president of the United States by 11pm on election
night. The America I knew was all about “plausible deniability,”
had a shameful legacy of racism, had carried on a pre-emptive war, lied
to the American people about weapons of mass destruction, lied to the
American people about what they are doing in Haiti, passed the Patriot
Act, tortures prisoners at Guantanamo, discriminates against Haitian
immigrants...
I don’t know the November 4, 2008 America…But I'd like to
make it real and have a relationship with it.
The US I know:
Flaunt their love of justice and liberty and then support Taliban-type
regimes and when that goes awry, bomb the heck out of Afghanistan.
The America I know:
Sponsor elections throughout “the developing” world, and
then outfit their own private armies, to “restore order”
and reverse said elections whenever the US-sponsored candidate fails
to be elected by the populist. Mobutu, Duvalier, the Gerald Latortue
Boca Raton Regime, who maintained these?
The America I know:
Armed and trained thugs and convicted felons, Louis Jodel Chamblain
and Guy Philippe in the Dominican Republic to invade Haiti on Feb. 2004
in order to end Haiti’s Constitutional democracy and when these
surrogates could not complete the task...
The America I know:
Sent in US Special forces, with the assistance of French and Canadian
soldiers, to kidnap the Constitutionally elected President of Haiti
and exiled him to the Central African Republic in order to dominate
Haiti, secure the Haitian market for US goods and take by US-sponsored
force, once again, Haitian resources – state-owned companies,
Haiti’s gold, oil, gas reserves, coltan, et al... and all they
couldn't persuade Haitian President Aristide or the Haitian people,
to give away.
The America I know:
Was built on the genocide of the Amerindians, the enslavement of Africans,
and then the blood of centuries of lynching with impunity, the razing
to the very ground of Black cities like Rosewood and the “Black
Wall Street” in Oklahoma, the colonization of Haiti for 19 years
as well as the neocolonization of Dominican Republic, Latin America…;
built on gunboat diplomacy and US marines bringing (their sort of) “order”
to “backwards” Black and Brown countries all over the world.
The America I know:
Legalized murders and mayhems under Jim Crow for 100 years after the
Emancipation Proclamation; then after the Civil Rights Movement, denied
equal rights to Blacks-Americans through racial profiling, mandatory
sentencing, the criminalization of poverty and drug addiction otherwise
known as the “war against drugs,” or more aptly, the war
against young Black males.”
The America I know:
Trained death squad soldiers and sent them forth, from Fort Benning,
Georgia, unto the Haitian people, onto the people of Latin America....
The America I know:
Employed Toto Constant, Haiti's strongman who was the head of the FRAPH
death squad that murdered more than 3,000 Haitians from 1991- to 94
and then gave this terrorist asylum in New York while denying fleeing
innocent Haitian refugees even a hearing of their asylum claims...
The America I know:
Incarcerated and indefinitely detained Black children, women and men,
whose only crime is that they are poor and from Haiti, at Guantanamo
Bay, before they started using it as a place to indefinitely incarcerate
and torture Al Qaeda, and other "enemy combatants".
The America I know:
Has an overwhelming, disproportionately high African American male population
(more than 50% of total US prisoners) in jail when we only make up 13%
of the population. More than half of death row prisoners in the US are
Black males.
That's the America I know. That's the America I thought
would never make a righteous Black man with the democratic and social
justice values of Barack Obama its President.
I know the America of the dream that all men are created equal. I was
raised in the post-Civil Rights era of the dream, again, deferred for
the masses. I was raised in the post-Civil Rights era where America
was starting to look like Haiti, with Katrina lifting up for the world
to see the huddled and excluded Black US masses left behind and Ophra,
Michael Jordan and PDitty representing the few who had successfully
made it in an America where overt institutional racism was replaced
by the more insidious covert institutional racism and its denial...
"Race doesn’t matter" the Neocon chorus went, and most
vociferously by the right wing neo-conservative blacks who were universally
celebrated as the “good Black” the "objective"
and "not angry" Blacks. Like in Haiti, these Black middlemen
told white America what their rich white benefactors wanted them too
say and what white Neocon-rule America wanted to hear. Who are some
of these black "conservatives?" Well, African American folks
like Shelby Steele, Ward Connelly, Armstrong Williams, Condi Rice, Colin
Powell, Clarence Thomas, et al...
That's the America I know.
Is the nightmare is over?
President Barack Obama was born of an African father, a white mother
from America, spent his childhood in Asia - America/Africa/Asia - will
this internationalist bring US change that will help bring relief to
the disenfranchised of the world - to the children in Haiti, Baghdad,
Congo, Beirut, Gaza, and all the other places in the crosshairs of the
American empire's superpower guns?
There is work to be done, and it's up to all of us, not just President
Barack Obama.
In his victory speech, President-elect Barack Obama, had the vision
to place the responsibility for the welfare of the nation in our own
hands, us the citizens, where, in a democracy, it truly must rest. We
know the odds, but Obama’s victory has taught us not to be led
by fear or doubt but faith and hope. He’s taught us that anything
is possible. Yes we can - Wi nou kapab.
Marguerite Laurent/Ezili Dantò
Founder and President, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
November 5, 2008
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Forwarded by Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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Video -
The Obama Song (World of Friends): Bridges
for Obama
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Recommended HLLN Link:
I
Don't Know this America...But I'm Most Happy to Meet It
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Forwarded Mail:
From: David E. Talbert <>
Subject: Today I Woke Up A Black Man
Date: Friday, November 7, 2008, 6:31 AM
The Dream No Longer Deferred
Nov. 7, 2008
What's up Family!
Can you believe it?! No matter who
you are or where you live this historic event has touched so many people
in so many ways. For me, it was even more special because my 8 year
old nephew was among the group of folks over my house to watch the results.
He was so excited. We all were. But that night, after everyone finally
went home...I started to think about what it meant to him. And me. I
woke up Wednesday morning inspired to write something. Though I know
all of you are not Black, or men...and though these words might not
speak directly to you... I felt compelled to share them with you. Hopefully
it will inspire you as these thoughts inspired me. If they do, feel
free to forward this to every parent you know...every teacher, preacher,
family or friend.
As always thanks for all your love and support. Let's continue to pray
for America, for the World, and for the 44th president
of the United States of America... President Barack Obama.
Enjoy!
Today
I Woke Up A Black Man
Inspired By President Barack Obama
Written By David E. Talbert, Nov. 7, 2008
Today I woke up to the reality that everything is possible
Leaving nothing to chance, luck or speculation
I have this new realization
I'm a safe bet
The cards are stacked in my favor
Not a victim of some wicked plot, scheme, or attack plan
Today I woke up A Black Man
No longer enslaved by the images that once defined me
I woke up with a light so bright it blinds me
Today I woke up A Black Man
My clothes no longer fit me
My chest pokes out a bit further
My arms reach a bit higher
Even my hat fits snug
My brain has increased its capacity
Enlarged by my own audacity
I can be more than a thug, a pimp, or the crack man
Today I woke up A Black Man
The generational curse has been broken
My journey needs only this token
This fee
That I choose to believe in me
That I set free the thoughts of pain, stress and strain
That I accept the responsibility that greatness is my probability
Today I woke up A Black Man
Not shackled by how the world sees me
What matters most is how I see me
A seed snatched from the equator
The most beautiful reflection of my creator
Fear and failure are simply a distraction
Today my future found traction
Today I woke up A Black Man
I have twenty twenty vision
Courage, hope, and honor is my daily mission
I'm no longer a gamble
Leaving nothing to chance, luck, or speculation
I have this new realization
I'm a safe bet
The cards are stacked in my favor
If you dare suggest these words aren't fact man
Today I woke up A Black Man
© 2008 David E. Talbert
David E. Talbert
email:
info@davidetalbert.com
web: http://davidetalbert.com
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Forwarded by Ezili's Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
www.ezilidanto.com
or www.margueritelaurent.com
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Recommended HLLN Link:
I
Don't Know this America...But I'm Most Happy to Meet It
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