It's my favorite charitable option because it directly supports grassroots Haitian social movements that are committed to both immediate relief and systemic change. Joseph Catron -------------
I've been reading up and tracking news stories all yesterday. The history is so bad I was astounded Obama put Clinton and Bush in charge of whatever they do---then sent in the military. What is there to say?
The most helpful thing I could think of was organizing by neighborhoods and tent camps along the lines of worker brigades to manage relief and recovery from the bottom up, making decisions in collective councils, etc. The same goes for the rural areas. There is no one in charge. That means the people have to put themselves in charge of their own affairs before somebody else does it for them. However that process of social reconstruction goes, it will probably determine their outcome.
My trouble is I don't know shit about Haiti. I don't know its customs and ways, don't know its languages except English and only a sketch of its history. At the moment it looks like individuals, families and small groups are the social order. What's needed is a higher level of a community based social system to organize supply deliveries to a system of groups. From the group level then supplies get broken down to individual need. The Haitians know how to do all that kind of work.
What grassroots Haitian social movements could do, is help organize around the immediate work needs. Social movements tend to be too `cause' specific. But I assume many people in these organizations learned more general lessons about organizing social structures.
The point is to reconstruct a social system. Most people forget communism is a practical solution to public disaster. I learned a little from reading about Cuba a long time ago.
In one news story I read, the first outside medical help on the ground came from the Cubans No surprise. Their teachers and doctors are a consequence of their own reconstruction. There was also a news report from the biggest hospital in Port au Prince where Cubans had help set up a training system. One of the doctors was complaining that no aid was reaching them. Again no surprise. Then there were the Venezuelans, Bolivians, and the almost as poor Nicaraguans. All these people come from societies that have experience with organizing themselves with very little and under bad and hostile conditions.
I had some experience with work organizing in service delivery a long time ago, when there were few if any services available to disabled students. All the so-called experts and professionals in education and health care were part of the problems to be by passed or co-opted in some fashion. We had to invent ways of doing things. The basic lesson was that ordinary people have most of the skills needed. Another lesson was let the work at hand (some need) dictate the organizing principle.
This also reminded me of the Nicaraguans back in 80s. The locals here organized a system of shipping salvaged wheelchair parts and health care supplies down there during the contra wars. This was organized by friends up here, some of whom I had worked with at UCB. When we were learning, we didn't have enough of a budget to cover most of the work needed, so we learned to salvage parts and rebuild frames, motors, and controllers. In other words, we were reproducing the backyard mechanic system the Cubans had.
Some of us had been attendants and orderlies. Our system to get around the student hospital and the medical profession was to set up a network of local doctors who had treated disabled people and were trustworthy. We ran the prescriptions through a rehab medicine guy, then got a pharmacy that would do batch Rx's and let us pick up the supplies. All this got tossed when State Rehab sent an ex-Navy nurse to run the floor. The women students revolted. It seems they had nurse issues. So they became the negotiating committee. In the Nicaragua project days, the method was to collect basic supplies that didn't need an Rx, were at or near stamped shelf date, or were discontinued stock.
I was reminded of all this while I was looking at photos of Haitians setting up temporary tent camps and triage centers. People have all kinds of skills, especially making, fixing, and organizing things.
Anyway, these are examples of practical social order that seems to come organically out of organizing work. I am pretty sure this all sounds too homespun. All I can say is I've seen it work, especially if there is a sense of solidarity in the work and need. It also takes your mind off your own problems.
The work for Haiti is medical treatment, water, food, shelter, sanitation, and communication. Each of these also represent social systems of work. So the way that work is socially organized is critical to what happens now and later.
At the moment a collectivized work system serves to expedite equitable distribution of supplies and services. Getting that kind of delivery system functioning from the bottom up, also lays the foundation for re-building larger social institutions later. I was just reading grassroots online yesterday afternoon:
``Is it utopian to imagine a reconstruction process in Haiti driven from the grassroots, with a radical, egalitarian vision of democracy, justice, and human rights for all? Not if we listen to Haitian activists already on the ground. Grassroots International partners and allied organizations like Zanmi LaSante/Partners for Health in Haiti have been striving to prove that another Haiti is possible...''
I see I am preaching to the choir. Besides organizing on the ground, another thing that Haitians and outside groups can do together is set up an `alternative' communication system via some internet based system for information and news. I've had a hell of a time trying to figure what was going on. That goes directly to this:
``Now more than ever, the Haitian popular movement needs our solidarity with Haiti’s its long fight for justice.''
Whatever the Palestinians did with the internet during the Israeli attacks on Gaza last winter was really helpful for building solidarity, information and communication. The basic idea was digital pictures to web sites along with daily narrative field reports.
On the ground, some form of local Haitian free lance news service is important because US media and official sources are terrible. Nobody trusts them. They certainly don't contribute to solidarity. Even the alternate US media is pretty thin mostly consisting of commentary, opinions and histories of US malfeasance. So Haitians on Haiti are needed.
Hell, no sooner dreamed than done. Just found some Haitian student news video from Cine Institute (back tracking from an PBS News Hour story, labeled under arts). Those damned art students again. Cool. If anybody has links to more, please post them. Go to the Cine Institute main site for several news stories about what is going on in Jacmel:
http://www.cineinstitute.com/news/
There is one cool video that shows the students working away with their equipment dug out of their partly collapsed school. It would help them to join up with journalism students to form teams.
I was listening to Democracy Now tonight. They reported organized tent camps outside the capital in other cities and repeated problems with the UN designating some of these towns as `red zones' that require `security' when there was no security problem. The problem was DNow concentrated on how terrible things were rather than what Haitians were doing about it.
The security concerns mentioned are probably coming from US military and UN armed patrols. There was also a short segment on organizing women through a Haitian ministry run by a former woman activist who was killed in the quake. Part of the segment was composed of background clips from a New Orleans conference (ironies noted).
What's really breaking down is law and order at the top, not the bottom, so naturally the top thinks things are out of control. This is a familiar inversion. Forty years ago Cal State Rehab thought things were out of control on the second floor, so they sent in the Navy. The hospital administration thought things were out of control because students and orderlies were running the floor without `nursing supervision.' This was a student housing floor. Nobody was sick.
My paranoid mind tells me the rise of local organization and popular front style coordination is exactly what the US doesn't want to happen. The LAT reported that Preval said, Haitian people should organize themselves to maintain order. Not smart. Order isn't the problem. Distribution is the problem.
Well, the short videos from Cine Institute cheered me up.
CG