In This Issue:
- We Have a Chance, If....: A Message from Father Jack
- A Message from the President
- Update on Vallieres Scholarships - September 2006
- Meeting Calendar
- News About Pignon
- Volunteer Medical Mission to Cavaillon, Haiti
- Dame Marie/St. Catherine Partnership
- Prayer Vigil: Memorial Service for Esterne Bruner
- Half Hour for Haiti Actions
- People in the News
- HSNNE Events and Special Announcements
"We Have a Chance, If....:"
A Message from Father Jack
The legendary Notre Dame football coach, Knute Rockne, is reported to have told his players back in the 1930s when they faced, as underdog, a very strong team, "We have a chance if we take the field."
Struggling for positive, just changes in Haiti often seems like an impossible dream. Some will shake their heads at us "dreamers". Well, we know it's a battle, and we recognize that the odds are against us, but quitting or sitting on our hands is not our plan. We agree with the coach's message. "We have a chance, if we take the field." In this Thanksgiving Season, we learn from our Native American sisters and brothers, and we call upon The Great Spirit to bless all who "take the field" for Haiti.
A Message from the President of HSNNE
It is this time of the year when we acknowledge friends, family and neighbors for their kindness and their overall good deeds. This holiday season, HSNNE would like to acknowledge those of you who have, overtly or covertly, showed your support to the organization by sharing your talents, presence and treasures with the people of Haiti. We want you to know that your on-going support is valued and is critical to the organization. We are therefore asking you to remember HSNNE as you are making your holiday list. Our ability to move forward lies in your faith in us, our commitment to the poor people in Haiti and the many faces that have steadfastly stood by us as we try to carry out God's work.
We have made lots of noise this year and have been in touch with several individuals in Haiti and here to help bring about some positive changes. We have taken many actions; such as, speaking out about the injustices committed by Haitian civilians and those who are sent there to help, visiting different villages in Haiti, and meeting with the people who, in turn, have allowed us to walk with them in their journeys.
Many have testified that their lives have somewhat changed with our assistance and although we believe that our presence made a difference, we also know that more needs to be accomplished in order for Haiti to regain its title of "Perle des Antilles" and for the poor Haitian people to be free of poverty, terror, exploitation and violence.
My brief message to my dear reader, friends and supporters of HSNNE this year is: Let us work together to help rebuild Haiti and make it a greater nation, the nation we (Haitian people) have inherited from Dessalines, Christophe, Petion and all our other Heroes and "Sheroes".
Together with all the members of the Haiti Solidarity Network of the North East, I once more wish you a Healthy and Happy Holiday.
Joyeux Noel et Bonne Année 2007!
Georgette Delinois,
HSNNE President
Update on Vallieres Scholarships - September 2006
In June, Clauvice St. Hilaire and I went to Cape Haitian to visit the secondary schools attended by our Vallieres students. We wanted to see the schools for ourselves, meet with the directors and find out firsthand why expenses were increasing. Of the six schools we visited, we were favorably impressed with three and not so with the other three, which we have eliminated from our program this year. There is one in Fort Liberte, which we were not able to visit. Many of our students now attend College Union Vallieres, located in the village, and with which we are very satisfied.
The directors of the schools told us that their teachers were demanding more money, because they cannot meet their living expenses with the high rate of inflation in Haiti -- thus the increase in our costs. We were worried we could not continue to raise enough money. We, therefore, decided to give the students a test to be used to eliminate students, as necessary, based upon the amount of money contributed.
My husband Chris, Clauvice and I returned to Vallieres September 3rd to administer the test. Clauvice, formerly a professor in Haiti, drafted two examinations, one for the lower grades, 7, 8 and 9, the other for the higher grades, 3rd, 2nd and Rheto (their system). On Wednesday, September 5th, we spent the entire day, with the help of the professors from College Union Vallieres and Clauvice's brother, Rene, guiding the children through four sessions of testing, two for each group.
We spent most of the next day grading the examination papers. The children waited anxiously for the results. Finally, around 5 PM, we were ready to announce them. Everyone gathered in a meeting area in one of the church buildings. The children huddled together at one end of the room. Some parents and other adults were present. Clauvice read each name and test score out loud. Several children buried their heads in their hands. He told them that next year we expected them to do better on the exam. He then told them what we had realized the day before when we counted the number of exam papers - they could all go back to school this year. The room erupted with cheering, screaming, hugging, tears, all expressing their joy, excitement and relief.
One hundred seventy students had shown up to take the exam. We did not require that the students in their final year (called Philo) take the exam, because they have to be well qualified to be accepted to complete Philo. We estimate this number to be approximately thirty more students. The number of two hundred students is the number our New Jersey parish (Our Lady of Mercy, Park Ridge) donations have been able to support in prior years. Our test had brought out the serious students and eliminated non-Vallieres residents. The students now also realize we will be following their test scores, which, hopefully, will make them study harder.
Our six university students completed their first year and now begin year two. They are all doing well. The presence of Our Lady of Mercy Church in Vallieres has brought about a very effective program to educate Haitian children, who would otherwise not be in school. The cost is $250 per child for this school year in secondary school and $2,500 per university student, with a commitment of four years.
We are grateful to those outside our parish who also support our program. If anyone is interested in sponsoring a secondary school or university student, please contact me directly at 201-391-2373 to discuss what is involved.
Our scholarships are making a tremendous difference in the lives of our twin parish brothers and sisters.
Judy Reilly
God says do your part and I'll do mine
Meeting Calendar
HSNNE meets the second Tuesday of the month at 7:30 pm at St. Joseph Social Service Center, 118 Division Street, Elizabeth, NJ.
Upcoming meetings:
| 9/12/06 | 10/10/06 | 11/14/06 | 12/12/06 | 1/9/07 |
| 2/13/07 | 3/13/07 | 4/10/07 | 5/8/07 | 6/12/07 |
Monthly prayer vigils are held every third Monday at 7:30 pm at St. Patrick's Church, 492 Bramhall Ave., Jersey City, NJ.
Upcoming prayer vigils:
| 9/18/06 | 10/16/06 | 11/20/06 | 12/18/06 | 1/15/07 |
| 2/19/07 | 3/19/07 | 4/16/07 | 5/21/07 | 6/18/07 |
Jubilee Interfaith Immigration Rights Task Force meetings are every first Tuesday at 7:30 pm at Grace Community Church, Ferry and Wilson Ave., Newark.
Networking News
News About Pignon
Our twinning program is going very well. Over 2000 women and some men are receiving microcredit loans of some sort at any given moment. Seven young adults are being sent to university to learn a profession and return to Pignon, and over 200 children are being sponsored by our parishioners in grammar and secondary schools.
In the last year, we initiated an oxen loan program, using a model pioneered by the Grameen Bank. An ox costs about $650 U.S. We have also stepped up our donkey loan program ($75), a popular idea with our USA donors, that makes life a lot easier for village women.
To make sure all these animals stay healthy, two years ago, we started sending a young man, Moussanto Dantil, to the University of Fondwa in Leoganne to study to be a veterinarian. With the help of a veterinarian friend here in N.J., we have helped Moussanto to set up a veterinarian clinic and pharmacy in Pignon.
We will be in Pignon from January 5-11, 2007 to visit and look it all over.
Volunteer Medical Mission to Cavaillon, Haiti
Joe Nuzzi, coordinator, reports they had another successful mission in November, declaring that a mother of five and a one-year old child would not be alive if the staff hadn't been there. He writes the following to Father Jack Martin:
It's humbling. All I know how to do is thank God for allowing me to be an instrument of His love and care for His people. Every trip gives us even more energy to continue our project to build a small clinic in Cavaillon through NoVaHope for Haiti. And we're moving forward with our plans and our fundraising. On Friday, February 16, 2007 we are having our first formal dinner dance for NoVa to raise the money to buy the farm in Cavaillon.
Jack, I remember you coming to Presentation in the fall of 2001, as our heads were swimming from the events of 9/11, and sitting with the peace and justice committee in the library and proposing to us to look into twinning in Haiti. I remember you unrolling your map of Haiti and telling us of the plight of the people there. I remember thinking how strange and foreign this little island nation was to me. I would never have imagined that because of you coming and inspiring us, I would have been in Haiti 8 times by Thanksgiving 2006. And, of course, you were part of the two teams that eventually landed us in Cavaillon where we have been serving for 2 years now. I have a deep, deep awareness and appreciation that our ministry was founded on the bedrock of your work and love for Haiti. So, it is really fitting that you be the first person honored by NoVa. The whole board unanimously feels the same.
"Give a week…change lives forever!"
The Church of the Presentation, Upper Saddle River, NJ runs a non-denominational medical mission to Cavaillon for 8 days every six months. Join us!
We are always in need of caring doctors, nurses, nurse-practitioners, pharmacists, pharmacy technicians and Creole speaking translators.
Our next Mission Dates: Sunday, April 29th - Monday, May 7th, 2007
Dame Marie/St. Catherine Partnership
Dame Marie will be receiving more support from their twinned parish of St. Catherine of Sienna, Mountain Lakes. Together with the annual spaghetti dinner fundraiser, a request was made that parishioners commit to sponsoring children for the feeding program to enable them to go on to school.
Prayer Vigil: Memorial Service for Esterne Bruner
Esterne Bruner, father of six children, coordinator of the Grand Ravine Community Human Rights Council, was assassinated on September 21st, after he returned from a meeting at AUMOHD (Evel Fanfan's human rights group) concerning the second Grand Ravine Massacre. Bruner was always there at a press conference, at a demonstration to demand justice and reparation for victims. He agreed to take Widnise Jocelyn, who had lost her mother, father and aunt in one massacre on July 7th.
Mario Burocher wrote and recited the following for the Memorial:
Jalouzi!
Jalouzi pasyon dangere makònen ak manti, vironnen nan lanmò.
Nan palè Bondye Papa a, kèk zanje te gen lanbisyon,
Yo rantre nan fè move aksyon.
Chase; Konsa yo tornen satan.
Pasyon jalouzi:
Nan bel kreasyon Bondye a, gason ak fanm yo te rele: Adana ak Eve.
Adana ak Eve te fè 2 pitit gason: Cayen ak Abel.
Cayen: Bandi, sauvage, anbisye.
Abel: Ti gason sage, renmen Bondye.
Bondye renmen li.
Cayen touye Abel.
Pasyon jalouzi.
Ayiti manman libèté, chaché libète pou anpil payi.
Ondiras, Venezuela, Guatemala e e lees zetazini.
Jalouzi mennen ti peyi sila nan 34 kou deta.
Dènye kou 2004 la, fè li tounen koukou.
San inosan koulé, pitit Bondye tonbe.
Fòk sa fini, fòk sa chanje.
Dechouke jalouzi nan kè nou.
Dechouke l'mare l'anchennen l'
Kloure l', kloure l', kloure l' kloure l'l'l'l'.
Dòmi, dòmi Desaline, dòmi.
Dòmi, dòmi, Tousen, dòmi.
Dòmi, dòmi tou sak tonbe Cité soley, dòmi.
Dòmi, dòmi, tou sak tonbe sou Bèlè, dòmi.
Dòmi, dòmi sa ki tonbe Matisan.
Dòmi, dòmi saki tonbe Granravine.
Dòmi an pè.
Esterne, Esterne dòmi, dòmi dòmi an pè
San ou koule pou soèy ka leve.
San ou koule pou lavi ka retounen.
San ou koule pou konplo ka fini.
San ou koule pou jalouzi kaba.
Dòmi, dòmi Esterne, dòmi, dòmi, Dòmi.
Prayer, preaching, readings, messages and song completed the remembrance. Congressman Donald Payne attended and spoke on the current needs of Haiti and asked for a committee from HSNNE to meet with him regarding the interim Cooperative Framework paper and the international donors commitment to Haiti.
Regarding the current situation in Grand Ravine, the following is an excerpt from a letter to Atty. Claudy Gassant, Government Prosecutor on Nov. 2nd, 2006:
"Thousands of refugees have been created and they are without housing. The acts of terror have been enormous and the near total inaction by the authorities, Haitian and UN, until now is inexcusable. To say that it is a matter of deadly conflicts between armed groups is not an excuse for this inaction. There has been and still is a group of citizens and AUMOHD who are not partisan, who follow a belief in non-violence and the law. These people, still courageous in the face of death threats, greatly deserve a high level of cooperation with all the authorities."
Half Hour for Haiti Actions
Brian Concannon reminds us that the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS' 58th anniversary is December 10th. This articulates a vision of a world where everyone enjoys the same rights regardless of their national origin, race, gender, status or the status of their country. Haiti has always provided the International Community a challenge to live up to the Declaration's principles of Universality, and too often the world's powerful countries and institutions have failed to rise to that challenge.
The Half Hour for Haiti action is to ask Louise Arbour, Canadian Judge and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, to apply human rights in Haiti without distinction. She correctly recognized the need for the Haitian government to respect its human rights obligations, especially regarding the prisons and the economic and social rights of the majority of Haitians who are poor. But she failed to even mention the need for the international community, including the United Nations and powerful countries like Canada, the U.S. and France to respect their own human rights obligations with respect to Haiti.
Canada Haiti Action Network documented:
- The three countries' active participation in the overthrow of Haiti's Constitutional government
- The UN's refusal to investigate while sending a peacekeeping force, MINUSTAH
- Systemic, widespread complicity in human rights violations by MINUSTAH troops (documented by several human rights investigations)
The Canadian network provided Ms. Arbour with the major human rights reports written on Haiti since MINUSTAH'S deployment and urged her to launch a full investigation of the role the UN and Canada played.
Address:
High Commissioner Louise Arbour
Office of the UN
High Commissioner of Human Rights, UNOG-OHCHR
1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
or
fax "011" 41-22-917-9022.
Jubilee USA welcomes the Inter-American Development Bank decision to cancel debts of five Latin American countries. It also welcomes the special consideration for Haiti. But it continues to urge the IDB to cancel the broadest amount of debt possible while implementing immediate debt cancellation for Haiti. To benefit, Haiti needs to implement a series of harmful economic reforms mandated by international financial institutions, led by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Because more than half of Haiti's $1.3 billion in debt was contracted by the brutal dictatorships of Francois and Jean-Claude Duvalier, it is unjust that Haiti is being asked to comply with economic policies such as privatization of basic services or increased trade liberalization before obtaining full debt cancellation. We reiterate our call for immediate debt cancellation for all impoverished countries in Latin America and the Caribbean where debt is odious or impedes human development and progress towards the Millennium Development Goals.
People in the News
Claudette Antoine Werleigh
Claudette Antoine Werleigh of Haiti will become the next Secretary General of Pax Christi International, taking office in November 2007. Claudette can boast extensive international experience in the fields of peace, justice and reconciliation using non-violent means.She has a university degree in Law and Economics, as well as a Post Graduate Specialization in Adult Non-Formal Education. She has previously held a number of different governmental and non-governmental positions. From August 1990 onwards Mrs. Werleigh became active in public administration and politics in Haiti, as a Minister for Social Affairs and Foreign Affairs (1990 to 1995). Notably, she also served as prime Minister of the Republic of Haiti in 1995 and 1996. Important to us, she is the sister of our good friend and colleague Guy Antoine.
Sonia Pierre, RFK Human Rights Award Laureate
by Rev. Eugene SqueoA few months ago, Guy Antoine arranged for Sonia Pierre, a Dominican-Haitian, who is president of MUDHA and has a long history as a human rights activist, to be the featured speaker at one of HSNNE's monthly prayer vigils for Haiti. Sonia spoke movingly about the horrendous working and living conditions of Haitian migrants on the sugar cane plantations in the Dominican Republic. Those of us who were present in St. Patrick's Chapel were impressed by Sonia Pierre as a woman of compassion, courage and commitment.
HSNNE members were therefore pleased to learn that Sonia Pierre was named the recipient of the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award for 2006. I was delighted to be able to travel to Washington along with Rev. Petero Sabune in order to be present for the award ceremony which was held in the US Senate Caucus Room on November 17th. HSNNE was also represented at the ceremony by Guy Antoine.
Sonia was born on a batey (a sugar cane plantation) in the Dominican Republic. At the age of thirteen, she was put in jail for participating in a demonstration for better working and living conditions for all cane cutters. It was in the partial success of the demonstration that her conviction to fight for the rights of her Dominican-Haitian people took root.
Cutting sugar cane is strenuous and back breaking work. Dominicans refuse to work in the bateyes and look down upon the braceros (cane cutters), much as United States natives relegate crop picking to migrants who are at the same time disdained as illegal aliens. Not only is their work scorned but the braceros are subjected to inhumane slave-like working conditions and are deprived of their basic human rights and even treated as non-persons in Dominican society.
Every year the Dominican government engages in round-ups of "illegal Haitian migrants" and deports an estimated 45,000 of the migrants to Haiti. The Dominican politicians use the Haitian migrants to distract the Dominican populace from the political issues and social problems of Dominican society by exploiting the fears and racism that exist among Dominicans and by scapegoating the Haitian migrants for all the ills of Dominican society.
Sonia's organization, MUDHA, which she founded in 1983, works to empower women and to advance the rights of Dominican-Haitians and Haitian migrants in the Dominican Republic. One way that MUDHA works to ensure basic rights to children of Haitian descent is by registering and documenting births that take place on the bateyes and seeing that birth certificates are issued by the Dominican government.
In accepting her award, Sonia Pierre was very gracious and accepted on behalf of the residents of the bateyes and her co-workers in MUDHA. She also accepted the award on behalf of the oppressors in the Dominican government and on the bateyes - because their hatred and rancor provide Sonia with a constant reminder of how not to treat people and how to struggle for justice without hatred and without rancor.
At a small group meeting with Sonia at the RFK Center, she answered acting director Monika Kalra question that they could help in her work by publicizing the inhuman conditions on the bateyes and by pressuring the government of the Dominican Republic to respect the rights of all who are born, live or work within its borders.
In making the award presentation, Senator Edward Kennedy cited Sonia for devoting her life to the cause of equality and justice, two of the most fundamental human rights. Senator Kennedy finished his remarks by turning to Sonia Pierre and saying to her: "Kenbe Fèm! - Keep the Faith." Members of HSNNE join in the same sentiment: Sonia, Kenbe Fèm!
HSNNE Events and Special Announcements
HSNNE will show the film The Price of Sugar, which depicts the human rights abuses in the Dominican Republic, at its December 12th meeting. At the January meeting, we'll hear about Fr. Rick Frechette's work in Cite Soleil and Upper Saddle River's work in Cavaillon.
Mark your calendar for our annual Dinner Dance April 21, 2007 . One of our honorees is Bill Quigley, attorney for Father Gerard Jean-Juste. Fr. Jean-Juste still needs letters of support to be re-instated.
Blessings on this Holy Season. Thank you for remembering HSNNE in your giving.
Information about trips to the cane fields of the Dominican Republic can be obtained from Stella Petrone, a Canadian high school teacher, who meets with Fr. Christopher Hartley, PhD, an American from NYC. Fr. Hartley has been living in the Dominican Republic for eight years. Stella claims he is the cane cutters' Nelson Mandela/Mother Teresa and has given his life to advocating for the sugar slaves.
Contact information: PetroGlor@aol.com, Stella Petrone (905 338 8346), 24th Annual Haitian Experience Slavery Awareness 2007, Dominican Republic July 2-9; also, hartleychristopher@gmail.com, 809 526 9264.
"With Paul VI and John Paul II, as well as the documents of the Latin American and North American bishops, a significant shift took place. Now the 'plight of the poor' is seen not primarily as a part of reality that calls for charity, but as part of disordered systems calling for justice. In this context the spirituality demanded is SOLIDARITY with the poor."
- Quote from Jesuit Walter Burghardt's talk in Washington on July 10, 2006. (emphasis added)