Haiti: The First Domino

Before you put your money where your mouth is, take a moment to think instead of just feeling.

Haiti was a man made disaster. The houses were built with a combination of money invested by predatory foreign businesspeople and money mal-invested in the wrong kinds of infrastructure development by charities, foreign government outreach, and regular people. Every dollar given over the past several decades has been divided up between corrupt community leaders, poorly trained development firms, and people without financial planning skills. We have to keep this new tidal wave of investment from earning the same reputation of inefficiency and waste.

There will be people who challenge you to pay attention to Haiti for years to come, to always keep it in your heart. Yet what of Rwanda, Sierre Leone, Myanmar, and even Afghanistan? Genocides, predatory religious regimes, military juntas run by those who dwell in narco-architecture mansions, and so many other man made events, have caused millions to die. Tens of millions. Hundreds of millions live in poverty and oppression. The real challenge, is for people to come to terms with the fact that almost two decades after the disasters of the 1990s and nearly a decade after the disasters of the 2000s, there has been no rebuilding. There has been no reconstruction. There are still latent fears that history will repeat itself.

Haiti is experiencing a repetition of history. In the 1820s the country was robbed of the equivalent of over 40 billion dollars by France, and the US collected interest on the debt they used to pay that bill for over a hundred years. In the 1860s, the world finally recognized the nation's independence - withheld due to the fact that the country was founded by slaves in an age of slavery - but did nothing as a blood thirsty Emperor slaughtered thousands upon thousands that dared to stand up to him. In the early 1900s, the nation was the only pawn of the First World War that no one talked about, batted back and forth between German and American corporate interests until the US Marines invaded. They brought Jim Crow laws to the land of the free slaves, and killed tens of thousands in the name of national security.

In the 1930s, the leader of the Dominican Republic executed the first attempted genocide in the Western Hemisphere since the 1600s. Some estimate that hundreds of thousands of Haitians were slaughtered. But do you know that? Does anyone? That Haiti was victim of a genocide less than eighty years ago? Soon after, the Duvalier dictatorships stole every dollar to come into the country for almost forty years, right up until 1986. They killed tens of thousands more. Since the fall of Baby Doc, the last Duvalier, who currently lives in France - untouched, never tried, and with billions of stolen money - there has been little reprieve. The Americans invaded in 1994, after a seven month blood letting where thousands were slaughtered - but not until former President Jimmy Carter secured a safe landing for the American troops. Thousands died while they stalled, and since that invasion, billions of dollars of fraud still took place.

2004? Another invasion, UN led. Thousands more dead.

2010? 200,000 dead. But if you really care, fix the problem. Remember Rwanda, the nation that is still in chaos and has nothing to show for itself - how can we say that we support Haiti and remember Haiti, if we tarnish the memory of the 1930s Haitian genocide by ignoring the most recent ones in the final years where we can give something to make things better. It is too late for the 1930s cleansing. How can you say you support Haiti, if you tarnish the memory of the dictatorships and predatory leaders by not putting this same spotlight, today given to Haiti, on Myanmar and Iran and Saudi Arabia and Yemen and Nigeria and North Korea and even Peru, where corrupt governments steal billions and force millions into poverty without the blink of an eye. How can you say you support Haiti, if you tarnish the memory of Haiti by ignoring the extreme poverty in our own backyards, the drug users and narcotics market too many of us tacitly endorse, that fuels many of the predators that likely plan to use this disaster in Haiti to increase their profit margins.

If you care, and give money to Haiti, follow up next month, next year, three years from now - demand to know where that money was spent, and shine a light on the poor construction practices of charity-hired development firms; be a pest, force the money to go in the right place... because it never has before. Never. Never once.

And then give to Rwanda. Give to the Sudan. Give to the Gaza strip. Give to Somalia. Give to the impoverished neighborhoods of Croatia. And the slums of Newark. And the slums of Montreal. And the bad neighborhoods in Edmonton, and London, and Paris, and Kingston, and Rio, and Tokyo, and New York City, and Cleveland. There is only one thing that can prevent another man made disaster. And you know what that is.