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New York’s Haitian community will march
across the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan’s Liberty Plaza to show
solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protestors on Friday,
October 7, 2011 at 5 p.m. The Haitian community will rally
at Cadman Plaza Park at 4 p.m. and then walk across the
bridge to arrive at Liberty Plaza at 6 p.m., where they
will rally for one hour.
“For the past seven and a
half years, UN troops have occupied Haiti, shoring up the 2004
coup d’état which Washington led against Haiti’s elected
government and enforcing Wall Street’s austerity policies which
are strangling our people,” said Ray Laforest of the
International Support Haiti Network (ISHN). “Now Washington
and Wall Street are trying to strangle the U.S. working class in
the same way. But the people are standing up to carry out a
counter-occupation. We Haitians are fighting the same battle as
those demonstrating on Wall Street, so we are going to join
forces.”
On April 20, 1990, over 100,000
Haitians poured across the Brooklyn Bridge and tied up downtown
Manhattan to protest a Center for Disease Control (CDC)
prohibition against Haitians donating blood because they were
supposedly more at risk for HIV infection. Since then, Haitians
and their supporters have reenacted the historic demonstration
several times, with thousands marching in October 1991 to
protest the Sep. 30, 1991 coup d’état against former President
Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in August 1997 to protest the police
sexual brutalization of Abner Louima, and in April 2000 to
protest the police killing of Patrick Dorismond.
The Haitian demonstrators will
also be demanding an immediate end to the UN military occupation
of Haiti, whose Security Council mandate expires on Oct. 15; a
stop to Haitian President Michel Martelly’s moves to resurrect
the repressive Haitian Army, which has been demobilized for over
16 years; and the take-over of the Bill Clinton-led Interim
Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC) by a governing council
representing the Haitian people. The IHRC is deciding how to
spend the $10 billion in earthquake recovery aid which Haiti
will receive over the next three years.
“It’s time for the people of
the world to link arms against this small cabal of billionaire
bankers who are driving millions of people the world over into
misery,” said Ray Laforest. “The Occupy Wall Street
movement resonates with us Haitians and with decent, working
people everywhere.”
The October 7 march across the
Brooklyn Bridge has been initiated by a coalition of Haitian
community groups and individuals including the Fanmi Lavalas New
York chapter, the International Support Haiti Network (ISHN) and
the Konbit Ayisyen pou Kore Lakay (KAKOLA), among others.
The last time Haitians crossed
the bridge was in a candle-light march on the bitterly cold
night of January 29, 2010. The demonstration, called by the
Coalition to Stand With Haiti, was to honor the memory of those
killed in Haiti’s January 10, 2010 earthquake and to show
solidarity with the Haitian survivors struggling with hunger,
disease, and homelessness.
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