August 19
GUEST: Robert Roth, activist in the Central America solidarity movement, organizer for various campaigns to free political prisoners in the US, and co-founder of the Haiti Action Committee, talks about colonialism and how our media covers it up.
Haiti Action Committee
Like Jim Crow in the US, racism towards the country of Haiti has gone on for generations. And it has mostly been invisible to the majority of white Americans.
Part of that racism can't be understood unless one looks at the history of Haiti, and its overlord, the US Empire. The perpetual invasion, coups and private interventions are airbrushed out of our ever compliant media. Stories about Haiti are always like stories about our inner city ghettos. Blacks are perpetually described as shiftless, rebellious, and incapable of creating a workable society.
What isn't referred to is the millions of dollars being taken from Blacks in the form of wage theft, resource robbery, and ethnic cleansing. Many US corporations and their grossly overpaid CEOs thrive on exploiting Blacks, both in the US and in Haiti.
Slavery itself, that most obvious of exploitive institutions, persisted for hundreds of years in the US. Jim Crow and Sundown Towns lasted well over a century. The imperial injustices visited on Haiti's Black population go way back as well. Haiti is really an oppressed colony of the US, and since colonialism ultimately depends on racism to survive, the treatment of this supposed independent nation has been particularly bloody.
Take a look at the Haiti Action Committee above. Freedom for Haiti means removing the US knee from this island's neck.
