October 14
GUESTS: Dr. Andrew Meade, director of the Office of International Services at Vassar College and co-founder of the Vassar Haiti Project, talks about project's goals, both on campus and in the surrounding community. We also have co-founder and executive director of the VHP, Lila Meade.
Vassar Haiti Project
This has been a long term project at Vassar College, both to raise money for Haitian relief and to spread awareness of human rights abuses there.
We talked about the needs of the Haitian people as well as their history of resisting colonialism. In 1804 the country was the first nation in the world to abolish slavery, and it has been under attack ever since. Haiti became a Black led nation back when US politicians were buying and selling slaves. Even after the Civil War, the US continued its racism through the practices of forced sterilization, Jim Crow, and the study of Eugenics.
I thought that the interview failed when it came to the most recent US interventions in Haiti. I brought up the grifter Clintons, friends of Haitian dictators and neoliberal investors in colonial projects there. The last thirty years have seen some of the worst US interventions there, from the creation of corporate sweat shops to the CIA overthrow of President Aristide, arguably the father of his country.
Are NGOs that sell Haitian art and fund humanitarian projects doing good work or are they normalizing the occupation? Perhaps a bit of both. I wouldn't have invited Dr. Meade and his wife on if I was going to attack their obvious commitment to the Haitian people. So my questions are oblique. Perhaps my interview is also a bit of both.
