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Mass Rebellion in Haiti

Photo credit: Haïti Liberté

By Joseph Rosen

Waves of popular uprisings have been roiling Haitian society for months. Workers, peasants, teachers and students have taken to the streets to oppose the corrupt U.S. backed oligarchy in control of their government. The last upsurge in protests began on Nov. 18, marking the anniversary of the Battle of Vertières which decided the hard-won war for Haitian independence in 1803. For several days, workers across the country mounted a general strike. The streets have surged with hundreds of thousands of people fed-up with a government that has not only ignored their needs but has met their protests with lethal violence.

The most recent mobilizations have centered around the embezzlement of as much as $3.8 billion dollars in public funds by government elites since 2008. There are obvious reasons that so many have rallied against the injustice of the stolen public funds. While Haiti’s bourgeoisie and their crony bureaucrats have been taking vacations to Miami, less than half of the Haitian population has access to potable water. The masses of Haitians are still struggling to rebuild basic infrastructure after the devastating earthquake of 2010. The funds could have been used to meet the dire needs of the Haitian people, one in four of whom lack access to sanitation.

In fact, the so-called PetroCaribe funds in question were intended for development, for the construction of much needed infrastructure and social programs as part of an accord with oil-rich Venezuela under the leadership of Hugo Chavez. This deal reflects a longstanding historical bond of solidarity with Venezuela. In 1816, the young republic of Haiti lent arms and aid to Simon Bolivar and his army in their fight for independence from Spain on the condition that slavery be abolished in the founding of Venezuela. In 2017, the PetroCaribe program was halted due to the imposition of financial sanctions on Venezuela by the Trump administration.

Acts of international solidarity fly in the face of U.S. rulers who have sought to undermine the popular will of the Haitians and the Venezuelans ever since this country was founded by wealthy slaveowners. For more than two hundred years, the U.S. has been relentless in its attempts to keep Haiti as a colony where low wage workers would produce goods for export, up through the bloody coups that removed the last popular government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Even today many Haitians work in sweatshops for an average of $3 a day to produce textiles and garments for U.S. companies.

The current U.S. backed government of President Jovenel Moïse as well as the government of his predecessor Michel Martelly are both implicated in the theft of billions. Some in the streets are still calling for an accounting of the lost funds. An increasing number are learning through struggle that this demand is akin to asking a thief to arrest himself. Fanmi Lavalas, the party of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is calling to remove Moïse, his ministers, and to establish a transitional government. In their indifference to the suffering of Haitian masses, Moïse and his government have become more an enemy of the people by the day.

As repression grows more brutal, the masses are awakening to the need for a complete overhaul of the state. The Haitian National Police have killed a mounting number of protesters. More troublingly, there have been reports of killings carried out by paramilitary forces, recalling the death squads of the U.S. backed Duvalier regime. On November 13, mercenaries carried out a massacre of dozens in the La Saline neighborhood near Port au Prince; images of the brutal aftermath have fueled the outrage of the anti-government opposition. Among the National Police are 1,300 armed United Nations police officers forming an occupying army that answers to the U.N. Security Council, an instrument of U.S. imperialist rule. For the Haitians set on real revolution, they will have to contend with up to 10,000 U.N. troops should the Security Council authorize it.

The historic destiny of workers and oppressed people in the United States is intimately bound up with the destiny of the Haitian people. In the first case of U.S. aid to a foreign government, the slave-owning George Washington lent over $700,000 to the French planters of St. Domingue in order to put down a rebellion of African slaves. Neither Washington nor the French got their way. Instead, Haiti became the first oppressed nation in the colonized world to win its independence and the Haitian revolution became the standard to which oppressed Africans across the United States aspired in their never ceasing struggle for liberation. Indeed, the heroic example of the Haitian revolution has long shone brightly as a beacon to all oppressed people of the world. Let the freedom seeking people of Haiti lead the way! « Chavire chodyè a » “Overturn the pot!”

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French Masses Take to the Streets, Rebel Against Government of the Super Rich

By Nathalie Clarke

Paris, France—Since May, French workers from all industries and students of all ages have been rising up against continued austerity. Austerity means cuts to wages and social programs making people poorer. Emmanuel Macron, the bankers’ president, as he’s often called because of his work with super rich bankers and his pro-rich, anti-worker policies, has been doing everything to turn back any small victories workers have won through class struggle.

After privatizing the French railway company, which puts workers at risk of mass layoffs, reducing government investment in public hospitals, and attempting to reform schools to side-line working-class students, he’s recently decided to increase the price of diesel fuel.

In response, over 280,000 workers from various parts of France headed to Paris and other big cities, created makeshift barricades from trashcans and old chairs, and reminded the ruling class how powerful a mass movement of workers can really be. Beyond the big cities, thousands of actions happened all over the country, in small towns, on the sides of roads, at tolls, at roundabouts.

This movement, called the “yellow vests” for the high-visibility jackets they wear, began without a political party or union, amongst workers complaining on social media—now driven to the streets by their fury.

The “yellow vests” movement, so-called for the high-visibility jackets the protesters wear, started without the leadership of a political party or union; the movement began among workers whose protests on social media spilled into the streets.

The movement has not only galvanized thousands of workers, it has widespread support: 80% of French citizens declared they support the yellow vests.

The movement erupted in response to a few cents increase on the price of diesel fuel, but it has come to encompass all workers’ frustrations at the elite government’s disconnection with most of France. Most recent demands include a capped monthly salary of 15,000 Euros (around 10 times minimum wage in France), a tax on airplane and boat fuel (which would affect large corporations and not workers), and an end to French interventions in Syria. The class struggle has allowed people who felt divided because of their race, their political party, the industry they work in, their religion, or their sexual orientation to realize that they have far more in common with each other than with the ultra-rich capitalists.

The yellow-vests have fueled a widespread feeling amongst workers: anger at inequalities stemming from the government’s imposing anti-worker and poor rightwing policies. But because elite politicians like Macron and his cabinet are not amongst those who benefit from welfare, unemployment benefits, or housing aid, they see no problem in reducing spending that literally saves lives. Macron’s Trump-like government claims that the increase in the price of diesel is an ecological tax, acting as though they are not aware that taxes on diesel will disproportionately affect rural areas, where people drive to work every day and where most live below the poverty line. Any tax (that does not depend on income), whether the proposed diesel tax or the absurdly high sales tax in Louisiana, is unjust because people who make 7 dollars an hour pay the same as those who earn over 250 dollars an hour.

The big business media, if it speaks of the yellow-vests at all, will probably talk about the rioting that occurred in several big cities. It was not rioting; it was a justified rebellion. They, of course, make no mention of the billionaires who steal MILLIONS of Euros from France every year by cheating on their taxes. No one will mention that these workers are engaging in the greatest act of self-defense there is: fighting for their right to exist. Poverty is deadly: an estimated 10,000 to 14,000 people die per year because of unemployment in France and 6,000 people die because of homelessness.

A few cents may seem like nothing to elites who have never lived on minimum wage, but we workers know how much a few cents can mean when the paycheck won’t come for another week, rent is due tomorrow, electricity and gas bills were due yesterday, there is no food in the fridge, and the kids need coats for the cold weather. Whether in New Orleans, Louisiana or Orléans, France, workers generate all the wealth of society. Our children don’t deserve to go hungry. We deserve better than to struggle every month to make ends meet. We deserve more than the crumbs the capitalist offers us. We deserve better because it is from the sweat of our labor that the capitalists make their profits, because we are the unsung heroes—carpenters, electricians, culture-bearers, hospitality workers, nurses, teachers, builders, truckers, train drivers—upon whose labor society is built. The capitalists, whether in France or the United States, will not give us what we deserve, but, united as a class, we can take it.