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26638: Simidor (forward): Haitian Labor Group Confronts US Lavalas Backers (fwd)
From: daniel simidor <danielsimidor@yahoo.com>
http://www.grassrootshaiti.org/News/HaitianLaborGroup.html Haitian Labor
Group
Confronts US Lavalas Backers
NEW YORK, Nov. 11
Long-standing differences in the Haitian left began to emerge as an
issue among US progressives this fall as the well-known Haitian labor
organizing group Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle") responded to what it
called a "slander" from US supporters of the Lavalas movement of deposed
Haitian president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
During an "International Tribunal on Haiti" in Washington, DC on
the weekend of Sept. 23, a panelist charged that Batay Ouvriye had been funded
by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as part of a
program for "creating a leftist opposition" in Haiti in the months
leading up to Aristide's overthrow in February 2004. The money came
through the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center and was part of a $3 million
package for subverting the Haitian government, according to Jeb
Sprague, an independent journalist and a graduate student at
California State University at Long Beach. Batay Ouvriye was "working
with co-conspirators overthrowing a democratically elected government," Sprague
said.
The tribunal was organized by several large left and solidarity
groups,
including International ANSWER, the International Action Center and
the Latin America Solidarity Coalition. Sprague's presentation
was aired in New York on Sept. 28 on WBAI-FM's popular morning
program, "Wakeup Call."
Batay Ouvriye responded on Oct 1 [see below]. The group ridiculed
the
idea that it had been paid to be part of "an unholy alliance fabricated
by the State Department." In fact, the statement said, Batay
Ouvriye has a long, very public record of opposition to "the
Lavalas leaders, who we certainly exposed to be reactionaries,
swindlers, complete frauds, anti-popular and fundamentally anti-
worker." Sprague--who claimed to have conducted 30 interviews in
his research--"never once contacted our organization for
information," Batay Ouvriye charged.
Batay Ouvriye has worked with a number of international
solidarity
groups over the years, including the National Labor Committee and
the Campaign for Labor Rights. Among its
best-known campaigns were unionization drives at Grand Marnier and
Cointreau plantations in northern Haitian and the
recent unionization of a Dominican-owned factory
in a "free trade zone" by the Dominican border in Ouanaminthe.
During the Ouanaminthe struggle Batay Ouvriye received $3,500
from the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, in response to public appeals
for funds to help fired workers. This was apparently the funding Sprague
was referring to.
Stressing that it focuses on grassroots struggles "against the
bourgeoisie
concretely in the factories, sweatshops, plantations," Batay
Ouvriye asked why the International Tribunal had chosen to target
it rather than a number of much less militant
Haitian unions that "closely resemble...the pro-imperialist
and pro-bourgeois Confederation of Venezuelan Labor (CTV)," a
major force in the 2002 US-backed effort to overthrow
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
Batay Ouvriye noted that two of its supporters were killed
in
northern Haiti in May 2002 by goons led by a local Lavalas
mayor. Aristide's government responded to
the anti-union violence by arresting several Batay Ouvriye
organizers and two journalists; some were held in the National
Penitentiary until December 2002, when
they were released following an international campaign to
press the Lavalas government for their release.
The controversy between Batay Ouvriye and US supporters
of
Lavalas comes at a time when many US progressives are beginning
to question the picture of
the Haitian situation presented here by both mainstream
and alternative media, including the well-known national
radio and television program "Democracy
Now!"
The image of Lavalas as a unified militant force on the
left
has been shaken recently by disarray within the movement
over elections scheduled
to be held in December by a US-backed interim
government. A number of "grassroots
leaders" in Port-au-Prince neighborhoods are supporting the presidential
candidacy of former president Rene Preval, a personal friend
of Aristide's. Many former Lavalas office-holders,
meanwhile, are backing former World Bank official Marc
Bazin, a cabinet minister in the government of deposed dictator
Jean-Claude Duvalier ("Baby Doc") and a longtime proponent of
US-backed neoliberal economic programs for Haiti. Meanwhile groups
around the New York-based
weekly Haiti Progres are calling for a boycott of the elections.
All
factions are claiming the support of the Lavalas base.
------
A Batay Ouvriye organizer, Yanick Etienne, will be in
New
York the week of Nov. 21. She will be speaking at a public
forum, sponsored by the Grassroots
Haiti Solidarity Committee, on Friday, Nov. 25, at 6 pm,
at the Church of the Evangel
at 1950 Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. Etienne will be
available for interviews during the week. Grassroots
Haiti, a New York-based group of
long-time Haitian and North American activists, is
also organizing a delegation of activists and
independent journalists to visit Haiti in February to
solidify contacts with Batay Ouvriye and other
grassroots organizations.
David Wilson
Nicaragua Solidarity Network and the Grassroots Haiti Solidarity Committee
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