Beverly Bell first went to Haiti as a teenager. Since then she has dedicated most of her life to working for democracy, women’s rights, and economic justice in that country. She founded or co-founded six organizations and networks dedicated exclusively to supporting the Haitian people, including the Lambi Fund of Haiti. She worked for both presidents Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Rene Preval and wrote Walking on Fire: Haitian Women’s Stories of Survival and Resistance (Cornell University Press, 2001). Today she is associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and runs the economic justice group Other Worlds.
Alexis Erkert and Deepa Panchang are co-coordinators of Other Worlds' Another Haiti is Possible program. You can access all of Other Worlds’ past articles regarding post-earthquake Haiti here.
In Haiti, "We Will Never Fall Asleep Forgetting"
At the Toussaint Louverture Airport in Port-au-Prince, I spot Ronal’s taptap, pick-up-turned-public-bus, painted to resemble an Argentine flag - a salute to his favored team in last year’s World Cup soccer match. Ronal’s first report is about his glee over last month’s return of Jean-Claude Duvalier. Duvalier’s ouster in 1986 ...
Haitian Renaissance: Youth Paint a New Country
“Everyone expects there to be a new problem daily in Haiti. I can’t concentrate on problems each day,” said Roseanne Auguste, coordinator of a youth art program in the sprawling, under-resourced Port-au-Prince section of Carrefour-Feuilles. The program is run through the community clinic Association for the Promotion of Family Integrated ...
The Right to Housing for Internally Displaced Haitians
While the eyes of the world are on Haiti’s illegitimate elections and the return of the deposed dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, about 1.5 million displaced earthquake survivors continue to live in sub-human conditions. In the absence of large-scale or systemic responses by the government, international community, or aid organizations, progressive civil ...
Dennis Brutus: A Small Tribute to a Giant Man
This week we depart from Haiti to visit the native son of another country with a deep history of oppression and resistance: South Africa. The luminary Dennis Brutus - freedom fighter, economic and environmental justice activist, professor, and poet - died last year on December 26. We republish this eulogy ...
"Miami Rice": The Business of Disaster in Haiti
As we file this article, Port-au-Prince is thick with the smoke of burning tires and with gunfire. Towns throughout the country, along with the national airport, are shut down due to demonstrations. Many are angry over the government’s announcement on Tuesday night of which two presidential candidates made the run-offs: ...
The Poor Always Pay: The Electoral Crisis in Haiti
The start of Haiti’s most recent crisis came with ample warning. Most Port-au-Prince residents scurried to their homes mid-afternoon last Tuesday, certain of the violence and chaos which would ensue once the electoral council announced which two presidential candidates would make it to the run-offs. The trouble-makers didn’t wait until ...
"The People Must Be Agents of Change:" The Lambi Fund of Haiti
Josette Pérard is director of Fon Lanbi Haiti, the Haitian counterpart of the Lambi Fund. Fon Lanbi trains, builds capacity of, and gets grants to women’s and small farmer organizations in rural areas. Josette’s perspectives on community development follow.The idea of development is to provide everyone with the means to ...
Amid Haitian Crisis, Opportunity
When people ask me, as they do all the time, “Is there any cause for hope in Haiti?” I answer yes.It’s more tempting to think that the situation is so hopeless that it can’t any worse, especially right now. Last week, Hurricane Tomas brought three days of heavy storms, causing ...
Haitian Women and Elections: Presidents, Politics, and Power
Reconstructing Haiti is not about buildings, projects, or money. It’s about power, about who gets to control what the future Haiti looks like. Redistributing power, and creating a new society based on different theories and practices of it, are perhaps more important in the aftermath of the January 11 earthquake ...
Haiti is a reminder of a lesson we in New Orleans got after Hurricane Katrina and the broken levees: the capacity of humanity to survive, sustain culture, and create joy – no matter the external circumstances - is without limit. That capacity is unsinkable, like trying to keep a cork ...
Citizen Protests, Government Repression Mount in Haiti
“I came to protest so we can find a solution. Misery is killing me,” said Mascarie Sainte-Anne, 70, at the edge of a rally in front of Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive’s office on October 12. Haitians have been taking to the streets with increasing frequency since August in calls for ...
Beyond Wyclef: What Haitians Want From Elections
We asked dozens of Haitians from different social sectors how they felt about the November 28 elections, and what they want or expect from a new government. Here are some of their responses. Louisiane Nazaire defines herself as a peasant. She is a member of a local peasant farmer group ...
Haitian Farmers: Growing Strength to Grow Food
Rony Charles, a rice grower and member of the Agricultural Producer Cooperative of Verrettes, said, “Instead of foreigners sending us food, they should give us the chance to do our own agriculture so it can survive.”Giving domestic agriculture the chance to survive would address four critical needs:Creating employment for the ...
An Alternative Environmental Future for Haiti
Haiti is famous around the world primarily for its problems, one being advanced ecological destruction. However, as with its other problems, citizens – with international friends and the occasional help of the government – are working to turn this around and create a healthy environment. Aldrin Calixte tells of the ...
Getting Their Reward on Earth: Haitian Social Movements and Reconstruction
“There needs to be a new vision for Haiti, and that vision needs to come from the people,” says Marc-Arthur Fils-Aimé, director of the Karl Leveque Cultural Institute (commonly known by its Creole acronym ICKL), a grassroots center which supports peasant and other popular organizations to help them develop their ...
"Help Us Produce, Don't Give Us Food": Food Sovereignty in Haiti (Part IV)
Jonas Deronzil is a farmer from the village of Mogé in Haiti’s fertile Artibonite Valley, and one of about 2,000 members of a production and marketing cooperative. Here he analyzes the problems Haitian small producers face, notably U.S. food imports, and proposes alternatives.I am a peasant planter, that’s all I ...
If one positive thing has come from the earthquake of January 12, it is the greater inclusion of Haiti in the human family. True, the catastrophe has brought out of the woodwork many scoundrels – individuals, corporations, agencies, and governments – looking to gain wealth and power off of poverty ...
"Even If We're Peasants, We Deserve to Live Too": Tèt Kole on the Needs of Haitian Farmers
Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen (Heads Together Small Producers of Haiti) is the oldest peasant group in Haiti, born covertly in 1970 during the Duvalier dictatorship. Today Tèt Kole is one of Haiti’s two national peasant farmer movements, with more than 55,000 members in all ten departments of the country. ...
"Part of the Dream for National Reconstruction": Haitian Refugee Camps Model Future Society
While it should never be the case that a high percentage of the Haitian population remains living in refugee camps seven months after the earthquake, still camp residents have managed to create in a few of those camps a small-scale model of the type of future society that many would ...
For Partners in Health, Good Health Means Justice and Rights
With the motto “Providing a preferential option for the poor in health care,” Partners in Health offers an unusual model of health care provision. Its mission is both medical and moral.Partners in Health is widely recognized as changing the potential for health for low-income people and countries throughout the world. ...
"People Need a Normal, Stable Life" (The Urgency of Housing in Haiti, Part V)
Carine Exantus is a 22-year-old university student majoring in social communications. She lost her home, aunt, and cousin in the earthquake of January 12. In “You Need to Hear from the People: Communicating from Haiti’s Refugee Camps” (August 5, 2010),” Carine explains why she has been blogging from the internally ...
"You Need to Hear From the People:" Communicating From Haiti's Refugee Camps
“We’re working to give speech to the most excluded, to democratize the means of communications in Haiti,” said Sony Esteus, director of the Society for Social Mobilization and Communication, or SAKS by its Creole acronym. Haitian community radio stations are gearing up broadcast the voices, perspectives, and issues of internally ...
Citizen Mobilization for Housing in Haiti (The Urgency of Housing, Part IV)
“We’re mobilizing people in the camps and the shantytowns to let them know that getting housing is a right. Our vision is to make the problem of housing a focal point of people’s struggle,” said Reyneld Sanon of the Force for Reflection and Action on Housing (FRAKKA by its Creole ...
The Right to Housing in Haiti (The Urgency of Housing Part III)
Colette Lespinasse is director of the Support Group for the Repatriated and Refugees (GARR, by its French acronym) in Port-au-Prince. Here are her thoughts on solutions to the crisis in which 1.9 million homeless people are still living in precarious tents and other makeshift structures, six months after the earthquake ...
"For a Better Life for the Peasants": Food Sovereignty and Land Reform in Haiti (Part II)
Tèt Kole Ti Peyizan Ayisyen (Heads Together Small Producers of Haiti) is one of Haiti’s two national peasant farmer movements. The oldest peasant group in Haiti, it was born in 1970 under the Duvalier dictatorship. Tèt Kole’s history is notable also because of the violence it has faced at the ...
Click here to suggest an article
May 9th, 2013
Haitian Sweatship Workers Speak: Subpoverty Wages and Sexual Coercion
Written by Beverly BellBelow, Haitian women workers tell of their experiences in sweatshops. These interviews, gathered over the past two years, are among many dozens ...
March 5th, 2013
A Tale of Two NGOs: In Haiti, Disaster Aid or Aid Disaster?
This review of Killing With Kindness was written by Other Worlds' founder and coordinator Beverly BellThree years after the deadly earthquake in Haiti, what has ...
December 11th, 2012
Interview with Larry Cohen, President of the Communications Workers of America
Interview by Beverly BellGiven the path we’ve been on in this country, the American dream is in tatters. Whether it’s a voice on the job ...
September 11th, 2012
Haitian activist tours U.S. demanding housing rights for the country’s 400,000 displaced
Housing activist Reyneld Sanon is beginning a tour to key cities in the United States. The tour will raise awareness about Under Tents, the ...
August 29th, 2012
The Creole Connection: New Orleans, Haiti, and Catastrophe
By Beverly BellAugust 28, 2012 As a native and resident of New Orleans who has spent three decades in and out of Haiti, and as ...
July 2nd, 2012
“Under Tents”: International Campaign Launch for Housing in Haiti
"The quantity of people who are homeless in Port-au-Prince today is not acceptable. We need the support of other governments, like the US, to demand ...
March 28th, 2012
By Alexis Erkert When police and the landowner commanded Michelène Pierre to vacate her tent on a Sunday afternoon so that they could light it ...
June 28th, 2011
By Beverly Bell, based on reporting from Haiti-based Haiti Grassroots Watch and AlterPresse HINCHE, Haiti, June 27 – Last week, thousands of farmers and supporters ...
May 5th, 2011
Haiti: Just When You Think It Can't Get Worse
We may soon look back on this period in Haiti with greater appreciation. Amidst the world-historic levels of death and suffering from last January’s earthquake, ...
September 16th, 2010
"Help Us Produce, Don't Give Us Food": Food Sovereignty in Haiti (Part IV)
Jonas Deronzil is a farmer from the village of Mogé in Haiti’s fertile Artibonite Valley, and one of about 2,000 members of a production and ...
October 21st, 2010
Haiti is a reminder of a lesson we in New Orleans got after Hurricane Katrina and the broken levees: the capacity of humanity to survive, ...
May 27th, 2011
Haitian Mayor's Office Vows to Destroy All Refugee Camps, Launches Violent Campaign
On May 23 and 25, police in the Delmas district of Port-au-Prince destroyed camps which sheltered people who were otherwise homeless since the earthquake. Police ...
March 5th, 2013
A Tale of Two NGOs: In Haiti, Disaster Aid or Aid Disaster?
This review of Killing With Kindness was written by Other Worlds' founder and coordinator Beverly BellThree years after the deadly earthquake in Haiti, what has ...
October 7th, 2010
Haitian Farmers: Growing Strength to Grow Food
Rony Charles, a rice grower and member of the Agricultural Producer Cooperative of Verrettes, said, “Instead of foreigners sending us food, they should give us ...
'Dirty Wars' by Jeremy Scahill
Why have you started a comedy festival in northern Michigan in the middle of winter?
Because if you were here in the dead of winter in the middle of nowhere (which is actually somewhere to us), you'd need a few laughs too ... Continue Reading
Michael Moore on MSNBC with Michael Eric Dyson, 3/22/13
Michael Moore on Democracy Now!, 6/28/12
Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show, 5/11/12
Michael Moore on MSNBC, Super Tuesday, 3/6/12
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Michael Moore on the Rachel Maddow Show, 2/27/12
