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.
Haitian Women Mourn the Dead, Recommit to the Living: International Women's Day (Part I)
All over Haiti on March 8, International Women’s Day, women’s groups will meet to honor their dead and raise up their living. As for how to raise up the living, Myriam Merlet, a pioneering feminist who died in the earthquake once said this: “This society [must] get to a different ...
My 85-year-old mother left a message on my phone right after the earthquake. “I’ve found 44 baskets around the house and wonder if you can help get them to Haiti. They’re so pretty, and I think they would be good for people to keep their belongings in.” Expressions of kindness ...
Chavannes Jean-Baptiste is the Executive Director of the Peasant Movement of Papay (MPP by its Creole acronym) and the spokesperson for the National Peasant Movement of the Congress of Papay (MPNKP). He gave this interview last month in MPP’s training center in the rambling, fertile fields and gardens in the ...
A Future for Agriculture, a Future for Haiti
We plant but we can’t produce or market. We plant but we have no food to eat. We want agriculture to improve so our country can live and so we peasants can live, too.– Rilo Petit-homme, peasant organizer from St. Marc, Haiti What would it take to transform Haiti’s economy ...
"Post-Disaster Needs Assessment" Whose Needs? Whose Assessment?
The Haitian government has been largely silent since the January 12 earthquake. Publicly, that is. Who knows what officials are saying behind closed doors to international governments and other donors? Citizens don’t. They have heard from President René Préval about his personal losses from the quake – his shirts, his ...
The downtown, around Grand Rue in the old part of the city, looks like a modern-day variant of Pompei. Nothing but ruins. Here the tall buildings didn’t even pancake; they just crumbled. It’s ghostly, with no electricity or cars and few people. Those who are out move quietly and slowly. ...
“Yon sèl dwèt pa manje kalalou,” says Christroi Petit-homme, a member of a peasant farmer organization. You can’t eat gumbo with one finger. Peasant groups throughout rural Haiti form the fingers of the hand, reaching out with humanitarian aid for those left bereft after the earthquake. U.S. Ambassador Ken Merten ...
As Haiti moves forward from the current point of devastation of its population, capitol city, and economy, what could a different nation look like?Who knows better than the Haitian majority? Why not ask them what they need and want?Their perspectives have been sorely lost from the post-earthquake plans of some ...
“Collapsed house, no number” is an old expression that Haitians uses to indicate that their flimsy homes of sticks-and-mud or shoddy cement blocks have finally fallen apart. Today that expression could serve as the motto for the capital city of Port-au-Prince. Take Helia Lajeunesse, an unemployed children’s rights activist. When ...
Everyone in Haiti knows many amazing stories about those who survived the earthquake, and at least an equal number of horror stories about those who didn’t. Here are a few from those who survived. Bishop André Pierre starts our conversation this way: “How are you doing, Father André?” “Oh, fine. ...
“A loss for the whole nation.” That is how one of Magalie Marcelin’s friends described the death of this women’s rights leader in Haiti’s earthquake January 12. Magalie was at the forefront of the 1980s birth of the contemporary women’s movement in Haiti (‘contemporary’ because recorded actions for gender equity ...
Community and Popular Radio in Haiti Today
Sony Esteus is squeezed into an elementary school chair, the kind with the curved piece of wood in front, in a courtyard. Around him are chickens, a fly-swarmed pile of compost, a truck, and a tent. Sony runs his laptop off of an extension cord running out a window. The ...
Putting 'Humanitarian' Back in 'Humanitarian Aid'
One of the first things that Haitians now living in the streets want to talk about is their disgust over the international food aid program. In such places as the camps in the downtown parks on Boulevard Champs de Mars, residents report, food is given sporadically – last week not ...
Beyond Disaster Aid to Solidarity
People have all kinds of things to say about where Haiti should go from here, and how it should get there. It’s an old story, that of being sure what’s best for the Haitian people, trying to remake Haiti in one’s own image. In this case, we don’t have to ...
The pioneering labor organizer Mother Jones said, “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.” That pretty much sums up the priorities for Haiti today. The fighting like hell has always been fierce in the nation that was once called the “pearl of the Antilles,” the wealthiest ...
From New Orleans to Port-au-Prince
(New Orleans, Feb. 7, 5:00 p.m.) A bald man I just passed on the street sports temporary fleur-de-lis tattoos all over his pate. The streets are loud with “Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints? Who dat? Who dat?”, chanted in that special New Orleans syncopation. Over at Parasol’s, ...
Following is the log of Beverly Bell during the first ten days after the earthquake in Haiti. January 12, 2010 4:12 p.m. 7.0 EARTHQUAKE ROCKS HAITI. I read this email subject line several times. My brain can’t make sense of it. I blast a note in Creole out to dozens ...
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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
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