By Bev­erly Bell, Huff­in­g­ton Post

A slo­gan of Haiti’s pop­u­lar move­ment — a group­ing of many orga­nized sec­tors, from community-based jour­nal­ists, to coop­er­a­tive street ven­dors, to children’s rights advo­cates — is ‘Another Haiti Is Pos­si­ble.’ Most Haitians we speak with, what­ever their sec­tor or polit­i­cal per­sua­sion, have very clear ideas of what a dif­fer­ent Haiti could look like and what would be required for its con­struc­tion. Here are some of those ideas.

Jean Jores Pierre is stu­dent of eco­nom­ics at the State Uni­ver­sity of Haiti and an intern at a pol­icy advo­cacy orga­ni­za­tion. An orphan, when Jores’ home col­lapsed in the earth­quake, he began sleep­ing in a tent in the yard out­side the office of his orga­ni­za­tion. He is now liv­ing with rel­a­tives in Port-au-Prince.

The cat­a­stro­phe of Jan­u­ary 12 showed clearly how poorly the coun­try has been man­aged. At the core of the prob­lem has been the com­plete exclu­sion of those who have always dreamed of a Haiti which is based on sol­i­dar­ity between peo­ple. We’re talk­ing about all those who have decided to fight to change the con­di­tions of their lives and their com­pa­tri­ots’ lives.

Today, to get past the prob­lems, we have to envi­sion another Haiti, based on the par­tic­i­pa­tion of every­one, where women, peas­ants, and mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple have a place in soci­ety. Where sol­i­dar­ity serves as the basis of all national deci­sions. A sov­er­eign Haiti that can take its des­tiny in hand, with a clear per­spec­tive of how to raise up all Haitians with­out distinction.

Ros­nel Jean-Baptiste is a mem­ber of the national coor­di­nat­ing com­mit­tee of Tèt Kole Ti Pey­izan Ayisyen (Heads Together Small Hait­ian Peas­ants), a national orga­ni­za­tion of agri­cul­tural work­ers. He goes back and forth between his home in the coun­try­side and the organization’s head­quar­ters in Port-au-Prince.

We have to decon­struct the cap­i­tal by sup­port­ing agri­cul­ture in the coun­try­side and doing land reform, so that peo­ple have land to work and can live there. We have to bring ser­vices to the coun­try­side, too, not just have a gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive in each rural sec­tion, like we do now.

Re-envisioning Haiti… it’s not houses which will rebuild Haiti, it’s invest­ing in the agri­cul­tural sec­tor. If the coun­try doesn’t pro­duce, our farm­ers won’t be able to sur­vive. And we’ll always have to depend on others.

But if the gov­ern­ment hasn’t been able to do any­thing after [the earth­quake of] Jan­u­ary 12 to resolve the prob­lems, I don’t think they’ll do it for us now. It’s up to us, social move­ments, to unite our­selves to change the sit­u­a­tion of this coun­try and to change the model our state.

Jacque­line Cher­ilus is 22 and a fourth-year med­ical stu­dent at Uni­ver­sité Lumière in Port-au-Prince. On Jan­u­ary 12, her school col­lapsed, killing many of her pro­fes­sors and class­mates. By sheer luck, she wasn’t there. Her own home did not col­lapse, but it was dam­aged. Now, she and her fam­ily are afraid to go inside, so they sleep under a bright-blue tarp instead. Her uni­ver­sity has since re-opened in a new loca­tion, and every day, she and her sur­viv­ing class­mates spend money and hours tak­ing sev­eral buses across town. But, the pro­fes­sors haven’t shown up yet.

You’ve asked the wrong per­son. I’m not a polit­i­cal per­son, I don’t know a lot about these things. If you want me to think like a good Hait­ian patriot, then I’d say we need social change. Social change that can bring about polit­i­cal change. We need a rev­o­lu­tion in the polit­i­cal milieu. I don’t mean an armed rev­o­lu­tion or any­thing like that, but we need to demand what we really need. Life is too expen­sive; we need to bring prices down. Every­one should have access to what they need.

It’s the peo­ple first who can bring about change. They can make demands of the gov­ern­ment, so the gov­ern­ment can put pres­sure on the inter­na­tional community.

Yan­nick Eti­enne has been a labor rights orga­nizer with the grass­roots group Work­ers’ Strug­gle (Batay Ouvriyè) for many years. She speaks per­fect Eng­lish, hav­ing attended uni­ver­sity in the U.S. in the late 1960s, where she also engaged her­self in the anti-Vietnam war and Black power move­ments. She moves a lot around indus­trial zones in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere.

In re-building Haiti, the peo­ple are not being con­sulted. Yet, they have lots of ideas about what they don’t like and what kind of Haiti they would love. They say, “We would like it to be totally dif­fer­ent.” We have to change social rela­tions, change exploita­tion, change rural envi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion, change the con­trol by the big land own­ers and the cap­i­tal­ist class, all those involved in import-export com­merce. Those peo­ple have been rul­ing the coun­try, and look what’s hap­pened to it.

We need work­ers’ rights and social sup­port in the fac­to­ries, and work­ers have to be able to deter­mine the envi­ron­ment they want to work in. We need to get rid of peas­ants work­ing on halves [share­crop­ping where the farmer gives half of his pro­duce to the landowner]. We have to have land reform. It’s very impor­tant to make sure that small peas­ant get land to work and get the tech­ni­cal assis­tance they need. We have to offer peas­ants alter­na­tives in the rural areas and the cities, so they don’t have to cut trees to make charcoal.

Peo­ple are say­ing, “If we don’t orga­nize our­selves, these camps could become per­ma­nent places to stay.” We know that pro­vi­sional things in Haiti always become per­ma­nent. Peo­ple have to mobi­lize to make sure they build real homes, dig­ni­fied places.

We have to know what we’re fight­ing for. The earth­quake gives us an oppor­tu­nity as a move­ment, to con­tinue our orga­niz­ing, to push for social jus­tice, and to unify the peo­ple to take change into their own hands.

Nixon Boumba is an orga­nizer with the Demo­c­ra­tic Pop­u­lar Move­ment (MODEP by its Cre­ole acronym) and with stu­dents at the School of Social Sci­ences at the State Uni­ver­sity of Haiti. He prefers to be called Boumba, because of the polit­i­cal asso­ci­a­tions with his first name.

This wasn’t a nat­ural cat­a­stro­phe, but a social cat­a­stro­phe. It just repro­duced the pre-existent cas­tas­tro­phe, with so much exclu­sion and exploita­tion, where you have the “coun­try inside” and the “coun­try out­side” [as Port-au-Prince and the rural areas are known], where you have [dif­fer­en­tial power for] men and women. We pro­pose more egal­i­tar­ian relations.

We pro­pose a rup­ture with the crum­bling state, instead lead­ing to a state that’s at the ser­vice of the peo­ple. The rup­ture must first be with depen­dence, which has been rein­forced since Jan­u­ary 12, with the impe­ri­al­ists who are fur­ther mil­i­ta­riz­ing the country.

We want the school sys­tem to be nation­al­ized. We want the gov­ern­ment to ded­i­cate money to take the school sys­tem in hand and con­se­crate schools to the ser­vice of the public.

We think that the state has to pro­vide hous­ing. We’re in favor of coop­er­a­tive hous­ing, to give peo­ple decent hous­ing at an afford­able price. We talk about ‘vil­lages of life’, with a whole plan admin­is­tered by the state. Maybe you don’t have a hos­pi­tal in each vil­lage, but at least you have health cen­ter, so kids can get health care. You cre­ate schools, so that no child lacks an edu­ca­tion. You have pro­fes­sional cen­ters, recre­ation cen­ters for youth, in these vil­lages of life. We’re work­ing out the details now.

We need another coun­try, where every­one has the chance to live as a human being, where noth­ing is recon­structed the way it was prior to Jan­u­ary 12.

Yves-Rose Jean-Juste is 22. Her mother, who worked as a live-in ser­vant in a middle-class house­hold, died on Jan­u­ary 12. Her mother worked hard to cre­ate a bet­ter life for her only daugh­ter, despite never learn­ing to read or write. Yves-Rose now lives in her uncle’s mod­est home in Del­mas, where she sweeps the floor, cooks meals over char­coal, fetches buck­ets of water, and waits for the U.S. Embassy to tell her if her appli­ca­tion for a visa (to join her father) has been processed. On Sun­days, she dresses up and goes to the King­dom Hall to pray.

This coun­try didn’t offer peo­ple any­thing in the first place, and it’s become even worse after the earth­quake. Many things in the coun­try are bro­ken, and per­haps those peo­ple who could have helped the coun­try real­ize its goals lost their lives in the earthquake.

When you look at all these dis­as­ters, we have to ask our­selves: Where is the world going? Is the world going to end soon? There is only one per­son who knows the answers: Jesus.

I would like the gov­ern­ment to con­cern itself and take respon­si­bil­ity for recon­struct­ing the coun­try, offer young peo­ple more means to live, and take kids off the streets. For our coun­try to be beau­ti­ful, for tourists to come visit and invest in our coun­try. For us not to die in boats try­ing to seek life in other coun­tries. But, for now, all of this is just a dream.

Bev­erly Bell has worked with Hait­ian social move­ments for over 30 years. She is also author of the book, Walk­ing on Fire: Hait­ian Women’s Sto­ries of Sur­vival and Resis­tance. She coor­di­nates Other Worlds, www.otherworldsarepossible.org, which pro­motes social and eco­nomic alter­na­tives. She is also asso­ciate fel­low of the Insti­tute for Pol­icy Studies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/beverly-bell/what-would-another-haiti_b_603003.html