Good News: Yes­ter­day the U.S. Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity Sec­re­tary Napoli­tano announced the des­ig­na­tion of Tem­po­rary Pro­tected Sta­tus (TPS) for Haiti. Thanks to every­one who has writ­ten, emailed and called to make this hap­pen. Steve Forester, Direc­tor of our Stop Depor­ta­tions Now! Cam­paign, is now work­ing with other lawyers to develop mate­ri­als for appli­cants and advo­cates, and to deal with obsta­cles to imple­men­ta­tion such as the hefty appli­ca­tion fee. We will post updates on our web­site, and send more action alerts if nec­es­sary. Good news from Haiti includes reports from clients Yvon Nep­tune and Ronald Dauphin, for­mer BAI staff Pas­calle Duvivier and Daniel Tillias, and for­mer intern Amber Munger.

Update: In Haiti, we are stay­ing out of the way of the emer­gency relief pro­fes­sion­als. Out­side Haiti we are work­ing to ensure that the inter­na­tional community’s response to the earth­quake includes long-term assis­tance rooted employ­ing a rights-based approach to make Haiti less vul­ner­a­ble to the next nat­ural dis­as­ter. For more on this, lis­ten to Democ­racy Now!‘s Thurs­day show, includ­ing Bill Quigley, me and oth­ers. Read the New York Times’ Room for Debate page fea­tur­ing a piece from IJDH. See our joint state­ment with five other human rights orga­ni­za­tions urg­ing respect for human rights in deliv­er­ing assis­tance to Haiti. Read Bill Quigley’s The Ten Things The U.S. Can And Should Do To Help.

We’ve received a gen­er­ous stream of peo­ple ask­ing us what they can do to help. We have linked vol­un­teers with appro­pri­ate orga­ni­za­tions when we could. For lawyers, we are putting together the Lawyer Earth­quake Response Net­work (LERN). It may take some time to have the net­work oper­a­tional, espe­cially with the dif­fi­culty com­mu­ni­cat­ing with our col­leagues in Haiti. But if you’d like to stay in the loop, sign up here.

This week’s action: The way that Haiti is por­trayed in the U.S. press has a strong impact on the way it is treated by the U.S. gov­ern­ment. Yes­ter­day, David Brooks wrote a col­umn blam­ing Haiti’s poverty, and its vul­ner­a­bil­ity to earth­quakes, in part on its cul­ture. This col­umn, by a respected writer in the New York Times, is infi­nitely more dan­ger­ous to Haitians than the more dis­mis­si­ble out­ra­geous state­ments of Rush Lim­baugh and Pat Robert­son. It can help pro­vide the intel­lec­tual foun­da­tion for decreas­ing urgently needed assis­tance and for pater­nal­is­tic poli­cies that will con­tinue to dis­em­power the Hait­ian gov­ern­ment and its people.

Long-time Haiti activist and the­olo­gian Tom Dri­ver and col­league Carl Lind­skoog felt that Mr. Brooks’ state­ments required a response, and we agree. Please con­sider adding your name to their open let­ter to David Brooks. They are ask­ing for a response by noon tomor­row, Sunday.

To add your name, either 1) fol­low this link or 2) send an email to Blaine Bookey at blaine@ijdh.org with your name, posi­tion and insti­tu­tion (for iden­ti­fi­ca­tion only).

Brian Con­can­non Jr.

Direc­tor

Insti­tute for Jus­tice & Democ­racy in Haiti

For more infor­ma­tion about the Half-Hour For Haiti pro­gram, the Insti­tute for Jus­tice & Democ­racy in Haiti (IJDH) or human rights in Haiti, see our web­site, www.HaitiJustice.org. To receive Half-Hour for Haiti Action Alerts (about 2 per month), send an email to HalfHour4Haiti@ijdh.org