Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Europe/Haiti: Singing for the Poor

By Jeb Sprague*

MANCHESTER, Nov 1, 2007 (IPS) - The Arcade Fire, a rock band based in Quebec in Canada, has made raising awareness and money for Haiti's most disadvantaged its top priority.

Last weekend the band played to the largest indoor audience of their career, estimated at over 14,000, at the Manchester Evening News Arena.

Concert-goers were provided leaflets titled 'Haïti mon pays. Wounded mother I'll never see' which detailed the group's support for the non-profit healthcare organisation Partners In Health (PIH) and its Zanmi Lasante healthcare centres in Haiti.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

We Miss You Lovinsky!

Haitian Human Rights leader Pierre-Antoine Lovinsky has gone missing now for nearly two months and is believed kidnapped. All of my thoughts right now are with his wife and children. We all miss you Lovinsky! Here is a photo I snapped of him with demonstrators in front of the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, D.C. back in July 2005.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Haiti: Digging Through A History of Economic Violence

By Jeb Sprague
JUBILEE USA

In mid-August 2007 Nazaire St. Fort and myself took a tap-tap transport heading out on Delmas toward downtown Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. We soon passed in front of the National Palace, the seat of so many past Haitian presidents and governments.

Crossing a street near the palace, we reached the Ministry of Planification and right next to it the Ministry of Finance. We visited two other government ministries soon after, spending the next few days traveling between them all, entering into rarely touched archives and in the process probably bugging quite a number of ministerial employees (although making friendly acquaintances along the way).

Economic Justice for Haiti


I will have published a rather long blog entry on the Jubilee USA blog for October 4th. They have titled the piece, "Haiti: Digging Through A History of Economic Violence." It is timed with the last day of Jubilee USA's fast as well as their long campaign to get Haiti's debt dropped.