toujou sonje ke ayiti kapab, e pèp ayisyen pral!
it is haitian heritage month as i type this, but the message remains the same; silence is cowardice and compliance / elevate & listen to HAITIAN voices over the media / supporting HAITIAN-led initiatives is how you can show that you truly value us as a people & respect our sovereignty. otherwise, the love is fake!
haitian liberation is probably the most comprehensive resource that i can link. a great place to start if you don’t know what’s been going on. but, in the case that you don’t have enough time to go through it right away, one & two are condensed graphics that get right to the root of the island’s problems. together, these resources help you see the forest for the trees. once seeds (systems of oppression) sowed by waves of settler colonialists, and still fostered by their descendants to this very day; giving us the rampant anti-indigeneity & anti-blackness (both going hand in hand with anti-haitianism) ranging from the caribbean to latin america & even beyond our waters, apartheid & ethnic-cleansing, religious colonialism by depriving indigenous practitioners of a quality life & stigmatizing our beliefs [vodou] to push catholicism/missionary work in its place—and, like it can’t get any worse, destabilization & foreign occupation disguised as “intervention”. *all* of which is urged by core group (the u.s., france, spain, germany, canada) and unsurprisingly endorsed by our own “siblings” in the region who allow themselves to be used as pawns to violate our sovereignty, states of caricom & latam.
and, of course this violence wouldn’t be permitted without the illegitimate puppet governments (as haiti hasn’t had a democratic election in a DECADE), who pride themselves on being of the island yet their actions say everything BUT—who’ve been installed by core group, elites of european settler origin, and foreign oligarch families that began settling on the island long ago.
descending from people who’ve resisted comes with a hefty price to pay. and we won’t cower. they won’t see a haiti without haitian people. they won’t suck our lands dry. why? because, this is the work they won’t tell you about on our island.
resources
P.S., i don’t want to hear anything about our independence, us being the prototype, how much you “love” us and our food & music, whatever konpa class you took to learn what’s innate for us, how beautiful haiti looks in flicks online/on your vacation, and that one haitian ex you can’t get over—if you’re silent on our issues. sòti la, kokorat.
to those who do care though, enough to put their money where their mouth is, mèsi pou ede w! 😁