Haitians denounce Trump’s ‘shithole’ remark

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As if 200 years of U.S. racism and imperialism weren’t enough, Haitians must contend with the idiotic rantings of the U.S. commander in chief, Donald Trump. “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” asked Trump at a Jan. 11 immigration meeting.

Trump was referring to Haiti, El Salvador, and African states, provoking worldwide outrage. During the meet­ ing he asked, “Why do we need more Haitians?” “Take them out.” according to sources cited in a Jan. 12 Wash­ ington Post article. And that wasn’t enough for Trump, who added, “Put me down for wanting more Europeans to come to this country. Why don’t we get more people from Norway?”

Initially, the White House refused to deny the reports, but Trump tweeted a denial the next day that merely ad­ mitted to non-specific “tough talk” and added, “I have a wonderful relationship with Haitians.”

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) confirmed the report, saying Trump used the term “shithole countries” repeatedly; he called Trump’s rant “hate-filled, vile, and disgust­ ing.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) confirmed Trump’s “shithole countries” slander in a comment to the Post, overheard by Sen. Tim Scott. Said Scott, Graham told the Post that the remarks attributed to Trump are “basi­ cally accurate.” Even the United Nations, usually under the thumb of U.S. imperialism, called Trump’s remarks “racist.”

Trump’s arrogant “shithole” comments were made on the eve of the eighth anniversary of the catastrophic Haitian earthquake, Jan. 12, 2010, which killed up to 300,000 and injured many more in a country of 10 mil­ lion. Virtually every Haitian family was affected. Trump: “They all have AIDS!”

On Sept. 16, 2016, candidate Trump said to a small gathering of Haitian Americans in Miami, “I really want to be your biggest champion.” Many recalled Trump’s empty promises after his Nov. 20 racist termination of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 60,000 Haitians who fled in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, a cholera plague, and a post-hurricane Mathew Haiti. TPS Haitians support 250,000 relatives back home. Haiti is in no condition to receive deportees!

The falsity of those promises was also demonstrated last June, at a White House meeting on immigration, when Trump was presented with a list of immigrants by country. After seeing that 15,000 had entered from Haiti, Trump snarled, they “all have AIDS” (The New York Times, Dec. 23, 2017).

The astonishing ignorance and racism of Trump to­ ward Haitians was a throwback to the AIDS hysteria of the 1980s. At the time, the Food and Drug Adminis­ tration (FDA) issued a warning that “Haitians and sub-Saharan Africans” were highly susceptible to AIDS and banned blood donations by Haitians. Racist stereotyp­ ing exploded, but they were, of course, lies. The FDA determination was removed in 1990, but not before 100,000 Haitians and supporters massed at the Federal Building in downtown Manhattan and basically shut the city down in April 1990—proving again the power of mass action!

As if these attacks weren’t enough, Trump has vowed to keep open the notorious Guantanamo, Cuba, gulag, which Obama pledged to close. The early 90s struggle for the entry of HIV-positive Haitians imprisoned in Guantanamo spawned a fight-back of Haitian activists and supporters and AIDS activists in ACT-UP. A combi­ nation of street actions and legal battles, led by attorney Michael Ratner, led to the release of the HIV Haitians. Continuing Guantanamo as a human rights atrocity shows how fleeting are victories under capitalism.

DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) pro­ gram was also ended on Sept. 5 by Trump, affecting 800,000 children of “illegal” immigrants who are now subject to deportation. Socialists say, “No one is illegal!”

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okay with this anymore, and we need to finally stand up and change the views of what is right and what we will tolerate.”

Indigenous women missing and murdered In the Northwest and the Southwest, Indigenous women had contingents marching and in some cases leading the Women’s Marches. It started in Phoenix, where they had been organizing since October around “Honoring Indigenous Women Leading The Women’s March.”

They wanted to focus on the missing and murdered indigenous women in their communities. More than four in every five Native American women have ex­ perienced violence in their lifetime, with over 90% “Defend TPS and DACA!” “Full citizenship for TPS Hai­ tians and DACA recipients!”

Concerning the “shithole” remark, Marlene Bastien of Haitian Women of Miami told Socialist Action, “I think his comments were racist and outright disrespectful. To make a comment like that would be out of ignorance. Some people are feeling the impact on their children.”

“The U.S. owes so much to Haiti. One thousand free men came to shed their blood in Savannah [Ga.] to fight for U.S. independence. Just to be able to defeat Napo­ leon, who had the mightiest army at that time, allowed the U.S. to double in size with the Louisiana purchase.”

On Jan. 15, Martin Luther King’s birthday, some 10,000 to 12,000 angry protesters—including many Haitian immigrants—poured into Times Square in Manhattan. The anger of the crowd was not matched by militant de­ mands and was muzzled by the presence of several capi­ talist politicians, including “progressive” Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose housing policies continue to force record numbers into homelessness. However, some protesters marched up to Trump Tower at 56th Street and Madison Avenue.

Haiti Liberté journalist and activist Kim Ives spoke to Socialist Action about the newly formed 1804 Move­ ment, comprised of grassroots organizations that met on Jan. 13 at the Haiti Liberté office in Brooklyn. Pres­ ent were 50 activists from the New York and New Jersey area. Participating organizations include Le Caye, the Lavalas Family, Haiti Solidarity Network in New Jersey, as well as leftist parties, including Petit Dessalines, the Black Alliance for Justice in Immigration, Haiti Liberté newspaper, and U.S. socialist groups.

On the cold morning of Jan.19, the 1804 Movement led a protest of between 500 to 1000 Haitians and support­ ers who marched from Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn over the Brooklyn Bridge to rally at the Trump Building on Wall Street.

Haitian American unionist Marie Paule Florestal made these remarks: “The 1804 Movement for All Immi­ grants has chosen to demonstrate on Wall Street be­ cause we condemn the politics of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. We condemn both the Republican and Democratic parties. We condemn the entire politi­ cal and economic system which enslaves this country, but also enslaves our countries, where our families and compatriots are forced to work for pennies a day for U.S. corporations.

“If we in the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa, or Asia try to flee our plight, to sell our smarts and labor else­ where, we are arrested by the U.S. Coast Guard or Border experiencing violence at the hands of a non-tribal member, according to the National Institute of Justice Research Report in 2010. These cases have mostly been ignored. The Centers For Disease Control And Prevention state that in 2016 the third-leading cause of death for Native American and Alaskan American females, ages 10-14, is murder.

Participants were asked to wear red to honor the murdered and missing. In Portland, Ore., over 700 people turned out for the Indigenous Womxn’s March on Jan. 21. Indigenous women led the march of 20,000 in Phoenix. There were five other marches in Arizona, with 1500 in Prescott and hundreds in Sedona and in Flagstaff.

Native American women also marched throughout the sparsely populated towns in Washington State where tribal lands are located, and they joined with non-Native women in cities named after their tribes. In Yakima they expected about a hundred march­ (Above) Haitian Americans demand an apology from Trump at his Mar-a-Lago, Fla., retreat on Jan. 15.

Patrol. In short, we are imprisoned in our homelands. But the U.S. demands complete freedom to buy land, set up businesses, and sell products there. Our sovereign nations are, in fact, modern colonies, neo-colonies.”

In Haiti, Mario Joseph, a human rights attorney and a protest leader, said, “On many occasions in the past we have been victims of imperialist countries, particularly the United States.” Even Haiti’s corrupt Senate on Thurs­ day declared their country “is the expression of refusal to be humiliated, since the founding fathers engaged in an epic combat against slavery, colonialism, and racism to indicate to the oppressed peoples of the world the way to freedom.”

One Port au Prince protest drew 2000. “Trump is a vul­ gar racist, and a racist is a very poor-minded person,” said protester Marvel Joseph. “We don’t feel any resent­ ment against the American people, who we know largely disapprove of Trump’s behavior in the White House.”

Batay Ouvirye (Worker’s Fight) in Haiti released a statement, which reads in part: “For all peoples around the world, if they are calling us shitholes, it’s the capital­ ist class that is the cause! Let’s coordinate our struggles to overthrow and in this way uproot capitalism with all its racism.”

More Trump racism The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) an­ nounced Jan. 18 that people from Haiti, Belize, and Sa­ moa are no longer eligible to apply for H-2A visas for farm work and H-2B visas for non-farmworker jobs. The department said the nations had a high rate of fraud, abuse, and people overstaying their visa time limits. The overstay rate for Haitians is over 39 percent, out of roughly 1500 H-2 immigrant workers in 2016, the DHS stated.

However, those DHS statistics about Haitians were dis­ puted on the Young Turks TV program, posted Jan. 25 (Huffington Post). Citing DHS figures for “overstays” on H-2 visas in 2016, Haitians had, in fact, far fewer in that category. Haitians were only 3.86% “overstays,” com­ pared to people from Afghanistan (13.7%) and Jordan (5.97%), to name a few. A Pew Institute study of 2015 “overstays” found that Canada had 93,000 “overstays,” Mexico 42,000, Germany 21,000, etc.

The conclusion? The Trump administration lied about Haitians as revenge for blowback after Trump’s “shit­ hole” comments. The U.S. and Haiti need revolution! n ers and 1000 turned out. Wenatchee saw marches of 1600, and 6000 marched in Spokane. Indigenous women led the march in Seattle. This year showed that the uprising of women with the election of Don­ ald Trump has continued and remains strong even in the smallest communities in the country.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party will continue to attempt to “harness” the movement and drive it into electing their candidates. They will try to bring women into a political system that has no answers for institutionalized sexism and racism.

At the same time that women were pouring into the streets all over the country, the Democrats were be­ traying the Dreamers and looking for compromises. Anyone who turned on the television or was watching video of the news on Jan. 20 saw a split screen, with hundreds of thousands of women in the streets on one side and politicians on the other. The choice could not have been clearer. n SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 2018 5