This presentation took place during a December 2, 2021, webinar. Toward Freedom has 69 years of experience publishing independent reports and analyses that document the struggles for liberation of the majority of the world’s people. Now, with a new editor, Julie Varughese, at its helm, what does the future look like for Toward Freedom and for independent media? Toward Freedom‘s board of directors formally welcomed Julie as the new editor. She reported back on her time covering Nicaragua’s critical presidential election. New contributors Danny Shaw and Jacqueline Luqman also spoke on their work for Toward Freedom as it relates to the value of independent media. Danny touched on the rising Pink Tide in Latin America while Jacqueline discussed the role of the Pentagon in Hollywood.
This week, Toward Freedom’s Board of Directors bids farewell to guest editor Charlotte Dennett, welcomes Toward Freedom’s new editor, Julie Varughese, and extends a heartfelt thanks to Sam Mayfield who stepped down as President of Toward Freedom’s Board of Directors in December, 2020.
Charlotte Dennett stepped in as Toward Freedom’s guest editor last October. Her decades-long experience as a scholar, author and activist allowed Charlotte to seamlessly step into the position serving Toward Freedom’s mission, “to publish international reporting and incisive analysis that exposes government and corporate abuses of power, while supporting movements for universal peace, justice, freedom, the environment, and human rights.”
Charlotte contributed not only her editorial and writing skills, but also her great depth of geopolitical knowledge, as well as her enthusiasm for working with other writers. She went above and beyond the call of duty to mentor new writers, guiding them through the editing process, which resulted in the publication of many articles about places and issues not covered by any other English-language media. You can read Charlotte’s reflections about her time as guest editor here. Thank you, Charlotte!
Earlier this month, Julie Varughese came on board as Toward Freedom’s new editor. Julie comes to us having worked as a newspaper reporter, video producer and communications professional in a variety of settings. She has been working with the Black Alliance for Peace since its inception, supporting their impressive growth over the past four years. Julie’s strong writing, editing, video, graphics and social media skills will be a boon to Toward Freedom as we expand and grow to serve a more diverse audience and cover different parts of the world. This past week, Julie edited and published stories on Colombia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Palestine, and drones in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen. Please drop her a line at [email protected] with any comments or suggestions. Welcome, Julie!
Sam Mayfield led the organization during a period of transition in our operations, finances, and governance, with a clear vision and commitment to high-quality reporting and analysis of global events and grassroots movements from an anti-imperialist perspective. Her principled leadership, strong work ethic, and experience as a reporter and filmmaker were invaluable as we navigated multiple challenges over the past several years. Thank you, Sam!
Check out towardfreedom.org for all the latest, and expect to see increased presence of Toward Freedom stories on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in the coming weeks.
Thanks to you Toward Freedom readers for your continued support!
On behalf of the Toward Freedom Board of Directors,
“Militarized Police” by Shotboxer Portland is licensed under CC BY 2.0
The world is shocked by the image of an 11-story residential building in Gaza collapsing because of a bomb dropped by the Israeli Defense Force, one of the most advanced armies in the world thanks to U.S. support. But in the United States, Andrew Yang, former presidential candidate and now candidate for mayor of New York City, proudly proclaims he stands with the “heroic people of Israel” who are under attack from the vicious, occupied Palestinians, who have no army, no rights and no state.
But as politically and morally contradictory as Yang’s sentiments might appear for many, the alternative world of Western liberalism has a different standard. In that world, liberals claim that all are equal with inalienable rights. But in practice, some lives are more equal and more valuable than others.
In the liberal world, Trump is condemned for attempting to reject the results of the election and indicating he might not leave office at the end of his term. But as soon as Biden occupied the White House, one of his first foreign policy decisions was to give the U.S.-imposed Haitian president, Jovenel Moïse, a green light to ignore the demands of the Haitian people and the end of his term in February. He remains in office.
In the liberal world, the United States that has backed every vicious right-wing dictator in the world since the Second World War, orchestrates coups, murders foreign leaders, attacks nations fighting for independence in places like Vietnam, trains torturers, brandishes nuclear bombs, has the longest-held political prisoners on the planet, is number one in global arms sales, imprisons more people than any other nation in the world, has supported apartheid South Africa and is supporting apartheid Israel—while championing human rights!
In the liberal world, the United States can openly train, fund, and back opposition parties and even determine who the leader of a nation should be, but react with moral outrage when supposedly Russian-connected entities buy $100,000 worth of Facebook ads commenting on “internal” political subjects related to the 2016 election.
In the liberal world, Democrats build on racist anti-China sentiments and the identification of China as a national threat, and then pretend they had nothing to do with the wave of anti-Asian racism and violence.
In the liberal world, liberals are morally superior and defend Black life as long as those lives are not in Haiti, Libya, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, all of Africa, and in the jails and prisons of the United States.
In the liberal world, you can—with a straight face—condemn the retaliatory rockets from Gaza, the burning of a police station in Minneapolis, attacks on property owned by corporations in oppressed and exploited communities, attacks on school children fighting back against police in Baltimore, and attacks on North Koreans arming themselves against a crazed, violent state that has already demonstrated—as it did with Libya—what it would do to a state that disarmed in the face of U.S. and European aggression.
And in the liberal world, Netanyahu is a democrat, the Palestinians are aggressors and Black workers did not die unnecessarily because the United States dismantled its already underdeveloped public health system.
What all of this is teaching the colonized world, together with the death and violence in Colombia, Haiti, Palestine and the rest of the colonized world, is that even though we know the Pan-European project is moribund, the colonial-capitalist West is prepared to sacrifice everything and everyone in order to maintain its global dominance, even if it means destroying the planet and everyone on it.
That is why Biden labels himself an “Atlanticist”—shorthand for a white supremacist. His task is to convince the European allies it is far better to work together than to allow themselves to be divided against the “barbarians” inside and at the doors of Europe and the United States.
The managers of the colonial-capitalist world understand the terms of struggle, and so should we. It must be clear to us that for the survival of collective humanity and the planet, we cannot allow uncontested power to remain in the hands of the global 1 percent. The painful truth for some is if global humanity is to live, the Pan-European white supremacist colonial-capitalist project must die.
This article was originally published in Black Agenda Report.
Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was awarded the U.S. Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.
Community members say police burned down the Shada 2 neighborhood in Cap Haitien as retaliation against armed gangs / credit: Twitter/DannyShawCUNY
The assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse didn’t seem to make a difference for the average Haitian.
“We woke up hungry Tuesday,” said Jean Paul, 26, a resident of the sprawling ghetto of Laforcette in Haiti’s second capital, Cap-Haïtien. “Wednesday, we woke up with the same hunger.”
This is how one person, speaking for many, experienced the July 7 assassination of Moïse, a U.S.-backed, neoliberal stooge.
Moïse did not have popular support. In an interview with TeleSUR, political analyst Patrick Mettelus described the widespread feeling across Haiti that foreigners had no right to intervene. “The social movements sought for months and years to remove Moïse from office but never to harm him.” His removal was popularly deemed the historic task of the Haitian people.
Furthermore, many Haitians find it peculiar that the governments most under scrutiny for the assassination have been tasked to lead the investigation. For a media outlet like CNN, it is an afterthought that “members of the U.S. delegation met with rival contenders for the country’s leadership on Sunday.” The U.S. government continuing to appoint itself as the custodian of Haiti’s immediate and long-term future has nothing to do with altruism and everything to do with U.S. economic and geopolitical interests.
David Oxygène, spokesperson of MOLEGHAF (Mouvement de Liberté, Égalité des Haïtiens pour la Fraternité or the Haitian Movement of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity) commented on the contradiction.
“The apprentice is gone, but the master, the boss and teacher are still there,” Oxygène said. “Their illegitimate proxy isn’t there, but the master, U.S. imperialism, is.”
Mtg of Haitian peasant leaders. The masses continue to stand up, march forward & mobilize to overthrow this regime. Jovenel is not there but the PHTK regime still is. “We will never agree with foreign domination, with elections under foreign control & PHTK crimes” #Haiti 🇭🇹 pic.twitter.com/7yGRHRjYcf
Absent from any mainstream analysis focused on palace intrigue and throwing us off the scent of 26 Colombian paramilitaries and DEA agents involved in the murder is what the Haitian people are saying and living.
The power scramble now gives the regime of the Parti Haitien Tèt Kale (The Baldheaded Party or PHTK) carte blanche to persecute any of their political enemies. Demonstrations against PHTK’s state and paramilitary violence were planned for July 7 and 8, which was designed to culminate in a protest against the PHTK on July 11, where diverse social actors would have taken back the momentum and the streets. All of these actions were cancelled and postponed once Moïse was assassinated because of fears of state repression.
Organizer Pierre Chanel: devaluing a ppl’s currency damages our economy & self-esteem. An incompetent state isn’t just responsible for ongoing massacres & political assassinations but for hunger & inflation. The #Haitian goud is now 104 for 1 US dollar. #Haiti 🇭🇹 pic.twitter.com/fLRBWVEfGK
Mainstream headlines predictably obfuscate, engaging in racist tropes and sensationalism. As the sentiment Jean Paul expressed, in the last week, nothing objectively changed in the lives of the millions of workers, peasants, and the under- and unemployed across Haiti. The Haitian currency is highly devalued. One U.S. dollar converts into 94.69 gourdes. Gasoline scarcity causes serpentine queues and a black market price of $10 dollars per gallon. Millions of Haitians wake up hungry every day. Foreign-owned sweatshops and giant plantations, like the Savanne Diane, continue to produce for export, paying Haitian workers an average wage of $4 a day.
Youth from the forgotten #Haiti explains how he survived the everyday violence of a turf war between Bannan and Chada. 8 bullets later he is still here 🇭🇹 pic.twitter.com/v8P780xzKs
Gangs and paramilitary units have been involved in a pitched turf war, killing hundreds of Haitians while displacing thousands. While Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherezier, a strongman from Port-au-Prince ghettos Delma 6 and Lasaline, has shifted his rhetoric as of late, innocent families continue to be trapped in neighborhood feuds. For a deeper examination of the role of Barbecue and the heavily armed G-9, or the Confederation of Nine Gangs, Democracy Now hosted a debate on July 8. Mintpress News pressed about the potential of the 3-million-strong lumpen proletariat (those members of the working class who are unable to sell their labor for wages) to organize themselves against their class enemy.
No Further U.S./UN/OAS Intervention in Haiti
The slogan, “no foreign intervention in Haiti,” is misleading. Haiti is a neocolony. Foreign intervention is everywhere in Haitian society. Now, U.S. imperialism and their junior partners are attempting to use this power vacuum to launch yet another invasion of Haiti.
Mainstream outlets have shown images of Haitians asking for help outside the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince. How did a proud, dignified people—an example of self-determination for the world—get reduced to dreaming of a visa to escape their country’s woes? Only a thorough examination of the neocolonial model and all of its far-reaching tentacles of economic, political, diplomatic, military, educational and psychological domination can begin to address this question.
Walter Rodney’s analysis in the “Politics of the African Ruling Class,” (Black World View, 1976) offers an introduction to Haiti’s subservient position today:
“They [the dependent countries] were brought into the world economy as fractions during the colonial period. They have not yet transcended this state of affairs. And, therefore it follows that they have not yet attained the stage where we can talk about national economies.”
The Western media is expert in ignoring this history of foreign repression and resistance. Instead, it presents Haiti as an isolated basketcase.
A NACLA article by Haitian scholar and activist Mamyrah Dougé-Prosper and professor and organizer Mark Schuller offers insights into how to support a people’s agenda. The Commission de Recherche pour une Solution Haïtienne à la Crise is a coalition warning of another U.S. intervention and fighting for a “sali piblik,” or a Haitian solution.
In the protracted national liberation struggle, the Haitian people must have the last word. As David Oxygène said, “We are standing up, marching forward and mobilizing to overthrow this regime. Jovenel is not there, but the PHTK regime is still there. MOLEGHAF will never agree with foreign domination, with elections under foreign control, PHTK crimes with or without Jovenel. Imperialism ate him up and threw him away. No longer needing him, they discarded him. MOLEGHAF continues the battle against the imperialists and neocolonialism. The struggle continues! Stronger! Long live the Haitian revolution!”
Danny Shaw is a professor of Caribbean and Latin American Studies at the City University of New York. He frequently travels to Haiti to stay with the mass anti-imperialist movement. A Senior Research Fellow at the Center on Hemispheric Affairs, Danny is fluent in Haitian Kreyol, Spanish, Portuguese and Cape Verdean Kriolu. He has reported for Toward Freedom on Haiti and he recently wrote a book review.
