12901: URGENT ACTION -- CALL Representative PELOSI This Week -- Let Haiti Live! (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Haiti Action Committee <haitiaction@yahoo.com>

LET HAITI LIVE CAMPAIGN

URGENT ACTION ALERT (August 26 - 30, 2002)

Urge Representative Nancy Pelosi to Support an End to
the International Aid Moratorium Against Haiti

The Haiti Action Committee urges you to contact
Representative Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco before
she returns to Washington D.C. following the Labor Day
holiday.  We kindly request that she support House
Concurrent Resolution 382, introduced by Rep. Barbara
Lee and sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus.
The resolution, entitled "New Partnership for Haiti,"
calls for an end to the U.S.-led aid moratorium
against Haiti, and for a program to bolster Haiti's
economic base.

Representative Pelosi plays a significant role as the
House Minority Whip, and is a member of the
Progressive Caucus of Congress.

Call or Fax a letter to her local office this week:
· Phone: 415-556-4862
· Fax: 415-861-1670
· sf.nancy@mail.house.gov

Call early, and call often.  (Calls welcomed from
regional and national contacts, given Representative
Pelosi's leadership position.)

Background: this international aid moratorium blocks
more than $500 million in grants and loans intended
for health care, education and public works (such as
producing potable drinking water). Haiti must pay
millions of dollars in interest in order to avoid
defaulting on the loans, even though they have not
received any of the money and are blocked from
receiving this aid according to U.S. foreign policy.
Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledged that the
U.S. will pursue these sanctions in order to "leverage
a political outcome in Haiti."

This aid moratorium is particularly unconscionable in
a country as poor as Haiti, where only 40 percent of
all Haitians have access to potable water, where only
one physician exists for every 10,000 people, where
the infant mortality rate spirals upward, where the
rate of HIV/AIDS infection has reached epidemic
proportions and where environmental degradation
continues  unabated.

Contact Haiti Action Committee for more information:
510-483-7481; haitiaction@yahoo.com



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