13029: RE: 12024: Haitian Family Day Scam (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Pascal Antoine <pascal.antoine@verizon.net>

Let's not be so quick to sling mud in the faces of the organization that
promised to bring us the Haitian Family Day Picnic. I had been
approached by the organizers to promote the event on my web site
(www.haitixchange.com) and gladly did so since I thought it would be an
excellent event. I also believed this would be excellent exposure for my
own endeavors.

I was as surprised as everybody else to show up and see thousands of
Haitians and hundreds of cars waiting at the closed gates of Belmont
Park. After rumors started spreading about possible insurance problems,
this seemed to be another Haitian event gone bad and everyone was saying
things like "Ayisyen pa ka janm fe bagay korek!" ("Haitians can never do
things right!") . Upon spending 5 hours at the front gate and eventually
leaving, I'll be honest, I felt the same way. The minute I got home, I
removed their banner from my website in order to quickly disassociate
myself.

However, there are always two sides to every story and this morning in
my inbox, I found a response/press release from Rockmasters
Entertainment, the organization responsible for the event. After reading
the release, I simmered down and gave myself a chance to really think
about what happened. I remembered watching the organizers scrambling
around and making numerous phone calls on their cell phones in order to
straighten things out. At one point it looked like tears were coming out
of one of their eyes. I don't think I ever really believed they were
scamming, but my anticipation of this event, and my resulting
dissapointemnt, left me thinking the worst.  I do believe they may have
made some bad business decisions (they admit this in their press
release.)

A better question to ask might be, "Why do so many Haitian organizations
and events fail?" I truly do not think most Haitian businessmen are
trying to scam and am ready to support any Haitian entrepreneurs whom I
believe is doing positive things. The problem seems to be that they
might not always be familiar with some of the intricacies of doing
business in the US.

Mind you, aside from helping to promote the event, I am not affiliated
with Rockmasters Entertainment at all. In return for my promotion, all I
was to receive was a chance to put up a banner in the park for
HaitiXchange. That's all. I feel the need to say this before people
start assuming that I also am part of some "scam."

We need to look at our community and discover the reasons behind so many
business failures while continuing to support the works of honest
entrepreneurs.

For the benefit of the readers, I have posted the Rockmasters press
release at the following location:
http://www.haitiexchange.com/picnic.htm

I'm sure it will eventually make it to this list.

Pascal Antoine
pascal@haitixchange.com
HaitiXchange
http://www.HaitiXchange.com
Peyi Nou Pap Tonbe!