15277: Karshan: Danny Glover comments during press conference in Haiti (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: MKarshan@aol.com

April 9, 2003 comments by Actor Danny Glover during press conference with
Haiti's President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on the occasion of the 200th
anniversary of the death of Toussaint L'Ouverture on April 7, 2003.

Thank you President, I certainly want to begin by saying how honored I am to
be here in Haiti with President Aristide and members of the Haitian
community, esteemed professors on Haitian history, specifically on Toussaint
L'Ouverture.

One does not come to a point in his life and not have some sort of revelation
about how he comes to that place and time. As much as the spirit of the
people of Haiti and its glorious history has fueled my own passion -- as an
artist, as a human being -- I feel as if  I'm at the particular moment and
this revelation in my life where the opportunity to use my craft as the
vehicle for understanding the people of Haiti, understanding their valiant
role that they played in world history and in this hemisphere becomes
critical.

So, we begin a process with this celebration of 200 years. The 200 years of a
birth of a nation and in telling and elevating its most prominent heroes we
also elevate the spirit - our own spirits - in our attempt redefine what it
means to be free, what it means to have self-determination, what it means to
be a nation united.

For the past thirty years I have awaited this moment to be a part of this
celebration.  We may call it destiny, we may call it whatever, we may say
that it is the most appropriate thing to happen to me, to be a part of this
great moment.

In some way we are all the offspring of and children of this great nation.
We are all its products.  We must use our souls in whatever way that we bring
the past, not only into focus, but allow this past to energize and reenergize
our commitment to certain values in the future.

In 1804, with the establishment of the first black nation, the first
independent black nation in the hemisphere, it marked a very important
moment.  It also was the moment in which we were able to demystify white
supremacy. It was the most important moment to happen in the African world,
for African people in the Diaspora.

It changed the historic terrain, it changed the relationship that America, of
which I am a child of, saw its own slaves.  So the 200th anniversary is all
of our calling.  The 200th anniversary becomes our own reaffirmation of our
own identity, an identity that thrives for independence for
self-determination, an identity that strives for development, a development
that is sustainable, an identity that subscribes for equal rights.

I believe we will be judged by how we treat this moment, how we use this
moment, at this very important and critical junction in the world's history.
We will be judged by our children on how we use this moment.  There is a
great deal of work to be done, much work to be done, much to learn from each
other, much to present to the world, but we also, in light of that, know that
we must do it, we have no choice but to do it.

The interesting thing about film is that once done its life span goes on and
on and on.  I hope that once we pass this moment of 2004 that the life of the
Haitian revolution, the memory of Toussaint L'Ouverture, continues on and on
and we begin to breath his words, we become truly its children, we become in
our action, in our devotion.

This is an enormous challenge for us all and I know that we are up to the
task.

Thank you.


Answers to questions:


I've talked about working on a film on the Haitian revolution for the last 20
years.  That is a project which has taken many roads.  It has been a very
arduous journey.  The story is, as the esteemed scholars would say, so large
that it's almost unimaginable.  We've all learned about the American
revolution, we all learned about the French revolution, but so few people
know of, or are aware of, the Haitian revolution.  So the attempt to use a
film as the medium of education must have an enormous support system to
reeducate people who've been miseducated.  So a film is only a very small
part of the process.  The work that we have to do before, beyond the film and
after the film. The work we have to do in creating the kind of teacher, the
educational materials, is daunting.  We have to break through this wall, this
veil, this presumptuous attitude that people have about people of color, and
specifically of people of Haitian descent.

So the process of writing a script has been going on my part for the last two
years and the process of acquiring a director simultaneously has gone on for
the last two years.  But the ways in which we can introduce the idea of
freedom, the ideas of nationhood, the reeducation of a world population, in
particularly a population in this hemisphere, begin and has to begin right
now.

One of the fascinating things that I've learned in reading and reading
various parts of history in the United States, reading commentary over the
period of the twentieth century, is that more people knew about  Toussaint
L'Ouverture, more people knew about the Haitian revolution, or Henri
Christophe, 100 years ago, or 50  years, or 75 years ago, than know about it
now.  In fact, there had been schools named after those aforementioned
gentlemen.  There have been schools in the United States named in their
honor, at various points in time, so people had a sense of a history and
people can have a dialogue about that.  They were a part of our popular
culture, those popular cultures at the time, which included reading.

Jean-Jean Pierre is working on a project right now that's going to be
presented at Carnegie Hall on the 23rd of May and that project is going to be
a multimedia event. It's going to include dance, it's going to include
poetry, it's going to include a script about Toussaint L'Ouverture, that will
be a one-night event and that will be at Carnegie Hall in New York.

Let me say something about this because I think there can be a great deal of
emphasis placed on a film, and certainly expectations.  I come here and I
make a proposal, a promise that I would do everything possible I can to
realize something that's been a dream of mine.  The first thing that has to
happen is there has to be a congruency of events that come together.  We all
know that.  We have to create an audience that wants to understand and know
about this information.  So at this historic moment, whether I do it, or if
someone else does it, all I am saying is that it needs to be done.

In that sense there may be many attempts at doing this but when it gets done
we would of achieved something enormous, and believe me, it is an enormous
task.  Making this film in itself takes enormous resources, and passion, and
passion.  What leads us here, more than anything else, is our collective
passion. It may be my individual passion to do a film about Toussaint, but it
is our collective passion which is going to get this done.

But what an incredible opportunity we have at this particular point in time
to celebrate this event.  For all nations who are struggling, for all
countries who are struggling to develop.  The oldest black republic in the
world, the oldest black republic in the world.  President Aristide reminded
me that we would also be celebrating in 2004 the 10th anniversary of the
newest black republic, South African, at the same time.  So we celebrate, we
have this incredible aptitude when people of the world need this right now.
People of the world need to be reminded, desperately need to be reminded, as
we move into this uncharted water, this uncharted area of the 21st century.

Let us say that perhaps 100 years from today our great grandchildren, our
grandchildren, will know that we did the right thing and will know that we
did something that they could build on and feed off of.


I discussed the embargo with the President and we both felt that what was
important for us to do is to use this moment also to highlight the injustice
of the embargo.  We also felt that what was necessary, that we need to build
a critical consensus within the United States, among all people, but
particularly people of African descent to lift the embargo, that we were in a
critical position, an important position, in the United States to do whatever
work we could do to elevate that issue, to take that issue and make it a part
of the political discourse within the United States to end it.

When Randall Robinson, the former President of TransAfrica, went on a hunger
strike in order to highlight the plight of Haitians and to bring democracy
back to Haiti, it had a very dramatic effect on the American people and it
had a very dramatic effect on the political dialogue.  We need to elevate and
raise the issue to that level in order for the present administration to
respond and we need to, as we've done in other events, at other critical
moments, to bring the attention right to the American people and personalize
the struggle.  We're in the process of now, as the  Chairman of TransAfrica
formed, and other groups have been mobilizing to wage the battle necessary.


I would hope that its [the film] a dramatic success.  I can't guarantee it.
I'll make every effort to bring something very special to that moment.  I can
guarantee that it will be a good story, I can guarantee that it will be a
dramatic story.  We have the elements there and I can guarantee that in some
ways that it will be successful in that way.

Do you think that Hollywood is ready for that film?

I don't know. I'm sure that people are ready to see such a film.  It often
takes something, as I said earlier, whether we want to call it destiny, this
moment, whether we want to say  a moment in a 100 years overdue, however we
want to frame this, the fact that we have the responsibility and the
opportunity to demand something more. Something more in terms of what we see
in films, something more in terms of what could bring some abiding sense of
identity, something that's going to happen in this process.  We cannot
continue as we continue to go on.  We have to begin to look at who we are to
understand who we are in relationship to our past and to celebrate our past
as a way, as a gateway, to our future. I think the story of the Haitian
revolution, and I'll say this many, many times, and hopefully I'll be able to
say that we've accomplished that when we make this film, that it's the story
of the Haitian revolution that is the very vehicle that could possibly unlock
something about filmmaking, that not only entertains us, but fuels us in such
a way that we're capable of using that information to act, for action, for
the purpose of actions.