19310: Kathleen: Re: 19290: Esser: Re: 19259: Kathleen: Aristide's unconstitutional blunders (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Kathleen <kathleenmb@adelphia.net>

Sure.  I worked with Haitians in boston, including Haiti Communications
Project, where I monitored tv and radio (mostly unfair) coverage of Haiti.
I was a member of haitian studies association.  for a long time, we were all
friends together working for the reinstatement of Aristide.  Oh, I jumped
ahead of myself.  My marketing and pr company had high tech clients only,
but that changed when I heard the magnificent and powerful music of Magnum
band in Guadeloupe.  we took them on as a client, the coup happened, I met
other musicians and music scholars as well as freedom fighters like kk, Noam
chomsky, Paul Farmer.  I think I didn't meet Kim Ives and Ira Lowenthal
until I was  in Haiti.  At that time we were all working for Aristide.
Around the end of the nineties, many of the people who had worked for
Aristide were distressed at the villas and  other riches enjoyed by
Aristide's people.  I resisted, wanting proof, so much was rumor. I heard
some things about the drug traffic from musicians and a journalist who had
talked to Chavannes' experience when he was in the Palace, but I never
talked to him about it, for the very good reason that at that time we did
not speak a common language. My relationship with Chavannes, and his wife
and daughter, is that of neighbor and friend.  Bazelais, his younger
brother, responded to my wish to move to the Central Plateau in 1999, a move
I have never regretted.  I'm retired, have no professional ties but a great
deal of heart for justice and peace in Haiti.

kathleen Burke