23072: Esser: Haiti: The Attica of the Americas (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: D. Esser <torx@joimail.com>

ZNet
http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=6118&sectionID=30

The Attica of the Americas

by Justin Felux; August 28, 2004

Both places have a population of several million, mostly dark-skinned
people. In both places, those who are able to find work can only
obtain poverty wages under conditions that differ from slavery only
in name. The right of the people to vote is not respected. The lights
only stay on for a few hours a day. People are often raped, beaten,
and even killed with impunity. Those who manage to get out of either
place are usually apprehended by the authorities and returned,
regardless of whether or not their return is warranted. One is the
country of Haiti. The other is the U.S. prison-industrial complex. At
first glance, the U.S. government's policy of black mass
incarceration and its policy of undermining democracy in Haiti don't
seem to have much in common, but on a basic level, they have nearly
everything in common.

Dostoevsky once said, "The degree of civilization in a society can be
judged by entering its prisons." If this is true, the United States
suffers from a great civilization deficit. Over two million people
are in jail or prison in the U.S., and the whole correctional
population (including those on parole or probation) is almost seven
million. When civil unrest was sweeping across the Haitian
countryside earlier in the year, preparations were made to interdict
upward of 50,000 refugees in the infamous Guantanamo Bay naval base
in Cuba, where Arab inmates have made numerous charges of physical
abuse and torture. Incarcerating people of color would seem to be one
of the few things the U.S. government does with any efficiency.

After the recent and unfortunate death of Frank "Big Black" Smith, it
is an appropriate time to be talking about prisons. Smith was one of
the leaders of the 1971 rebellion in Attica prison, during which
inmates took control of the prison and held the guards hostage. The
prisoners made several demands of the government which involved job
training, education, health care, and religious freedom, among other
things. Most of the demands were modest reforms that would allow the
prisoners to be treated as human beings. The standoff ended when
Governor Nelson Rockefeller had a thousand troopers storm the prison,
killing 29 inmates and 10 guards in the process.

But it wasn't enough for the guards to simply retake the prison. The
inmates had forced the nation to recognize their humanity for those
brief moments during the rebellion, and it was important to snatch
that humanity away from them as soon as possible. Otherwise, Attica
could have been the first of many rebellions. Big Black later
described the torture he and his comrades endured at the hands of the
guards afterwards:

"It was very, very barbaric; you know, very, very cruel. They ripped
our clothes off. They made us crawl on the ground like we were
animals. And they snatched me. And they lay me on a table and beat me
in my testicles. And they burned me with cigarettes and dropped hot
shells on me and put a football up under my throat and they kept
telling me that if it dropped, they were going to kill me ... It just
hurt. You see one human being treating another human being this way
and they really hurt me. I never thought it would happen. I never
thought so many would be treated like animals."

Decades later, not much has changed. According to Human Rights Watch,
"In recent years, U.S. prison inmates have been beaten with fists and
batons, stomped on, kicked, shot, stunned with electronic devices,
doused with chemical sprays, choked, and slammed face first onto
concrete floors by the officers whose job it is to guard them."
Prison rape is an epidemic. According to a study in The Prison
Journal, one in five male inmates reported a pressured or forced sex
incident while incarcerated. The United States also exports its
culture of prison terror to the rest of the world, the most recent
example being the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where teenagers were
tortured, women were impregnated through rape, and detainees were
subjected to now familiar forms of sexual humiliation and abuse.

Many reasons are often cited for the growth of the prison-industrial
complex in America. One is that the prison industry provides jobs and
a Keynesian stimulus to the economy. Another is that prisons provide
cheap labor for American corporations. While these are certainly
factors, they actually provide very little economic benefit to the
ruling class. To them, the real utility of prisons lies in their use
as a form of social control. They help contain the (darker) more
troublesome segments of the population while frightening the rest of
the (whiter) population into submission. Prisons have been a
remarkably effective tool in keeping America's prevailing race and
class divisions in place.

As C.L.R. James pointed out in 1943, "The contrasts between their
situation and the privileges enjoyed by those around them have always
made the Negroes that section of American society most receptive to
revolutionary ideas and the radical solution of social problems."
This is what President Nixon was talking about when he said,
according to an aide, "the whole problem is really the blacks. The
key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing
to." The system he came up with was the racially-charged "War on
Drugs." After the civil rights and black power movements brought down
America's formal apartheid, the prison-industrial complex took its
place as the new means of maintaining white supremacy and undermining
the momentum of black political movements.

Many reasons are likewise cited for the U.S. government's support of
the recent coup in Haiti, such as access to cheap sweatshop labor,
control of the windward passage leading to the Panama Canal, policy
differences with the Aristide government, and others. The main
reason, however, is the same reason our country is littered with so
many prisons. Much like African Americans are a threat to the
domestic order of things, Haiti is a threat to the international
order of things. This explains the eagerness of other rich, white
countries such as France and Canada to play an active role in such a
dirty affair. If a poor, black nation such as Haiti were to succeed
in establishing a stable democracy and an economic system that
benefits its own people rather than multinational corporations, then
other poor countries would follow suit. Therefore it was necessary to
send a message to dark-skinned people across the world: know your
place, or suffer the consequences.

In post-coup Haiti, prisons that once held thieves, murderers, and
rapists now hold journalists, activists, and teachers. The former
were set free by the rebel forces, the latter rounded up by the
puppet government for their political views. Rooms designed to hold
ten people now have a hundred prisoners packed in like sardines. A
journalist for Radyo Timoun that had been arrested reported that the
drinking water for prisoners was their own previously used bath
water. In Les Cayes, prison conditions are so bad that epidemics have
broken out.

Part of the United States solution to this crisis was sending Terry
Stewart and John Nielsen to help "reform" Haiti's prisons and police
units. Stewart is the same consultant who was sent to "reform" the
Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He is also the former director of
Arizona's prison system, where the U.S. Justice Department sued the
state's Department of Corrections for allowing an environment in
which female inmates were raped and sodomized by guards. Nielsen, who
will be making a "mid-six-figure salary," formerly worked in Albany,
where the Coalition for Accountable Police and Government urged that
he be fired, "on the grounds that his leadership has resulted in a
climate of distrust both within the police department and between the
police department and the community."

All this is simply the next chapter in a 200-year-old economic,
political, and cultural assault on Haiti's well-being. As Frederick
Douglass explained in 1893, "Haiti is black, and we have not yet
forgiven Haiti for being black or forgiven the Almighty for making
her black ... While slavery existed amongst us, her example was a
sharp thorn in our side and a source of alarm and terror. She came
into the sisterhood of nations through blood ... She was a startling
and frightful surprise and a threat to all slave-holders throughout
the world, and the slave-holding world has had its questioning eye
upon her career ever since." Back then, Haiti posed the same threat
that it does now: the threat of a good example.

It is no wonder then that Haiti is the country the world powers
choose to make their own example of. Two-hundred years ago black
slaves outwitted and outfought the mighty army of Napoleon Bonaparte.
It was one of those hitherto rare moments in history where justice
rolled down, not like water, but like lava from an exploding volcano.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the revolutionary leader who bore the marks
of his former master's whip on his back, would proclaim after his
victory, "I have given the French cannibals blood for blood," and
that, "nothing shall prevent us from punishing the murderers who have
taken pleasure in bathing their hands in the blood of the sons of
Hayti." What was once a very profitable colony for foreign powers now
rang with slogans such as "Hayti for the Haytians."

The resilience of the Haitian people even impressed their foes.
Lemmonier-Delafosse was a pro-slavery officer in Napoleon's army.
Years after the revolution, he wrote in his memoirs, "But what men
these blacks are! How they fight and how they die! One has to make
war against them to know their reckless courage in braving danger
when they can no longer have recourse to stratagem. I have seen a
solid column, torn by grape-shot from four pieces of cannon, advance
without making a retrograde step. The more they fell, the greater
seemed to be the courage of the rest. They advanced singing, for the
Negro sings everywhere, makes songs on everything ... One must have
seen this bravery to have any conception of it."

The same spirit of courage and resistance can be seen today as young
Haitian activists defiantly hold five fingers -- signifying the
five-year mandate of President Aristide -- in the faces of American
occupying forces with total disregard for the loaded machine guns
trained on their bodies. It can be seen in the recent Lavalas
demonstrations held in Cap Haitien, despite the fact that the armed
paramilitaries still control that area of the country. And it can be
seen in the words of Annette Auguste, who when speaking from her
prison cell said, "They may imprison my body but they will never
imprison the truth I know in my soul. I will continue to fight for
justice and truth in Haiti until I draw my last breath."

Justin Felux is a writer and activist based in San Antonio, Texas. He
can be reached at justins@alacrityisp.net
.