[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

27134: Collesano: (reply) Fwd: Haiti Progres vs. Batay Ouvriye Round III (fwd)



It now seems that Batay Ouvriye tried to hide this $100,000 donation
from the US State Dept via AFL/CIO. Evidence of other grants is also
emerging. The left wing - even ideologues in Brooklyn like Simidor may
also be receiving money from as-yet-unexposed sources. When there is
income only from those that seek to corrupt you, do you reject it and
starve or accept and try to work the least damage possible?

Raymond Aron once said: "Politics is not the struggle of good against
evil. It is the struggle of the preferable against the detestable.."
Everybody has to make compromises. This goes a fortiori for those who
must make their living from donations by foreigners. The trick is not to
sell your whole soul.

For purity, you have to go visit John the Baptist in the desert. He ate
locusts and honey, dressed in animal skins and, with nothing to lose,
bowed to no man - even the king who eventually killed him. No mortgages
or hostages given to fate there. JB could stone all the glass houses in
the valley because he lived in a cave. The rest of us have to inhabit
moral grey areas and protect our investments be they children
themselves or merely the means to support them.

- dcc



BATAY OUVRIYE'S "SMOKING GUN":
THE $100,000 NED GRANT
bY JEB SPRAGUE



Both before and after the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d'état in Haiti,

Washington

infiltrated "democracy promotion" programs (also known as "democracy
enhancement") into almost every sector of Haitian civil society:
political parties, media, human rights groups, student groups, vote
monitoring organizations, business associations, and labor
organizations.

Recently declassified National Endowment for Democracy (NED) documents
reveal that a "leftist" workers' organization, Batay Ouvriye (BO),

which

promoted and called for the overthrow of the constitutionally elected
government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, was the targeted
beneficiary of a US $99,965 NED grant routed through the AFL-CIO's
American Center for International Solidarity (ACILS). Listed in NED's
"Summary of Projects Approved in FY 2005" for Haiti, the grant states,
"ACILS will work with the May 1st Union Federation- Batay Ouvriye
[ESPM-BO] to train workers to organize and educate fellow workers."

The NED, which is funded through the U.S. State Department, provided

the

grant to ACILS, also known as the Solidarity Center. The grant money is
then to be used by the Solidarity Center to fund and aid Batay

Ouvriye's

labor organizing activities for 2005-2006.

Statements made by both Batay Ouvriye and Solidarity Center officials
suggest that there is further funding of the former by the latter. In a
recent telephone interview with Canadian freelance journalist Anthony
Fenton, a Batay Ouvriye leader Paul Philomé admitted that his
organization had received US $20,000 from the Solidarity Center. A
Solidarity Center official also recently said at a Dec. 22 public
meeting in San Francisco that ACILS provided approximately US $13,000

to

the Batay Ouvriye this past year. This funding appears to be in

addition

to the NED grant, since Solidarity Center officials have stated that

the

NED grant will not be spent until 2006.

Batay Ouvriye has been waging a successful campaign to gain high-level
support from labor federations like the AFL-CIO, which shuns trade
unionists who supported Haiti's constitutional democracy and are today
arrested, persecuted, and harassed. The NED grant explains that NGOs

and

trade unions from the U.S. and Canada will meet with Batay Ouvriye to
discuss working conditions in Haiti.

The Solidarity Center-administered NED support for Batay Ouvriye fits
neatly into the U.S. State Department's "democracy promotion" strategy
of undermining and destabilizing Haitian self-determination. Instead of
supporting unions which did not call for the overthrow of the elected
government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the AFL-CIO, along with

mainstream

international labor centers, such as the International Confederation of
Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and its Latin American regional affiliate the
Organización Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores (ORIT), has sought
to strengthen marginal groups like Batay Ouvriye and the Coordination
Syndicale HaVtienne (CSH), which taxed the Aristide government as
"anti-worker" and "criminal."

Workers affiliated with public sector unions, often seen as supporters
of the elected government, have been fired and persecuted by the
thousands. In a recent radio interview, Isabel Macdonald, a Canadian
journalist conducting interviews in Port-au-Prince, explained that
between 2,000 and 3,000 unionized workers of the state phone company
TELECO have been laid off since the 2004 coup, with many of those fired
placed arbitrarily on the Haitian National Police's "Wanted" lists
(Listen to the Interview with Isabel Macdonald at
www.wakeupwithcoop.org).

When questioned why the AFL-CIO was not supporting or funding unions
whose membership supported the overthrown government, a high level
Solidarity Center official, in June 2005, referred to pro-Lavalas labor
leaders as "revolutionary ideologues."

Batay Ouvriye, like other organizations heavily dependent on foreign
"democracy promotion" funding, has failed to stand up and organize
against the massacres being carried out by the Haitian National Police
and the United Nations MINUSTAH force. The Pacifica Radio network's
Flashpoints News correspondent Kevin Pina writes: "Is it not patently
obvious that, for Batay [Ouvriye] and their supporters, the killing,
jailing, and forced exile of thousands since Feb. 29, 2004 are not
acknowledged nor condemned by them? Can their politics be so sectarian
and insular as to pretend none of this ever happened?... Members of
Batay [Ouvriye] are not under fire in their communities nor the objects
of this campaign of repression for the simple reason that they are not
seen as a threat by the US-installed government."

Pina goes on to write: "We can get trapped into a false dialogue with
pretty words like bourgeois, proletariat and vanguard, but it will

never

excuse their silence in the wake of this human tragedy."

Pierre Labossiere of the Haiti Action Committee sees the U.S.

government

grants to Batay Ouvriye as a "pay-off for their voicing no opposition

to

the 2004 coup."

Channeling "democracy promotion" funds through labor unions is just one
of the ways that the U.S. government has sought to subvert popular
democracy in Haiti. "Democracy promotion" has facilitated, what William
Robinson, the author of Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US
intervention, and Hegemony, calls a "consensual mechanism of
transnational social control," by which a small minority elite can
manipulate civil society and government. Through co-opting labor

unions,

human rights groups and political organizations, "democracy promotion"
casts a wide net of social and political influence.

Recently the Washington, D.C.-based think-tank, the Haiti Democracy
Project, financed in large part by members of Group 184 and
board-membered by ex-State Department officials, put up a link on its
website to Batay Ouvriye's "grassroots" support group.

Batay Ouvriye and its supporters have continually denied that the
organization has received large-scale funding from the U.S. government
via the Solidarity Center. Prior to the opening session of the
International Tribunal on Haiti on Sep. 23, 2005 in Washington, DC (see
HaVti ProgrPs, Vol. 23, No. 37, 11/23/2005), Batay Ouvriye's
relationship with the Solidarity Center was not public knowledge. Since
then, the organization has only admitted that it received from the
Solidarity Center US $3,500. Batay Ouvriye and its supporters have
sought to minimize the importance of the grant, saying it was a small
sum of money. That argument will not be possible following these latest
revelations.

Here is a summary of some of the defenses that Batay Ouvriye and its
supporters have offered to revelations about its State Department
funding:


On December 9, 2005, Mario Pierre, a representative of the Batay

Ouvriye

in New York City, claimed his organization received only "$3,500 from
the Solidarity Center," while charging that those individuals and
organizations criticizing his organization for accepting U.S. State
Department funding were "doing the work of the CIA."

On November 25, 2005, Charles Arthur, the head organizer of the Haiti
Support Group in England, wrote, "I think that the fact that Batay
Ouvriye received US$3,500 from the Solidarity Center to help the 350
workers.should not distract anyone from appreciating the organization's
fantastic work."

On November 28, 2005, Batay Ouvriye supporter Daniel Simidor wrote:

"All

[this author] can 'prove' is that the workers' organization accepted a
$3,500 contribution to their strike fund from the AFL-CIO Solidarity
Center in Haiti. Sprague's contention that Batay Ouvriye accepted
'monetary aid and oversight' from the US government is based not on
facts."

On November 29, 2005, Batay Ouvriye supporter Mitchell Cohen of the
Brooklyn Greens wrote: "Organizations and individuals who are spreading
this lie need to retract it immediately and apologize for their
reckless, sectarian behavior. If it turns out that you actually

document

that a particular group, in this case Batay Ouvriye, has received funds
from the CIA or State Department, then I'll listen..Wow, what a smoking
gun! (I say sarcastically)."

In late November, 2005, a supporter of Batay Ouvriye, Cort Greene,
posted on the internet: "Just from looking at documents provided by J.
Sprague and others, I have not seen any proof that Batay Ouvriye is a
creation or in the service of U.S. imperialism."

On December 14, 2005, Yanick Etienne, a Batay Ouvriye leader, speaking
at a New York City gathering, in regards to the criticism leveled
against her organization, failed to mention the NED's $100,000 grant

via

the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center.

In December 2005, the Solidarity Center updated its website on Haiti
(see http://www.solidaritycenter.org/content.asp?contentid=531). "With
funds provided by the AFL-CIO, the Solidarity Center immediately
forwarded $3,500 to Ouanaminthe, where ESPM-BO and the [subsidiary
union] SOKOWA Executive Board distributed these funds," the site
reports, but once again it does not reveal the much larger funding of
Batay Ouvriye.

The Solidarity Center continues to refuse to open its books to show its
full funding relationship with Batay Ouvriye. In September 2005,
Samantha Tate, a Senior Program Officer for the Americas at the
Solidarity Center, contacted my academic department chair at California
State University of Long Beach, attempting to isolate and discredit

this

research.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Jeb Sprague is a researcher, freelance journalist, and a graduate
student at California State University of Long Beach. To read more on
the AFL-CIO's support for anti-democracy labor in Haiti, see his

article

Supporting a Leftist Opposition to Lavalas: The AFL-CIO's Solidarity
Center and Batay Ouvriye both in HaVti ProgrPs (see Vol. 23, No. 37,
11/23/2005) and Monthly Review
(mrzine.monthlyreview.org/sprague211105.html) Contact him at
Jebsprague@mac.com or visit his blog at http://www.freehaiti.net.



All articles copyrighted Haiti Progres, Inc. REPRINTS ENCOURAGED.
Please credit Haiti Progres.

-30-


----- End Original Message -----

----- End forwarded message -----