The earthquake that shook Haiti on 12 January struck heavily the poorest country in Latin America. The images of the disaster and the suffering of the Haitian people impact and generate spontaneously, among the workers and people throughout the world, the supportive will to help.
It is a very fair and commendable feeling that the selfish moral “save yourself” adopted by the capitalism could not destroy.
Therefore, IWL-FI has launched a solidarity campaign independent of governments and the UN, with a clear content of the working and popular class. First, by the organizations that organize and boost in their respective countries. In this sense, it has already begun, such as in Brazil, where Conlutas, Jubilee Brazil and the MST have established a National Front for Solidarity with Haiti to raise funds and material aid; such as the workers of the Larcade Hospital in Argentina, which even in the midst of a tough fight against the dismissal of its union leaders, agreed at a meeting a campaign of solidarity with the Haitian people and a call for coordination with other workers and popular organizations to push it; or the PdAC (Italian section of the IWL-FI), which began to raise funds to develop in Italy the call of Conlutas in Brazil.
For those who want to send money and goods to Haiti to serve, indeed, the needs of the Haitian people, our proposal is that they are delivered to Batay Ouvriye, a working and popular organization that, from the start, fought against the occupation of UN and who has just released a call for an international solidarity campaign, so to make concrete actions to help the residents of the neighborhoods and workers in factories where they are present.
We propose an independent and class campaign, different from the governments of the imperialist powers, especially U.S., governments lackeys in the military occupation of Haiti, like Brazil; different from the UN or the Haitian bourgeoisie itself, complicit in the occupation, because they try to use that fair feeling and solidarity to conceal their responsibility for the consequences of this disaster.
Firstly, because they are responsible for the conditions of the large backlog of the country which have aggravated the effects of a natural disaster that was predictable and, therefore, could have been taken measures to prevent and respond much more effective. Secondly, because they are responsible for a military occupation that lasts for five years and this has worsened poverty in the service of “maquiladora” companies in the textile industry. Thirdly, because, in view of the disaster, they are sending a “help” almost non-existent not only in relation to the urgent needs of the Haitian people, but in the face of trillions of dollars spent to save banks speculators in the recent economic crisis or the 3500 billion that has already been spent on the UN mission.
At the same time, they want to show how “good” military occupation is and justify it before the eyes of the world as a supposed aid due to the earthquake. The reality is that U.S. imperialism has decided to take direct military control of the country (actually replacing the UN mission) and send 15,000 men, who are not civil specialists in disaster relief, but specialized soldiers in combat. Their main concern is not to help the Haitian people but to be prepared to quell a situation where the discontent of the Haitian people explodes with violence.
We require that these governments spend this money not in these military actions, but in real aid. But, at the same time, we can have no confidence in how this “solidarity” will be used or come to its recipients. It is enough to see the pathetic image of the UN civil servants using the scarce resources available to save themselves and flee the country, while the UN was not delivering the food supplies they had stored in its office in the country. Or the attitude of U.S. troops of sending a few supplies by parachute, which were not only insufficient, but could generate a wild scramble to get them.
Therefore, we propose an independent campaign, with a clear working and popular content and organization. This is an urgent campaign whose results will actually help the Haitian people at the same time it will provide its independent organization, more necessary before this disaster exacerbated by capitalism, and building international ties of solidarity and working class people.
