After the rescue attempts end, and the immediate trauma passes....then what?

[SoCalDem]

A fly-over tells the story. Haiti is a hopelessly "brown" country. People who used to eke out an existence with a shack somewhere and a garden..maybe a few goats & some chickens, have been moving into the city for DECADES. Once there, they found out pretty quickly that there was nothing "more" there for them, and once off that little patch of land, they were relegated to an even bleaker future.

Probably the younger ones plotted an escape plan via a rickety raft, on their way to Miami, but many more just tried to get by.

With an almost non-existent government, building codes obviously were not an issue, so it's little wonder that most of the capital lies in a crumbled heap.

What ARE these people to do? Where do they go? What happens after a few weeks-months of aid?

Haiti has a climate that is conducive to vegetation growth, but it has to BE planted first. Instead of just donating food to fill a belly every day, and giving out blue tarps to keep the rain off their heads, these people need a CCC-style plan to get all able bodied people out into the countryside..and get them busy re-planting.

They need to be educated about ways to prepare food that does not require every stick of wood they can find, being turned into charcoal.

A reporter yesterday said that the "annual average income " is $580 a year. Even in a poor country, we all know how much building supplies cost ( especially for an island nation, where everything must be brought in), and where is the incentive to build safe places to live, for people who are too poor to pay to inhabit those dwellings?

Tourism helps, but it cannot be the mainstay of a place like Haiti. Rich tourists, visiting to "look at all the poor people", is not the way out.

Making them "less poor" is the goal, but we have seen , for a very long time now, that that goal is rarely achieved..anywhere.. even here in America.

The earthquake, or even the annual hurricanes are events that will repeat themselves, and if things are just cobbled together like before, nothing will change.

It won't be a very long time before weather will be an issue for all the people "camping out". It takes a long time to bulldoze all the rubble, and to rebuild, and history tells us that the rebuilt buildings must be more substantial. Time is their enemy.

Haiti HAS people, and those people need work..paid work. Instead of swooping in with military & aid workers who hand out bottled water for a day, and food for a day, these people need experts to swoop in and enlist these people & give them the tools & supplies & help to rebuild, reforest and restore their country.

The people of Haiti are not in a zoo, where people go to "look at them" or show up at feeding time, and then go away. Instead of always responding to their latest disaster, and then wandering off once the crisis has past, countries need to invest money, so they can start to succeed. People don't try to flee a successful life.

[HopeHoops]

1. Back to which celebrities are banging which other celebrities and so-called "reality TV".

Americans as a whole have very short attention spans. The attention span of the media is even shorter.

[Fumesucker]

2. I think Haiti is going to be a remarkably intractable problem.

You can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps when you lack boots in the first place.

Once the M$M focus has moved on to the next shiny object du jour Haiti and Haitians will again be left pretty much to their own devices.

:cry:

[SoCalDem]

3. Poverty & suffering are not what they like to report on

Tiger & Kate's 8 are so much more "interesting"..:(

[laughingliberal]

4. That's always an issue

Once the media moves on and the initial sense of urgency passes the enthusiasm for helping wanes. I just posted an update from NNU who is coordinating response teams of nurses. They now have 7000 nurses signed up. I am signed up as a volunteer but as I am unemployed I'm very flexible. So, my thought is to let those who are chomping at the bit to get there now go now and I will be available for a long time to come as interest starts to wane. I expect NNU will be there for a long time. They had an acute presence after Katrina for 4 months.

[superduperfarleft]

5. This is a very important point, and I was thinking the same thing.

We're pouring food and water into a country that didn't have a whole lot of food and water available to begin with. Are we going to feed them for a week, then forget about it, leaving them to go back to barely surviving? As for rebuilding, are we going to help them rebuild their mud huts on the sides or ravines?

This is why the people posting historical information that attempts to put the events in Haiti in context are important, and why the people chiding those posts as "this is not the time" couldn't be more wrong.

[SoCalDem]

9. This same scenario could repeat.. in Mexico City

ANY densely populated large city that is prone to earthquakes could suffer the same fate.

Weather-related disasters at least offer some time for people to get out of the way, but a big earthquake can reduce a whole city to rubble.

and what infrastructure that existed underground (sewer lines..power delivery ..communication systems) is probably hopelessly damaged as well, and will take ages to repair.

[XemaSab]

22. At least in Mexico City, Banda Aceh, and New Orleans

there are areas outside the disaster area that are unaffected.

After the hurricane, Baton Rouge could be used as a logistics base, and some of the people from NOLA could move out of the city and find shelter elsewhere until their homes were rebuilt. It's not optimal, but it's possible.

The problem in Haiti is that the capitol city was demolished.

People there can't go hang out with folks in another city for a while, and resources can't be sent from 50 miles down the freeway.

The only possibility that looks at all hopeful is that (like San Francisco in 1906) the area will be built better than before.

[SoCalDem]

25. Unless there is massive aid..for decades, they will rebuild just as before

The poorest have no choice..

[CaliforniaPeggy]

6. You make some excellent points.

I applaud your very clear thinking...

K&R

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. A UN rep spoke two days ago of a Marshall Plan for Haiti

if they go that route, government run, or rather multiple governments, things will change. If things remain as historically they have been for 70 years...

But I suspect things will change... things like this change societies.

[Selatius]

8. The funny thing is Haiti used to be self-sufficient as far as food production.

Starting in the 1970s, they began adopting recommendations of the Washington Consensus and opened up their economy to outside investment. Global labor arbitrage combined with the US dumping subsidized crops into their economy buried indigenous farmers and deprived the workers of a good paycheck. Social programs were cut or privatized following recommendations to curb government spending. By the early 1990s, Haiti, not a wealthy nation to begin with, had sunk to become the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Cuba is a paradise compared to Haiti, and Cuba has been under the US-imposed embargo for 50 years.

[SoCalDem]

10. Countryside farming.. small local farms, and controling the population size of cities

Cuba has been successful at doing that, but the downside is that the poor farmers in the countryside are still in the 1950's timewarp.. but they do have food & water & shelter..and medical care & education for their kids.

[RaleighNCDUer]

12. So the poor Cuban farmers don't have I-pods.

Such a tragedy.

If they are feeding themselves and have secure roofs over their heads they are doing better than 20% of the world's population. And MUCH better than their Haitian neighbors.

I don't see having self-sustaining farms as having any downside. My mother got through the great depression having virtually no money, but having chickens, a couple cows and a large garden, so even if the farm couldn't sell its product it was at the least self-sustaining.

You can bet, though, that if Cuba offers any substantial help past the immediate emergency we will be all over them - can't be having them communists spreading their poison in the Caribbean.

[SoCalDem]

14. Yep.. farmers always had food on their table & plenty to share too

and i doubt that many of the Cuban farmers even WANT an ipod:)

The sad thing about farming, is that so many young people DO want those things though, and if the next generation is not eager to take over the farm, the knowledge of farming dies with the older farmers..

technology is fine, but seeds in the ground, with adequate rainfall is what it's all about..Not exciting occupations, but sustaining.

[Spazito]

11. I, too, wonder what will happen in the long term....

I think the outpouring of support/aid from around the world has been wonderful and it is what is needed right now but if, after the immediate crisis is reduced and we all go back to ignoring the plight of the Haitian people as we (the first world countries) tend to do then it is at best a band aid put over a weeping wound, imo.

"Haiti HAS people, and those people need work..paid work. Instead of swooping in with military & aid workers who hand out bottled water for a day, and food for a day, these people need experts to swoop in and enlist these people & give them the tools & supplies & help to rebuild, reforest and restore their country." Exactly, well said! There needs to be a long-term, sustained plan to re-build Haiti in a manner that would aid the Haitians to become self-sufficient and successful.

[EFerrari]

13. From what I have been reading, Haitihas more ngo experts per square inch

than just about anywhere else.

But the problem is that since the US wants to control the Haitian government, they've wound up with virtually none that can preform the basic jobs of looking after the populace. So the ocean of experts wind up not doing very much constructive. The whole thing sounds like the wordl's biggest money laundering operation.

[SoCalDem]

15. In the 60's the Dom Rep had US "help" too, and my father was one of the ones

from the "School of the Americas" in Panama.. Lots of guns & military, but less "help".. One of the "jobs" the military did? using forklifts to push boxes marked "C.A.R.E"...off the docks, into the sea.

Food is a weapon.

[EFerrari]

17. There is wealth in Haiti. Wealthy sweatshop owners

need to begin to pay a living wage to people.

And one of the reasons France helped ouster Aristide is that he brought up the topic of the billions of dollars in reparations Haiti was made to pay France and more on top of that, in usurious interest on those loans.

[Dappleganger]

16. Aristide wants to return so this could get interesting.

[SoCalDem]

18. Where is he these days? Is he still in Africa?

I remember how the Bushies whisked him away to CAR, and dumped him..

[EFerrari]

19. Still in South Africa and issued a statement earlier this week:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4223021

[uppityperson]

20. kitten subthread. We just got a kitten like the ones in your picture

cross of tabby and calico, beautiful leggings and armlettes.

[scarletwoman]

21. Land redistribution would be a start.

I don't remember the exact numbers -- so I may be way off -- but one of the things I've read over the past few days is that something like 1% of the population owns something like 90% of the land.

My impression is that one of the things the Haitians need the most is a restoration of self-sustaining agriculture and an end to "Free Trade" policies that undercut the local farmers' ability to make a living.

That would be a big piece right there, imo.

sw

[XemaSab]

23. A lot of what they need is reforestation

They've destroyed their country by cutting down all the trees. :(

[smalll]

24. This is not the end for Haiti, but the beginning of the beginning --

we will be there for years. We will nation-build. We will first get them water, and food, and security on their streets -- yes, today, Port-au-Prince is dominated by machete-weilding gangs. But criminals are not the Taliban. Once the U.S. Armed Forces start patroling the streets, the gangs will stand down...

We'll give the Haitian people food and social peace. And we'll start to help them rebuild -- bricks and mortar, houses and homes. We'll build schools. In time, we'll give tax credits to American businesses to do business in Haiti -- to pay Haitians in Haiti for their labor.

Perhaps, in a place like that, the only hope is to start again at square one. Well, it's square one right now. Obama will be their savior, as he can, as he will be, as he should be, and it works.

In many ways, this sudden devastation is on a par with the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 -- in many ways, it is a deep and fundamental challenge to our general ideas of the bearability and understandability of this world. And that matters. But on a SLIGHTLY less deep level, this disaster and OUR RESPONSE TO IT will make us believe again, for very good reasons: in hope -- now, there is hope! -- and in change -- now there can be change.

... mine eyes have seen the salvation, and the power, and the glory ... :)

[sabrina 1]

26. When the West stops propping up corrupt Haitian puppet

governments and starts supporting democratically elected leaders (but when did we ever do that) there might be a chance for Haiti to finally gain the independence it has sought for so long.

There WERE educated, professional men and women in Haiti. But under the brutal rule of the Duvaliers, father and son, starting in the '50s, they were persecuted and many left for fear of their lives. There was a huge 'brain drain' during that period which lasted for several decades. Papa Doc Duvalier, with US backing, drove out or killed 'communists' and his son wasn't much better.

The remnants of those years of brutality are still operating in Haiti. Duvalier supporters (his son, Baby Doc is now living in France) are often funded to cause disturbance, ie, when Aristedes was president. Those elements, thugs who still kill and terrorize supporters of Aristede, need to be brought under control. The country needs help with its infrastructure and judicial system so that laws can be implemented.

Education ~ the missionary schools used to provide excellent education for the children there. Aristedes eg, who was an orphan, was sent to college abroad after being educated by the Salesian fathers. He attended school in Israel, Canada and I believe, France. He speaks eight languages fluently. But the entire infracture of Haiti has been devasted by social unrest, poverty, natural disasters, and mostly by the attempt to colonialize the country and force it to succumb to the status of being dependent on the west.

This could be an opportunity to begin to change all that. But to be honest, I think this will gradually disappear from the news, the way all stories about Haiti do. People will grow tired of it as the next big story comes along.

After the coup that removed Aristedes from Haiti eg, it was in the news for a while. I know I blogged about it along with others trying to keep people interested, for nearly two years. But it was hard to find any news on the country, once the big story left the front pages and after a while, people lost interest.