NEW JAMAICAN
Issue #22
June 29th, 2008.

GARVEY & HAITI:
Speech Delivered on the Occassion of Garvey's 121st Birthday
by Myrtha Desulme

As President of the Haiti-Jamaica Society, I am honoured to have been invited to be the guest speaker at your annual UNIA Banquet, celebrating the 121st birthday of your founder, and Jamaica’s first national hero, the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey. I can think of no better marriage than Haiti and Marcus Garvey, for just as Haiti is where the African Presence first stood up in the New World, so Marcus Garvey is where the Pan-African Presence first stood up in the New World. The crucifixion which Marcus Garvey suffered as a Man, in his struggle to counter the racist hegemony of imperialism, Haiti suffered, and continues to suffer as a nation, for the very same reason.

Like Garvey, Haiti has always been in a strategic position of defiance against the reigning imperialist regimes. The Haitian revolution, which culminated in Independence in 1804, threatened the very foundation of the Western Hemisphere’s colonial societies. Haiti was built on the ideology of cultural, social, political, and economic independence from the West, and on the principles of self-sufficiency, which were the cornerstone of Garvey’s philosophy. There has been a long-standing determination of the colonial powers, to extinguish these two dangerously unyielding torches of Black freedom in their midst. I am therefore proud of this opportunity to consolidate the historic bond between Haiti and the legacy of Marcus Garvey. As Garvey has taught us so well, “Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences.”

The romanticism, beauty, and tragedy of the history of the Haitian people cannot be lost even on the most cynical amongst us. Haiti’s tragedy is that, unlike other nations, her long-suffering people, though christened in glory, have yet to be allowed to reap the benefits of the heroism of their founding fathers, who accomplishing a feat unparalleled in human history, established the foundations of universal freedom in the modern world. Destiny, would however decree, that Haiti should be born at the wrong place, at the wrong time: A Black revolutionary in a world dominated by Eurocentric fanaticism, which is still paying a heavy price for ushering in the New World Order.

Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States, who drafted the Declaration of Independence, shuddered to think of the rage which would be unleashed on America, the day the Africans awoke to the Great Injustice, which had been perpetrated upon them. Jefferson wrote: “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate, that these people are to be free. I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever, that considering numbers and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events, and may become probable by supernatural interference. The Almighty has no attribute, which can take side with us in such a contest!”

When the Haitian Revolutionaries stepped on to the stage of history, in this sweeping drama of mythological proportions, Jefferson’s worst nightmare had come to pass. In his overview of the Haitian Revolution in The American Historical Review, Professor Franklin W. Knight tells us that: “The Haitian Revolution represents the most thorough case study of revolutionary change anywhere in the history of the modern world. In thirteen years of sustained internal and international warfare, a colony populated predominantly by plantation slaves overthrew both its colonial status, and its economic system, and established a new political state of entirely free individuals — with some ex-slaves constituting the new political authority. As only the second state to declare its independence in the Americas, Haiti had no viable administrative models to follow. The British North Americans who declared their independence in 1776 left slavery intact, and theirs was more a political revolution than a social and economic one.”

The impact of the Haitian Revolution was both immediate and widespread. Haiti, the Caribbean, the Americas, and Europe, would never be the same again.

Haiti’s nationhood was based on its Black identity, as it declared itself the first Free Black Republic in the world. Ethno-nationalism was not foreign to the 19th century, where many European countries used ethnic origin as a demarcation for the formation of nation-states. But European nationalism was one thing, Black nationalism another thing altogether: It was a scandalous, unheard of, and unacceptable effrontery, which could not be tolerated in a world dominated by European imperialism. Haitians had established for the first time a victorious African presence in the New World.

In the foreword to his magnum opus on the Haitian Revolution, CLR James analyses Haiti’s victory over France, Spain and Britain with these words: “The odds Haiti had to overcome are evidence of the magnitude of the interests that were involved. The transformation of slaves, trembling in hundreds before a single white man, into a people able to organize themselves, and to defeat the most powerful European nations of the day, is one of the greatest epics of revolutionary struggle and achievement.”

Trinidadian novelist George Lamming adds this commentary: “There was no socialist bloc in 1804, no non-aligned movement, no Organisation of African Unity. The Haitians stood alone, in complete charge and masters in their own land; in charge, but utterly alone against the wounded pride of Europe and Euro-America, which had institutionalized slavery as the normal relationship of black men and women to white authority.”

The Haitian constitution drafted in 1805, by Haiti’s second ruler, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, was a “jus sanguinis” constitution, where only Africans or Indians could aspire to Haitian nationality, or land ownership. It made distinctions of colour illegal, declared all Haitians, regardless of ethnic origin, officially Black, and granted all Blacks setting foot on Haitian soil, automatic citizenship upon arrival, thereby making Haiti the sole refuge for the beleaguered slaves of the hemisphere. Dessalines also bestowed upon Napoleon’s Polish legions, who had defected from the French army, and settled in Haiti, the status of “Honourary Blacks”.

Proving the theory that great minds think alike, Marcus Garvey, more than a century later, also promoted the same ideology of ‘Race Pride’, and ‘Race First‘, when he expressed to his followers that the Black skin was not a badge of shame, but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness. "Sons and daughters of Africa,” he exhorted, "I say to you arise, take on the toga of race pride, and throw off the brand of ignominy, which has kept you back for so many centuries. Dash asunder the petty prejudices within your own fold!"

Also, echoing Dessalines’ idea of a separate Black nation, the first UNIA international convention held in 1920 produced the "Declaration of Rights of the Negro People of the World", which declared that: “All persons of African descent anywhere in the world should be accepted as free citizens of Africa.”

Like Dessalines, Garvey believed that the break between the black and the white world was beyond mending. His creation of the UNIA therefore doubled as the foundation of a new nation, which would respond to the specific hurts, and aspirations of the Black race. The UNIA was based upon a well-defined and thought-out programme, which Garvey believed would lead to the total emancipation of the black race from white domination. Like the Haitian revolution, Garvey's message of racial pride and self-reliance struck a chord among Blacks worldwide.

While Dessalines declared Haiti’s Independence to the entire Universe, and swore eternal hatred to France, in a manifesto published in The Negro World, the UNIA declared: “We are descendants of a people determined to suffer no longer.”

Yet, today, at the dawning of the 21st century, it is amazing to reflect on how effective and far-reaching the pernicious and soul-corroding notions of race inferiority and superiority fed to the world by imperialist Europe have been, to the point that so many Black people were for centuries, and still are, convinced of their own inferiority, and people like Marcus Garvey and so many other Heroes, sung and unsung, have been vilified, imprisoned, and lost their very lives, for daring to challenge these vicious notions. But we take comfort in knowing that ‘Truth crushed to earth shall rise again', because as Malcolm X imparted to us: ‘Truth is always on the side of the oppressed’.

I sometimes see artistic representations, which have nothing to do with Haiti, but in which the symbolism of Haiti, strikes me so vividly. For example, in May, I attended, the University Players rendition of Aime Cesaire’s version of “The Tempest”, which sets Shakespeare’s play in a colonial context, in terms of the struggle between a colonizing European master, and his colonized indigenous slaves.

Caliban, the slave, is relentlessly rebellious and confrontational towards his master. At the height of his frustration with Caliban, Prospero, the European master pronounces these memorable words: “His insubordination brings into question the very order of the universe”.

That line was so powerful to me, that I was fumbling in my handbag, to find a pen to write it down, right then and there in the darkness of the theatre, because it struck me that that was the whole story of Haiti. That was, in fact, also the story of Marcus Garvey. It was the same reason Garvey was considered such a threat by the authorities on 3 continents, because that is how revolutionary and far-reaching his concept of race pride was at the time. As far as the hegemonic establishment was concerned, Garvey’s ideas brought into question the very order of the universe.

It is truly amazing to realise how much Garvey accomplished, in light of the fact that he was only 53 years-old when he died. Just as I never cease to be amazed, whenever I reflect on the fact that the American giants, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, who have uplifted us in so many ways, were only 39 years old when they were assassinated.

In one of his legendary exhortations, King suggested to his followers that the story of the Black race was one of such epic beauty, that when the story would be written, historians of the future would have to declare: “There went a gallant race of Negroes”, who faced with the harshest and most insurmountable obstacles to their freedom and human dignity, rose as a mighty nation, exalted by righteousness, purified like gold by the fire of their afflictions, and showed the world what could be achieved through discipline, indomitable courage, moral ascendancy, strength of character, and self-mastery. Like Garvey, King, who later became the symbol of the American Civil Rights Movement, sought to mobilize his people into a well-disciplined force, which would rewrite history, by reversing through the application of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance, centuries of Jim crow segregation laws, and the American legacy of virulent racism, brutal repression, and entrenched discrimination, which had been the hallmark of race relations, since the first slave ship landed in Jamestown, Virginia in 1619.

Like King, all great Black leaders, from Toussaint L’Ouverture to Nelson Mandela, through Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X, have advocated this vision of grandeur, self-pride, and ascendancy, of a noble race conquering all odds, to regain its dignity through self-assertion; of a mighty and Chosen people, fulfilling a destiny of Greatness.

So I ask myself today: “What would Marcus think of his Chosen People, on this his 121st birthday, 68 years after his demise?” I think he would be proud of how far we’ve come.

A people snatched from the bosom of their motherland, and transported across the ocean, in the dark and heaving bowels of slave ships, to a strange land, to face the harshest possible conditions of slavery and oppression; deprived of their history, their language, their heritage and culture, their human dignity, their Gods, down to their very names, all of the things, which men cherish and preserve with the greatest of care. We traversed the scorching desert of bondage and subjection, but in the words of Jamaica’s poet balladeer, Bob Marley, who became the voice of the internationally dispossessed: “Our hand was made strong by the hand of the Almighty. We forward in this generation, triumphantly!”

On the 10th of May 2001, France passed the ‘Taubira Law’, in which the French Republic became the first country to officially recognise slavery and the Atlantic slave trade as crimes against humanity, transcending the realm of history, for negating the principles of humanity and universal ethics.

In the Private Member’s Bill submitted to the French Parliament by the MP for French Guyana, Christiane Taubira-Delannon, expounding on the grounds for the ‘Taubira Bill’, she declares: “Those who faced the most extreme cruelty, while taking with them, beyond the seas and the horror of the situation, traditions and values, principles and myths, regulations and beliefs, while inventing songs, stories, languages, rites, gods, knowledge and know-how towards an unknown continent, those who survived the apocalyptic crossing in the holds of ships, all those human beings do not have to prove their humanity….

France which was a slave trading country before being abolitionist, and which is the homeland of human rights, will regain radiance, glory, and prestige, by being the first to bow before the memory of the victims of this orphan crime.”

If chattel slavery was the biggest crime ever perpetrated against humanity, does it not then follow, that the ultimate emancipation of the African in the New World will stand as the greatest achievement of the human spirit, of overcoming, and of self-definition?

Yes, we have come a very long way. We have in the US, the legacy of Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr, and his unstoppable dream of a post-racial America. We have, the presumptive Democratic nominee, the freshman Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, running for the highest office in the land, (notwithstanding the fact that the assassination watch has been on since the first day he announced his candidacy). We have Nelson and Winnie Mandela, and the epoch-making victory over apartheid. We have the Haitian Governor of Canada, Michaelle Jean. We have Malcolm X, Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, (whatever we think of their politics!), Oprah Winfrey, Muhammad Ali, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Ben Carson, Bob Marley, Asafa Powell, Usain Bolt, Veronica Campbell… So many we can be proud of! Yet, we still have a long, long way to go.

What is the state of the Black nation today? When we look around us, in the Black community, what do we see? A wasteland of crime and violence, drugs and despair, rage and weapons, urban blight and decay. Black Womanhood desecrated by the twin monsters of lack and need. Black Manhood reduced to sex and guns. Our beleaguered leaders incarcerated and assassinated for their heroic efforts. The African motherland decimated by the scourge of AIDS.

Wherever a high concentration of young Black males is to be found, be it in the Caribbean, the US, Britain, Europe, South America, or Africa, they have become an endangered species. Their natural habitat is a precarious environment, which renders them the primary victims, as well as the primary perpetrators of crime and violence, with nothing to look forward to, but jail or an early grave. Jamaica and Haiti are no exception. What we need is an emergency preservation plan. Instead we are killing them in cold blood, and clamouring for more prisons, and a return to the gallows.

Randall Robinson's best selling book on Reparations, entitled: “The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks”, reminds us of “the millions of African-Americans, who are still bottom-mired in urban hells by the savage time-release social debilitations of American slavery.”

Denouncing the overwhelming preponderance of African-American minorities in the US penal system, civil rights leader, Jesse Jackson, was forced to point out to the white establishment, that they really ought to take into consideration the fact, that it costs more to send them to jail, than to send them to Yale!

I don’t know if any of you watched the CNN programme ‘Black in America’ which aired a few weeks ago. There was an interview of a young white woman, who had spent years researching race relations in America, and one of the things that her research had revealed, was that it was practically impossible for a Black man with a criminal record to get a job, but that a Black man with no criminal record had as much chance of getting a job as a White man with a criminal record.

And I thought to myself: “Well, she did not need to do all of that research. She could have saved herself a lot of time and effort, because Marcus could have told her that!”

This young lady has spent all of these years researching, to discover what Garvey told us one hundred years ago: That the white colonial system had made it a crime to be Black.

Our youths are angry. They’re angry because that is exactly what they are experiencing out there today: Their blackness is equivalent to a criminal record. The Police they know is not there to serve, protect and reassure. They’re only there to harass, arrest, and brutalise. Yes, we want the police to do their job, but where wisdom is called for, force is of little use.

There is a great uproar all around about the guns flooding our streets. But weapons by themselves are not dangerous. It is the anger within Man that is harmful. What happens when you have no money for food, clothes, shelter, or education; no social structure, no goals and dreams, no plans, no opportunities, no aim, no direction or guidance, no respect, no peace, no hope…but you have a gun… and you have bullets,… and you hold the power of life and death in your hands? The gun becomes synonymous with manhood, power, and respect, and a survival tool, to obtain a livelihood, and extort by force, what could not be obtained by fair means, from a society practicing the politics of exclusivity.

What we are concerned with here tonight, my friends, is how to ensure that our youths do not continue to fall into this idle path, to even become collateral damage in the war on crime. Angry boys grow up to be angry men. Violence in the home leads to blood in the streets, and the endless cycle continues.

Vicious, hardened criminals notwithstanding, our rampaging, disaffected youths just want to belong. Deprived of nurturing family structures, father figures, or role models, neglected by the system, and locked out of society, they have created gangs, which have become the new families to whom they pledge allegiance. As long as our youths do not have a stake in society, society will be perceived as the enemy, whose values, conventions, beliefs, morality, and authority, it will be a self-defining badge of honour to reject and defy.

Yet deep down inside, these youths just want to have a dream. They want to have an ideal. They want to know that they can contribute something, and play a role in building our society. But without a vision the people perish. That is why Garvey’s message is as relevant today as it was one century ago. We are the ones who are going to have to teach the youth what we have learned from Marcus: That they can learn to see good and perfection in themselves. That Mind creates, and as much as they desire in Nature, they can have through the creation of their own minds. That there is no height to which they cannot climb, by using the active intelligence of their own minds. We have to instill in them strength, determination, courage, hope and faith, all of the sustaining qualities.

We will also have to teach them History. Garvey understood the critical importance of History. Black people have been fundamentally separated from their history, a fact which he firmly believed, hampered any efforts at success they might seek to build anywhere in the world. It was this lack of origin in which to root one's identity, that Garvey believed had to be restored in order to free black people from the "servility of mind".

Garvey sought to address the self-hatred he understood afflicted black people throughout the world, due to the history of European oppression, by simply filling the spiritual and psychological void resulting from their uprootedness.

Garvey's paper, The Negro World, not only gave news of Negro affairs, but also described regal splendor in ancient Africa, to which Blacks could refer with pride. He sometimes wrote in fanciful detail, of the heroism of such slave dissidents as Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey, and of the battles of Zulu and Hottentot warriors against their European rulers. He recounted the histories of Moorish and Ethiopian conquests, and the exploits of Toussaint L'Ouverture against the French in Haiti. He narrated Toussaint’s brilliance as a soldier and statesman, which outshone that of a Cromwell, Napoleon or Washington; rendering him deserving of the highest honour as a hero among men.

Marcus took the narrative of Black people's inherent depravity, and replaced it with one of "natural nobility", seated in a great legacy of triumph and strength. His message was simple and unambiguous: black people were a good and noble race. They were a beautiful people with a grand history, which had been hidden from them by their white oppressors. They had been an enslaved people, true, but theirs had been a servility of mind - the effects of the brainwashing of the colonial system - not of nature. Once black men and women rid themselves of self-hatred, and asserted their natural nobility, they would overwhelm white oppression, and come into their just inheritance. Only through studying, and drawing inspiration from their glorious past, would black people ever find the courage to create a worthy future.

We have a responsibility to continue Garvey’s work, by seeing to the spiritual well-being of our youth; by instilling in them the sense of pride, which will induce them to reach for their best; by creating outlets for them, so they can live lives of dignity, characterized by work and productivity, and contribute to building up our society.

It will take all of us working together, to make a real impact on this daunting problem. But if we don’t rise to the occasion, we will have to answer to Marcus, to Toussaint, to Dessalines, to Nanny, to Taki, to Malcolm, to all of the giants on whose shoulders we stand. We will have to answer to History itself.

We need to remain ever vigilant in the maintenance of the honour, dignity and integrity of the race. Eternal vigilance and responsibility will forever be the price of freedom.

In February 1899, when Marcus Garvey, who famously claimed Africa for the Africans at home and abroad, would have been 12 years-old, British novelist and poet, Rudyard Kipling, wrote a poem entitled “The White Man’s Burden”, which became emblematic of the ideology of European ascendancy, and "cultural imperialism".

This patronizing view proposes that the white race has an obligation to rule over people from other ethnic and cultural backgrounds, until they can take their place in the world by fully adopting Western ways. The term "the white man's burden" would become a metaphor for racism, and a condescending view of non-Western culture, and economic traditions.

The truth is that the White Man's burden has really turned out to be the Black Man’s burden. The result of the imperialist thrust of underdevelopment, and the "virtues of empire" celebrated by the “White Man’s Burden”, is that today, Africa, which has the richest natural resources of any continent in the world, is the only continent predicted to regress economically over the next decade.

Africa is groaning under a $360 billion debt burden, and a $15 billion a year debt service: While most of her people live on less than $1 per day; While 6,500 Africans die each day from HIV-related illnesses; While 3,900 children die each day because of dirty water or poor hygiene; While 2 million Africans die every year from malaria; While its 22 million AIDS victims constitute 67% of victims worldwide.

And we still have people who are vehemently opposed to the idea of Reparations, because they think that Reparations is about a cheque. They split hairs about the remoteness of time; about who would be the rightful recipients, and the rightful debtors. So we have to remind them that Reparations is not about payments from individuals to individuals. It is about a moral debt, and confronting History, to which no statute of limitation applies. Reparations speaks to the reconfiguration of world power. It is about reconstruction, rehabilitation, and a new World Order, which seeks to counter the centuries of injustice and exploitation, and create a global equilibrium free of economic domination.

Two countries glaringly highlight the deep hypocrisy of the anti-Reparations discourse: Israel and Haiti. As heinous a crime as the Jewish Holocaust was, it lasted 6 years, (12, if we count the pre-WWII anti-Jewish build-up), and involved 6 million deaths. It did not last 400 years, nor did it involve hundreds of millions.

We abhor the odious practice of comparing sufferings. All atrocities are intolerable. But when we study the case of Israel, and the US $40 billion it has received as compensation so far, what are we to read into the fact that Africa and its Diaspora are still being begrudged as much as an apology?! Even the Archbishop of Canterbury admitted in March, that Britain paid the Church of England, and all former slave owners, significant compensation for the loss of their slave labour, and that passing on that reparation to the descendants of slaves, should now be considered.

Now, let’s take a look at the egregious case of Haiti. It is one of the greatest ironies of world history, that while the former enslavers are vehemently refusing to admit that these crimes against humanity ought to be compensated and redressed, there is actually one country in the world, which has already paid reparations for slavery, and that country is the one which least deserved to do so. That country is none other than Haiti! Yes, Haiti! As unbelievable as it may sound, the country which is invariably described as the “poorest country in the Western Hemisphere”, as if that were an integral part of its name, is actually the only one to have ever paid reparations for slavery, to one of the richest countries on earth, France!

Though no country can be deemed poor which has contributed so greatly to the global freedom principle, Haiti’s material poverty can be directly linked to this unconscionable aberration and injustice.

It is common knowledge that Haiti, formerly St Domingue, was the richest and most prosperous colony of the New World, simply because it was also the most merciless. Nowhere was the system practiced in a more brutal manner, in order to extract the greatest amount of profit to enrich metropolitan France. So the nation, which most deserved to receive reparations for slavery, has actually been forced to pay it.

In 1825, 21 years after independence, Haiti was living in an extreme state of isolation, surrounded by a sea of hostile slave colonies, which refused to recognize the Black Republic, fearful as they were that the revolution would spread to their shores. This isolation, following on the heels of Haiti’s great achievement, represented a crippling obstacle, which disallowed opportunities for economic development and physical rebuilding, after the extensive devastation of the War of Independence. The loss of its richest colony, was a great shock to France, and constituted an insurmountable setback. Deluged by the hysteria of ex-colonists, who for years, had been demanding indemnities for the loss of their properties, including their slaves, French King, Charles X, issued a royal ordinance requiring that the former colony pay an indemnity of 150 million gold francs, as a prerequisite for France’s recognition of the independence of Haiti. The astronomical sum was equivalent to France’s annual budget, ten years of Haiti’s revenues, and represented 3 times the value of the entire lost colony. When has one ever heard of a victor paying tribute to the vanquished? Haitians were being asked to pay with money, what they had already paid with their blood. The demands were delivered by 12 warships armed with 500 canons. The Haitian people were outraged and refused to pay. A desperate President Boyer nevertheless submitted to the extortion by the French government, and eventually signed the treaty. Haiti was forced to continually borrow at exorbitant interest rates from French banks, in order to pay the crippling indemnity. These coerced payments caused continual financial emergencies and political upheavals, and so distorted and stunted Haiti’s economy, that they retarded its development by decades, chaining it to perpetual poverty. Haiti did not finish paying until 1947, more than a century later.

The immediate consequence of the indemnity on the Haitian population was unfathomable misery. Haiti was spending 80 percent of its public resources on external debt payments, rather than the important domestic investments necessary for a country at that stage of development. France had achieved its objective, which was the re-enslavement of Haiti through the debt. This formula for re-enslavement would later be extrapolated, through the International Financial Institutions, to the rest of the developing world. Now, if the French state felt justified in bleeding an infant nation, born of a devastating War of Independence, for “compensation”, after one century of brutal exploitation had already built up the magnificence of France, then how can the former slave-owning nations, have the gall to claim, that four centuries of exploiting Africa and its Diaspora, and destroying the lives, cultures, and languages of generations, to enrich themselves, do not warrant compensation? The hypocrisy is all the more indecent, given that Haiti was being punished for having the temerity to claim the freedom, which the slave-owning powers had enshrined in their constitutions as Man’s most basic, fundamental and inalienable right. The effects of this armed robbery on the Haitian people, are still being felt to this day. According to the Haiti Restitution Commission established by former President Aristide, the indemnity is equivalent to US $21.7 billion, in today’s currency. France is honour-bound to redress this appalling historical wrong, by returning to Haiti the price of its blood, thereby enabling the so-called “Poorest country in the Western Hemisphere”, to finally rebuild its shattered economy.

History matters, because it teaches us not only about yesterday, but also about today. History clarifies why things are the way they are, and it is important that we pass this knowledge on to our children, because that is most fundamentally what the Colonizer stole from us: Our Legacy, our Heritage, our History.

The failure of development in Africa and the Caribbean, has highlighted the extent to which the legacy of the slave trade, colonialism, and neo-colonialism, have remained as shackles which need to be removed, if the developing world is to be free to pursue development, and eradicate hunger, disease, the continuing degradation of our societies, and the collapse of states.

Today, the international debt has become one of the greatest obstacles to development. The Debt has now transcended the realm of economics, to become a political and a moral issue, demanding a political and moral solution. Debt cancellation should free up resources for self-development for the Caribbean and for Africa, which spend 4 times more on debt service, than they do on health and education combined.

Article 2 of the ‘United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide’ defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

Slavery was genocide, plain and simple. The Reparations debt is not an issue for debate. It is long overdue and payable.

Upon Garvey’ death, the man who had led the largest, most widespread, most powerful, and most influential movement among people of African descent in world history, was completely ignored by our textbooks. To this day, Garvey is still not taught appropriately in our schools. He is only taught in a very sketchy manner. I hope that I will not be speaking out of turn, if I mention that someone expressed the hope that High Commissioner Golding might now be in a position to remedy this shortcoming.

The Haitian Revolution is taught in an equally sketchy manner in our schools. To quote Arthur Newland, the neo-colonial education policy has systematically erased knowledge of our achievements as triumphant freedom fighters, reducing Haiti to a simple symbol of poverty and human suffering, without any reference to the incalculable resources of spirit, which despite the poverty and isolation imposed upon her, continue to render her, perhaps the richest and most secure Caribbean territory in her collective sense of identity.

What I want to leave you with tonight, my brothers and sisters, is that we are still a great people. We were once the Masters of the world… As it was in the beginning, so shall it be in the end. As soon as we emancipate ourselves from mental slavery, and overcome our self-esteem issues, we can, like the Phoenix, rise again from our ashes.

African slaves stood up to the violence of the slave trade armed with the living force of their culture, their gods, their legends, their values, their traditions, their rhythms, and their undying faith in their own identity – all of these buried in their souls, beyond the reach of the slave master, who was only interested in their bodies.

The Vodun religion, which the West has tried to demonise as Black magic, superstition, devil worship, and even the cause of Haiti’s misery, is simply an amalgamation of all of the animistic religions of the different African tribes which were brought to Haiti, and it was instrumental to the success of the revolution. Vodun was an Africa hidden in the hearts of the slaves; remembered traditions that formed the core of their identity. They made outward signs of obeisance, whilst continuing in their hearts, to revere their African Gods.

Vodun was the people’s sustenance. It afforded them a free, unmediated glimpse of Africa, of their heritage, and of liberation from a so-called civilization of genocidal exploitation. It gave them the vision to forge a cultural, ritual, and physical resistance to slavery and exploitation.

The second point I want to leave with you, is that the current period of globalization makes it imperative for Black people worldwide to realize the interdependence of our struggles, and to unite. The struggle for Black Liberation and the salvation of all oppressed people is a globalised struggle, which necessitates a removal of geographical boundaries.

As Marcus famously declared: “I know no national boundary where the Negro is concerned. The whole world is my province until Africa is free.”

It is therefore incumbent upon all of us to support Haiti, our martyred sister nation, which paid such a dear price, for daring to be the first to strike a blow for human dignity and freedom. Haiti is a land of eternal struggle with dignity. Between 1915 and 1934, she was occupied for 19 years by the US. On the 3rd of August 1924, Marcus Garvey wrote to President Louis Borno of Haiti, from the Fourth Annual International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World: “We are in deep sympathy with the indignation of the people of Haiti, in the matter of the rape of the country through a forcible occupation by an alien race. We shall work along with the patriots of Haiti to free her from the yoke of exploitation. Long live free and independent Haiti, the pride of the black race of the Western world. Our convention sends greetings to you and the people of Haiti.”

Today in 2008, 84 years after Garvey’s message, Haiti is again under occupation. Even after elections in 2006, there is still no democracy, for there can be no democracy under occupation, even if the troops are wearing blue helmets. A people’s leaders are not kidnapped or exiled, and there are no political prisoners in a democracy. The mainstream media’s racist and unfounded depiction of Haiti continues to shroud her in obscurity and mystification. We need to work in solidarity with the Haitian people to end the occupation. It behooves us all to see to it, that the Haitian Revolution succeeds in the end, because of the symbolism and significance of this unique experiment for the Black Diaspora. Were it not for Haiti’s heroic revolution, which pioneered the cycle of emancipation, and ushered in the era of decolonization in the Western Hemisphere, millions might today, still be walking around in shackles. Freedom is not cheap, folks. Haiti paid, and is still paying, the price for all of us. We owe a debt of gratitude to a people, who continue to struggle in the legacy of their ancestors. The cause of Haiti is our cause. Now as then, the fight for liberty in Haiti is a fight for the liberty of people the world over. In the words of Randall Robinson: “Honour Haiti, and we honour ourselves.Forget Haiti and we forget ourselves.”

Likewise, tonight as we honour Marcus Garvey, we also honour ourselves. UP YOU MIGHTY RACE, YOU CAN ACCOMPLISH WHAT YOU WILL! Only after you awake, do you realize that you were sleeping.

NEW JAMAICAN Vol.2