Echo Times

Issue date: 3/1/10 Section: Features

Media Credit: William Kennedy Humane historian: Walter Turner has dedicated his life to teaching and activism.

For College of Marin professor Walter Turner the destruction in Haiti is personal. He knows people who have been affected. He has worked with them. He has great respect for them. While some are numbed by the horrors of yet another barrage of devastation during an era that has seen so much worldwide destruction, Turner places great importance on maintaining a long-term focus on Haiti and the relief efforts there. "I have interviewed so many Haitian people and of all the places I've traveled in the world, which is a lot, they're among the hardest-working, among the most caring." Turner said, "When you're in a situation where you're surviving on less than a dollar a day, your friendships run broad and they run deep and the Haitians have always had hope." Helping hands Turner, who teaches history at COM, serves as the president of Global Exchange in San Francisco. He first traveled to Haiti in the late 1970s and did some of his thesis work on United States/Haiti relations. As the host of "Africa Today," broadcast on KPFA 94.1 on Mondays from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m., he has featured a regular series on Haiti every six to eight weeks. When asked how COM students and faculty could best help the relief efforts, Turner recommended a few local organizations. "One organization that I know most of the individuals at, an organization I've traveled with, is Haiti Action Network (www.haitiaction.net), which is based in Oakland. He also points to Partners In Health (www.pih.org/Stand-With-Haiti), an organization run Dr. Paul Farmer, the Harvard educated MD who has devoted his life to helping people in Haiti and Africa. "If people want to go beyond that there is Global Fund For Women (www.globalfundforwomen.org), (that) is working very specifically around issues of women," Turner said. "The need to deal with women who are pregnant, the need to deal with young girls, people who are vulnerable: I would say those were areas where people could do something and play a small role or a big role." While support has arrived, Haiti, which has suffered from many natural and manmade disasters in the past, is certain to feel long-term implications of the quake, according to Turner. "It's a disaster; there's no other way to put it," he said. "If you check the indicators, (Haiti is) the fourth poorest country in the world. It's probably the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. "The fact that so many lives have been lost, that the capital city has been so devastated, that the government has been so torn---a lot of it due to the United States, a lot of it due to France, a lot of it due to Canada--it's devastating." Turner believes canceling Haiti's national debt, which he describes as illegitimate, and returning the country's long-exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide will be among the most important steps for stabilizing the Caribbean nation. Troubling past Of course, taking the appropriate course of action and seeing it through will not be easy, but Turner said that if reconstruction dominated by corporations can be avoided and benchmarks can be put in place that give Haiti an opportunity to recover free from past obstacles, improvement is possible. Europe and North America's past relationship with Haiti, one of the oldest democracies in the western hemisphere, may complicate relief efforts. Indeed, Haiti's historical struggles have their own tragic story, Turner said. "As European countries moved into the Caribbean, France became very dominant in Haiti. There was a revolt in Haiti, which overthrew the French from 1791-1804. (The French) charged Haiti with having to pay reparations for the cost of (their) property that was lost," he said. ìIn the early 1900s the U.S. came in and took over Haiti's treasury. The Marines took the money out of the gold reserves, leaving in the early 1930s. After that it was military dictator after military dictator, usually supported by the U.S. and France." Relations and race Relations between the US and Haiti remained tense, according to Turner, flaring up recently during an American sponsored coup. "In 1990 we have the election of Aristide, who's overthrown in a military coup and he's out of the country for several years and eventually brought back. The U.S., the Tonton Macoute and the Dominicans do everything possible to undermine Haiti, armed and unarmed. And finally in 2004 Aristide is kidnapped again," Turner said of a subsequent, U.S. backed, removal of the elected president. "People say, 'Well, some people liked him and some people didn't.' No, no, he was elected. You can't use the excuse that you don't like somebody to take them out of power. Using that theory every president weíve had in the United States could have been snatched off by a coup by some country or another." All of this, Turner said, is tied to an undercurrent of racism toward Haiti and Haitians that must be addressed if the island nation is really to recover. "The country has been about as battered as a country could be and clearly it has something to do with the fact that they're a proud, black people. It has to do with their resistance and their war against France, which has never been forgotten," Turner said. "France still claims that Haiti owes them money. Haiti was paying out millions of dollars to France. There's got to be a change in the mindset and I think it's a good time for American citizens and world citizens to raise those issues. Why did Haiti find itself with only two fire stations before this?" It is a good time to ask questions, but it is also a good time to take a stand and help, Turner said. "People are dying. People need assistance," he said. "There are some things--the appointment of Clinton, who only reluctantly had Aristide go back, the appointment of Bush, who was the person in office when he was taken away from his country and flown to central Africa in the middle of the night, the thought of them heading up the relief effort is a lot to take. Why not call on the elected president of Haiti, Aristide? I know how international politics works, but you always hope that there are some crisis points, where people's lives are in danger, that humanity is the value rather than political posturing."

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