We Have an Anti-imperialist Obligation to the People of Haiti

5. Mobilize and organize to end the UN’s occupation. Create or contribute to a broad-based campaign of progressive forces in your community, country, or region aimed securing the withdrawal of the United Nations’ occupation force of over 8,000 uniformed personnel in Haiti. Haiti did not experience a civil war, and there are no warring sides being kept apart to justify this military presence. Support initiatives in states that have troops or police personnel in Haiti to build support for the pull out of their respective military and police contingents.

6. Contribute to the fight against neoliberalism. Your organizations ought to support Haitian trade unions, rural organizations, and other progressive civil society groups that are fighting neoliberal capitalist policies in Haiti. They have devastated Haiti’s rice industry and flooded the country with heavily subsidized agricultural products from abroad. As a result of the extreme neoliberal economic policies imposed on Haiti, it has one of the most open economies in the Americas. For those of us who are based in global North countries the fight against neoliberal capitalist policies starts where we live and work.

I am in full agreement with international solidarity activist Kali Akuno’s statement: “As we gather our forces to support the resistance of the Haitian people, and join with it in common struggle against imperialism, we will appear as a new defiant spirit and a force to be reckoned with.”18 Challenging anti-working class policies at home is a part of the global solidarity work of delegitimizing them and pushing an alternative approach to human economic and social development.

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