7. Mobilize against any attempt to bar Fanmi Lavalas from participating in the next round of elections. The conservative political and economic forces have conspired to exclude this movement from participating in recent elections because of its popular support among the people. Fanmi Lavalas was the political organization used by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to win the presidency on two occasions (both times unseated by a coup). It can lay claim to the series of economic, social, and physical infrastructure programmes that benefitted the peasantry and the working-class during the Aristide administrations.19
Irrespective of how we might feel about elections, if a progressive and popular Haitian organization is deliberately and deviously barred from participating or Fanmi Lavalas is seen by large segments of Haitians as representative and reflective of them,20 as allies we ought to stand in principled solidarity with the self-determined goals of the people.
The abolitionist, former enslaved African, feminist and statesman Frederick Douglass had this to say about Haiti’s role in promoting “universal human liberty” and it serves as a reminder of our debt of gratitude and obligation to its people:
In just vindication of Haiti, I can go one step further. I can speak of her, not only words of admiration, but words of gratitude as well. She has grandly served the cause of universal human liberty. We should not forget that the freedom you and I enjoy to-day; that the freedom that eight hundred thousand colored people enjoy in the British West Indies; the freedom that has come to the colored race the world over, is largely due to the brave stand taken by the black sons [and daughters], of Haiti ninety years ago. When they struck for freedom, they built better than they knew. Their swords were not drawn and could not be drawn simply for themselves alone. They were linked and interlinked with their race, and striking for their freedom, they struck for the freedom of every black man [and woman] in the world.
Article Appeared @http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/we-have-anti-imperialist-obligation-people-haiti