Boston city councilors hear report from Haiti

Seven Boston City Councilors attended an eyewitness report from Haiti in Boston City Hall on March 11. City Councilors Chuck Turner and Charles Yancey hosted the meeting, which filled the Piemonte Room. In Turner’s introductory speech, he called for a grassroots mobilization demanding the restoration of democracy in Haiti.

FIST organizer Jonathan Regis with Jenny Ulysse. WW photo: Steve Kirschbaum

After a moving song by an elementary school children’s choir from a local Haitian church, Boaz Hilaire of the Boston School Bus Drivers, United Steel Workers Local 8751, who had just returned from a relief trip to Haiti, described how he saw U.S. military personnel everywhere in Haiti but no aid being distributed.

Turner then introduced Jenny Ulysse, a Boston teenager and community youth organizer who had been caught in the rubble of a building in the earthquake. Ulysse told how, though she needed immediate medical assistance, the U.S. Embassy failed to come to her aid — because she is a permanent resident green card holder and not a citizen.

She described the conditions in Haiti where bodies are still unburied and pigs are roaming free, eating human cadavers, and are in turn eaten by hungry Haitian people, spreading disease. Ulysse expressed her intention to return to Haiti to help with reconstruction.

Turner read City Council resolutions that recognized Jonathan Regis of Fight Imperialism, Stand Together (FIST), Andrea Yarde of the District 7 office, and Horace Small of the United Minority Neighborhoods for their work in helping Ulysse successfully return to Boston. The meeting also recognized the international campaign of support for Ulysse and all permanent residents to return to the U.S. from Haiti.

Claude St. Germain, newly elected Coordinator for Fanmi Lavalas of Boston, described the lack of democracy in Haiti and how Washington is trying to force elections from which Fanmi Lavalas is excluded. He called for the return of democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.