Raleigh, N.C., workers’ banquet focuses on Haiti

Labor, community, student and political activists packed the North Carolina Association of Teachers auditorium here on April 10 for the 27th Annual Martin Luther King Support for Labor banquet organized by the Black Workers For Justice.

Marleine Bastien: Haitian people must make the decisions on aid. WW photo: Monica Moorehead

While most of the audience hailed from various cities in North Carolina, some traveled from as far away as Virginia, Ohio and New York. Among the delegations represented at the banquet were the Million Worker March Movement and the Bail Out the People Movement from New York, the Virginia People’s Assembly and the Raleigh Fight Imperialism, Stand Together youth group.

The BWFJ hosts this important yearly fundraising event to help keep alive Dr. King’s dream of guaranteeing living-wage jobs and social justice for all. BWFJ and its allies, especially the North Carolina Public Service Workers Union, UE Local 150, are deeply committed to organizing campaigns for economic and political rights for oppressed workers — Black, Latino/a and women — especially in the “right-to-work” state of North Carolina. North Carolina is one of two states — the other being Virginia — that denies public sector workers the right to collective bargaining with employers.

Since its founding in the early 1980s, BWFJ has expressed its solidarity with the struggles against racism, national oppression, sexism and exploitation at home while building internationalism. To drive this point home, the keynote speaker at this year’s banquet was Marleine Bastien, executive director of Haitian Women of Miami and a candidate for the 17th Congressional District. In this district, located in southern Florida, 65 percent of the people are immigrants from Haiti, Cuba and various parts of Central America.

Bastien focused her powerful talk on the heroic efforts being made by the Haitian people to rebuild their country following the horrific earthquake that devastated the capital of Port-au-Prince on Jan. 12. She recently returned from a fact-finding trip to her homeland.

Bastien exposed the fact that mainstream media like CNN have erroneously portrayed the Haitian people as “helpless” and “dependent” since the earthquake in order to justify U.S. military intervention. She went on to say that despite extremely limited resources and underdevelopment, the Haitian people have organized on a grassroots level to pull people from the rubble and to secure makeshift shelters and other lifesaving measures for thousands of earthquake survivors.

Bastien stated that only the Haitian people can decide who should aid them, including those living throughout the diaspora and other supporters. She pointed out that the recently formed Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, headed by former President Bill Clinton, did not include one Haitian representative on it. The worst immigration policy against the Haitian people was established under the Clinton administration, Bastien emphasized.

Haiti’s local economy had been decimated and controlled by the U.S. capitalist market even before the recent earthquake. Fifty thousand Haitians who have already been granted Temporary Protective Status are still denied entry to the U.S. Bastien commented that the TPS should be extended to all Haitians.

For more information on Bastien’s bid for Congress, go to www.votebastien.com.