Haiti Relief Efforts Underway In VI
Editor’s Note: In addition to the Donastorg initiative, St. Croix Rotary West, under the leadership of Mr. Clifford Christian, (340) 772-2505, and Sen. Terrence “Positive” Nelson are also conducting relief efforts for the victims of the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti earlier this week. Please contact these organizations for specifics on the items they are collecting.
Senator Adlah “Foncie” Donastorg is mobilizing a local effort to provide relief to victims of the earthquake that devastated Haiti on Tuesday.
“We as a community know what it is to face a major disaster and to be isolated in an island environment,” Donastorg said in a news release. “This is an emergency of epic proportions and I know that my fellow Virgin Islanders join me in offering prayers and well wishes to our neighbors in Haiti.”
Donastorg said he was deeply moved after seeing the photos and hearing the reports from Haiti.
“I wanted to help in any way I possibly could,” Donastorg said. “We have plenty of space to store donated items at my campaign headquarters and will coordinate with relief agencies to get these items to Haiti as quickly as possible.”
Donastorg said that donations could be brought to his office in Charlotte Amalie or to his campaign headquarters at Four Winds on St. Thomas. St. Croix and St. John drop off points will also be identified.
He said that the usual relief supplies such as bottled water, canned food, diapers, formula, clean blankets and personal hygiene items are needed.
“We will turn any cash donations over to the Red Cross to the fund designated specifically for Haiti,” Donastorg said. “It is my understanding that the Red Cross has already pledged more than $200,000 to Haiti relief, but with more than 3 million people impacted it is going to take much more.”
For more information or to coordinate donation drop-offs call 693-3515.
Great job Senator , Must be given credit when credit is due. Keep doing the good work.
Why no mention of the other ongoing efforts to help the Haiti cause? There are also efforts being led by the Governor’s Office, Sen. Hill and the Red Cross just to name a few….c’mon people. This cause crosses all politically motivated barriers. Let’s be even on this one!
Kenneth Mapp raised $2800+ on Saturday, which was voted on to give over to Red Cross. He will ask his supporters on STT for donations as well, when he has his next campaign drive.
Great!
To STT fo sho – We couldn’t agree more and we’re happy to publicize all legitimate efforts. The initiatives we’ve highlighted are the ones we have details on. If there are others (verified) that you or others are aware of, feel free to post them.
Thank you.
By the way, has Pope Benedict said anything publicly about the Haiti earthquake? I keep hearing that the Haitian people are predominantly Catholic, and that their archbishop was killed. I wonder if the Vatican will sell some of its expensive baubles and donate to the recovery.
As a group of people, we need to sit a consider that like Haiti, we share similar circumstances. We need to start getting serious about protecting our right to self determination, status and our right to a constitution.
In order to consider any of the above we must first take an accounting of our natural resources including the most valuable, us. What is our true financial status? How much do we owe & to whom. Who owes us money and how do we go about collecting it and putting it toward creating an atmosphere/environment of self sufficiency or independence in our thinking as well as our actions.
Our situation calls for us to put trivial, self serving agendas and unite as one holding one head, resisting temptation to satisfy immediate wants. We must learn to think like a hammer, not allowing emotional distractions to lead us down divisive paths hurrying us along a course of eventual destruction or a group of people without a homeland. A hammer is not swayed by emotions. Emotions cloud an issue. What are the facts surrounding the issue and what do we need to protect ourselves?
My comments are not meant to alarm, but to enlighten. Please give some consideration to the following story. The situation facing our Haitian Brothers and Sisters could easily be our own. Knowledge protects, ignorance endangers.
http://www.gregpalast.com/the-right-testicle-of-hell-history-of-a-haitian-holocaust/
The Right Testicle of Hell:
History of a Haitian Holocaust
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Blackwater before drinking water
by Greg Palast for The Huffington Post
long wayClick on image to enlarge
1.
Bless the President for having rescue teams in the air almost immediately. That was President Olafur Grimsson of Iceland. On Wednesday, the AP reported that the President of the United States promised, “The initial contingent of 2,000 Marines could be deployed to the quake-ravaged country within the next few days.” “In a few days,” Mr. Obama?
2.
There’s no such thing as a ‘natural’ disaster. 200,000 Haitians have been slaughtered by slum housing and IMF “austerity” plans.
3.
A friend of mine called. Do I know a journalist who could get medicine to her father? And she added, trying to hold her voice together, “My sister, she’s under the rubble. Is anyone going who can help, anyone?” Should I tell her, “Obama will have Marines there in ‘a few days’”?
4.
China deployed rescuers with sniffer dogs within 48 hours. China, Mr. President. China: 8,000 miles distant. Miami: 700 miles close. US bases in Puerto Rico: right there.
5.
Obama’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, “I don’t know how this government could have responded faster or more comprehensively than it has.” We know Gates doesn’t know.
6.
From my own work in the field, I know that FEMA has access to ready-to-go potable water, generators, mobile medical equipment and more for hurricane relief on the Gulf Coast. It’s all still there. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who served as the task force commander for emergency response after Hurricane Katrina, told the Christian Science Monitor, “I thought we had learned that from Katrina, take food and water and start evacuating people.” Maybe we learned but, apparently, Gates and the Defense Department missed school that day.
7.
Send in the Marines. That’s America’s response. That’s what we’re good at. The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson finally showed up after three days. With what? It was dramatically deployed — without any emergency relief supplies. It has sidewinder missiles and 19 helicopters.
8.
But don’t worry, the International Search and Rescue Team, fully equipped and self-sufficient for up to seven days in the field, deployed immediately with ten metric tons of tools and equipment, three tons of water, tents, advanced communication equipment and water purifying capability. They’re from Iceland.
9.
Gates wouldn’t send in food and water because, he said, there was no “structure … to provide security.” For Gates, appointed by Bush and allowed to hang around by Obama, it’s security first. That was his lesson from Hurricane Katrina. Blackwater before drinking water.
10.
Previous US presidents have acted far more swiftly in getting troops on the ground on that island. Haiti is the right half of the island of Hispaniola. It’s treated like the right testicle of Hell. The Dominican Republic the left. In 1965, when Dominicans demanded the return of Juan Bosch, their elected President, deposed by a junta, Lyndon Johnson reacted to this crisis rapidly, landing 45,000 US Marines on the beaches to prevent the return of the elected president.
11.
How did Haiti end up so economically weakened, with infrastructure, from hospitals to water systems, busted or non-existent – there are two fire stations in the entire nation – and infrastructure so frail that the nation was simply waiting for “nature” to finish it off?
Don’t blame Mother Nature for all this death and destruction. That dishonor goes to Papa Doc and Baby Doc, the Duvalier dictatorship, which looted the nation for 28 years. Papa and his Baby put an estimated 80% of world aid into their own pockets – with the complicity of the US government happy to have the Duvaliers and their voodoo militia, Tonton Macoutes, as allies in the Cold War. (The war was easily won: the Duvaliers’ death squads murdered as many as 60,000 opponents of the regime.)
12.
What Papa and Baby didn’t run off with, the IMF finished off through its “austerity” plans. An austerity plan is a form of voodoo orchestrated by economists zomby-fied by an irrational belief that cutting government services will somehow help a nation prosper.
13.
In 1991, five years after the murderous Baby fled, Haitians elected a priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who resisted the IMF’s austerity diktats. Within months, the military, to the applause of Papa George HW Bush, deposed him.
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. The farce was George W. Bush. In 2004, after the priest Aristide was re-elected President, he was kidnapped and removed again, to the applause of Baby Bush.
14.
Haiti was once a wealthy nation, the wealthiest in the hemisphere, worth more, wrote Voltaire in the 18th century, than that rocky, cold colony known as New England. Haiti’s wealth was in black gold: slaves. But then the slaves rebelled – and have been paying for it ever since.
From 1825 to 1947, France forced Haiti to pay an annual fee to reimburse the profits lost by French slaveholders caused by their slaves’ successful uprising. Rather than enslave individual Haitians, France thought it more efficient to simply enslave the entire nation.
15.
Secretary Gates tells us, “There are just some certain facts of life that affect how quickly you can do some of these things.” The Navy’s hospital boat will be there in, oh, a week or so. Heckuva job, Brownie!
16.
Note just received from my friend. Her sister was found, dead; and her other sister had to bury her. Her father needs his anti-seizure medicines. That’s a fact of life too, Mr. President.
***
Through our journalism network, we are trying to get my friend’s medicines to her father. If any reader does have someone getting into or near Port-au-Prince, please contact Haiti@GregPalast.com immediately.
Urgently recommended reading – The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, the history of the successful slave uprising in Hispaniola by the brilliant CLR James.
The author of the above writing must be anti-American. Why must the U.S.A. always be the first to arrive on the scene? Isn’t President Obama sending relief to Haiti? Is this the time to be political? People of all nations are united in a humanitarian cause. Let’s applaud them for their assistance, regardless of how little or how late.
Since when is the truth un-american? Maybe when the world was told Saddam had nuclear weapons and now the cost of the Iraq invasion is $1 billion a day, not to include the untold numbers of dead Iraqis and Americans and their now fragmented families.
If you do a little research on how Haiti became this way, then maybe you can gain some insight into the above statements. Especially since it was the 1st black republic to gain it’s freedom by kicking the butts of the French.
http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/world/A0858544.html
http://www.language-works.com/Haiti/history.htm
To Anonymous
http://www.bushstole04.com/Obama_Presidency.htm/haiti_oppression.htm
Haiti “gain it’s freedom by kicking the butts of the French” and now there is a humanitarian effort to assist the victims of a natural disaster. What is the connection?Should the French rejoice at the Haitians’ misfortune? I prefer to focus on the humanity elements of the tragedy and leave the politics out at this time. We should always open our hearts to the Haitians. This independent nation has always been poor. People of all nations and color are helping them.
I did the research and I believe the U.S.A. has always been a friend to Haiti.