Gina Athena Ulysse, a Prof. of Anthropology & African American Studies at Wesleyan University, writes at the huffingtonpost about the oppression of Vodouists in Haiti: 

Read the rest here:

Gina Athena Ulysse, Defending Vodou in Haiti, 10/18/2012 

One of the most interesting turn of events during the current nuclear crisis in Japan is how by Thursday, March 17, 2011 the ongoing drama of the catastrophe was displaced from the headlines by stories about the rebellion in Libya. Just as it seemed the story of the nuclear crisis came to a head with startling revelations about more widespread damages to the reactors, higher levels of radiation than previously detected, flaws in Japanese leadership and the contamination of food crops as far as ninety miles from the stricken Fukushima plant the media seems to have turned its attention to a different front.

By the end of the week stories about the escalation of the nuclear crisis and to a lesser degree, the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami still appeared the media, but the headline grabbing story in the media has become the conflict in Libya. As catastrophic and unprecedented as the tragedy in Japan is, the media’s attention seems to have waned. One wonders if media gatekeepers sense that their consumers have tired of the drama in Japan, or perhaps because of the US’s primary role in the no-fly over zone, American and audiences are more concerned about events in Libya than in Japan. Or perhaps that warfare is more vivid than the invisible threat of radiation.

Historically, the media has always had a fairly short attention span for disasters, including even catastrophic ones like those that have occurred in the last year; beginning with the nightmarish earthquake in Haiti which destroyed the fragile infrastructure of a nation and whose toll took over 300,000 lives. The Haitian earthquake is a tragedy that is far from over and whose misery continues to unravel largely because of the lack of continued aid and attention from the international community.

As stunned as the world was by misfortune of Haitian people attention quickly turned to the more powerful, but less destructive quake in Chile. Then came the terrible floods in Pakistan, which killed of thousands and left a nation in anguish but received only little more than passing attention from the international press. The horrific and relentless floods in Australia captured the world’s attention very briefly despite the disturbing magnitude of the disaster. Next up was the recent earthquake in Christ Church, New Zealand. It made front-page news for a few days but now seems to have lapsed form the media and the public’s view.

None of this is new. The monstrous tsunami that that shocked the world and unleashed a flurry of destruction on several Southeast Asian nations made headlines for sometime. Nevertheless, despite the horrific magnitude of the event it slipped from the media’s radar. Eight months after the event, while the stricken nations were still struggling to recover Hurricane Katrina came ashore in the gulf. Almost without looking back, the media’s attention turned to the Gulf Coast and forgot the unparalleled tragedy in Southeast Asia.

As shocking as the media’s headlong pursuit of reporting the most recent sensational story and rapid abandonment of previous disasters it is an all too common pattern. One that perhaps reflects our modern day culture’s increasingly desensitized attention span for suffering and our addiction to ever more sensational stories.

The public, politicians and especially the media have a penchant for what seems like short-term memories when it comes to disasters. We tend to neglect the fact that major disasters have long-term, often second generation impacts that require us to invest in long-term recovery efforts rather than to take the band aid approach that typifies most modern day disaster response.

The media tends to only revisit earlier calamities with occasional anniversary stories. Such coverage often only consists of a retelling of the early days of the event and neglects the continuing plight of the disaster victims; thereby ignoring the fact that in the wake of calamity disasters continue to unfold for extended periods of time. Thus, the cascading series of events that unfold in the wake of most disasters are all but ignored except by the local media. Unfortunately, at times media retrospective accounts can downplay the seriousness of previous disasters as have some recent accounts that have surfaced during the current Japanese nuclear crisis. It causes one to wonder if revisionists accounts of Chernobyl are possible what future revisionist accounts might be made of the current nuclear crisis.

It is troubling to wonder how the media and our culture seem to take such vicarious interest in disasters. For disaster researchers like myself I am disturbed by what may be another tendency: our refusal, despite irrevocable empirical evidence to the contrary, to recognize that in recent years the frequency, magnitude and severity of disasters has increased tremendously,

The recent tide of major catastrophic events underscore the emerging reality that there is an urgent need to develop the conceptual tools, strategic and material tools to confront the increasing challenges of disasters which have been made more potent and complex by environmental degradation, climate change, and the increasing production of technological hazards. In another words, rather than continuing to view catastrophic events as isolated episodes we need to systematically examine the cumulative forces that confront us in the guise of disasters and begin to address the larger issue: why is it that disasters of such magnitude are becoming so commonplace?

Gregory Button has been researching disasters for over three decades. His most recent book is: Disaster Culture: Knowledge and Uncertainty in the Wake of Human and Environmental Disasters (Left Coast Press 2010). He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at The University of Tennessee Knoxville.

Click here for the original Boston Globe article about Partners in Health accompanying this video.

Check out Partners in Health’s website – http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti – for updated news and information on how you can support those affected by the recent earthquake.

Partners in Health is co-founded by anthropologist-physician Paul Farmer. From their website, in their own words:

About Partners in Health

“PIH has been working on the ground in Haiti for over 20 years. We urgently need your support to help those affected by the recent earthquake.

Partners In Health (PIH) works to bring modern medical care to poor communities in nine countries around the world. The work of PIH has three goals: to care for our patients, to alleviate the root causes of disease in their communities, and to share lessons learned around the world.

Based in Boston, PIH employs more than 11,000 people worldwide, including doctors, nurses and community health workers. The vast majority of PIH staff are local nationals based in the communities we serve.”

===In response to the terrible devastation in Haiti, Anthropology Now is offering special coverage of events in Haiti. For the next few weeks, Press Watch will be a dedicated Haiti Watch. Elizabeth Chin, a professor of anthropology at Occidental College who has worked for many years in Haiti joins us as a Featured Special Report guest blogger.For her previous posts, Click on ‘Read More’ in Press Watch. We will also be tracking news coverage of anthropologist Paul Farmer and his work on the relief efforts. And we encourage all concerned readers to donate generously to Partners in Health, the organization Paul Farmer co-founded that is working on the ground in Haiti. Please contact us with links and news on Haiti that we can share with our readers.===

*Special Report blogger Elizabeth Chin is an anthropologist who has studied Haitian Folklore dance for over 20 years, both in the US and in Haiti. Currently a professor at Occidental College, she has been spending time in Haiti since 1993, sometimes doing fieldwork and sometimes not. She will return to Haiti in May to assist with the relief effort.*

For many of us, Bob Corbett’s Haiti Mailing List is the go-to place for up-to-date information Haiti, informed discussion (much of it passionate), friendly updates, and for answers to nagging or arcane questions. (Click here to go to Bob’s website and here for prior posts on the mailing list.) Since the earthquake, the list has been unbelievably busy and I wonder if Bob has gotten any sleep. One of the most striking things – not surprisingly, I suppose – has been the way technology has shaped my ability to intimately feel and experience the earthquake’s aftermath. Over the course of several days, for instance, one increasingly frustrated nurse at a hospital in Milot, in Haiti’s northern area, was begging for patients. “We will light up the soccer field tonight with our headlights!” she announced, “and you can land a plane there!” It was horrifying and it was only one cry among many.

Thursday the 14th, one post urgently requested five satellite phones, for use by Haiti’s President, Prime Minister, Minister of the Interior, Chief of Police, and Ambassador to the UN. That might give some indication as to the state of Haiti’s infrastructure.

At 2:58 a.m. On Tuesday, the 19th an urgent message was posted to the list saying that a woman was alive and texting from beneath the rubble of the building where she was trapped. Later that day another post asked for a ‘miracle,’ and described in detail how to get to a school in Carrefour where at least 100 children were underneath its ruins. A third gave the location of an orphanage with 70 children ranging from months old infants to 17 years old, which had run out of food and water.

In Iran, during the political demonstrations, tweets and texts were a way for people to organize and resist. In this crisis, the barriers to organization are so profound it is hard to even comprehend. But when people are sending out desperate emails to get the top guys in government basic communication – those satellite phones – there’s a lot of work to be done. It’s the texts from the people trapped under buildings that are haunting me right now.

The other day Bob thoughtfully reposted the link to one of his early essays, “Why is Haiti so Poor?” Though written in 1986, it is still relevant.

Bob Corbett’s “Why is Haiti so Poor?”

]]> http://anthronow.com/press-watch/texts-from-beneath-the-rubble/feed 0 http://anthronow.com/audio-video/paul-farmer-on-haiti http://anthronow.com/audio-video/paul-farmer-on-haiti#comments Wed, 20 Jan 2010 03:32:07 +0000 Xiao Xiao http://anthronow.com/?p=581 Watch CBS News Videos Online A medical anthropologist and physician at Harvard University, Paul Farmer is also the Deputy U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti and a co-founder of Partners in Health (PIH), a health organization that has worked in Haiti...

===In response to the terrible devastation in Haiti, Anthropology Now is offering special coverage of events in Haiti. For the next few weeks, Press Watch will be a dedicated Haiti Watch. Elizabeth Chin, a professor of anthropology at Occidental College who has worked for many years in Haiti joins us as a Featured Special Report guest blogger.For her previous posts, Click on ‘Read More’ in Press Watch. We will also be tracking news coverage of anthropologist Paul Farmer and his work on the relief efforts. And we encourage all concerned readers to donate generously to Partners in Health, the organization Paul Farmer cofounded that is working on the ground in Haiti. Please contact us with links and news on Haiti that we can share with our readers.===

*Elizabeth Chin is an anthropologist who has studied Haitian Folklore dance for over 20 years, both in the US and in Haiti. Currently a professor at Occidental College, she has been spending time in Haiti since 1993, sometimes doing fieldwork and sometimes not. She will return to Haiti in May to assist with the relief effort.*

Yesterday I went to a meeting at the Full Gospel Apostolic Church of God, in West LA. The small church, with its weirdly bouncy pews and awkwardly placed pillars, was stuffed to the gills with Haitians and with media representatives. The Haitians, as ever, were dressed for church, which to me is like being dressed for a wedding: beautiful suits complete with silk tie and pocket square and beaded dresses, fancy hats, girls in poufy gowns and barrettes in their hair and boys with little suits on. Also attending the meeting, which was organized by the church’s pastor along with an up-and-coming mover and shaker, Idor Laurent, was Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Some members of the Los Angeles City Council showed up, too, and a member of the State Assembly.

The Haitian community in Los Angeles is only about 10,000, broken up into two primary groups: the generally pretty well off ones who left Haiti in the 1970s, when Duvalier was still in power, and the more recent refugees who arrived in the 1990s, when political instability was extreme. These newer Haitians are on the whole from the less privileged element of Haitian society: not wealthy, not educated in Haiti, arriving speaking only Kreyol. The older group of Haitians, it seems to me, are Catholics while the newer ones are Evangelical Protestants. The newer immigrants live in the rough-and-tumble neighborhoods around or in South LA; the older ones are pretty well suburbanized.

As Black people who speak a foreign language, and whose culture is distinctly different from most of the African Americans around them in Los Angeles, Haitians here have often felt isolated, misunderstood, or both. Such big and little schisms weren’t on the radar screen yesterday, where the topic of solidarity was primary. There was a speech from Dr. Maulana Karemba, of the African American Cultural Center in South LA whose refrain was “We are all Haitian!” Members of a Nigerian Church, gloriously attired in spanking white robes, brought their own message of solidarity, as Nigerians, and on behalf of all of Africa. Maxine Waters of course had a great deal to say – from reestablishing her long-standing support of Haiti to a sly, “I don’t want to get political, but I’m Lavalas!” “Imagine what it could mean to a family in Haiti to get $50 a month,” she said.  She wants to start a kind of sponsorship program and urged people to save their money for something like that.   “So start saving your money now,” she said, “a dollar a day.”   After all the press had left, the basketball player Olden Polynice stood up – it was hard to miss since he’s 6’11”. He spoke about his continuing commitment to Haiti, and added, “by the way, I still am a Haitian citizen, and I’m proud of it.”

“Hot dogs for Haiti,” Richard Thiong, a Haitian with some Chinese in him, called out rather merrily, once the meeting has broken up. “Hot dogs for Haiti!” Round the back of the church, they’ve heated up hotdogs to sell to raise money. Actually, the hotdog is a weirdly appropriate choice, being a totally American and yet totally Haitian food. Many mornings in Haiti I’ve had ‘spaghetti hot dog’ for breakfast. You can feed a whole lot of people on a pound of spaghetti, a few hotdogs, 1 habanero pepper, one green pepper, some scallions and a tad of oil – the ingredients for ‘spaghetti hot dog.’.

I don’t know if it’s a Haitian thing or not, but laughing in these dark moments is something that my Haitian friend are definitely doing, when they’re not crying. “My mom thinks the TV is talking to her,” my friend Mona tells me from New York. “She’s got the beginning of dementia. And my sister, the one who lives in Haiti, she was here visiting when the earthquake hit, thank god. But you know what? Everybody is calling her every minute to tell her that her house fell down, and my sister is saying, ‘Don’t they think I already know that?’ She was so upset. So she went out to get her hair done so she wouldn’t have to talk to them. When she got back they were still calling, so she said, ‘You know what? I think I need to get my nails done!’ Yep, this is what she has to do because of that earthquake! Get her hair done! Get her nails done!”

Tip of the day: Don’t believe for a minute the ridiculous so-called reports about roving armed gangs, looting and ‘unrest.’ No doubt, there’s disorderliness and a disinclination to wait quietly in line, and no doubt people are going into fallen down stores to get food if it’s in there. Emails I’ve seen from people in Haiti right now say that the reports of crazy violence are utterly baseless.

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