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NEW YORK—Just two days before Haitian Flag Day, Haitian New Yorkers came out last Sunday to commemorate the lives of the 230,000 people who were killed in the Jan. 12 earthquake. The Haitian population in New York City is second only to Port au-Prince.
About one hundred people came together for a prayer, gathering at the Grand Army Plaza. By 1:00 p.m., the procession was underway, with people walking across the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan.
The procession culminated at Foley Square, where a ceremony was held to honor the deaths of those who passed in the devastating earthquake.
A woman known as Queen Mother, dressed in pink-and-white African garb and speaking in a rhythmic patois, performed a traditional ceremony that included scattering roses on a traditional Haitian cloth, while a man accompanied her on his djembe. To conclude the ceremony, she sprinkled water on the ground to symbolize purification.
Rev. James Forbes, pastor emeritus of the Riverside Church, spoke at the event with the fervor of the African Burial Ground Monument and of the Haitian people.
“You should know that when New York City was being built, the African slaves where brought here and we, of the African diaspora, helped to build Wall Street, helped to build this government plaza area,” he said.
Speaking to a largely Haitian audience, he added: “You are to be encouraged, all you who bear Haitian blood running in your veins … We may knock you down, but lord knows, you will get up, you will rise up.”
State Sen. John L. Sampson also spoke at the event. He pointed to the need for a change in American policy when dealing with Haiti and emphasized the need for forgiving all of Haitian debt.
“We need to forgive all the debt this country is put under in order for us to deal with the rebuilding and the restructuring. They must be given an opportunity unsaddled with this debt,” Sampson said.
The president of the Haitian American Veterans Association, Dr. Fritz Fils-Aime, was a spectator at the event. He expressed the need for some changes, saying, “We’re going to have to rebuild Haiti, and we need to rebuild it with the correct kind of infrastructure so that we don’t have the same kind of problems that we had before.”
“We need a sort of emergency response put into place so that when we have disasters we can help ourselves, as opposed to waiting for the outside of world to coming to our aid,” he added.
Fils-Aime also pointed to the fiscal corruption currently infesting the Haitian government, saying, “Money is coming into Haiti, and it is disappearing.”
“We have to be able to ask people to be accountable. Even the Red Cross and UNICEF and all these major organizations have collected millions and millions of dollars, but we aren’t seeing much of it,” he said.
