18256: Simidor: NYC Town meeting on Haitian crisis (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Daniel Simidor <karioka9@mail.arczip.com>


2004 HAITI INITIATIVE
1218 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11226
Tel: (718) 284-0889; e-mail: initiative2004@yahoo.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Haitians in New York Mark Bicentennial of Country’s Independence
with Town Meeting on Crisis in Homeland

 Brooklyn, February 3, 2004.    New York-based 2004 Haiti Initiative and
 the No Collective in Haiti will hold a town meeting on Sunday, February
 8, at IS 246, Walt Whitman Junior High School in Brooklyn, to bring the
 Haitian community here up-to-date as to current conditions in Haiti.  The
 Walt Whitman Junior High School is located at 72 Veronica Place and
 Snyder Avenue.

 “The repression is unbearable, our lives are threatened daily” says
 author Lyonel Trouillot, a founding member of the No Collective, which
 groups Haiti’s most prestigious intellectuals and artists.  “What we are
 living under is not politics; it is a criminalization of power.”

 The No Collective grew out of a petition drive last November, which took
 exception with President Jean Bertrand Aristide’s manipulation of Haiti’s
 bicentennial celebrations to legitimize his own corrupt and repressive
 rule.  Representatives from the No Collective will travel especially from
 Haiti to be part of the Sunday Town Meeting.   They will be available for
 interviews on Friday and Saturday, February 6th and 7th.

 The 2004 Haiti Initiative is a varied group of educators, activists and
 cultural workers, who have come together to help foster a better and more
 critical appreciation of the Haitian revolution and of Haitian history in
 general.