COMMENTARY:

Seize Wall Street Bonuses and Send them to Haiti

I’ve spent a good deal of time in Haiti reporting first on the repression, then on Aristide, and later after Aristide on the early Preval period.Europe and the US have sat by as Haiti has grown poorer and poorer. For the young,survival is barely possible. When I was there you could find the children just outside Cite Soleil, the giant slum,living in the garbage dump, waiting for the US army trucks to dump the scraps left from the meals of American soldiers. There they stood, knee deep in garbage, fighting for bits of food. As for the old, they people every street, gathering at the Holiday Inn at Port au Prince in wheel chairs, stumbling at the doorway in search of a coin or two. There is no hope for them. No bank, no insurance company, no hedge fund, no mutual fund, nobody with any money ever makes any serious investment in the country. Instead, well to do Americans wince at the photos, then pick their way among the foundations which offer alms to the Haitian poor. The question always is who gets $25? Which one is crooked? Can you trust the Catholics? What about the Protestant evangelicals? Which do-good foundation is least likely to steal the tiny amounts of money we find our way to give?

Here is a proposal to help Haiti taken from Juan Cole’s email listserv this morning. It goes like this: