By Hazel Trice Edney | SACOBSERVER.COM WIRE SERVICES

Rev. Jesse Jackson (left) is briefed by Haitian President René Préval on Haiti's continued needs after the earthquake. Photo © Courtesy / NNPA

CHARLOTTE (NNPA) – The Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. - the day after returning from a tour of the devastated Island of Haiti - urged America’s Black newspaper publishers to continue pleading the cause for the people of Haiti - that they will be helped to take control of their own nation as the aftermath of the earthquake transitions from rescue to recovery to reconstruction.

“We have to shake things up. When I look at the news media and Haiti, I look at the array of journalists who are telling our story every night on the networks. Most of them have not had a kinship with Haiti nor with Haitian Americans, nor with you,” Rev. Jackson said at a luncheon during the National Newspaper Publishers Association’s Mid-Winter Conference in Charlotte Jan. 20-23. “We cannot sit idly by and watch the interpreters of the Haiti story night after night be absent of your faces.”

The mission of the Black Press – “to plead our own cause for too long have others spoken for us” – as John B. Russwurm and Samuel Cornish wrote in the first Black-owned newspaper in 1827 – has long extended to Black people outside America, including Haiti.

In his vintage preaching style, Jackson went from describing the tumultuous history of Haiti from its alliance with the U. S. to its decline to poverty to what could now become an opportunity to rise again.

Jackson envisioned what he perceives as the ideal outcome for the growth and development of the nation, which long before the Jan. 12 earthquake, suffered devastating poverty and political unrest.

“I want us to do something different now in Haiti,” he said. “I want us to involve Haitian-Americans. Haiti’s majority income comes from Haitian-Americans who remit money back home. The biggest revenue is Haitian-Americans. There are more Haitian-American Doctors in America than there are in Haiti. There are more Haitian-American nurses in America than there are in Haiti. So, Haitian and Haitian-Americans should have priority on development and contracts. Haitians who live in Haiti should have priority on jobs and contracts.”

This kind of inclusion and fair participation will strengthen the people and give them the wherewithal to do for themselves, Jackson said.

He said a firm and simple economic plan with teams working alongside the Haitians to rebuild is the best answer.

“Fifty-year loans, 2 percent interest, government secured. That’s the Marshall plan,” he said describing the historic reconstruction plan to rebuild European nations after World War II. “You wouldn’t even know how to fail that…Haiti needs debt forgiveness, debt relief, long-term low-interest loans, use indigenous engineers; plus our engineers; plus allies.”

The poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, Jackson said the horror of the earthquake, which killed as many as 200,000 people, has finally drawn the attention that may be warranted to bring the nation the help it needs. Even the destruction of the earthquake was exacerbated by the poverty, he pointed out.

“We all love Haiti today. The scenes, the grotesque, the pain the blood, the dying,” Jackson said. “The big issue in Haiti is not so much the earthquake. It’s the poverty. The U. S. embassy did not collapse because it was structurally sound. There was a 7.6 in San Francisco in 1989, 63 people died. In Haiti, 7.0, 200,000 died. The variable was not the earthquake, it was the poverty.”

Describing scenes that he had witnessed, Jackson was brought to tears.

Driving down the streets, he saw people who had not eaten in five or six days, he said. Trucks would drop off bags of rice onto the streets.

“People trying to get the rice; more demand than supply,” he recalls. “Then they were throwing cups, trying to get the water … As opposed to having water stations and feeding stations in some orderly way.”

Networks have often discussed why plane loads of supplies would not be quickly emptied and delivered to awaiting doctors and relief workers. Common sense would easily clear up the answer to that question, Jackson said.

“Ordinarily they land five planes a day. Now they’re landing 200 planes a day. And they bring in these huge jumbo jets that require high tech equipment to unload,” he said. “Nobody can unload a jumbo jet by hand in a short period of time.”

Describing a scene that was reminiscent of Hurricane Katrina, Rev. Jackson told how the police seemed insensitive to the needs of the Haitians even as they chanted his name and pleaded for food and water.

“I stopped and the police pushed them back with the rifles. They don’t need police. They need water. They don’t need police. They need the rice,” he said.

Even as the aftermath of the earthquake transitioned from rescue to recovery of bodies, people didn’t give up on finding their loved ones.

“I saw a woman yesterday digging with a shovel trying to find her relatives on the side of a hill where the rescuers had not gotten to yet,” he said. “I saw babies being injected with adult needles because they didn’t have baby needles and taking adult dosages because they didn’t have baby dosages for medicine in the tent. I saw a woman’s body, a carcass lying in the streets with bugs and rats eating her body in the street.

“But, I saw something worse,” he said, beginning to weep. “I saw babies who were crying waking up looking for Mama. But, they will never see Mama again. Their mother is dead and their father is dead and their brothers and sisters are dead. And now they’ll be orphans. And we must fight for the right for them to be orphans here in America … They must have the right to come here beyond the rescue.”

Because of the resilience and faith of Black people overall, including the people of Haiti, Jackson says he knows they will overcome.

“The reason my hopes are so high in this long-term battle is because we serve a mighty God. We’ve survived earthquakes before, we’ve survived storms before, we’ve survived slavery before, we’ve survived Jim Crow before,” he said, even recalling the civil rights struggles that he has personally witnessed. “I’ve seen us fight for the right to vote. I also saw us on another day say there’s a new president because our vote changed the course of our country. I’ve seen a lot.”

Jackson concluded that the Black Press must continue to tell the story after all the television cameras have gone.

“The righteous must stand up now. We must fight back now,” he said. “Weeping may endure for a night, but hold on, hold out. Don’t give up. Don’t give in. Joy comes in the morning. It’s morning time NNPA. It’s hope time. It’s joy time. It’s equality time. And you keep hope alive.”

Hazel Trice Edney is the NNPA editor in chief.