Jesse Jackson Draws Attention to Haiti

Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

MICHEL MARTIN, host:

I'm Michel Martin and this is Tell Me More from NPR News. Coming up, "This I Believe" returns to NPR. The award-winning radio series is back with new essays by listeners who want to tell us what they're all about. Series curator Jay Allison is going to tell us later how listeners can submit their contributions and be part of it. And Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter Regina Belle releases her first gospel album. But first, Haiti. If you follow the news, you've certainly heard about the threat of starvation after that deadly cyclone in Myanmar and also the concerns about the cost of food and gas here in the U.S. But meanwhile, in Haiti, one of the first countries where the worldwide spike in food cost has had an impact, the food crisis continues. The cost of basics like rice, beans, fruit and condensed milk has gone up by 50 percent over the past year, sparking riots across the country. Also rising are fears that Haitians are so desperate that they will risk the dangerous trip to the U.S. Here to talk about this, the Reverend Jesse Jackson and journalist E.R. Shipp. They were part of a delegation that recently visited Haiti to assess the problem. Welcome to you both. Thank you both so much for speaking with us.

Ms. E. R. SHIPP (Journalist): Yes. Hello.

Rev. JESSE JACKSON: How are you?

MARTIN: Reverend Jackson, first, tell us briefly what made you take this trip? Certainly you'd been to Haiti many times. What prompted this trip?

Rev. JACKSON: Well, the food riots which, a) destabilized the government. The prime minister was removed from office in rebellion, and there are three dimensions to these riots, whether it is in Yemen or Burkina Faso or Egypt, and now around the world is that a) we have a moral obligation to respond to the desperation, and we have the capacity to do something like that.

Secondly, a destabilizing democratic governments, but thirdly, there's a homeland security issue because when these riots emerge out of desperation, that's when the al-Qaeda type forces move in. We would do well engaging in food-boat diplomacy on the front side rather than gunboat diplomacy reacting to riots on the back side.

MARTIN: E.R. Shipp, what struck you about your trip to Haiti and why did you want to go?

Ms. SHIPP: Well, I was curious, and when I got there I was struck by how impoverished people were but also, among the poverty there were bits of hope, and people really did want to meet with Reverand Jackson's delegation to express that. One of the more interesting things was when we visited Cite Soleil, one of the large slums of Port-au-Prince, and as we were leaving a community center to go to a medical center, which are both beacons of hope there, people just kind of fell in line as if we were marching in New Orleans or something because they were glad that somebody was paying attention to them.

MARTIN: And E.R., you sent us back some pictures from Cite Soleil. If you would just describe some of what you saw there and we'll post those on our Web site, but just tell me some of what you saw there. Is it visible that people are weak from hunger? Is it obvious that there's malnutrition?

Ms. SHIPP: In some cases. In fact, Reverend Jackson can tell you about a baby he held at the medical center and that was one example. You also see people who are very much undernourished, particularly children, as you walk through the neighborhoods. But in some areas you find piles and piles of garbage. There's been no government pickup of garbage, and in the garbage you'll find goats roaming around trying to find something to eat. You'll find dogs roaming around trying to eat. We saw lots of that. We saw open sewers with waste. We saw crumbling concrete that would have been roads or sidewalks and such. People living on those and building shanties out of any material they could find.

Rev. JACKSON: And 70 percent of the people make a dollar a day or less and 60 percent of the women are chronically malnourished, and that drafts up a very high infant mortality rate and short life expectancy. I held babies in my arms five months old that weighed fifteen pounds, literally dying in front of our faces. And what is compounding the concern I have is that things can better for them. They use deforestation to cut down the trees to make charcoal - to sell charcoal as a way to make some money and that affects the climate in the region, I'm convinced of that.

The second point is that we dropped heavily-subsidized U.S. rice on that market and drove their rice farmers out of business. They have the capacity to feed the entire Caribbean region. They have three crops a year capacity, and yet our own quote unquote, "liberal trade policies," have driven their rice and wheat farmers out of business.

MARTIN: If you're just joining us, you're listening to Tell Me More from NPR News. I'm speaking with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and journalist E.R. Shipp about their recent mission to Haiti. So, Reverend, that leads me to my question. First of all, were you able to meet with Haitian President Rene Preval? You mention that the prime minister was forced out because of the criticism about the government's response to the situation. What about the president? Did you get any...

Rev. JACKSON: We met with him and interesting enough, I asked myself, what things do you need as priorities right now? He said the first priority is help us fight the drug flow. He said the drugs are corrupt. The drug laws have more money that the government has. We have one airport for the price. They may have 12 landing strips in the country and they come from Columbia right through Haiti on the way through Miami and to America, and so we need to really joint venture to stop the drug flow. It is very damaging.

He said secondly, for the Haitians who are in America but not since 1990 who want temporary status, we need to stop deportation because nearly half of their budget is from remittances of Haitians who live in America who send money back home.

The third is to keep the Hope Food Program alive so that those who can sew garments can sell their product in the American market, a way of employment, but fourth is that the debt service is 75 million dollars a year, which they cannot pay.

MARTIN: Is that unilateral? Is that unilateral debt, U.S. to Haiti or is that the World Bank or...

Rev. JACKSON: No. It's not - It's U.S. and it's World Bank and the like...

Ms. SHIPP: It's a 1.7 billion dollar, I believe, deficit, that they have.

Rev. JACKSON: And there's no fault of dis-governance. And the thing about it is when they are positioned to have to borrow money from us, they then must buy our product with what they borrow, so we - they have to buy our rice, packaged in the U.S., shipped by the U.S., and so what is a dollar becomes fifty cents because we get half of it back and we are heavily subsidized.

And last, of course, in the - for this year, they need rice and wheat and cooking oil to not starve to death. They really want tractors for their infrastructure and they want irrigation so they can begin to farm. They really have a great sense of pride and want to be self-sufficient. Right now they're into sustained structural poverty.

MARTIN: So what you're saying is that there are international economic financial arrangements that have, in fact, diminished their capacity to feed themselves and that's one structural problem that has to be addressed. Are there any immediate - is there any usefulness for an immediate grassroots effort on the part of U.S. citizens who are concerned about this, or is the more pressing issue the structural - addressing these long-term structural problems?

Ms. SHIPP: The long-term issues will indeed be just that, long term. There is an emergency need now for food, and that was one of the things that led to some of the riots in April. An example is that there was a 40 percent rise in rice prices over the last six months. So what used to be - well, it was going for about 60 dollars for a 100-pound sack of rice just before the riots.

Rev. JACKSON: So a ten-dollar sack of rice, Michel, in the States, will cost 60 dollars there, though they make a dollar-a-day less.

Ms. SHIPP: Right. And one of the things that President Prevail wants to do is to reduce the price of rice for at least six months. He thinks that his government, particularly with the new prime minister coming on board, needs at least six months to try to sort some things out, but there's an emergency need for food. That does not mean, however, that people should start sending canned goods over.

MARTIN: Mm hm.

Ms. SHIPP: Because whatever they send over may never reach the people, it may end up on the docks.

MARTIN: Mm hm.

Rev. JACKSON: World Food Service said they may run out of food within a month. You know, the flip side of the crisis of the food issue, what it is, hey there (unintelligible) Nigeria is the opportunity for the U.S. to become, in some sense, just a good partner. This is a great moment, since we have an agricultural surplus, to do what Al Qaeda cannot compete with us in doing, that is, feed the hungry people and try see us as friendly. That's why food-boat diplomacy would be a great asset for us on the front side as opposed to gunboat diplomacy when there are riots and when there is rebellion.

We also find that when these small countries are now turning their corn production into ethanol as opposed to feeding, because they get more money from ethanol, that becomes, I think, an unintended consequence of trying to move from oil to ethanol.

MARTIN: Reverend, I just wanted to ask, have you had an opportunity to make this case to any officials in the government and the State Department, and what has been the reaction? And I also wanted to know whether any of the presidential candidates, in your view, have addressed this matter?

Rev. JACKSON: I called Secretary of State Rice and talked with her. She directed me to meet with the USAID and their program is good, but inadequate. I mean, children are walking four and five miles to school a day. They've cut back on the school feeding program. One thing we want to do is to begin to determine how much it will cost for a child to get two meals a day and books at school. A kind of adopt-a-child program, because if the children have food at school, a) it's an incentive to come to school; b) it's nutritional, and three, they are off the streets where the potentially rebellious forces engage in rioting.

What a great opportunity for us, again, to get food and books to children of Haiti. I may hasten to say that we are - Haiti in our vision is the creditor and we are the debtor, or we would all be speaking French today, had not Toussaint L'Overture defeated Napoleon and the French in Haiti to stop slavery there. Defeated them twice, as a matter of fact, because of those victories it drove France out of the hemisphere. It enabled us to get the lease on the projects, all land west of Mississippi for a dollar an acre. The French quarters in New Orleans built by African French-speaking Haitians. And then they were our ally in the battle of Savannah. Sad to say that...

MARTIN: Yes.

Rev. JACKSON: Have a huge historical relationship here and we've not honored it.

MARTIN: Reverend, we're going to have to leave it there. Thank you so much for speaking with us to bring attention to the situation to keep the spotlight on this. Revered Jesse Jackson is the founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. We were also joined by E.R. Ship, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. They recently returned from Haiti where they were on a fact-finding tour. I thank you both so much. They joined us from Chicago. Thank you both.

Rev. JACKSON: Thank you.

Ms. SHIPP: Thank you.

MARTIN: Just ahead, an update on the drug bust last week at San Diego State University. Dozens of students were arrested. Some are wondering whether drug traffickers have settled in or whether the authorities are just going for easy pickings. And a popular radio series returns.

Mr. JAY ALLISON (Curator, "This I Believe"): And I think it's this process, this idea, the rhetorical question behind this whole series is, what would I say if I had three minutes on the air?

MARTIN: The curator of the "This I Believe" series is with us to tell us how you can be part of it. That's next on Tell Me More from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin.

Copyright ©2009 National Public Radio®. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to National Public Radio. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.