Investing in Kinder, Smarter Aid Organizations'
Thinking more about Haiti, when and if to go and with whom. I’ve been having a lot of conversations with folks and, like everyone else, am reading a whole bunch of shit on the Internet. Issues emerging seem to be finding a good organization to support either with money now or as a volunteer in the future; the need for sustainable, responsible aid—i.e. not militarism; and the media’s persistent fascination with Haiti’s poverty and its failure to acknowledge Western imperial responsibility for that poverty.
As always when making a charitable contribution (as when volunteering) it’s important to know where the money’s going and understand the past and present work of the organization you’re donating to. For example, the Red Cross puts money and services to aid disaster recovery, but has a much more difficult time promoting development in part because they don’t have relationships with local organizations or communities pre-disaster.
According to an Urban Institute report cited in Katy Reckdahl’s essay on the Red Cross’s response to Hurricane Katrina, “after Katrina, said the experts, the Red Cross was hindered by ‘its relative lack of integration with local networks of social welfare agencies and publice and private funders.’”
Since Haitian infrastructure was a mess before the earthquake, development-minded relief work will be even more valuable. As a donor or volunteer, I’m looking for organizations that have been operating in Haiti with low administrative costs for a long time. If it’s a Haitian organization, even better.
On the topic of kinder, smarter aid work, I’m looking for organizations that oppose militarism in disaster response. People have been making an understandably big deal about Wyclef Jean’s comment on his Yele organization site that:
President Obama has already said that the U.S. stands ‘ready to assist’ the Haitian people. The U.S. Military is the only group trained and prepared to offer that assistance immediately. They must do so as soon as possible. The international community must also rise to the occasion and help the Haitian people in every way possible.”
I’ve heard too many stories in New Orleans about violence and harassment at the hands of the National Guard during the weeks after the flood. I fear Haitian earthquake survivors will be victimized by military attempts to enforce “order” in Port-au-Prince. As Bill Quigley, Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans, writes in his widely-circulated list of “Ten Thing the US Can and Should Do for Haiti,” “Do not allow US military in Haiti to point their guns at Haitians.”
It’s also my sense that reports of violence within the country are being overstated by media. While there’s undoubtedly some, but I was heartened by Partners In Health co-founder Paul Farmer’s report in Sunday’s Miami Herald:
Contrary to rumors of looting and mayhem, the city of two million was quiet, which in itself was unusual. I had never experienced Port-au-Prince without the blaring of radios and car horns. And I expect it will remain this way — calm, as long as people are offered dignity and respect and the necessities of daily survival: food, water, sanitation and shelter.
Supporting suspicions that media prefers reports of Haitians engaged in mayhem and violence over reasoned accounts of suffering and struggle, Tamiko Beyer in an extremely thoughtful post on the Kenyon Review blog brings up Haitian novelist Edwidge Danticat’s observation that when there’s not a coup, “the country disappears from people’s consciousness.” Beyer goes on to analyze the ways that media word choice avoids the harsh truth that the US government and other “developed” nations both in their obvious exploitation and their misplaced good intentions are directly responsible for conditions of poverty, starvation, corruption, and environmental devastation.
On a mildly ironic note, I’d signed up with Hands On New Orleans to do some MLK Day volunteering. Was going to landscape with Make It Right (Brad Pitt’s rebuild org in the Lower Ninth). Landscaping in New Orleans, especially in the Lower Ninth, is more than just cosmetic, you can receive steep fines if your grass is overgrown and those still displaced have a difficult time keeping their properties maintained.
Got an email on Saturday that the event was canceled and I’d been reassigned to hand out fire safety pamphlets in Gretna with the Red Cross. Needless to say, I’m here writing shit on the Internet and donating to Partners In Health instead of knocking on doors with a clipboard. Probably should have just showed up and seen for myself, but I kind of feel like I know enough already.