Haiti: When the cameras leave and the ribbons fade
Del Walters on the long term view
2010-01-21
By Del Walters

We have been here before.  Can anyone sing the words to, “We are the world?”  Now that you can remember the lyrics, can you remember the cause?  Which celebrities came forward to save the victims of Hurricane Katrina? What happened to the money?  Can you name the ward in New Orleans that was virtually wiped off the earth?  How many people died in the tsunami? Which coastal city was destroyed?

Face it; we live in a microwave society.  Today’s headlines of a terrorist attack are tomorrow’s fish wrapping.  The speed of news is so fast that newspapers have become obsolete covering it.   Many of the broadcast networks in Haiti now, will be gone when the public’s appetite diminishes and the ratings start to fade. History bears this out.   In the days following Hurricane Katrina the broadcast networks announced that they would keep a long term presence in New Orleans until the city was rebuilt.  Even though the city is far from back to normal, where are those networks now?  

Already, because of the Senatorial upset in Massachusetts, the networks are moving toward the cheaper, political alternative headline.  It is easier to have a group of old men sitting around a table discussing the fate of healthcare than it is to have crews on the ground in Haiti. If you don’t believe me just watch it happen.  By week’s end the broadcast networks will devote more coverage to the political landscape than the collapsing landscape of an impoverished island nation. In two weeks the Haiti headlines will be fish wrapping.  I pray it isn’t so, but fear history- all too often - has a tendency to repeat itself.

Because I have daughters I have a collection of ribbons, rubber band bracelets and other mementos of disasters past and each reminds me of how quickly our attention shifts. There are ribbons for AIDS, Cancer, and a variety of other diseases.  There are ribbons I brought back form covering the horrible bombing at the federal building in Oklahoma City, and the victims of the Columbine Massacre.  There are ribbons from the September 11th terrorists attack, and the leather bracelets I brought back from the carnage in the West African National of Liberia. They represented my own personal campaign to stop the killing in Africa.  Each bracelet has the words “20 million dead and counting stamped inside.”  The number has now soared well beyond that in the three years I have been giving them out. I have run out of bracelets, unfortunately Africa has not run out of bodies.

Until we address the root causes behind why the death toll in Haiti is so large, and that it has to do with the fact that for years the island stood under the boot of the world’s most prosperous nations, we will never recover all of the real victims. Earthquakes happen, and will happen again.  The casualties have more to do with faulty construction than anything else. Buildings in prosperous countries can be built to withstand earthquakes but that was not the case with Haiti.  No one cared. Just ask Randall Robinson.

In his book “Unbroken Agony” Robinson writes on page 53, “Over the course of 2003, The Bush administration broadened its assault on Haiti into a crippling, multipronged campaign.” In the ensuing pages he describes how the U.S. and other so-called developed countries enabled much of what we see today, “The administration moved apace to strangle Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere into a state of economic, social, and political unrest.”
Robinson is no newcomer to these issues.  He is the Harvard educated, former head of TransAfrica, which during its heyday led the efforts to end apartheid in South Africa, and as a result, the subsequent release of Nelson Mandela from prison. For years he has been a long voice in the wilderness for all things oppressed. The question is what we do now.

Clearly the eyes of the world are on Haiti, and the purse strings are open.  But how long will we continue to give, before we have moved onto the next crisis? How long will the rock stars continue to hold concerts and when will the bracelets fade?  It is the same question I asked following Bangladesh, Biafra, AIDS, Soweto, Liberia, Rwanda, The Sudan, Sierra Leone, the war in Iraq 1, Oklahoma City, Columbine, September 11th, Katrina, the war in Afghanistan, the war in Iraq 2 ….