“For whose entertainment shall we sing our agony? To the destroyers, aspiring to extinguish us, reveling in their own fantastic success? The last imbecile to dream such dreams is dead, killed by the saviors of his dreams.” — Ayi Kwei Armah
Èzili Dantò January 1st
interview 2013
Civil Alert interview (177:03min): Èzili Dantò of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN) speak about the Haitian Revolution and its hidden history, January 3, 2013, Civil Alert/BlogTalkRadio.
Èzili Dantò Note: I write this essay every January 1st. It was posted on this blog in 2013 and is copied below.
But the original was written in 2004 after the US regime change taking out Haiti democracy. Haiti is still under occupation, still struggling for human rights, self-determination and liberation. These broader issues of colonialism, and corruption of the power elite who rule the many are the same even when the particulars, as noted in the essay, may change from year to year.
Haiti holds the line going back 213 years since our independence on Jan. 1, 1804 and 514 years since the first African was brought in chains to Ayiti in the Western Hemisphere by the European slavers in 1503.
Happy New Year everyone. Hope you are looking forward to a more humane, prosperous, loving and joyful 2017. Thank you for your support during the past year. It is greatly appreciated and we look forward to your participation and reflections to come this new year.
We begin the New Year by celebrating Haiti’s 213th year of independence, even while we are under US occupation behind the UN front and billionaire mafia today. The Ancestors’ achievements guide us to another tomorrow.
Lanmou, fòs, kouraj, sante, pwosperite. Wi nou soufri kriz, boulvèsman,
okipasyon Meriken, retou kolon, trayizon restavek yo, tranbleman tè, siklòn, grangou klorox, lavi chè, vol resous peyi a, e chomaj oksidantal. Men, lan
mitan tout sa, GRANMOUN kompran byen: Ginen poze.
Gade andedan w wap wè: Ayiti se yon plas ansyen li ye, tè sakre nou. Ou se Ayisyen. Veso sakre. Timoun ki fèk parèt sou latè, ki tou ti bebe e ki panse lamò se lavi etenèl pakapab vin ranse ak Ginen Fran. Si w granmoun, Ayibobo pou ou.
May the spirit of the Bwa Kayiman Ancestors guide us more in 2017. Viv
Desalin and the warriors at Vètyè. Viv Ayiti. Viv lame endijèn Ayisyen an. Kouwòn pou Defile. Aba okipasyon. Mèsi papa Desalin.
Love, light, healing and honor,
Èzili Dantò of HLLN
Desalin is Rising!
January 1, 2017
(See also special Jan 1st posting of Desalin’s Constitution (Kreyòl and English)
“May the clear waters of Simbi and Agwe heal hearts for new beginnings, wash away the pain of those who continually kill the innocent. May Cain be healed so that Able may live free.” – Èzili Dantò of HLLN, December 25, 2012
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Jan 1: Another Independence Day Under Occupation
Ours has been a long struggle. It started, over 500 years ago in 1503 when the first kidnapped African captives set chained foot on what is now known as Haitian soil.
Back on Jan. 1, 1804, European/U.S. barbarity and savagery received its greatest blow in the Western Hemisphere. We continue to face their guns, greed, foreign germs and odious cruelties. But we also continue to celebrate our victories, humanity and determination never to be as shallow and violent as these enemies. Haitians have been stigmatized and forced to pay with their lives and freedom for that achievement ever since.

HLLN’s Zili Dlo 2012 Clean Water and Solar Power for Haiti delegation standing in the shadow of Janjak Desalin monument at Place d”Armes, Arcahaie Haiti
In photo are Zili Dlo/Barefoot college participants – Marie Andrea Saint Felix, Marie Ilma Meriste with Billy Bataille and Èzili Dantò of HLLN/Zili Dlo
Every Jan. 1st marks Haiti’s freedom day.
Oceans of our blood have poured and watered the soil to nourish civilized co-existence on this planet earth and continue, this very minute, to soak the earth needlessly, simply because Haitians were the first to counter, in combat, European/U.S. biological fatalism, destroy their myth of white superiority and to do what even Spartacus could not.
How should Haitians mark this anniversary?
Who should we confer with about our awesome burden, our plight, our long struggle to be treated as human beings by the European “discoverers” and settlers? About the U.N. soldiers” massacres; about the US occupation of Haiti behind the UN front; about the US/Euro open-pit mining for Haiti’s untold billions in gold in the time of UN-imported cholera; about the savage disenfranchisement of the impoverished with US-supported sham elections since 2004; about their feudal pillage masked as humanitarian aid in Haiti; about $10 billion in earthquake dollars collected that’s been put in foreign pockets leaving practically no footprint in Haiti; about the use of Haiti misery by the US/UN/NGOs to cash in – market for donation dollars; about the arsonist and firemen role played by the fake humanitarians; about the rapes of our women; importation of cholera that’s killed over 10,000 and infected nearly one million innocent Haitians and the repression of Haiti’s defenseless poor? About the lies of the mainstream media and awful propaganda for empire by the likes of Bill Clinton and Dr. Paul Farmer? (See, Lakou New York interview (in Kreyòl) on Haiti’s Riches, 2008; Open pit mining in the time of UN cholera catastrophe is good for who in Haiti?)
Who should we confer with about this insane Western force that attacks all that is not like itself, even though it had no attackers? About Bartholomew De La Casas’ “New World,” enmeshed in its own armor of materiality, caged in centuries of self-serving lies that defends itself endlessly from the planet’s masses, bringing genocide it veils in false declarations of benevolence?” (See full text of HLLN’s regular Jan 1st essay at Another Independence Day Under Occupation http://bit.ly/wXsPKN)
How do we Haitians get justice?
Who do we tell about the UN repackaging old donor pledges and Dr. Paul Farmer and Obama’s complicity in denying the earthquake and cholera victims justice and reparations, all the while telling the world they’re bringing stability, democracy, justice and civilization to Haiti?
How do we show that Haiti’s violence rate is lower than that of most of the tourist destinations in the Caribbean – has one of the lowest violence rates in the Western Hemisphere when the US has a Chapter 7 UN peace enforcement (tourista/MINUSTAH) mission in Haiti collecting over half billion per year when there’s no civil war or peace agreement to enforce?
Who do we tell that the kidnappings, sex slavery and organ trafficking in Haiti are not the work of impoverished Black youths but mostly the work of the wealthy global elites, folks with access to diplomatic pouches, privatized ports and it went nuclear with the kidnapping of democratically elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide by US Special Forces and that the cholera epidemic began under the US occupation of Haiti behind the UN and NGO humanitarian front? How do we show a world convinced with the false benevolence of the “first world” rulers, absorbed in white gluttony, profit-over-people values, monopolistic, and unfettered capitalism of its absolute evil? How should we Haitians, who still live and breathe free, fight on for ourselves, our children, for those who don’t?
In the book “Two Thousand Seasons,” Ayi Kwei Armah writes:
“How have we come to be mere mirrors to annihilations? For whom do we aspire to reflect our people’s death? For whose entertainment shall we sing our agony? In what hopes? That the destroyers, aspiring to extinguish us, will suffer conciliatory remorse at the sight of their own fantastic success? The last imbecile to dream such dreams is dead, killed by the saviors of his dreams.”
It is an exercise in futility to go to the perpetrators and executioners of human rights crimes in Haiti in hopes of getting justice for our people.
Those who ousted the constitutional government of Haiti in 2004 – the U.N., which acts as proxy to maintain this international crime, the Haitian lackeys and their Bill Clinton, Paul Farmer and State Department masters – are dead inside and cannot hear the cries of the Haitian masses.
It’s not their mission or mandate. For they don’t represent life, liberty, democracy, development, and decency, but its opposite. This officialdom, this authority, rains death, despotism, destruction, cruelty, inhumanity, injustice, and represents all that civilized peoples worldwide struggle to overcome. They write laws but are too “high tech” to live them. They mouth words of “justice” and fairness but their words are DEAD.
To further quote Ghanaian writer, Ayi Kwei Armah: “Those utterly dead, never again to awake, such is their muttering.”
See for yourself, my people, Paul Farmer’s mutterings and back peddling on the UN as the source of Haiti cholera quoted at “Haitians Won’t Play Baseball in the time of Cholera.” (The Haitian Blogger, December, 2012 http://bit.ly/W5lx56.)
But as you read Dr. Farmer’s racist obfuscations and immoral lies that seek to mask the US occupation behind UN front as Haitian “progress” that is worthy of international support, remember: A zombie’s mutterings are meaningless.
Ayi Kwei Armah explains what’s to be done with such predators and their blan-peyi Haitian lackeys, for they are dead: “Leave them in their graves. Whatever waking form they wear, the stench of death pours ceaseless from their mouths. From every opening of their possessed carcasses comes death’s excremental pus. Their soul itself is dead and long since putrefied. Would you have your intercourse with these creatures from the graveyard?”
NO. Leave the dead in their graves. Speak your righteous message not to these “long rotted ash” but address your message, my people, to the living and look only to Desalin’s descendants worldwide. His legacy is liberty. Speak to liberty lovers. Empower the world’s lovers of liberty.
On freedom day, raise up peaceful co-existence in the name of Janjak Desalin, the father of Haitian independence, author of the concept that a “Haitian” is a “freedom lover,” no matter his or her skin color or from which branch of that Black woman, mother of all the races – our ultimate root – he/ she hails from.
Remember that “Black” as redefined by Desalin means a “Lover of Liberty.” Therefore, any person, of whatever fabricated social “race,” who loves freedom and liberty is Black, not white in the pejorative “tyrant” sense. For, to Haitians, anyone who is a tyrant, no matter what his or her skin color, is deemed “white,” a blan, a stranger, not family. We speak also, for instance, of Barack Obama, the two warmongering Rices or Colin Powell, servants to the Sodom-Gomorrah vampire system.
Black is also, to Janjak Desalin and his knowledgeable descendants, the color and texture of liberty.
It is because of this Desalin philosophy and psychology that Haitian beliefs are marginalized and why Haitians are forever marked for destruction and annihilation. Our concepts, based on the observable facts of our history, experiences and existence, threaten white supremacy to its core. That is why most people in this world only know the lies told and retold about Haiti, about Haiti’s culture, its psychology, its philosophy.
I’ve written in the “Red, Black, Moonlight” monologue series, “Reaching for Black, keeps me from bursting into flames.” For it is that “reaching” which defines and gives texture to our struggle. Our independence and freedom is divine and “as black as primordial space, as black as the firmament from which creation sprang ” the color of carbon, the key atom found in all living matter. All who are ”Haitian” carry particles of a culture, where every vibratory energy comes out of the dark melanin seed, that Haiti and Africa owns, which captures light and reproduces itself and various hues and shades, full of multidimensional patterns, disparate energies, eternal seeds.”
Remember and celebrate the road traveled
Humbled by the courage of the Haitians who left us a freedom legacy to live, a liberated psychology to help free Africa’s children from all sorts of colonization, a philosophy to extend, on Independence Day, we remember, respect and honor our deep roots even as we continue to face officialdom’s bitter lies, its white despotism and racist disdain. We face its lies and half-truths, such as written by the likes of the fake progressives bringing Hollywood to celebrate the opening of a sweatshop as the height of “building Haiti back better” or their various mainstream press chums, who continually call Haiti “a hell hole,” “violent,” “full of ignorant blacks,” “infectious,” while calling their imposed Martelly/Lamothe regime “progress,” its reign “democracy” and their last sham election-under-occupation “worthy.”
On our Independence Day, Haitians shall come together to stand tall within ourselves against the empire’s lies and stigmas. We’ve survived. We know who we are, what we are and that we’ve got roots to keep us strong.
Our history of survival is our greatest asset and rallying point. We exist still because we have ALWAYS defined ourselves, extended ourselves, given value to ourselves, our life, strengths, ancestors, history and heroes, when the world’s greatest armies, media and superpowers have not.
In fact, white officialdom and its Haitian blan-peyi lackeys are united solely in their refusal to recognize Haiti’s value, its sovereignty and right to self-determination. Death, imprisonment, suffering and sacrifice may be our perennial plight in this, Bartholomew De La Casas’ “New World.” Yet try as the pathetic likes of Bill Clinton/Paul Farmer may to tell Haitians what we are worth, how exclusionary elections are “our due” and that repression is liberty, they fool and shame only themselves and their restavek Haitian lackeys.
Ayi Kwei Armah writes, “A people losing sight of origins is dead. A people deaf to purposes is lost. Under fertile rain, in scorching sunshine, there is no difference: their bodies are mere corpses, awaiting final burial.”
As flesh and blood, endowed by our creator with the right to life, we claim the natural right to just retribution, to self-defense, to equal application of international laws governing human and civil rights. For we are certain, if not in this lifetime, then in our children or great-grandchildren’s time, the day will come when the fiendish fake progressives like Paul Farmers of this world will answer for the Haitian lives they’ve helped to destroy down the centuries and generations. The day will come, as surely as tomorrow is already here, and Haitians all over the world, who have survived the US occupation’s bloody carnage since 2004, will continue demanding an end to the masking of the tyranny as a way of remembering our independence from European/ U.S. official servitude and its manifold injustices.
Every tomorrow will be our Independence Day. Every tomorrow we Haitians shall extend our independence, blocking re-colonization, its modern day applications and their new rods of empire – endless use of progressive credentials of the likes of Paul Farmer, Bill Clinton, Ban Ki Moon and Jim Wong Kim to hide the disconcerting savagery of the US occupation of Haiti since 2004. Every tomorrow, even if placed in jail, forgotten and abandoned like Catholic nun Dona Belizaire and Vodouist, Ougan Zaza (Frantz Jean Raymond) or in exile or contained in poverty, we won’t relent but shall recount our glorious history of struggle ad nauseam, until no doubt remains that we are indeed Desalin’s descendants.
My people, leave the dead in their graves and look to Desalin’s descendants. Gather the living un-coopted Haitians, drink soup joumou, play Desalin’s anthem, recount the StoryofJanjak – the greatest hero to ever live, meditate on Boukman’s prayer. Remember Desalin’s Law, read the two (November 29, 1803 and January 1, 1804) Haitian Declaration of Independence to your children. Call on Defile, Gran Toya, Gran Guiton, Marijann, Kapwa Lamò, Sanit Belè, Bwaron Tonè, Anri Kristof, Boukman, Makandal, Chalemayn Peralt and Katrin Flon. Like Moriso Lewa, say “Thank you – Mèsi Papa Desalin” and celebrate our living history. Keep making that history. Remember and celebrate the dignity of one of the least violent peoples in the Western Hemisphere, the Ezili Dantò generosity of Haiti’s present and historical women warriors. Remember our roots, our struggle – its vast glory. Nou fè yon sel kò.
Those roots are our living way, our legacy, our path to freedom and our light that’s impossible to lose. Its remembrance calls us, animates us and keeps us moving through these unspeakable sufferings and grief.
On our Independence Day and on every other tomorrow to come, we shall forget the dead living amongst us, sucking our blood like the vampires they are. These parasites have lost sight of Haiti’s origins – its sanctity, divinity and goodness, its gift of liberty and fraternity, when all around the Europeans settlers were bringing only depravity.
Desalin’s descendants hold a sacred trust. Our mission is to live free, not to live as dead zombies, corporate or U.N. sell-outs, servile to gluttonous and inhuman greed like the Bafyòti restaveks and their vampirish white masters.
“Kanga Mundele,” said the spirit of Èzili Dantò that mounted that great mambo Cecile Fatiman, on Aug. 14, 1791, at Bwa Kayiman, the ceremony that began the great Haitian Revolution. Kanga Mundele means “kill the stranger” in Kikongo – “kill the stranger within,” “amongst us,” – and also means “long live freedom.”
Indeed our freedom still lives. Despite over 500 years of grief, Haitians are still here – standing on truth, living without fear. Nou La!We don’t get much press, but we’re here! Nou la. Kanga Mundele!
Èzili Dantò of HLLN
Li led li la
January 1st, another day under occupation
(For more on the non-colonial narrative on Haiti, go to: Jan 1, 2012 Another Independence Day under occupation at http://bit.ly/wXsPKN and, in general at https://ezilidanto.com/)
Donate to support Èzili’s HLLN work, Zili Dlo Clean Water, Solar Power and Skill Transfer for everyone in Haiti.
The Haitian struggle – the greatest David vs. Goliath battle being played out on this planet
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Forwarded by Ezili’s Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
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November 29, 1803 – Haiti’s first Declaration of Independence, “I have saved my country, I have avenged America”–Janjak Desalin, Haiti founding father
January 1, 1804 Haiti Declaration of Independence
HAITI EPISTEMOLOGY
http://bit.ly/fBCE8B
The Bwa Kayiman Call
Spoken in the KiKongo language on August 14, 1791 – The Bwa Kayiman Prophecy and Call, which began the Haiti revolution, is: E, e, Mbomba, e, e! Kanga Bafyòti. Kanga Mundele. Kanga Ndòki. Kanga yo!
Ezili’s English translation: The Supreme Creator (E, e, Mbomba, e, e!), Master of Breath shall foil the black collaborators/traitors (kanga bafyòti). Kill/tie up/stop the tyrannical white settlers/colonists, strangers (kanga mundele). Bind all their evil forces/sorcerers (kanga Ndòki). Stop them!
(Listen to the Welfare Poets’ song Sak Pase and their reciting (2:05) of the Bwa Kayiman invocation: E, e, Mbomba! Kanga Bafyòti. Kanga Mundele. Kanga Ndòki. Kanga li! – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1DnBmvMjkU)
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At Bwa Kayiman, on August 14, 1791, the enslaved Haitian rejected bourgeois freedom and fought for universal justice and freedom. The struggle for human rights and dignity continues today…”
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MORE BACKGROUND INFORMATION
“…These poor people are being punished because they have the audacity to
hold a huge MIRROR to the face of hypocrites who come to lecture them about
democracy with machine guns in their hands….” Jean (Jafrikayiti) St. Vil
speaking out on the December 22 massacre in Site Soley, Dec. 20, 2006,
ezilidanto
[ezilidanto] 400 UN soldiers open fire and attack the starving Site Soley community, at least 10 dead, countless civilians wounded, hundreds of residents demand end of the violence and withdrawal of the 8,000-strong UN troops in Haiti.
“…At least 10 people died and 20 were wounded Friday in a UN peace-keeping
operation in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, a UN official said.
The operation was aimed at disarming one of the armed bands in the poverty
district of Cite Soleil, according to Sophia Boutaud, spokeswoman for the
United Nations Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH)…” http://bit.ly/RfDK2S
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[ezilidanto] Senate passes HOPE Act | HLLN statement on the new US trade legislation to “help Haitians”, erzilidanto, 12/16/2006
[ezilidanto]“…We at HLLN, fondasyon Mapou and Democracy for Haiti, along with our Network partners abroad and in Haiti giving voice to the plight of voiceless
Haitians, did not endorse it then, and we wish to reaffirm our position now
that the legislation has been passed. HOPE was combined to follow the path of
AGOA, a preferential treatment bill which supposedly should have worked
wonders for the African economy. AGOA has done little for the Africa worker
and African domestic economy, so why will it be any different in Haiti…”
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[ezilidanto] Bon Ane 2007! – New Years Message from President Jean Bertrand Aristide (in Kreyol text and audio) from Pretoria, South Africa | The kidnapping epidemic in Haiti BEGAN with the kidnapping of President Jean Bertrand Aristide and the foreign-sponsored 2004 coup d’etat that ousted Haiti’s democratically elected government, erzilidanto, 12/25/2006
Audio :Bon Ane 2007! – New Years Message from President Jean Bertrand Aristide (in Kreyol text and audio) from Pretoria, South Africa
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[erzilidanto]Denounce UN slaughter of mostly civilians in Site Soley on Dec. 22, 2006, call your churches, civic organizations, your local, national and international media and speak out! | Massive UN assault on Cite Soleil – URGENT ALERT from Haiti Action Comm-The UN’s Christmas present to Haiti, erzilidanto, 12/25/2006
“The came to terrorize the population, said Rose Matel, (a Site Soley
resident) referring to the police and UN troops. “I don’t think they really
killed the bandits, unless they consider all of us as bandits.” (regarding
UN’s Dec. 22, 2006 brutal military assault on Site Soley residents)- Reuters
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Aren’t there gangs in the US? W ill 400 UN foreign soldiers, with helicopters and war tanks come blast a whole neighborhood in Los Angeles in the dead of night on the excuse they are looking for gangs and then carelessly dismiss the assassination of US citizens as mere “collateral damage?” as they are doing with their Dec. 22 massacre of Site Soley’s innocent residents?| Jafrikayiti speak out against the Dec. 22, 2006 UN massacre | Haiti Blue Helmets not Peaceful, erzilidanto, 12/30/2006
Jan 1, 2007- Haitian worldwide celebrate defeating European enslavement and
colonialism: Remembering Haitis founding father, Jean Jacques Dessalines at
the end of the bicentennial year, 1806-2006
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Seismic Shifts: Haiti Freestyling to murder Tarzan, Jane & their Uncle Toms
Mesi Papa Dessalines
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/papadesalin.html#mesiE
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Three ideals of Dessalines
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/dessalines.html#3
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Kouwòn pou Defile
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/dessalines.html#kouwon
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Libète Ou La Mò
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/dessalines.html#libete
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Dessalines’ Law
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/dessalines.html#Law
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Dessalines’ Songs *La Dessalinienne
Haiti’s National Anthem
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Haiti: Foreign Investment means Death and Repression: A Historical Perspective
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