A Place for Haitian Empowerment!
Sorry we haven’t posted anything the past couple of days, we are udating there are gonna be alot of new features and MyAyiti.Com Presents – “L’Union Fait la Force” Unity Makes Strength Vol. 2 is coming out soon!
Thank you again for all the support, myayiti.com will be offline for a couple of days 
~ Pwa
FORT LAUDERDALE, FL — U.S. Representatives Alcee L. Hastings (D-Miramar) and Robert Wexler (D-Boca Raton) issued the following statement in response to the decision made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to resume deportation flights to Haiti.
“Upon hearing from several groups in South Florida today that deportations would be starting again, our staff confirmed with ICE officials that, in fact, deportations to Haiti have already begun. We find this decision to be short-sighted and inhumane.
“Over the course of the past year, Haiti has been ravaged by a devastating food crisis and four back-to-back natural disasters.
Months later, Haiti’s economic and physical infrastructure remains practically obliterated. Haiti is certainly no stranger to crisis and despair.
Even more, many deported Haitians simply have no communities to return to. It is disappointing that the Bush Administration would even consider sending people back to this incredibly fragile nation. “Instead of pursuing this course of action, the United States should extend a helping hand to Haiti, as it has done for other nations in similar situations, by granting Haitians Temporary Protected Status. Haiti has long met the qualifications for TPS, and it is now more urgent than ever that the United States provides them with this much needed, long overdue, temporary assistance.”
GEORGETOWN, Guyana: Haiti is expected to participate in at least one component of the Caribbean Single Market and Economy, (CSME) by the first quarter of 2009.
The fundamental components of the CSME are free movement of goods and services, free movement of people and skills, and the right of establishment of business entities within the Community. Haiti’s participation in the CSME will increase the size of CARICOM’s market under the CSME to an unprecedented 15 million people.
Ambassador Earl Stephen Huntley, Director of the CARICOM Representation Office in Haiti told the opening ceremony of the Third Meeting of the CARICOM Commission on Youth Development (CCYD) on Monday morning that Haiti was now in the process of revising and developing legislative frameworks to facilitate its participation in Free Trade in Goods under the CSME. He noted that by January 2009 bureau of standards would be established in Haiti as the country prepared to participate in its first segment of the CSME.
Approximately 40 delegates including Commissioners, consultants and representatives of the University of the West Indies, development agencies, Departments of youth affairs, and the CARICOM Youth Ambassador Corps are meeting at the Hotel Montana in Port au Prince, to discuss preliminary research findings and develop a plan of action to complete the Commission’s Report. The recommendations contained in the Final Report, will be discussed by the special Meeting of the Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD) in April 2009, prior to its submission to the CARICOM Conference of Heads of Government in July 2009.
By Greg Braxton
Long before he set out for the White House, Barack Obama sought to adjust the colors on America’s TV sets.
Four years ago, fresh off his star-making keynote address at the Democratic National Convention, Obama challenged the television industry to live up to its responsibility as the country’s “most powerful media” and accurately reflect the United States’ population. “TV ought to reflect the reality of America’s diversity and should do so with pride and dignity, not with stereotypes,” he told the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
But as Obama prepares to move into the White House in January, he and his family will be hard- pressed to find black people like themselves represented on any of the major networks: ABC, NBC, CBS or Fox.
In fact, not only will they have great difficulty locating any black family in a leading role on the networks, but they also will see it’s nearly impossible to find a scripted comedy or drama that features a young person of color in a central role.
Although the networks’ prime-time slates are packed with more than a dozen comedies and dramas revolving around family life or involve characters who are related (“Brothers & Sisters” and “Two and a Half Men,” for example), almost all of them have predominantly white casts. A black family has not anchored a network series since “The Bernie Mac Show” left Fox in 2006.
Long before dozens of Haitian children died from severe malnutrition, their rural community was no stranger to hunger.
BY JACQUELINE CHARLES
BAIE D’ORANGE, Haiti — The slow road to death runs high above the scenic coastline, past the crumbled bridges and buried rivers. It traverses a jagged trail passing green slopes and red fertile dirt before arriving here: an isolated mountain village where little Haitian girls dream of eating rice and the doctor is a three-hour walk away.
This is the place where children, suffering from stunted growth, look half their age, where struggling mothers cry that their half-starved babies with the brittle orange hair — evidence of malnutrition — neither crawl nor walk.
‘He doesn’t cry, `Manman.’ Or `Papa,’ ” says Christmene Normilus, holding her visibly malnourished 2-year-old son, Jean-Roselle Tata.
In the last month, international aid workers and doctors have airlifted 46 children on the brink of death from this southeastern village and neighboring communities to hospitals in Port-au-Prince, and elsewhere in the south. The emergency intervention came after it was reported that 26 children from the Baie d’Orange region had died from severe malnutrition in the wake of the four successive storms that devastated Haiti in less than a month this summer.
By WILL WEISSERT
SANTIAGO, Cuba – President Raul Castro said Sunday that Cuba has battled Washington’s trade embargo for nearly 50 years and is prepared to do so for another 50 if need be.
His comments appeared to be a small swipe at Washington at a time when President-elect Barack Obama has raised expectations that warmer U.S.-Cuba relations could be on the way. He spoke as leaders from the 14 member nations of the Caribbean Community trade bloc, or Caricom, gathered in the eastern city of Santiago to discuss ways to strengthen tourism in the region despite the global economic crisis.
Castro and Antigua Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer, whose country is occupying the rotating post as head of Caricom, led a visit by summit leaders to the tomb of 19th-century Cuban independence leader Jose Marti, where each leader laid a flower in front of the hexagonal mausoleum.
Later, during an event at Santiago’s Plaza of the Revolution, Castro said of the U.S. economic sanctions that “we have learned to resist for half a century, and we are prepared to fight for another half century.”
By Tequila Minsky
La Revolte Des Zombies” ( Zombies’ Revolt”), the seventh studio album by alternative Haitian Roots/Vodou group Boukman Eksperyans, is thought provoking and musically enriching.
Always a band of multiple influences, it’s obvious that on this album Boukman seek to include both literally and musically the new generation in its evolution.
Incorporating rock, jazz, funk, reggae, folk and more recently hip-hop and rap, their lyrics embody Haitian history, political upheavals and social changes. Zombie, the signature song on their new CD successfully combines current musical trends including some rap with musical licks people love and that they’re known for.
Boukman Eksperyans is known as introducing electric guitars and keyboard to traditional haitian roots. Followers of the religion were concerned about combining modern with the sacred but traditionalists realized that it was just the medium that was being changed.
Theodore “Lolo” Beaubrun and his wife Mimerose started Boukman Eksperyans, Haiti’s most well-known and oldest on-going rasin-roots bands; their first album Vodou Adjae was released in the late 80s. They won the Best Song at Carnival “Ke’ M Pa Sote (My Heart Doesn’t Leap/I’m Not Afraid)” and during the coup years in the early 90s their songs were banned from radio, though played on pirate radio and through illicit tape distribution. They spent some years in exile, too.
Canada’s governor general, a largely ceremonial position, could decide the fate of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s embattled government.
BY ROB GILLIES
TORONTO — Canada’s governor general cut short a European trip Tuesday to deal with an unprecedented political crisis that could force the second national election in two months or see an opposition coalition take power.
Michaelle Jean, who is the representative of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II as head of state, holds a mostly ceremonial position. But it will be her decision which path to take if the opposition votes to oust Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.
Constitutional experts speculated Jean would probably allow the opposition to form a government because parliamentary elections were just held Oct. 14.
The Liberals, New Democrats and Bloc Quebecois, which together control a majority in Parliament, signed a pact Monday agreeing to vote to oust Harper’s minority government next week and setting the structure for their proposed government.
By Todd Johnson
Moving into a new neighborhood doesn’t always come down to what the houses look like or how much they will cost. For hundreds of white respondents in a recent study, race matters too.
Randomly selected white adults from the Chicago and Detroit metropolitan areas were shown videos of identical neighborhoods and asked to evaluate items such as the cost of housing and the quality of area schools.
While the neighborhoods in the videos were identical, the residents were not. Some respondents saw neighborhoods with black residents, others saw the same neighborhoods with white residents or a mixture of both.
According to the research released in November, whites who saw white residents in the video rated the neighborhood more favorably than whites who saw black residents in the same neighborhood.
The study was co-authored by Maria Krysan, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Reynolds Farley, a research professor emeritus at the University of Michigan.
By David Edwards and Muriel Kane
The Bush administration is reportedly planning as one of its final actions to announce a “right of conscience” rule that could further limit access to abortion, particularly for poor and rural women, and might even impact a much broader range of medical procedures.
“We should call this the ‘Amish bus-driver rule,’” fumed MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “If you’re Amish and your values and your beliefs will not allow you to operate an automobile, then surely that’s your inalienable right — but consequently, you will not be hired to drive a bus.”
The rule would apply to over 500,000 facilities nationwide and would allow all healthcare workers — not just doctors and pharmacists but potentially even janitors — to refuse to participate in any procedure they find morally objectionable.
Maddow turned for comment to Princeton professor and reproductive rights activist Melissa Harris-Lacewell, asking, “Do you see this as a major setback for reproductive rights?”
“Absolutely,” Harris-Lacewell agreed, although she emphasized that “this right to conscience is not just about reproductive rights” because it could potentially affect everyone.
