Sold-Out Brooklyn College Rally Slams U.S. Role in Aristide’s Ouster

An overflow crowd of over 2,000 people packed the Center for the
Performing Arts at Brooklyn College on the evening of Wednesday, April 7
to hear a broad range of speakers accuse and condemn the Bush
administration for undermining and eventually kidnapping Haitian
President Jean Bertrand Aristide on February 29, 2004.

The event, entitled "The Truth Behind the Haiti Coup," highlighted the
work done by the Haiti Commission of Inquiry, which presented the
results of its findings from delegations sent during March to the
Central African Republic and the Dominican Republic. The independent
Commission, a project jointly initiated by the International Action
Center (IAC) and the Haiti Support Network (HSN), is investigating the
origins, methods and actors of the coup.

Speakers at the rally included Congressional representatives Maxine
Waters (D-CA) and Major Owens (D-NY), actor Ossie Davis, former U.S.
attorney general Ramsey Clark, and Haitian political leader Ben Dupuy.
WBAI Radio’s Don Rojas and Amy Goodman also spoke.

"U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell calls investigations into the
latest Haitian coup, even that called for by CARICOM, a waste of time,"
said Dupuy, the secretary general of the National Popular Party (PPN),
at the event. "This shows how much they fear the truth getting out. To
add insult to injury, the U.S. is promoting diversionary investigations
into Aristide’s alleged drug trafficking, human rights abuses and
corruption. Meanwhile, to carry out their coup, Washington is
collaborating with death-squad leaders and soldiers universally
recognized as corrupt drug-dealing human rights abusers. Even U.S.
government officials from former President Clinton to Powell have called
them criminals and thugs." The PPN offered critical support to
Aristide’s Lavalas Family party in recent months and continues to lead
resistance to the coup.

Exiled Secretary of State of Communications Mario Dupuy called
Aristide’s Feb. 29th removal a "coup-napping," combination coup and
kidnapping.

Sara Flounders of the International Action Center, denounced the U.S.
occupation of Haiti and Iraq. "We have to march on Washington as soon as
we can to get U.S. troops out of Iraq and Haiti," said Flounders, who
was a member of a delegation that visited President Aristide in the
Central African Republic

Musicians like La Troupe Makandal, Phantoms and Marguerite Laurent
performed to the packed supercharged auditorium. The audience, a 3 to1
mix of Haitians and Americans, drowned performers and speakers alike in
applause. The evening closed with a videotaped message from Aristide,
recorded while in Africa, as well as a taped message from well-known
U.S. political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal about the coup.

"The success of tonight’s event shows how deep and broad the opposition
to the February 29th coup is," said one of the event’s organizers, Kim
Ives of the Haiti Support Network and a journalist for the newsweekly
Ha�ti Progr�s. " We are planning another rally for April 17th at the
Medgar Evers College auditorium and more demonstrations and rallies
after that. The huge response to the April 7th rally should give both
Washington and the Haitian putschists pause."

The event, organized by the IAC and HSN, was endorsed by the Coalition
to Resist the Feb. 29th Coup d’�tat in Haiti, a broad coalition of
Haitian and U.S. groups which have held several large marches through
Brooklyn to protest the coup.