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ANTI-WAR ACTIVISTS IN LANSING HOLD DIE-IN TO PROTEST HAITI INTERVENTION
A few weeks ago, right-wing death squads from the old dictatorship, not so subtly egged on by the world's only remaining super-power, started an "uprising" against the elected government. The day before yesterday, the fradulently elected President of the United Stated ordered the demoratically elected President of Haiti to step down. That is to say, the imperial commander-in-chief exercised his right to hire and fire the leaders of semi-colonial third world countries. Yesterday, American soldiers were sent in to "escort" President Aristide out of the country. Late last night, while the country was watching the Academy Awards instead of C-Span, President Bush took the opportunity to send the Marines into Haiti to "restore stability," making it the third nation to be directly militarily occupied by the United States after US-backed "regime change" in all three countries in the last three years.
Sure, this means that more poor black people in Haiti and some of the disproportionately black and almost entirely poor American Marines may die, but at least Duhbya will get a government in Haiti that will follow orders--Ariside outraged him after the 2000 election when he doubled the minimum wage (thus increasing labor costs for American corporations operating sweatshops in Haiti) and refused American demands to privatize state-owned industries.
At 9 AM this morning, Cogresswoman Maxine Walters says she got a phone call from President Ariside, confirming that, contrary to the reports of the lapdog media, he did not resign voluntarily, but was essentially put under arrest and kidnapped by American soldiers. At 3:15 in the afternoon, responding to a call that had been put out over e-mail the night before immediately after Bush sent in the Marines, several anti-war activists met at the Espresso Royale Caffe in East Lansing. There some of us gave interviews to reporters from the State News (the local campus newspaper), explaining why we were so outraged by this latest act of imperialist "regime change" and we then went to the Marine Recruiter's office down the street to hold a protest action against the Marine deployment in Haiti.
At one point, the Marine recruiter came out of his office to threaten to have protestors arrested for "arson" for attempting to light on fire a free Marine recruitment poster. As was pointed out, this was more than a little silly, as it was obvious that all that was going on was a couple of protestors making a symbolic statement by having their pictures taken as they scalded the edges of the poster with cigarette lighters, with extremely non-flammable side walk below...no one was starting a bon fire in the street or anything of the kind. If this is "arson," then so is lighting a cigarette in public. He then taunted protestors in a very intelligent way for having "no balls" for discontinuing this when he called police. Apperantly, in his view of the world, immediately calling the cops every time any one comes near you or engages in even the most mild act of protest in your presence is completely consistent with "having balls." Apart from the straight-forward sexism, the logic is fascinating. After that, several protestors lay down in the street to be photographed in a symbolic "die-in" and the protest dispersed.
While this was, obviously, only a very minor action, it probably served a useful role in highlighting our continued opposition to these kinds of imperial adventures around the world and will (I hope) give rise to continued actions in the coming days to protest the intervention. A few local activist organizations have meetings on Tuesday nights, and if nothing else hopefully opposition to the "regime change" and military occupation in Haiti can be worked into the massive anti-war protests that are being planned two weeks from Saturday, on the 1-year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.
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