Sean Penn spends serious time helping post-quake Haiti

[Kadie]

Penn spends serious time helping post-quake Haiti
By JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Writer
Sunday, March 14, 2010


(03-14) 19:04 PDT PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) --

Look closely at the foreigners buzzing around a hospital tent above one of Haiti's biggest earthquake-refugee camps and a face stands out: There, carrying the box of supplies, that's Sean Penn.

Now he's guiding a Haitian girl to waiting doctors. Now he's lobbying the chief of U.N. peacekeeping operations to provide better security for the camp's 45,000 people. And now he's talking to the press.

"These people are going to have nowhere to go, by and large, in the rainy season," the Oscar-winning actor told The Associated Press. "The efforts that we've seen ... have been extraordinary — down the line. But this is an impossible kind of situation."

The 49-year-old actor came to Haiti about a week after the Jan. 12 quake killed a government-estimated 230,000 people and made 1.3 million homeless. He's left just a a few times since — mostly for Haiti-related meetings, he said, and to present the Oscar for best actress — and doesn't plan to leave again until mid-April.

His blue-shirted workers with the newly formed Jenkins-Penn Haiti Relief Organization provide medical care, water filters and food. On Sunday, they opened a health clinic for mothers and victims of a growing sexual assault epidemic.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/03/14/international/i190331D54.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0iCwJaLtP



U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, left, listens to US actor Sean Penn during his brief visit to at a makeshift camp for earthquake survivors set up at the Petionville Golf Club in Port-au-Prince, Sunday, March 14, 2010. Penn is doing aid work in Haiti through the Jenkins - Penn Haiti Relief Operation.

Photo: Andres Leighton / AP

[shraby]

1. You go Sean Penn! May the sun always shine on you.

[Skittles]

2. THANK YOU MR. PENN

[Merlot]

3. Wow. Putting his fame and good fortune to good use.

Very impressed. He's not just making contributions, he's getting his hands dirty.

Not that there is any thing wrong with just making contributions - people give what they can.


Thanks Mr. Penn. I now have someone to take Mr. Newmans place as someone who does good.

[rabs]

4. Thanks for posting this

tells something about this man who has been in Haiti almost since the earthquake doing what he can to help, without seeking publicity. We probably would not have known that he is in Haiti had the AP reporter not run into him.

There was another Sean Penn thread last week in which he defended Venezuela's Hugo Chavez from the constant torrent of the U.S. corpo-media's disinformation and misinformation about Chavez and his government.

As usual, the anti-Chavez dingbats on DU crawled out to attack Penn.

But see that they are strangely quite about now.

[flamingdem]

5. a really good guy nt

[upi402]

6. k/r NOT laying by his pool!

This guy does good work and is not selfish. DLC asshats attacking him here can 'kiss mah ass.'

[proteus_lives]

7. Is he advocating jailing reporter there too?

[upi402]

12. About as cold as you could be....

"Whatever you neglected to do unto one of these least of these, you neglected to do unto Me!"

Why are nonChritians like Penn the ones acting like Christians? These people are suffering and I hope the callous among us learn what it feels like.

[proteus_lives]

13. Why does he advocate jailing reporters?

Is it callous to wonder about that?

[upi402]

15. are you serious?

He said a sentence. And you decide his weeks of suffering and sacrifice on behalf of desperately hurting poor people is negated? You pull this statement out of your butt to ridicule a man that sacrifices instead of just sitting behind his computer sniping at self-less activists.

Did you see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZt8cWJzAm0 ?
Do you see the media there as valid journalism?

He tried to prevent the Iraq war as well. He went there too. He seems to be miles ahead of most of this "Democratic" Party.

[proteus_lives]

16. Who said it's negated?

Self-less? really?

So media not loyal to the state should be silenced?

[Old and In the Way]

8. You're making a difference, Sean.

Kudos.

[Electric Monk]

9. Hadn't heard of Diana Jenkins before. She kicked in a million bucks of her own money for this.

http://www.jphro.org/about.html

Together they have amassed a large network of emergency management and government contacts, which proved extremely beneficial in cutting through the bureaucracy that naturally comes with a relief effort.

Within hours of learning of the severity of the quake, Sean Penn began calling on those contacts. Thanks to a generous $1 million donation from entrepreneur and philanthropist Diana Jenkins, J/P HRO’s first chartered plane packed with medical supplies made its way to Haiti within a week of the disaster, along with 12 doctors including Dr. Raul Ruiz.

[Kadie]

11. Thanks for posting the info.

:hi:

[Occulus]

10. I smile when the wealthy and famous get their hands dirty for a good cause.

Good on you, Mr. Penn, and better on you for staying with it beyond the photo-ops.

[Echo In Light]

14. +1