JUDGE LIONEL JEAN-BAPTISTE is asking Congress to approve a bill for $50 billion to help restore democracy in Haiti and are asking Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. to support their proposed Marshall Plan bill entitled The Louverture Economic Development Foreign Assistance Act of 2023. (Photo by Chinta Strausberg)
Addressing scores of Haitian leaders during the Saturday, January 6, Rainbow PUSH Coalition broadcast, Representative Jonathan Jackson (D-1st) joined in the celebration of Haiti’s 220th Independence Day crediting the Haitians for overcoming slavery and being role models for freedom.
“People all over the nation need to understand that the Haitians in Chicago have come out in the cold and the snow to celebrate 220 years. That fire cannot be extinguished,” he told an audience that included nearly 100 Haitians.
“After three centuries of occupation colonial rule, there came a group of people of African descendants that kept the yoke of slavery colonialization off of their backs. They fought back. They set an example for the rest of the Black world that we indeed can be free, and it all started in Haiti,” Jackson said to a round of applause. “We remember.”
He also recalled how Haitians were enslaved and how the Haitian Revolution was the only successful revolt in history. Jackson noted that while along with their freedom, they had to pay reparations to France which wanted to be paid for losses in property and in slaves. Haiti borrowed money from 1825 to 1946 to pay France.
Jackson compared this to slavery in America, when Blacks were sold into conscript to fight in the Union Army and those who enslaved them were compensated.
“Robert E. Lee, having been a traitor to the government, when the bodies began stacking up in Washington, D.C., because the American Civil War had been going on for so long, they began burying the soldiers on his land.
“Now that land is called Arlington National Cemetery. Robert E. Lee got compensated for his land having fought against the American people,” said Jackson.
“This has been a consistent narrative that goes throughout American history.”
When he was with his father, Reverend Jesse Jackson, in 2004, Jackson said after they left Miami, they found out that those who came from Cuba were given assignments and work permits but those who came from Haiti “were put in chains in isolation in Guantanamo,” the U.S. military base in Cuba.
Jackson said when his father was given the highest award in France, on July 19, 2021, President Emmanuel Macron asked him, “What can I do for you?” to which Jackson replied, “What about Haiti?” Representative Jackson said Macron’s face dropped and he said, “You really do care about the least of these.”
