Concrete Umbrella Records Blog

Howard Zinn, one of the country’s most celebrated historians and author of the seminal work A People’s History of the United States, died of a heart attack Wednesday in Santa Monica, California. He was 87. Over the years, Zinn was a frequent guest on Democracy Now! Click for more [...]

Jean Montrevil was shackled, imprisoned, about to be sent to Haiti. It was Jan. 6, days before the earthquake that would devastate Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. Montrevil came to the U.S. with a green card in 1986 at the age of 17. Twenty years ago, still a teenager, he was convicted of possession of cocaine and sent to prison for 11 years. Upon release, he married a U.S. citizen; he has four U.S.-citizen children, owns a business, pays taxes and is a legal, permanent resident. He is a well-respected Haitian New York community activist. But because of his earlier conviction, he was on an immigration supervision program, requiring him to check in with an immigration official every two weeks. On Dec. 30, during his routine visit, he was immediately detained and told he would be deported to Haiti. A fellow detainee bound for Haiti had a fever. That man’s illness halted the flight, and then the earthquake struck. [...]

Has the mainstream media in the US replaced serious coverage with “junk news” and tabloidism? Especially in foreign affairs, are Americans less informed than ever? Who is shaping their perceptions of the rest of the world? And who is policing US foreign policy? Riz Khan speaks with Amy Goodman and Professor John Maxwell Hamilton, the author of Journalism’s Roving Eye: A History of American Foreign Reporting. Watch the Discussion [...]

Amy Goodman, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Elizabeth Press from Democracy Now are in Haiti reporting on the devastating earthquake. Tune in Tuesday for a report from Amy. For the latest updates visit the Democracy Now! Twitter page and Sharif’s Twitter page. [...]

The epicenter of Tuesday’s catastrophic earthquake in Haiti was located halfway between the capital city of Port-au-Prince and the port city of Jacmel, 25 miles away, on the southern coast of the country. The city was heavily damaged in the quake but the extent of the loss of life or destruction is not yet known. Film students at the the Cine Institute , located in Jacmel, are filing reports and posting them to Vimeo. See their work here [...]

Democracy Now! just received this email from a medical worker at Hopital Sacre Coeur in Milot, 75 miles north of Port-Au-Prince. From Tim Traynor at Hopital Sacre Coeur in Milot: I am sitting at Hopital Sacre Coeur in Milot, Haiti, 75 miles north of PAP waiting for patients that have yet to arrive. I have a 7 member trauma/ general surgery team that arrived from the States earlier this afternoon and have received only 4 people from PAP. Those that made it by USCGS helo were so septic that they would have died had they not been transported to us early this PM. We have 6 Orthopedic surgeons arriving at noon tomorrow and we have no patients for them. We have created space for one hundred people and have differed all non-emergency cases until we have handled the crisis. I am told that within three to four days all those injured in the quake will be dead and the extraordinary efforts accomplished by these generous doctors will have been wasted. What in the name of God can we do or who can we talk to in an effort to alleviate the misery and keep this tragedy from turning into one of the biggest calamities in our time. Thanks, Tim Traynor [...]

One. Allow all Haitians in the US to work. The number one source of money for poor people in Haiti is the money sent from family and workers in the US back home. Haitians will continue to help themselves if given a chance. Haitians in the US will continue to help when the world community moves on to other problems. Two. Do not allow US military in Haiti to point their guns at Haitians. Hungry Haitians are not the enemy. Decisions have already been made which will militarize the humanitarian relief – but do not allow the victims to be cast as criminals. Do not demonize the people. Three. Give Haiti grants as help, not loans. Haiti does not need any more debt. Make sure that the relief given helps Haiti rebuild its public sector so the country can provide its own citizens with basic public services. Four. Prioritize humanitarian aid to help women, children and the elderly. They are always moved to the back of the line. If they are moved to the back of the line, start at the back. Five. President Obama can enact Temporary Protected Status for Haitians with the stroke of a pen. Do it. The US has already done it for El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Sudan and Somalia. President Obama should do it on Martin Luther King Day. Six. Respect Human Rights from Day One. The UN has enacted Guiding Principles for Internally Displaced People. Make them required reading for every official and non-governmental person and organization. Non governmental organizations like charities and international aid groups are extremely powerful in Haiti – they too must respect the human dignity and human rights of all people. Seven. Apologize to the Haitian people everywhere for Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh. Eight. Release all Haitians in US jails who are not accused of any crimes. Thirty thousand people are facing deportations. No one will be deported to Haiti for years to come. Release them on Martin Luther King day. Nine. Require that all the non-governmental organizations which raise money in the US be transparent about what they raise, where the money goes, and insist that they be legally accountable to the people of Haiti. Ten. Treat all Haitians as we ourselves would want to be treated. [...]

Port-Au-Prince-based independent journalist Ansel Herz is filing video and written reports from Haiti on his website Mediahacker.org Ansel was interviewed on Democracy Now on Thursday . Ansel’s latest dispatch: Millions of dollars in aid are pouring into Haiti. Another head of state visits each day. The misery in Port-Au-Prince dominates the news nearly a week after the 7.0 earthquake struck the heart of this island country. What has changed on the streets of Haiti’s capitol city since the tremors? The Haitian people have mobilized, while foreign aid efforts continue to stall. More tents have been erected in the roads where Haitians gathered, away from crumbling structures. In the public squares across from the collapsed national palace yesterday, a young couple told me that the yellow tent overhead was given to them by a wealthy Haitian. That area, called Chanmas, strikes me as an ideal place to distribute aid to the thousands of people sitting and sharing food and shelter in orderly fashion. But people said no aid groups had stopped by to give them anything the whole day. Two US Navy helicopters flew overhead in opposite directions while we talked. Earlier in the day, I saw hundreds of American soldiers walking back and forth inside the airport. Dozens of Haitian men organized a digging and rescue operation on a pile of rubble in the suburb Santo. An huge orange Caterpillar bulldozer sat nearby, stationary. Heavy equipment from the Haitian construction company CNE is all over the city. As I rode a motorcycle taxi out of Cite Soleil, my driver and I yelled at at man driving a bulldozer that his engine was catching fire. At the collapsed parliament building in downtown Port-Au-Prince, another bulldozer retrieved the bodies of politicians laying in the street. Supporters of Haiti’s most popular political party, Fanmi Lavalas, dragged the stiff and dripping body of a high-profile party organizer named Bob Moliere into a wheelbarrow. The bulldozer drove 200 yards to a grassy area on the sea and dumped his body in a four-foot-deep grave dug minutes earlier. Marianne Moliere, now a widow, looked out at the dipping sun with tears streaming down her face. “There is no life for me because Bob was everything to me. I lost everything. Everything is destroyed,” she said. “I’m sleeping in the street now because I’m homeless. But when I get some water, I share with others. Or if some one gives some spaghetti, I share with my family and others.” She clutched a manilla folder with photos of her dead husband. One of them showed him shaking hands with former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The men had no idea that Aristide, pushed out by a coup in 2004, had issued a statement from exile in South Africa asking that he be allowed to return to Haiti immediately. As I told them the news, they started smiling and talking excitedly with one another. “They international community must let him return!” one man said. Moliere won his freedom from the post-coup regime in Haiti only three years ago after a full year in detention. The grave behind us remained open for the moment, a small mound of loose brown soil waiting to cover up Moliere’s stiff right arm pointing at the sky. [...]

Amy Goodman shares her thoughts on the important role of a truly independent media, the power of the first amendment, and why we should all question our political leaders and the so-called status quo. Watch the Video [...]

Dozens of New York State and City legislators and environmental activists gathered on the steps of City Hall on Monday to urge Governor Paterson to step back from the Department of Environmental Conservation’s “Draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement” (SGEIS), otherwise known as the state’s proposal to drill upstate. Some participants called for a statewide ban, while others called for additional investigations. [...]