Haitians resentful over the manipulative efforts of Bill and Hillary Clinton after the 2010 earthquake plan to protest Hillary’s commencement speech and honorary degree June 8 at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York.
Komokoda, or the Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti, which is protesting Clinton’s appearance, released a statement blasting Hillary for consistently using the black community to resurrect her reputation. They also urged the college’s president, Rudy Crew, to rescind the invitation. Their statement read:
Every time the Clintons get in a bind, they run to the black community to whitewash their tarnished image. After Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath in the Monica Lewinsky affair, he brought in Jesse Jackson and a host of black preachers to lead prayers with him at the White House. To divert attention from her “deleted emails” debacle, Hillary had Bill DeBlasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, bring her to Brownsville, one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in Brooklyn, for a photo op with little black children. When newspaper editorials and cartoons were blasting her for her unending lies and demanding investigations and prosecutions, former New York City mayor David Dinkins brought her out for a keynote speech at his Dinkins Leadership & Public Policy Forum at Columbia University. Today, for her resurrection from a shameful defeat by the last person most reasonable people felt could ever be president of the United States, the dirty work falls to Rudy Crew.
Komokoda President Dahoud Andre said:
They portray themselves [the Clintons] as friends of Haiti but their role in Haiti has been to pillage and plunder. For years we have been protesting Clinton because of her role in militarizing the police, in criminalizing black youth and building jails to incarcerate our youth. Many people in our community felt that it was a victory that Clinton didn’t win this past U.S. election.
After the massive earthquake in 2010, Bill Clinton served as the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti; Hillary was Secretary of State. As Jonathan Katz for Politico wrote in 2015, “Many of the most notable investments the Clintons helped launch, such as the new Marriott in the capital, have primarily benefited wealthy foreigners and the island’s ruling elite, who needed little help to begin with.”
But it was worse than that; the Clintons greased the way for the ascendance of former Haitian President Michel Martelly. The Washington Post reported, “Clinton reportedly pressured then-President René Préval with the loss of U.S. and international aid unless the election results were changed to fit the OAS’s recommendation.”
Thus Martelly was elected in 2010, even though the election was tainted. Manolia Charlotin, a Haitian journalist based in New York, told The Washington Post, “What does that mean as to her approach to foreign policy? To have a secretary of state visit a country, to make a stop, and as a result of that meeting, you have an illegal selection of leaders? How does that decision promote the American views of democracy?”
For more details on the Clintons and their corruption vis-à-vis Haiti, see here.