Salena Tramel's blog

Fault Lines—Haiti: The Politics of Rebuilding

By Salena Tramel
February 12th, 2010

In what’s left of Port-au-Prince, Haitians have self-organized into 450 camps administered by neighborhood committees. These newly formed communities not only provide temporary shelter, but are also launching points for local organizers to promote Haitian voices in rebuilding their society. Outside the city, peasant movements and organizations are welcome displaced victims of the earthquake into their communities. These returnees are part of a massive reverse migration back to their places of origin

After the Catastrophe: Our Country Can Rise Again

Many of Grassroots International’s partners in Haiti recently released the following statement in the wake of the earthquake in Haiti. Our partners have used this devastating and unstable time to bond together and to work to rebuild Haiti with creative bottom-up solutions.

From Gaza to Haiti and Back Again

GAZA CITY—I dreamt of Haiti last night. Something about the scene felt eerily familiar. The visions of people trapped under folded sheets of concrete, children crying out to family members they would never see again, and incapacitated hospitals overflowing with the dead and injured were so vivid that even after I opened my eyes, I still thought I was there. And then the early Islamic call to prayer brought me back to where I was—I had made it into the Gaza Strip from Israel the day before.

Last year, I visited Grassroots International’s partners and projects in Haiti right after spending time in Gaza over the summer.

"The wall will fall in Bil’in; the wall will fall like in Berlin"

Building a Movement, Haitian Style

I spent the better part of last week crisscrossing Haiti’s arid Northwest with Grassroots International’s partner the National Congress of the Peasant’s Movement of Papay (MPNKP). MPNKP is best known to our allies and friends for their Creole Pig Repopulation project that we have supported for many years, and I was excited to follow up with families in far-off rural areas that our organization has not yet visited.

Throughout our time on the ground together, it became clear to me that it’s not just about the pigs—it’s about the organizing. The pig repopulation project represents this organizing.

Rethinking Aid: Hurricane Relief Rooted in Sustainability

I stopped in Gonaives to follow up with last year’s hurricane victims while traveling with Grassroots International’s partner the Peasant’s Movement of Papay (MPP) from Port-au-Prince to Haiti’s Northwest last week. Last year, hurricanes Fay, Gustav, Hannah, and Ike ravaged the entire island causing immense suffering. The coastal low-land city of Gonaives -- which was almost entirely underwater during the disaster – witnessed more loss of life and livelihood than anywhere else during the storms.

"Generation 3.0" of Intervention in Haiti: What Is Bill Clinton Doing on the Island Anyways?

Below is a blog by Salena Tramel, Grassroots International Program Coordinator for the Middle East and Haiti. It originally appeared on Huffington Post.

Here in Haiti, a country all too often characterized by internal instability, the biggest scandals of all have external origins. Just ask the Haitians.

USAID Gets It Right?

Dr. Paul Farmer is slated to be the next head of the United States Agency for International Development. Farmer, long known for his outspoken criticism of U.S. developmental and other policies, could quite possibly be the one making many of them.

USAID has continuously implemented the rules of the Washington Consensus – stabilization, structural adjustment, and export-led growth in the developing world. Over and over this code of conduct has failed the Global South, leaving countries without adequate public infrastructure such as healthcare.

Health and Human Rights in Palestine

Today I attended a panel at Harvard featuring authors of the Lancet Special Series Health in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. They discussed and suggested reasons for the rapidly deteriorating health of those living in Gaza and the West Bank, including a lack of access to food and medicine. These vital resources remain blocked by obstacles such as the Wall in the West Bank and inaccessible borders in Gaza. Panelist Mitchell Plitnick, the U.S.

Palestinians Commemorate Land Day

Sunday marked Land Day in Palestine and around the world. Land Day is an annual commemoration of the events of March 30, 1976, when the Israeli army and police killed six unarmed Palestinian protesters and injured 96 others during a peaceful protest in the Galilee. More than 300 people were also arrested in the demonstration opposing the Israeli authorities' seizure of 5,500 acres as "closed military zones."