| Veye
Yo is Father Gerard Jean Juste's grassroots human rights organization
on 54th Street, Miami, Florida, which he founded in 1979. - "Don't
cry when I die," said Father Gerard Jean Juste, I
leave the rest for all of you."
Inside
the Veye Yo headquarters, on June 6, 2009, after the Church memorial
at the Notre Dame D'Haiti Catholic Center, I met up with veteran
Haitian human right activists from all over the US, Haiti, and Canada
and we gathered together as a community in mourning but doubly determined to continue the work of Father Gerard Jean
Juste ("Jyeri"). We shared our stories and many made it
a point to tell me how important and meaningful our HLLN advocacy
work, information, promotion of Haitian culture and counter-colonial
narratives is for them.
Old Angelina St-Phar, sat in the same place at the Veye Yo headquarters
that she has been sitting at for over twenty years of attending
Veye Yo meetings. Everyone acknowledges that she had a very special
relationship with father Jean Juste. She's your mother, your special
grandmother, that aunt you have who is always making you a healing
cup of tea. She was that for Father Jean Juste throughout the years
at Veye Yo and like Veye Yo, a safe harbor even when he was in Haiti.
Angelina St-Phar is a self-effacing woman, a natural nurturer mother/warrior
who prayed for Jyeri when he was ministering in Haiti, in the US,
at street demonstrations, in jail or out of jail. She prepared special
care packages, shaving kits, soap, socks, what mothers do. Watched
his back and was known for whispering truth directly into his ear
or for being a steady, calm center even when things got heated at
Veye Yo's weekly Friday evening meetings. Angelina St-Phar will
not be named in the tributes to father Jean Juste. In fact, his
organization is virtually ignored by most in power, including the
mainstream papers. But Lavarice Gaudin, the head of Veye Yo and
the members at Veye Yo, including the tall sentinel strength and
true solidarity of Jack Lieberman, provided Father Jean Juste with the support, care and loyalty to do
the work he did, draw the fire of the powers-that-be while the luckier
Haitian poor, needy and without papers would try to move behind
him to safer ground. Angelina St-Phar is a prime example of this
strength. She was his quiet advisor and with his death, Angelina
St-Phar, like Haiti, lost a treasured son. Lavarice Gaudin, like
all of Haiti's young men and women, lost a father, spiritual leader
and mentor.
But
when I walked into the Veye Yo headquarters Angelina St-Phar was
there, sitting in the same spot, not crying, watching everything
(that's what the Kreyòl word "Veye Yo" means - "Watch
them!"). I listened to the men and women of Veye Yo recount
their many bittersweet memories of Father Jean Juste. It was a sad
and tragic telling of a life of struggle, suffering and untold persecutions
by the Church and the political powers, both in the US and in Haiti.
Amongst all the telling to Ezili Dantò/HLLN, two veterans from Veye
Yo, examples of solid courage like that of our warrior mother, Angelina
St-Phar, these Haitian women told of the episode I'm about to recount.
"Tell this story to the world Ezili Dantò," said Yannick
Jolicoeur and Veronique Fleurime. I promised these unheralded Haitian
foot-soldiers that I would give them an international voice; that
I would say this was "yon mo kle de Jean Juste"
- I would tell of this relatively final insult, in a hundred such
cumulative injustices suffered by Father Jean Juste for us and on
our behalf as a community. For what Jean Juste declared at that
time most touched and tore their hearts.
But before I do, it is important for those who knew nothing of Father
Jean Juste to understand that he was a priest who struggled for
Haitian rights his entire career. He was the spokesperson for the
poor Haitian, the homeless and those without shelter, refuge and
asylum. For this work for the poor and needy, he was ostracized,
crucified, vilified, denigrated and imprisoned. At the time of his
death, the Catholic Church, after his 30-years of service and struggling
to help the poor, had stripped him of the right to perform as a
priest, suspended him. He thus had no resources to pay for his hospital
treatment and health problems, caused by two prison terms in Haiti
for speaking out against rule-by-force, the UN occupation and the
US-imposed Boca Raton regime from 2004 to 2006.
During his last hospitalization in Miami, in January of 2009, when
the hospital insisted Father Jean Juste had to give up the hospital
bed and leave without the medication he couldn't afford, even though
he was almost at death's door unable to breathe with a respiratory
problem, these women of Veye Yo, who sat with him, took turns sleeping
in the hospital to comfort him, relayed this to be close to his
very last words, said with some strength before he would fall into
semi-consciousness. Jean Juste, a fighter to the end, told the Miami
hospital that was refusing him medical care that he could not leave
without three things - he asked for a wheelchair, medication for
the pain and gas for his respiratory tank. The hospital refused
because they said he owed too much money already and needed to pay
at least half of "perhaps more than $60,000, I am not sure
but he owed a lot" recalls Veronique Fleurime of Veye Yo. No
Church official was there. Father Jean Juste had been fighting for
human rights and equal treatment in Miami for Haitians since before
1979 when he headed Miami's Haitian Refugee Center. Ultimately it
was "Ben" from Veye Yo who would hurry and apply for Medicaid
to stop Jyeri from being thrown out of the hospital without any
medication while so ill. Reportedly, the hospital's social worker,
charged to do this task, never put the Medicaid papers through.
Meanwhile, before the application approval hit the computers, and
asked to leave for lack of payment, a demoralized Father Jean Juste
got out of the hospital bed, paced the floor and as the Veye Yo
women and men at his bedside, stood in tears and grief, feeling
utterly helpless, he said:
"Kounyè a espwa m fini. Si m paka jwen swèn medikal se
pou m ale lakay mwen pou m'al tan lamò. (epi li frape pye a
tè li di:) Gade sa Neg d'Ayiti fè mwen!"
- "My hope is gone now. If I can't get medical care I'm being
sent home to die. (stamping his foot he ends with emphasis on these
words:) Look at what Haiti (Haiti's Oligarchy, tyrants) did to me!"
This occurred approximately two weeks before Jyeri was released
from the hospital. He had flown into Miami on January 7, 2009, directly
from Haiti, going straight to the hospital. He went home once, in
time to witness President Obama's inauguration. But would return
to the hospital, after this brief home stay on an oxygen tank, and
remain there until he died on May 27, 2009.
*
There's
not enough space in all of the universe to hold the pain of the
Haitian men and women whose suffering Father Jean Juste sought to
alleviate, nor that of his closest friends and family at Veye Yo,
like Lavarice Gaudin, Farah Juste, Angelina St-Phar, Fabius Rodieu,
Yeye Boul (Andre E. Joseph), Leader Fenfen, Thony Jean-Thenor, Lucie
Tondreau, Ertha Noel, Yannick Jolicoeur and Veronique Fleurime,
to name a few, who are witnesses and combatants alongside Jyeri
and helped to bear the awful life struggle that was Jyeri's burden
to bear for our community. The question is, who will now draw the
fire for us, until death, like Father Jean Juste did, in pursuit
of better treatment for those Haitians without papers, without power,
without asylum, safety, and justice of any kind and who can't risk
telling truth-to-power?
Never following the path of least resistance, Jyeri's power was
centered on his faith and love of Jesus and used to serve and protect,
not to maintain himself in a job or public position. He provided
the needy protection and walked the perilous journey, in the frontlines
of Haiti's populous neighborhoods, with the 2004 to 2006 demonstrators
against Bush Regime change. They were demanding the return of President
Jean Bertrand Aristide, denouncing the Haitian people's wholesale
disenfranchisement, the privatization of Haiti, foreign militarization,
debt, dependency and domination.
Father Jean Juste's huge sheltering presence is gone, but his indomitable
spirit lives on. And, as witnesses and participants in this David-vs-Goliath-Haitian-struggle for freedom and human
rights, we at Ezili's HLLN, in solidarity with all our collaborators, shall pursue justice
for Father Gerard Jean Juste and for Haiti's most needy - li
kite res la pou nou menm - until US immigration and the State
Department starts treating Haitians and Haiti equal to all other
nationalities and countries; until they no longer embolden the Haitian
Oligarchy's repressive and undemocratic rule.
Pursuing Justice For Jean Juste - Ezili's counter-colonial
narrative to the Miami Herald's coverage of Father Jean Juste's
June 6, 2009 Memorial Services
To
the end of pursuing justice, if you want to be kept engaged and
posted on Haiti and the community’s life in the Diaspora, skip the
Miami Herald’s coverage of Jean Juste’s June 6, 2009 memorial and
click on our photogallery. You will learn more there about Haitian thinking,
dress, memorial attendance and the ways the Miami community remembered
Jean Juste than you’ll ever find out from reading the Miami Herald/Jacqueline
Charles-Trenton Daniel’s article on Jean Juste, dated June 7, 2009
and entitled “Thousands attend Little Haiti funeral for Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste.”
Though I know better, it still amazes me when I attend a Haitian
event, whether in the US or in Haiti, and then read about it from
the embedded press. Little of the majority view of things in Haiti,
on Haiti issues or on the depth and visceral nature of what actually
took place is captured by these folks. You’ll see the sound bites
yes, the begrudging “Even though Jean-Juste fought against a system
he sometimes deemed unfair to Haitians, he respected and admired
the United States." But then the zingers will appear, such
as these Miami
Herald outlays: – “Jean-Juste also had a knack for getting in
trouble…In 1980, he was fired from his $16,000-a-year job at the
HRC (Haitian Refugee Center) for what the Christian Community Service
Agency called his ''ineptitude'' and ``erratic and unproductive
behavior… 'The jail time, the illness brought a lot of wisdom,''
Jean-Mary of Notre Dame said. ``I wish he had developed it earlier...''
See, the Miami Herald was always a voice for Haiti’s ruling oligarchy,
the world’s oligarchy - corporate America and the Church and so,
in conflict to Jean Juste throughout his life and now as expressed
in their article on his death.
Thony Jean-Thenor, a Veye Yo militant I spoke to said the Miami
Herald article on Jean Juste’s memorial was a “second killing.”
The article almost gave the Church Jean Juste fought all his life,
the last word on Jean Juste. They chose to quote not any Veye Yo
members, but a priest who said that prison in Haiti and the resulting
illness it caused had matured Jyeri - gave him "wisdom"
he didn't have!
For
every good word they are forced to say about him, there's an awful
jagged-edged pen-knife-stabbing ahead or below it. To wit: ''The
jail time, the illness brought a lot of wisdom,'' Jean-Mary of Notre
Dame said. ``I wish he had developed it earlier. At the same time,
you have to respect his convictions. He was a fighter.'' (Miami Herald, June 7, 2009)
What the Miami Herald fails to tell you is that by 1980, Father
Jean-Juste had incurred the wrath of the archdiocese of Miami by
conducting funeral services for non-Catholic Haitians who drowned
at sea and by picketing Archbishop Edward McCarthy of Miami, who
he said was a racist for not defending the rights of Haitian refugees.
No. The Herald will not contextualize. They butcher his reputation,
even at his memorial.
You won't learn that Father Jean Juste ran afoul of the Church in
the 1980s because, when the church agencies wanted to treat the
Haitian refugees - just as the current NGO’s are treating Haiti
and Haitians in Haiti - as charity cases, Father Jean Juste objected,
insisted Haitians are in their situation because of injustices done
to them. The pillage and plunder of Haiti by the rich and the US
backing and profit from this. Justice, according to Father Jean
Juste, demands rectification, changes in the US immigration laws,
changes in US policy that supports dictatorship, exclusion and coup
d’etat, not charity after the harm has been done. He found that
unconscionable, not generous and benevolent.
A Matter of Justice for Jean Juste
The Miami Herald is "consistent in tarnishing the image of
Father Gerard Jean Juste, just as it is in tarnishing anything that
comes from the popular movement in Haiti and in glorifying anything
the deviant people - the outlaw people put in place by the Bush
Administration in Haiti, do" says Thony Jean-Thenor of Veye
Yo. "Since the beginning until today, they've done their best
to show that the Coup D'etat that ousted democratically elected
President Jean Bertrand Aristide was the best thing for Haiti. They
always give the de facto's a voice while ignoring or vilifying the
popular movement for justice...The day after the 2004 Coup D'etat
the Miami Herald put Haiti on the business page, for the very first
time, as if to say Haiti has been reborn."
"The Miami Herald denigrates Father Gerard Jean Juste because
he didn't want to support the kidnapping of President Jean Bertrand
Aristide. President Aristide and anyone, who was part of his government
have been vilified all over the pages of the Miami Herald from 2001
until today" confides Thony Jean-Thenor.
In the Miami Herald's article, covering Jyeri's memorial, you won’t
learn that when, in November of 1980, the powers-that-be, including
the Church, simply left 102 shipwrecked Haitians to starve to death
on the deserted Island of Cayo Lobos, in the Bahamas, Father Jean
Juste was the only priest to fly to the Island, on his own initiative,
to bring them food, water and the media attention necessary so that
officialdom would not just let these maroon Haitians die there without
being rescued or be harmed when taken by force and returned to the
Haiti they were fleeing. The United States had refused to come to
the shipwrecked Haitians' assistance to avoid having to bring them
into U.S. territory. The Bahamas made the same choice. The shipwrecked
Haitians had become skeletal from starving on the isolated Island
for 6 days before Jean Juste reached them. Jean Juste ignored Church
warnings and went to their aid. These are some of the reasons, unexplained
by the Miami memorial article that starkly contends, Father Jean
Juste “had a knack for getting into trouble.”
Father
Jean Juste insisted that the Haitian refugees had a right to asylum
because they were fleeing injustices. “'Don’t go back to Haiti,'
Jean Juste warned after arriving aboard a television network’s helicopter.
The leader of the band, Claude Pierre, said they ‘could not go any
place but Miami. We sell everything to go to Miami,’ Pierre said.
‘We lose everything in Haiti. They (Papa Doc’s US-supported Tonton
Macoute/dictatorship) will beat us up, kill us, put us in jail.
It’s a decision between life and death.” (See, 102 Haitian Castaways Repel I Rescuers; Demand Trip To US.)
Back then, alone, a very young Father Jean Juste raised a media
storm on behalf of these shipwrecked Haitians who were left to die
on Cayo Lobos because the US did not want to apply its "wet
foot/dry foot" policy to Haitians only for Cubans. Jean Juste’s
intervention allowed for the refugees to, for once, tell their own
stories. But still, they were brutally beaten by the Bahamians while
the cameras were rolling and forcibly evicted and returned to Papa
Doc’s Haiti because Reagan’s US would not open its door to "black
refugees." Knowledgeable observers believe that this public
airing of the plight of Haitians to a world audience, sensitized
and influence US policy makers, embarrassed by the publicity, to
began to afford more equal and humane treatment to other Haitian
refugees, later on. By then Father Jean Juste had made some very
powerful and fierce enemies.
You won't see any of this in the Miami Herald's article about why
Jean Juste may have been fired. Instead, you'll read in the Miami
Herald that "…In 1980, he was fired from his $16,000-a-year
job at the (Haitian Refugee Center) HRC for what the Christian Community
Service Agency called his ''ineptitude'' and ``erratic and unproductive
behavior…"
At that time, in 1980, Miami’s elected officials were telling all
and sundry that all the Haitian refugees would be sent back to Haiti.
As far as they were concerned, there was no place in Miami for a
Haitian community as there was for the Cuban refugees. And but for
Jyeri’s work, that would probably have stayed true.
 Today’s
Haitian community in Miami owes its existence to the pioneering
work of Father Gerard Jean Juste. At his memorial services, Haitians
and even Miami's elected officials and the Church, paid homage to
this. But don’t expect these details from the Miami Herald's coverage
on Jean Juste’s memorial. As we've already shown, if they write
something good about him in a sentence, you may be sure, that soon
after they will insert a zinger, like: “Jean-Juste's penchant for
publicity -- more than once he threw himself on the asphalt in defiance
of immigration policy.”
Still, we all know that no matter how they vilified or denigrated
his work on behalf of poor Haitians, abused and being murdered in
the Bateys, in the prisons of Krome, at Cayo Lobos or in coup d’etat
or dictatorship Haiti, Father Jean Juste always insisted: “My rosary
is my only weapon.”
According
to Thony Jean-Thenor of Veye Yo, the Miami Herald newspaper, like
most of the corporate press, was "so close" to the de
facto imposed 2004-2006 regime from Boca Raton, they would begrudge
Jyeri the truth even at his funeral.
But, Ezili Dantò is writing this piece, and Jyeri showed us the
path. Jean Juste taught us-activists by example. When Officialdom
fired him from his job at the Refugee Center, or when they threw
him out of the Church he had built up in Miami, he had founded his
own grass-roots, Veye Yo, watch group organization to continue to
give voice to the downtrodden, hungry and homeless. God, indeed,
blesses the child who has his/her own.
We,
at Ezili’s HLLN have our own Ezili Network. Our daily posts and
writings are circulated over and over again and reach millions upon
millions of people. As a Haitian-led, Haitian-capacity building
organization, we are the foremost counter-colonial narrators for
Haiti and so the Rochambeau’s of this era will not be writing Haiti’s
history and telling our story. No.
When
they fired him, he kept going.
When they imprisoned him, he never stopped feeding the poor or ministering.
Father Jean Juste gave away the food his parishioners from St. Claire
Haiti brought to him to other prisoners and even over the prison
bars and fences to people in the neighborhood outside the prison
who were hungry.
Like Haiti's great revolutionary hero, Kapwa Lamò, Father Jean Juste
would not let any suppression of the truth stop his trajectory.
Neither will we allow this Miami Herald article the final world
on Father Gerard Justice. No.
What hurts us the most, those of us who came to witness and honor
Jean Juste's life and works, is that his various butchers let him
perish "without confessing their wrongs and without altering their ways...
a man whose heart was filled only with compassion and tolerance."
We write here today to counter the Miami Herald's lies with truth.
To support the footsoldiers at Veye Yo who won't be acknowledged
in their darkest time and grief period. It's a matter of justice
for Jean Juste. And, yes, we own this space, this place Haitians
gather to, to duct this eras’ cannon balls of oppression being hurled
at us by the media and their corporate and ruling tyrants. Like
Jyeri we say no to violence, no to exile, no to arbitrary arrests,
indefinite detentions, no to Coup D’etats, no to unequal immigration
treatment of Haitian refugees, no to the plunder and pillage of Haiti by the Haitian ruling oligarchy
on behalf of transnational corporations, no to the media's butchering
of Haiti's freedom warriors and glorifying of the Internationals'
paid thugs, death squads, imposed dictatorships and UN occupation.
Batay
la Fèk Komanse - The battle has only just begun!
We're
still here after 300-years of enslavement and over 200-years of
containment-in-poverty. No, our Ancestors did not yield to the combined
forces of the whole world. Neither shall we. As far as we're concerned
- nou pap bay legen - the battle has just begun.
Ezili's
HLLN is the place Haitians come to if they need a message of truth
on Haiti circulated. So, go to our photogallery to experience the thinking of Haiti's popular
movement as expressed at Jean Juste’s memorial and learn how Haiti
and Miami came together, on June 6, 2009, to the Veye Yo headquarters
to mourn, honor and remember the life and works of Father Gerald
Jean Juste.
Jean Juste founded Veye Yo across the street from the Haitian Refugee
Center (HRC) when HRC became embroiled in political and funding
battles during the early 1980s of the Reagan years. Veye Yo, a political
action/humanitarian assistance organization formally split the legal
and political work of Jean Juste so that the Haitian Refugee Center
could freely raise money to support the legal work and Veye Yo could
do the "political work" through volunteers, funding itself
and not soliciting funds and salaries as a non-for-profit. The "legal"
entity requiring outside funding and paid staff did not last. Today,
Veye Yo, because it meets the needs and constraints of Haitian life
and reality, is the largest and most powerful Haitian grassroots
group, not just in Miami but in the Haitian Diaspora. But you won’t
read that in any mainstream paper, certainly not in the Miami Herald.
Jyeri did not deserve to die this way. Ironically, as soon as he
was dead, the Catholic Church immediately reinstated him fully as
a priest. It was his dearest wish when he was alive, but he never
got that respect until he was dead. At his Miami church memorial,
on June 6, 2009, the Archbishop of Miami, John Clement Favalora,
who could not stay for the entire service came on first and proclaimed:
"His presence with us was a sign that God was walking with
us...He has walked the journey with you. He provided you with hope,
strength and courage...but your walk is not over...This leadership
is needed. The journey for Jean Juste is over. But the journey for
you has not ended... The Church in the United States and the Arch
Diocese in Miami walk with you on your journey." That
said, the Archbishop immediately left the church hurrying to another
more pressing engagement.
BlackCommentator.com Guest Commentator, Ezili Dantò/Marguerite
Laurent is President, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network. Click here
to contact Ms. Laurent. |
