The coverage of the aftermath of the two earthquakes to hit Haiti has been increasingly troubling, but not just for the obvious reasons.� What is left of the Haitian government reports that 150,000 bodies have been buried, leading to the conclusion that the estimate of at least 200,000 dead is probably, and very unfortunately, accurate.� Reports this past week indicate that Port-au-Prince harbor has been damaged more than first thought, thus creating additional problems for the delivery of relief and reconstruction assistance.� Thousands of people have been forced to evacuate Port-au-Prince, returning to rural areas where tent cities have emerged.� And, every so often, despite the odds, one more living, breathing person is rescued from the ruins.

Mainstream coverage of the disaster has varied in quality and quantity.� Most of us have been overwhelmed by the extent of the devastation, with pictures of Port-au-Prince resembling those of Berlin in 1945, with the only thing missing being bomb craters.� Yet after the initial coverage, the tendency has been for a focus on three things, (1)individual survival stories, (2)humanitarian relief efforts, and (3)how individual US citizens have contributed.

I wish to be neither cynical nor dismissive regarding the coverage.� In general, the more coverage of Haiti the better such that people around the world, but especially those of us in the USA, do not forget or minimize the extent of the tragedy.� Yet the troubling aspect of all of this has been the almost total lack of historical context to this disaster.� With the exception of left-wing media, mainstream coverage has largely restricted its �historical� analysis to descriptions of Haiti�s poverty and corruption.� If they are extending themselves, the mainstream media may give a bit of attention to the tyrannical regime of Papa Doc Duvalier and the two coups against democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.� But this is largely where the history stops.

The result of this ahistorical approach is that the viewers and listeners of mainstream media coverage get no sense of the breath of Haitian history, or the roles of the USA and France in undermining Haiti�s efforts at national self-determination and democracy.� None of this, of course, is to let any Haitian tyrants off the hook, but the fact of US and French interference�including the US invasion and occupation from 1915-1934�places the January 2010 earthquake in an entirely different context.

As a result of the sorts of mainstream coverage to which we are exposed, many of us have found ourselves rocked between despair and anger.� The pictures are overwhelming, yet we tire of seeing and hearing a presentation of a black people as being a constant flow of victims, treated as if their misery is either the result of their own inadequacies or the work of supernatural forces.

Progressive people, particularly but not exclusively in Black America, are, therefore, called upon to break this cycle.� Much as has been done in the wake of wars, interventions, and occasionally natural disasters, there needs to be a large-scale educational campaign that is moved across the USA.� There needs to be a period of time�soon�set aside where there are in-person, in-print and on-line teach-ins that focus on Haiti.� Such teach-ins need to introduce their participants to Haiti�s history and culture, but they especially need to introduce audiences in the USA to the parasitic role that the USA and France have had vis a vis Haiti since Haiti first achieved political independence in 1804.� African American media; the media of other portions of the African Diaspora in the USA; as well as media from the larger progressive world, need to call attention to US policy towards Haiti, including raising policy options that the Obama administration in the USA and the Sarkozy administration in France, can pursue as part of a process of repairing the damage that these two imperial powers have carried out over more than two hundred years (note:� in the case of France, since prior to 1804).

There is no rocket science to a wave of teach-ins; it necessitates initiation and organization.� We, at BlackCommentator.com, as small a media outlet as we may be, are committed to stepping up to the plate to help this happen.� We need other outlets, not to mention political and social organizations as well as religious institutions, to do likewise.� Let�s not debate it; let�s move it.

BlackCommentator.com Executive Editor, Bill Fletcher, Jr., is a Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies, the immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum and co-author of, Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice (University of California Press), which examines the crisis of organized labor in the USA. Click here to contact Mr. Fletcher.