Today, at age 75, Don Cornelius was found dead as a result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound authorities are calling a suicide. The tragic news jump-started Black History month. It was the end of the warm voice, the smooth cat-daddy composure, and the effortless swagger that was on full display for decades as the conductor of the Soul Train, the black community’s weekly TV party. For allowing us to ride on “the hippest trip in America,” Mr. Cornelius will always be remembered as the Afro-ed hero of a culture. Or will he?

Like every other Run-DMC-loving ’80s kid, I watched Mr. Cornelius introduce my favorite rappers— week after week after week—against his better wishes that rap just go away. (See De La Soul’s “Pass the Plugs”: “We didn’t do Soul Train/Don don’t like rap.”) And while I usually went on a silent jihad against any and all rap critics back then, I gave smooth Don a pass. Decades later, I found myself in the audience of the 2009 BET Awards. Michael Jackson had passed away days earlier and Chris Brown had been shut out of ceremony because of his very famous beating of his R&B-star girlfriend, Rihanna. With Michael Jackson tributes all about, Brown’s absence was an obvious omission. The negative space where Brown should have been was loud static.

Don Cornelius was there to introduce The OJays. But at 73, his words were not  smooth silk, they did not ease on out of his mouth. They fell, jumped, and stumbled onto the mic. He was droning on and on and the audience grew uncomfortable, looking around for someone to play the role of the Sand Man and shuffle him off the stage. When no one came, the audience clapped, giving him a rousing round of applause, as to gently cue Mr. Cornelius to exit stage left. When the clapping stopped, Don continued on. He was sadly oblivious. It was like watching your favorite boxer in the ring well after his prime. Yet no one would dare speak ill of Don Cornelius, a legend who had hosted so many parties in our living rooms.

The moment was not lost on Chris Brown, who had been shut out of the entire event. To Brown, there was a greater question dancing around in the air. Why does Mr. Cornelius—who had current domestic abuse charges—get to ramble on at the event celebrating the life of Michael Jackson, a man who had very serious child molestation charges leveled against him? Meanwhile, Brown, the most obvious MJ heir apparent, was not allowed in the building. It was a valid question. When I talked to Chris about it several weeks later, for the Dec/Jan 2001 cover story in VIBE, he was still fuming.

“They had me in rehearsal for it,” he told me at his Virginia dance studio, “and [at the] last minute they said, ‘Well, we can’t do it because of sponsor reasons,’ or whatever the case. That’s wack. I look at it like you have somebody who has the same scenario as me but you honor him that night, Don Cornelius. He had [a similar] charge as me and he even got convicted of his charge and you honor him that night.”

He followed up his charges of hypocrisy with another good point:

“If they want to stand for something, stand for everything,” he said. “I know what I did was wrong, and I was making amends and working that out for me. I felt like BET should have been looking at the people who got drug charges, gun charges, weapons, other stuff. You can’t discriminate…Let’s make sure we show them that it’s wrong but we still support our people and get them to a higher place and let them learn from their mistakes.”

Chris Brown follows in the footsteps of great singers like R. Kelly, who also performs with the shadow of an asterisk hovering over his head. And while Brown says he’s working through it, the shadow may remain as long as he breathes.

But in death, can a talent like Brown have a fatal flaw that undoes all he has done in life? Or should one’s character defects die with him? Joe Paterno’s recent death offers some answers for what is to come for Brown and for Cornelius. While Paterno suffered a blow to his legacy for the passive role he played in the Penn State child abuse scandal, he received a hero’s send-off and a growing call for empathy.

In the black community, these issues are extra thorny. For good reason, Black people have long been protective of their heroes, diligently fighting against a white power structure dedicated to tearing them down. Don Corneluis was such a hero. He wasn’t an upstart like Brown, a rebelious hip-hop generation progeny. Cornelius had moved through decades of black history with elegance and purpose. His abuse case was published quietly, but surely it was just as raw to the victim as it was to Rihanna. And yet, there he was rambling on before a crowd of anxious BET Awards attendees, who wished he would relinquish the spotlight for very different reasons than the silencing of Brown.

In light of Mr. Cornelius’ accomplishments and troubled personal life—which we’ll surely be hearing more about in the days-weeks to come—the value of the asterisks takes on new meaning. In death, the asterisk goes a long way to balance the extra, if underserved, virtues we bestow upon our heroes’ life. And if so, shouldn’t we highlight only the flaws that pertain to the reason the person is celebrated in the first place? The acts and thoughts that add perspective to the actual accomplishments, give complexity to the lives of these heroes, without clouding history with tangential flaws. We can debate whether Cornelius’ abuse of his estranged wife is an asterisk or simply a character flaw, as they are not always the same. But let’s not abuse the asterisk in an attempt to make short work of an otherwise complex existence.

After all, Thomas Jefferson, an advocate of human rights, held slaves; Tupac, the author of the uplifting “Brenda’s Got A Baby,” went to jail for rape; Barack Omaba, the first black president and student of Civil Rights, came out against gay marriage*. If such asterisks persist in people who have accomplished much in full view, what about the rest of us? When you die, what will the asterisk next to your name read?

-30- 

[*Obama's stance on Gay Marriage shows these signs of hope and change]

PolitiFact Lie of the Year 2011: “Republicans voted to end Medicare”

Despite the extra scrutiny brought by the “big lie” (your interpretation) above, I appreciate fact-checking websites, and the rising industry that J-school professors and media pundits love to tut-tut these days. But who among us doesn’t find Washington Post’s  Pinocchio icon chuckle-worthy? And how could any truth-seeker not bask in the flames of the “pants-on-fire” rating dispensed by PolitiFact’s truth-o-meter? Are you not entertained, people? But gimmicks aside, the explanations these sites offer are mostly thoughtful and transparent (also see: factcheck.org). With all the handwringing about “objectivity,” we should welcome the rise of fact-checker sites that attempt, in their way, to add more clarity to a fuzzy arena.

To be sure, there are problems. Sometimes those pesky “facts” tend to avoid neat stark colors (such as black and white), and other times they are not facts at all. When my favorite fact-finding sight PolitiFact tagged Democrats with “Lie of The Year 2011” media types spit flames. David Weigel of Slate was apoplectic, Paul Krugman was vomiting fire, James Taranto from The Wall Street Journal called its approach plain “wrong.” And friend to TheParkerReport Rachel Maddow said of the site, it was quickly becoming irrelevant. (Ouch on you I).

Overnight the entire fact-checker movement grew a cottage industry of fact-checkers whose sole purpose was to checkout the checkers. The referees found themselves with referees, equally diligent judges of fact. The whole scene was ripped right from the rhyme book of the Notorious B.I.G., who claimed to have “lawyers watching lawyers” so he didn’t go broke. For a time, fact-checking journalism as a whole was feeling the heat, but PolitiFact editor Bill Adair was the one under fire. It’s been a month since revealing the “big lie” and Mr. Adair stands by his decision. Here, he offers TheParkerReport (and you, who read) some valuable insight into the business of fact-finding and how to remain cool in a firestorm.

The PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year” caused a stir. Why not just do away with the controversy and let “the people” decide which is the lie of the year? Or try one from both sides (Dems and Repubs)? Or some other mechanism that would take you out of the bull’s eye? 

Bill Adair: We’re not afraid of controversy. We practice a gutsy form of journalism in a field with strong passions — politics. So we know we are going to make some people unhappy with practically anything we do.

We already have a Readers’ Choice award for the Lie of the Year. Two of the three years, the choice was the same as the PolitiFact editors.

We wouldn’t want to choose one from both sides because I think that would defeat the whole reason for the award — to honor the most significant falsehood of the year. And besides, we avoid that kind of forced balance. We make tough calls, which often means we’re going to make one side (or both sides) mad.

Some of PolitiFact’s critics cite the aforementioned “Lie of the Year” and the rating system as flawed. Gawker and Krugman (and a cadre of bloggers) have been particularly harsh. Is there any takeaway or any concession you may offer to your critics when it comes to “Lie of the Year” or general claims of selection-bias? 

I take the criticism seriously and have read it with an eye toward improving our work in the future. Our readers are smart people and I respect them. And I respect that reasonable people can disagree about our selection for Lie of the Year.

But I think it’s silly for people who disagree with one article to generalize that our rating system is flawed, or that fact-checking is somehow in trouble. I suspect that many of those same people have cited our work when it was favorable to them.

PolitiFact has had a great impact on the political scene so far. What has surprised you most about how PF has been received? 

The popularity of the Truth-O-Meter. From the start, we envisioned having a meter that would summarize our research and rate the relative accuracy of a claim. We considered a referee metaphor (with icons of the ref’s arms signaling the foul, which a friend had used one at the Washington Post), but we settled on the meter.

It’s been one of the most successful aspects of PolitiFact because it capsulizes our work in a handy icon that everybody can understand.

One time, a lady came up to me in National Airport while I was talking to a CBS News reporter. I thought she recognized him. But she turned to me and said, “You’re the Truth-O-Meter guy!”

Candidates have cited PolitiFact when attacking the records of others,but have you noticed any change in politician behavior—or statements—since the emergence of PolitiFact? I know, this is difficult to quantify, but wondering what your gut tells you about how PolitiFact might influence more honesty (or not). 

We’ve seen evidence that it does. A couple of times, President Obama has changed the wording of his speeches after we published our fact-checks. For example, we gave him a False for his claim that gasoline prices had never been higher and then, the next night, he changed that line in his stump speech and got it right.

We’ve also heard from people on Capitol Hill that senators and House members have told their staffers to check all the figures in their speeches because they don’t want to get a low rating from PolitiFact.

I don’t think fact-checking will ever eliminate falsehoods and lying — I think reasonable people can disagree about our ratings — but I do think that in the back of their minds, many politicians are aware before they speak that they will have to face the Truth-O-Meter.

Which campaign (or politician) has complained the loudest about your claims? 

I can’t think of one in particular. It really depends on the individual claim we have checked. We’ll get complaints from members of Congress or political parties about individual articles they dislike — but then they will often cite our work favorably when we give a False to their opponent.

My favorite is when someone will issue a press release that says, “PolitiFact finds what I said to be true!” I’m surprised that’s worthy of a news release. Aren’t they supposed to tell the truth?

How do you decide which reporters take on which claims? How many people check PolitiFact’s facts before publishing? In other words, what is the process? 

Here’s how it works: Every day, our interns look through transcripts, campaign videos, news coverage and interviews for factual claims. The editors review them and choose the claims to fact-check based on whether they are timely, newsworthy and whether people will wonder if the claim is true. That is our biggest criteria for selecting a claim to check — to satisfy people’s curiosity.

Most of the time, our reporters choose the claims they want to check. They do the research and write the article, which typically takes a day.

The articles, which include a recommended Truth-O-Meter rating, are then edited by one of our editors and then reviewed by a three-editor panel. The panel makes the final decision on the rating.

Campaigning and “lies” have gone hand in hand since there have been campaigns and elected officials. How does this crop of GOP candidates compare to their historical antecedents? 

We’ve only been around since 2007, so I don’t have much for a comparison prior to that. I will say that it’s striking how some candidates have adopted extreme language, such as calling President Obama a socialist, as Gov. Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich have. That’s a ridiculous false claim and it’s remarkable that it’s been made by presidential candidates.

PolitiFact has tweaked some of its features along the way. What changes big and/or small are you looking at now?

On the website, we’d like to provide new ways to visualize our work, such as the ratings for a single subject (showing the tally for all health care claims, for example). We’ve also discussed the possibility of having a feature to highlight our fact-checking for live events.

We also have a mobile app for iPhone, iPad and Android that I think of as our laboratory — a place where we can experiment with new features. It has the Truth Index, which is like the Dow Jones of truth, an average of all of our ratings. And we’re going to be experimenting more with mobile in the near future.

-30-

[Extra Credit: For more on the subject give Lucas Graves' piece at @NiemanLab a click here, or Greg Marx's piece in CJR, here]   

Follow me on twitter @erikgparker

 

“You will no longer hear the buzz of African belly flies / There will not be a weekend wrap-up of the continuing Sudanese Genocide / There are far too many characters for every fallen hero to be eulogized / But the photo of your junk, it will be publicized…”

It’s true, a cappella rap battles ruined spoken word, mocking poetry slams’ finger-snapping pretension with WorldStar worthy debates about who “styled on” whom. But the message of Ronnie Butler, Jr.’s latest satirical poem Photographs of Your Junk (Will be Publicized) added a few extra layers to some important, if obvious, truisms. That is, the internet has ended privacy as we know it; and the nets can be a brain-draining wasteland, where social responsibility and intellectual curiosity goes to die. To be sure, gen-Xers and their tinfoil hat-sporting antecedents have been wringing their hands about these issues for some time. If you are among such informed advocates, you may be excused. You’re sufficiently spooked about the evil workings of the miraculous tubes.

But if you happen to be reading this and you’re a celebrity (like her), left-dressing politician (like him); an anti-gay God fearing gay guy (like this fool); or high schoolers with raging libidos and unfettered access to the internet (like these guys); you should pay close attention. Ronnie Butler, Jr. will save you from yourself.

While Ronnie is a famous Bahamian son of renowned calypso singer, Ronnie Butler, Sr., he’s best known to us yanks for playing the role of Oscar on Nickelodeon’s True Jackson, VP, or as Jimmy Kimmel’s in-house Barack Obama-impersonator. In 2010, Butler broke out on his own to produce and star in the server-crashing clip, “Obama! A Modern U.S. President.” The satirical video, in which he sings to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Major-General’s Song,” logged nearly 2 million views on Youtube and caught the attention of Hollywood big Norman Lear (producer of The Jeffersons, Good Times, and Sanford & Son).

“I did the piece because it was an opportunity to try my hand at writing and directing,” he told me via phone. “But getting a call from Lear for a performer like me, was like my mom getting a call from Oprah.”

When Butler stepped out of Obama’s mom jeans to take on the complacency of Internet culture, he took his idea to Lear. “Not only did he support Photographs of Your Junk financially, but Lear and his team of Brent Miller and Lara Bergthold became collaborators,” he says. “The piece is better for it.”

The video, which you can watch for yourself below, finds Butler reciting a poem over Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.” The audience plays the role of society at large—a down-lo politician creeps with his cross-dressing date; a young girl, desensitized by all the “junk,” sighs at the bar. He updates Scott-Heron’s message—which called for action and engagement with social issues—for the 2.0 generation, tossing in a few smart phones and iPap apps. In Butler’s world, the internet has subjugated Scott-Heron’s idiot box, and is lulling you to sleep with images of your (their) junk.

“What I’m saying is the anti establishment feeling that could be going on has been co-opted,” he says. “Everybody is so busy and consumed with being their own celebrity. Our daily lives are all over Facebook, all over twitter. Everybody has the opportunity to be in the public eye. From a pop culture point of view, it is much easier to be distracted by the junk of celebrities.”

Aside from publicized privates, there is a subtext of privacy mixed up in all this, a warning to those who ought to know better. “I was originally thinking about a piece with Anthony Weiner, Tiger Woods and Arnolds Schwarzenegger together,” says Butler. “The hubris of being a celebrity or a person of power thinking you can get away with this because you’re famous. If you are going to send text pics of your junk don’t wake up the next day and whine about it and act shocked or dismayed when it turns up on the cover of the newspaper. Some people still don’t understand the nature of social media. There is no privacy.”

As for his next piece, Butler has his sights on the upcoming presidential elections. Surely, he will resurrect some singing version of Barack Obama, whom he still supports, however grudgingly. “I am disappointed by some decisions he made but I don’t think there is anyone contesting him that could do a better job,” he says. “And if you are an Obama impersonator and performer, it is in your best interest to be a supporter [laugh].”

From my trip back to Haiti, in which I retrace my steps.

For more on the backstory of this video, read this: ”One Year Later: Rescue Regrets”

Also, more about heroes in Haiti and elsewhere here: “Haitians are Responsible for Haitians“

What will become of a broken country’s most vulnerable citizens? What follows is a very long story about Haiti’s Restavec children–known to some as “child slaves”–surviving in post-quake Haiti.

In a series of pre/post-quake interviews with the family pictured here, several restavec children and people who work on the issue, I search for answers.

…

The rocky road up to La Vallée is carved into the edge of a mountain. Trees are scarce, hacked down for the wooden coal Haitians use to heat cooking pots and for the makeshift lean-to houses that spring up against one another in the cities. Despite the severe deforestation, the way to La Vallée offers a breathtaking view of the region. But it’s a lumpy ride on a road best suited for nimble motorcycles and farmers leading their cows on tight ropes. In most ways, La Vallée is like many of Haiti’s sleepy towns in the forgotten countryside. This one happens to be home to the Dade family.

Their two-room house is made of cinderblocks poured of pale grey Haitian mud. The doorway overlooks the valley below. There is no electricity and they drain rainwater from the roof into a bucket because it is otherwise difficult to collect. A narrow pathway down the hill marches past a few cows tied behind a fence and stops at a mandarin tree in full bloom. On a good day, this time of year, the Dades can help themselves to the sweetest mandarins money could buy.

But man—and family—cannot live on seasonal fruit alone. The Dades have given birth to eight children. Only four remain in their custody. The others, they sent away to live with families in the cities—Port-au-Prince and Jacmel—mostly out of touch and clearly out of reach.

It’s January 9, three days before Haiti’s catastrophic 7.0 earthquake will wreak havoc on the island. We’re all oblivious to the forthcoming tragedy, I am pressing the family for more information and they are settling into their day. Daniel Dade is home with his son Harold, 12, and his 4 year-old daughter, Mica. A local community group based in Jacmel, Fanm Deside (or “Women Decide”) has recently reunited Harold with the family after four years. The novelty of his homecoming may account for the boy’s toothy smile. “I feel good to be back home,” he says.

Harold was living with his host family 2 hours away in Jacmel when he was approached by a community worker who noticed his precarious living arrangement. “The woman I was staying with asked me to bring water in the house. While I was on my way, this person came and found me,” he says. He stands next to his father, looking out into the lush valley. He then described the many chores that busied him while others were in school. “I did a lot of water-bringing,” he says. “I washed clothes and brought water to the house. And they beat me a lot.”

For his part, Mr. Dade says he was clueless about his son’s living condition. “When I learned what kind of life he was living in Jacmel I decided to go see what was happening,” he says. “I came at the right time because when I got there I heard his voice crying. I stayed undercover. I hid just to hear who was crying and what they were doing to him. They were beating him with whatever they had in their hands. I went in and said, ‘I didn’t know you were treating my kid like this. I want him back with me now.’”

As Mr. Dade tells his story, Harold hangs out in the doorway. Mica, his 4 year-old sister, with huge white eyes and three fuzzy plats dancing on her head, steals peeks from the shadows behind her brother.

At the moment, he watches over his children while Mrs. Dade went to church to receive prayer. Mr. Dade and the mother of his children Clemene Lauture Dade are both not well. Daniel Dade has a bad back and has had surgery on his eyes. A doctor tells him he cannot work, which led to his family’s financial decline. When a friend of a friend asked him if they’d be willing to send Harold away, he and Clemene thought it was the best choice for their boy.

“After my operation, I was sick. It was impossible for me to work,” he says. “That’s when people came to my house and said, ‘I can help you with this kid. I’m going to take care of this kid for you.’ I said, ‘If someone could help me with my kid, I’ll let them go.”

“It doesn’t make me feel good to send my kids to live with someone I don’t know,” he continues. “I miss them a lot. If I can find a mandarin here and I eat it I think, My kid could be here and we can eat this mandarin together. But I do not have a choice.”

While talking to Mr. Dade, his wife appears, a small boy hopping up the hill behind her. She clutches a plastic bag against her chest. Her skin sags from her frail frame and her hair is pulled back into an unruly ponytail. The little boy, Benson, steps close to his mother and sits on a nearby rock.

“The others are in Port-au-Prince,” she says, after introducing Benson. “They stay with someone there. I sent them away because I cannot help them.”

Marilyn Antoine, an outreach worker for Fanm Deside acts as the Dades’ on-the-ground contact. She checks in on the family from time to time to assess their needs. She has located another of the Dade’s children in Jacmel but, under the circumstances, there are no plans to reintegrate the child.  “She doesn’t want him to come home,” Ms. Antoine says, nodding toward Mrs. Dade. “The situation he is living in is better than what she can provide. They don’t even have a bed for the children to sleep.”

When it comes to family planning, Haiti has its messages crossed with religious dogma. Roman Catholic is the dominant religion in Haiti. Though many Haitian Catholics also observe Voodoo practices, the Church’s firm stance against birth control is supported here, giving a spiritual tint to the idea of large families. On a very practical level, rural families see children as economic opportunities, more hands to help work the land or more chances for security in old age.

Ask Clemene Louture Dade why she has borne so many children she is forced to give away, and she echoes a common response. “I don’t choose to make them. God gives them to me,” she says, a smile playing on her lips. “Now with eight kids, there is no way to continue, so I’ll stop.”

It will take more than Clemene’s new sense of family planning to make a change in her family’s stead. In a few short days, the earthquake will further fracture Haiti’s fragmented system and create new twists that will affect the Dades and families like theirs in ways unknowable for many years to come.

But that is not today. Harold is back with his mother and father. The mandarin tree has enough fruit for Mr. Dade to share. After the mother and father finish their talk, the children explain what they do to pass the time. Harold reveals that he likes to ride bikes, though he does not own one. And Benson likes to fly kites. When Mica is asked what she likes to do for fun, she looks up and says with great energy: “Mwen renmen manje té [“I like to eat dirt.”] Harold lets out a cackle from the doorway that infects the other kids. But Daniel Dade finds no humor in his daughter’s remarks.

When the Dades handed their children over to other families, their children became “restavecs.” The term is derived from the French reste avec, meaning “to stay with.” The United Nation’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that there are 300,000 Haitian children trafficked in this way throughout the major cities, but actual numbers are difficult to nail down.

The restavec system doesn’t fit the traditional notion of trafficking whereby slippery figures wait in the shadows, armed with duct tape and blackout drugs. The typical case here involves an impoverished family, like the Dades, from the countryside who cannot manage to provide for its children. Someone in the city catches wind of the family’s plight—often through a third party—and offers to provide for the child. In return for some help in the house or in the field, the child is promised food, shelter and in many cases the opportunity to get an education. In this form, parents “traffic” their own kids for the promise of a better life for the children, of whom they will invariably lose track.

The problem has attracted many non-governmental organizations [NGOs], community groups and child rights advocates to Haiti in search of a solution. But the issue cuts to the core of Haiti’s most egregious problems. Limited education. Scant healthcare. Lack of jobs. Abundance of poverty and a political culture of corruption. It is a mistake to think of the parents, the children, and the host families as non-rational actors in this tragedy. There is a greater narrative to which they all belong.

Some workers, like Junior Battier, of the Jean Robert Cadet Restavec Foundation, argue that the problem doesn’t stop at poverty and lack of resources. At root, he points to a system of exploitation and abuse—sexual or otherwise. “There is a proverb in Haiti: Dan pouri gen fòs sou bannann mi or Rotten teeth take power over ripe bananas,” he says. “Basically, you take power over whoever you can. When you are at the lowest rung, the person you can have power over is the child.”

On a quiet day in the Carrefour-Feuilles section of Port-au-Prince, two young girls, Caroline and Clermis, sit in the stairway of a neighbor’s home in Port-au-Prince. They have come here at the neighbor’s urging—a secret meeting of sorts—to explain their living conditions. “My mother sent me to stay with this lady because she can’t feed me and she can’t send me to school,” says Clermis, 13. She has been living with the “lady” since she was 8 years old.

Clermis is an expressive teenager, feisty by Haitian standards. She doesn’t shrink from strange adults, nor does she swallow her words. She has done the lion’s share of all household work since she was eight and she says she receives the majority of the abuse. “I don’t like when they beat me,” says Clermis. She demonstrates by pounding her fist into her hand. “My back, everywhere. The lady blames me for things and I don’t like that.”

But between her harsh criticisms of the “lady” and the lady’s aunt—who taunts her—she will bury her face in her hands, rub her eyes, and then go back to talking about her circumstances. “I’m going to leave one day when I get the money,” she says. “I know the way back home. And I’m going to go.”

The idea of an escape is not just a daydream to Clermis. She’s rolled around the idea many times and tediously mapped out her return to her native Grand-Goâve neighborhood, located in the lower region of the Island. After so many years, she holds on to her route home.

“I need 100 Gourdes [about $2.50] to get there,” she says. “I would take a tap-tap [taxi] to go to Port Léogâne and take another tap-tap to go to Grand-Goâve. With the rest of the money I take another tap-tap for 5 Gourdes to my house.”

Caroline, 15, on the other hand, cuts her eyes away and offers one-word answers whenever possible. Other times, like when she is asked about her daily routine, she pushes through an answer with just enough information to shift the attention from her.

“My day starts at 6 in the morning,” she says. “I have to clean dishes. Go to a place to find water. Then I have to clean the entire house and make the beds and clean the beds. Then I wash the clothes.”

Her days don’t end there. She also takes care of the host’s 11 year-old son, and has been doing so since she herself was 11. “I help him to take a bath and feed him,” she says. “If his clothes are not clean, I clean them.”

Both girls say they are not being sexually abused, but it is not uncommon for female restavecs to be subject to sexual advances and to turn to sex work as young adult runaways. It is also not uncommon for children, like abused children across the globe, to keep the incidents to themselves for fear of punishment.

“The restavec children are the most vulnerable and they are one of the categories of children I work with,” says Costume Renel, Captain of the Minors Protection Unit or Brigade Protection des Mineurs (BPM), which is a law enforcement taskforce charged with child-related issues. “A lot of times these kids leave their homes and they become homeless or street kids.”

Today, there are more eyes and organizations dedicated to the rights of children. But there are huge gaps that allow children to be exploited. “The law doesn’t always punish,” Captain Renel says. “A lot of times the person who does the abuse will get arrested but they have connections. It’s very frustrating. But we are just policemen, we have to respect our limits.”

While Caroline and Clermis are intimately familiar with suffocating limits on their life choices, perhaps among the most egregious is the denial of access to any formal education. Neither child knows how to read or write—having difficulty even spelling their names—yet both have a yearning to learn.

“I want to be a teacher in high school,” says Caroline, who seems to light up at the thought. “It’s good to know how to read and write and help others.”

“I would like to know how to read in order to help my mom and my brothers and sisters,” says Clermis, whose 2 brothers and 3 sisters were also sent away to live as restavecs. “I would like to work in the office where I can make money and help my parents.”

Beyond the burden of carrying water from sunup to sundown, Clermis finds that being deprived of schooling certifies her second-class status. “Other kids can go to school,” she says. “They have nice clothes. Me? I am dirty and have lots of work to do. And I don’t get to go to school.”

She buries her face in her hands for a brief moment before continuing.

“Sometimes I cry when she [an aunt staying with the host family] calls me restavec and tries to blame me for things,” she says. “I used to tell her, ‘You have a chance. You stay with your family. That is why you call me that, because I don’t live with my family.’”

Before the quake, a girl living as a restavec has plans to run away.

She balances a large bucket on her head and starts up another steep hill to her home, a process she will repeat more than six times each day.

On January 12, a few short hours before the earthquake, Senator Céméphise Gilles bellies up to a plate steak at a favorite restaurant for the diplomatic set. She’s a hefty woman, strong-willed and no-nonsense. Today, she has something to say about the restavec problem, the government’s obligation to alleviate it, and the role Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) play in the restavec cycle. As the nation’s only female senator, and one-time chairperson of the government’s Child Rights Commission, she says she has championed the causes of children and women, often to little effect. At the moment, she is pointing her finger at the government bureaucracy at the highest levels.

“In the congress, we receive some laws from the chief of the government that are our legislative priority,” she says. “It is for them to sit down together and fix the priority,” she continues. “For example, we have the paternity law for a father to take responsibility when a woman is pregnant. It was very difficult for us to vote on that law because it is not in the priority of the government. The government needs more sensitization to these issues.”

As a representative of the Nord section of Haiti, which includes Cap-Haïtien, she believes many of the problems surrounding the children and restavecs should be solved by the Haitian government. “The NGOs are not going to resolve the restavec system,” she says.  “But we can ask them to make sensitization to the government and to Congress.”

While Senator Gilles believes NGOs can help through public awareness campaigns, she says the government should shoulder the weight of development. In particular, rural areas—like some she represents—should be where Haiti focuses its attention. “The people coming from the countryside into the big city are looking for a better life,” she says. “Haiti’s friends, the other countries, want to help build the government, they can do better to provide jobs in the countryside. Then the people in the countryside can take care of their kids feed them and they will stay in the countryside.”

The NGOs and the Haitian government have a symbiotic relationship, but not always one of appreciation. Haitians are generally skeptical of the NGOs—more than 10,000—operating in Haiti. Senator Gilles, who believes the government should have access to the type of resources that the NGOs command, is not convinced that the groups are working for the betterment of Haiti. “On the surface, we can say they do good work but in reality they do not,” she says, her husky voice adding gravity to her words.

Aside from the role of the NGOs and the lack of government attention, Senator Gilles ties the restavec problem to economic instability. The restavec system thrives in a country where nearly 80% of the population lives off $2 daily. In her mind, as long as there is extreme poverty, there will be equally extreme measures to adapt.

Before she hops into her SUV and takes off into the gruesome midday traffic, Senator Gilles addresses the basic solution of jobs and money that, for now, is beyond Haiti’s ability.

“The same way you cannot see any issue for economic development is the same way we cannot see any exit or resolution to the restavec system.”

At 4:53 pm, about an hour from the time Senator Gilles proclaimed the connection between economics and the restavec condition, the 7.0 earthquake caused a seismic shift in all aspects of Haitian life. It hit the country hard in all of its soft spots. The epicenter was in Léogâne, 15 miles outside of the capital city Port-au-Prince. The poorly constructed concrete homes amassed in the overcrowded capitol cracked and fell. The blocks tumbled over onto cars and suffocated bodies inside them. The buildings remained in their broken states as psychological tormentors long after the quake had passed.

When it was all done, the Haitian government announced that nearly 1 million were left homeless, more than 200,000 dead, and upwards of 300,000 injured. While the exact numbers are difficult to pin down, the significance of the suffering is not.

As people struggled to secure safe places to sleep and live in the coming days, many of the restavec children found themselves in precarious positions. Their host families, already tight on resources, suddenly had difficulties providing for their own children. Everyone takes a step or more down the social scale but for those already at the bottom, how much lower can they descend?

Mammi Laura looks on as an excited group of children run from the small one-story schoolhouse to the outdoor common area. The self-described “School Mother” for Haiti’s Foryer Maurice Sixto stays calm in the face of a small tremor, barely noticeable by Haiti’s standards these days. “Did you feel that?” she says. “That was an aftershock.”

More than two months have passed since the earthquake tore through Haiti. Yet the memory figures heavily in the mind of these students who have lived through collapsed buildings, broken bodies and the sudden deaths of loved ones. Though they are more amused than genuinely frightened by this minor vibration, they are no less sensitive to possibilities of unsettled ground, particularly given their own unstable life circumstances—the student body here is comprised exclusively of restavec children.

The school is named for Maurice Sixto, a Haitian humorist and journalist brought to light the injustice and hypocrisy surrounding the restavec condition in 1978 through one of his famous recordings, “Ti Sainte Anize.” He tells the story of a fictional restavec girl. She lived with a well-meaning professor who took up the cause of many human rights issues yet failed to see his own abuses at home. His wife kept the restavec girl under her thumb. “Take Mademoiselle her book bag,” the evil wife demands. “Do I have to tell you everyday? You’ll make her late for school. Oh, my. This book bag is filthy. Why don’t you clean it with your tongue, if you can’t find a rag?”

“Ti Sainte Anize” turned a mirror on the Haitian society and its open secret—the nation that fought to free itself from bondage holds its own children in servitude.

These kids trotting outside Foyer Maurice Sixto are considered fortunate among the restavecs. Though they are not immune to abuse, their host families, sometimes at the strong urging of Mammi Laura and her staff, allow the children time throughout the day to pick up a trade, play an instrument or learn how to read and write. The school can then monitor the child’s life and act as an advocate when abuse does take place. But the earthquake has complicated the matter for all restavecs, including this more privileged class.

“We have some children with broken legs and arms,” says Mammi Laura, “Some are hospitalized. We cannot give food like we used to. Everyday we gather children. They are coming to us and we have to give

Mammi Laura, school mother of Maurice Sixto school for restavecs, takes inventory.

them something to eat. Children in the neighborhood come here because their parents cannot feed them.”

Since the earthquake, a type of reverse migration has taken place. Many children, free of their obligation to their hosts, left without a home or caretaker, have returned to the same homes from which they were originally sent away.  Mammi Laura has noted this phenomenon within the approximately 300 children at Sixto.

“Some of the children went to the countryside, but I don’t know how many,” she says. “Some left and came back without us knowing. And some we sent for them because we know that in the rural communities they won’t be able to take care of them like we can here. We call their families and explain that they should send the children back here to receive an education and cultural activities. And they send them back to the host families they where living with before.”

Foyer Maurice Sixto is a unique case available to only a fortunate few. The fact that Mammi Laura opened her doors less than a month after the quake, while most government schools remained closed, makes it more of an anomaly. “We could not leave them like that,” says Mammi Laura. “They were in need and they still are in need. So, we just started.”

It will not be so simple for others.

Idaho missionaries brought international attention to Haiti’s child trafficking vulnerabilities when, in the wake of the earthquake, they were arrested for attempting to cross the Haitian border into the Dominican Republic with 33 Haitian children. The missionaries rounded them up from different areas of Haiti and said they intended to house them in the Dominican Republic to keep them safe. However, the missionaries had no papers or authority to transport the children. It became an international incident.

“Trafficking of human beings, particularly of children is a problem across the world,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said at a press conference. “The Haitian nation acted to protect children who were being removed from their country without appropriate documentation.”

In the weeks after the operation was busted, the Haitian government rejected the missionaries’ claims of good intentions. The Haiti justice department would not export the case to the US. “It’s Haitian law that has been violated,” Justice Minister Paul Denis told AFP. “It is up to the Haitian authorities to hear and judge the case.”

While the government bulked up its anti-child trafficking rhetoric in the wake of the international attention brought by the earthquake, it hasn’t always placed its children at the top of legislative agenda. And while world watches, the restavec condition remains difficult to pin down and may be pushed aside altogether.

Caroline and Clermis are no longer living in their homes and were unable to be found two months after the quake. The neighbor who arranged the original meeting now sleeps in a tent and believes at least one of them may have found her way home. Yet Clermis’ hometown of Grand-Goâve, which is where she planned to return, was 90% destroyed by the earthquake.

Senator Gilles flew to the U.S. for a trip she had planned before the quake. She met with senators, congressmen and community activists. She was trying desperately to make connections for aid, offering up the airport in Cap-Haïtien as a conduit for relief. In one meeting at the home of NJ State Senator Raymond J. Lesniak, she was arranging for an exchange program that would allow some students to continue their education in the States.

As she was leaving the Senator’s home on her way to meet with New York’s U.S. senator Chuck Schumer, she had a few words about the post-quake restavec problem:

“All the kids are in the street,” she told me. “We have to rebuild the government so the government can take care of the kids but right now the earthquake has only exacerbated the situation of the restavecs.”

Back in La Vallée, the Dade family has taken back more of their children since the quake. This reunification was not spurred by any NGO. The natural disaster of the earthquake brought the children home. On this day, several weeks after the quake, Daniel Dade is being trailed by three boys as he marches up the hill to his house. The home is still standing and in good condition, save for a crack that travels around the walls.

“We used to sleep outside after the quake but because of the rain we now sleep inside. But I don’t feel safe inside,” says Clemene Lauture Dade. “I am an asthmatic and I am sick. When we go inside to sleep we have leaks too.”

This day, the house is teeming with youthful energy. Mica, in a bright white dress, lays her head upon her dad’s lap. Laundry air-dries on the rocks in front of their home. A rooster pecks at the water that was set out to wash the clothes. The mandarin tree that once bore sweet fruit has no more. A bitter reality for a growing family.

Mr. Dade and his daughter Daniela, a restavec child who returned home after the earthquake.

“We do have more children now than before the earthquake,” says Mr. Dade. The people who kept his two older daughters—Daniella, 16, and Burnadette, 19—sent them back. But there are still some children from the Dade home that remain unaccounted for. “There is Emmanuel who is 9 that I do not know anything about,” says Mr. Dade, “and another, Marielle, who is 11, I know is living in Cité Soleil.”

Daniella Dade stands outside with her father and squints against the sun. She was in Jacmel during the earthquake when parts of the house began to fall on her. “I was in the house when it started to shake,” she says. “The other people in the house ran out, and then it collapsed. There were some who lost legs and one had his arms injured. I was stuck under the house,” she continues. “Some neighbors came back to get me.”

Afterwards, Daniella received permission from her host family to go home and caught a ride from a bus driver who knew her father. Now she is back with her brothers and sister and her two cousins—the children of Mr. Dade’s sister he has been looking after since she and her husband died in a car accident almost a decade ago.

Ms. Antoine, the community worker, is now working as a volunteer. She says she no longer draws a salary and she maintains that no major organizations including the government is doing anything to care for the countryside.

“They stay in the capital in order to sensitize people by making t-shirts and fliers,” she says. “You should come out of the capital to learn how the situation is going with the families. I visited three houses in which I saw the number of people in the home have grown. That means the restavecs staying in their host homes will have more work to do.”

For his part, Mr. Dade is not sure how he will manage with his children. As Mica rolls around on his lap in her bright white dress, he is stuck with an impossible decision. “I know I won’t be able to take care of them right now,” he says. “But I cannot send them away. They are mine.”

-30-

[This story is a shorter version of my Masters Thesis project submitted to Columbia University's School of Journalism. I was in Haiti reporting this story when the earthquake struck, a story you can read here]

Tim Scott at his first meeting with (Democratic-leaning) blacks in SC.

If you follow me on Twitter, you might recall some weeks back when I said I was on the campaign trail with South Carolina’s black Republican hopeful Tim Scott, who is a frontrunner in the race for the state’s 1rst congressional seat. Today it looks like Scott is about to make black Republican history as the first black Republican congressman from the south since Reconstruction. As the only reporter on duty when this black elephant quietly strutted into a meeting with black leaders; connected with black Democratic politicians; and embraced one white man who’d never imagined he’d vote for “a man of color,” I see the GOP’s race issue in a new light. Here, I’m on a three-stop mission with Tim Scott, as he offers a message to blacks everywhere: “Welcome to the Tea Party.”

Mission One: Black South Carolinians Meet Black Republican Town & Country Inn and Conference Center,  Charleston, SC

Tim Scott is in the hot seat. As a Black Republican running for office in the south he has his fair share of non-believers. Today he faces a room of his most ardent critics—other African-Americans.

“What discourages me is your campaign commercials, which were mostly white and maybe a token black,” says public relations executive Cheryl Harleston. “I recognize your need to play to the base, but why not have more African-Americans standing there with you?”

“That’s a good question,” Scott says, his wide smile attempting to keep the mood light.”

“I didn’t say I’d have a good answer,” he laughs nervously. The room comprised of local African-American figures in education, media, and business laugh with him.

“You need to have one,” Cheryl Harleston responds. Her pointed questions make it clear, she intends to make him squirm.

“You’ve proven you can get the job done,” pipes up Reverend John Paul Brown, a respected member of the clergy and a proud Democrat. “But when I listen to words like ‘Obama Care,’ ‘the Nigger plan,’ and ‘Take our country back,’ it’s offensive to me and the people that I represent.”

The members of the audience slowly nod in agreement, while Tim Scott’s shaven head glistens with sweat. Once again, he is left to defend the rhetoric of his entire political party, including those extreme elements.

“I don’t see [the term ‘Obama Care’] as condescending. People say Bush tax cuts all the time or Reaganomics,” he walks the room past the row of round tables, giving the Rev. direct eye contact, before revealing a compromise. “I will use the term ‘National Health Care’ more than I have in the past.”

Tim Scott is the Republican Congressional nominee from South Carolina’s largely Republican 1^st district who captured national headlines after proving that an African-American can win the Republican primary in the South. Scott, 44, has steadily served as a Republican for 15 years beginning in 1995 when he became the first elected African-American Republican to County Council in South Carolina since Reconstruction era. Now, Scott is expected to win his race and become the first black Republican congressman from the South since 1901.

After a short meet-and-greet, Scott collapses onto a hard dining room seat. “That is draining,” he says. “And I got more meetings to go to today.”

As he nears Election Day, Scott’s list of supporters is growing. Before his primary victory, GOP lightening rod, Sarah Palin, gave him an unsolicited co-sign via a facebook post:

“Tim has a remarkable success story. He grew up in poverty and was raised by a single-mom who struggled to provide.” She went on, “ Tim is a pro-life, pro-2^nd Amendment, pro-development, Commonsense Conservative…”

Scott wavers before answering a question about Palin’s impact on his Republican primary win. “It was two days before the election,” he shrugs. “We were already up 59 to 31 in all the polls.”

Likewise, Scott is careful about crediting RNC Chairman Michael Steele for the jump in African-American candidates running as Republicans. “I would think that he is trying harder, but I don’t know,” Scott says, when asked about his impact on minority candidates. “He didn’t recruit me, so it’s hard for me to tell.”

While he proudly displays his Tea Party endorsements, Scott believes that groups like the NAACP has misrepresented the Tea Party when it called on the organization to call out racist acts within its ranks. “[Black people] are weary of the association or affiliation with the Republican party,” Scott says, citing the mini black summit he just held. “It’s like, when I talked about fiscal responsibility everybody was saying Amen. I talked about insanity of spending, they’re all happy about that. I talked about entrepreneurship and they loved it. I talked about limiting the role of government, they were okay with that as well. That is the Tea Party message,” he says, setting up one of his well-worn punch lines. “Welcome to the tea party.”

Scott intended for today’s meeting, held at a hotel conference room, to address issues such as economic power and education opportunities. But this spirited crowd had different issues on their agenda.

“I invited them here to not agree with me,” Scott says after the two-hour grilling. “You can’t invite a bunch of democrats to a conservative republican event and expect to leave singing ‘Kumbaya.’ But because I’m leaving with 2/3 of the room committed to me and five or six checks in my pocket,” he says, pulling out a few checks from his inside his suit jacket, smiling broadly, “I’m cool with that.”

Mission Two: “Meet with a few old friends. Why not build alliances?” Alluete’s Cafe, Charleston SC

Before the next meeting Scott and Maurice Washington, the man who organized Scott’s talk with the influential blacks, stop off at his office (Tim Scott & Assoc.), where he sells insurance. Dallas Cowboy paraphernalia is on full display (“Of course, I’m a Cowboy fan,” he says.) Before Scott ran for office, he ran the football on a scholarship from Presbyterian College. He later transferred back to his hometown Charleston Southern University.

Washington and Scott cruise across town to sit with Democratic state representatives Robert Ford and Wendell G. Gilliard for lunch at Alluette’s, a nationally known health conscious Soul food spot in Charleston. In 2004, Gilliard endorsed the young Scott and took flack from his Democrat colleagues for supporting a Republican candidate. “They came around after a while,” Gilliard told me. “He was the right guy at the time and it’s about who is right for us.”

Meanwhile, the gregarious Ford shovels Scott’s wild rice onto his plate (did you know this was okra, man!?”) and shares tales from his many campaigns battles. Ford is a quick-witted, down home politician who is entrenched in South Carolina politics and handed Scott his first defeat as a young politician.

“I felt sorry for Tim,” Ford smiles, remembering the race in which he trounced Scott who challenged his State house seat. “He didn’t have a chance.”

Maurice Washington, who had previously lost a race to Ford, chimes in. “I said ‘Tim, you really want to do this?’ Tim said, ‘Oh yeah, I got full support of the Republican Party and I’m going to take him.’” Ford looks up from his plate, grinning at Washington’s version of the story. “Man, the votes came in and Ford got 5 to 1.” They all cackle loudly.

(From left) Reps Gilliard, Ford, and Mr. Washington meeting w/ Tim Scott

Ford is also reeling from a defeat in the Governor’s race, for which he blames Democratic leadership for not getting behind him. Republican candidate Nikki Haley is the clear leader in that race and Ford has not forgiven his Party heads. “If they had given me a little bit of money for the get-out-the-vote drive, I could have beat her in a race.”

Before Scott leaves Alluette’s, he asks representative Ford if he could count on his support. “I already told you that you got my support,” Ford said, his belly bouncing up and down with laughter. “I’m a bitter Democrat, man.”

Gilliard, on the other hand, made no such commitment this day, but Scott remained confident. “I think he’ll come around eventually,” he later said.

Mission: Talk about mentorship with mens’ group Faith Assembly of God, Summerville, SC

The day after his talk with black leaders, Tim Scott waits at the end of a small receiving line at Summerville, South Carolina’s Faith Assembly Church. He has just given a talk to a room of men and boys about the importance of mentorship that was part sermon and part moral motivational set. In this crowd, there were no dissenters. One white man steps to Scott, lifts his chin and pokes out his chest. He pumps Scott’s hand slowly. “You were the first man of color I voted for in my life,” he says in a slow and measured draw.

Scott’s smile is frozen.

“Well I thank you for that vote,” he replies. The man turns on his heels and walks out the room in firm measured steps, leaving Scott behind to receive the blessings of the next well-wisher.

The exchange leaves two young fellows slack jawed, their eyes as wide as saucers. But Scott is unfazed. “You gotta remember, I’ve been an elected republican for 15 years. So, most people who live here have voted for a man of color in the republican primary,” he later says. “But it was a bit surprising,” he admits, with a chuckle. “You hear everything, man.”

Despite the recent pledges of support, there are many questions still swirling about his commitment to his “community” (read: black community).

Tearing a page out of Barack Obama’s playbook, Scott tends to keep talk of race away from his campaign. To be sure, he is aware of his history-making run, but where Obama had moments like his heralded “race speech” to clear any doubts about his “blackness,” Scott won’t allow his race to enter his race. “It’s just not that important to me,” he says. “What’s important is advancing the issues of our community. Our community can be the black community the white community the majority community. It doesn’t matter. Wherever I am, that’s my community.”

On the other hand, J.C. Watts thinks race is an important factor not to be downplayed. Watts, a former football star who played quarterback for the Sooners and represented Oklahoma’s 4^th district until 2003, was the last African-American to serve as a Republican congressman from any of the 50 states. He believes that politicians at all levels have gotten the race issue wrong time and again.

“We Democrats and Republicans are so naive to think that race isn’t an issue today,” he says. “I never led with it but I didn’t run from being black.” He continues, “One of the values of having Tim Scott is understating that the Republican party needs a deeper relationship with the black community.”

Meanwhile, Scott refuses to assess his historical run or to place his race as a black man into any greater context. “If it was never spoken about, if you didn’t hear Tim Scott [will be] the first black Republican congressman from the South since reconstruction, there might be a place for me to talk about it,” he says, his voice straining to make the point. “But everybody acknowledges it for me, so why state the obvious.”

Along with increasing the funding and troops into Afghanistan, this is one of the rare points of agreement Scott shares with the president. “President Obama did not make race an issue,” he says. “Why should I?”

-30-

[Portions of this story was excerpted from a story I wrote in VIBE magazine's November issue, "The Black Elephants In The Room." <-- Read that!]

“I feel like a black Republican, Money I got commin’ in/ Can’t turn my back on the hood, I got love for them”– Nas ft. Jay-Z, from “Black Republican”

As the first African-American Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Michael Steele has a thankless job. Unlike Barack Obama’s historical first-black presidential break-through, which was celebrated as a “post racial” moment for all Americans, Steele has been mocked by blacks and kicked around by his fellow Republicans. Of course, it hasn’t helped that, since his appointment, his voice box has been replaced by a gaffe machine. He’s been beat down by his own party for calling the Afghanistan war one “of Obama’s choosing.” The establishment dissed him for promising to set the Republican party in more “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.” And he was smacked down by the GOP pro-lifers when he called abortion an “individual choice.” To be sure, there are many other instances in which Steele’s words caused a stir  and based on his desire to speak his mind (see below), there will surely be more to come.

Ask Steele what part of his woes can be attributed to race and he’ll laugh it off with the familiar guffaw that precedes many of his answers when talking to the press.

“[laugh] I don’t know what motivates people,” he begins. “I know what part of the noise is, that I do represent a different direction for this party. My style, which is something the 168 members who voted for me took into account, is very different it is very personal, I’m very emotional about my politics. My mother taught me as a young boy, if you want people to know what you think, tell them what you think.”

Despite his reputation for speaking his mind, however inartfully, Steele seems to take a less direct route when giving his take on the role race plays in his GOP disputes. Instead, he attempts to place his first-black status in context. “There is a wall that has a picture of every chairman of the RNC outside my office,” he says. “It’s a very interesting wall because I’ll be the first black face on it. That does have an impact on how people look at this job and the role of the chairman. But I can’t really speak to what motivates people or does not motivate them. I know that my style of being chairman is very different than what people are used to. Stuff that my predecessors weren’t criticized for, I am being criticized for because no one seen it that way, which is fine. I’m fine with that.”

However, it’s easy to get the impression that Steele is not okay with the criticism. He tries hopelessly to paint himself as the hip politician, an alternative to Obama’s easy cool. He gesticulates, he injects terms like “off the hook” into his political speak. He projects his black into a party where blacks are marginal actors. To the inside he’s an unstable black man thrashing against the establishment. Meanwhile, the outside sees him as a yelling black face, a Party tool with no real ability to fix anything. To further illustrate the chasm, president Obama famously mocked the chairman at the White House Correspondents Association dinner to great effect when he stated that Steele was in the house “or as he would say, in the heezy.”

But hip-hop pandering aside, J.C. Watts thinks Steele is onto something when it comes to the GOP and its shady relationship to African-Americans within the party. Watts, a former Sooner quarterback is the last black Republican to serve in congress, which gives him a unique experience as a sole black face under the Republican tent.

“I am disappointed with the way the establishment has handled Michael Steele,” Watts told me. “Even this silly trumped up charge of him filing an expense report with a strip club in LA. Now, that was so stupid that there is no way anyone can convince me that that wasn’t a set-up. You don’t have people at the RNC or the DNC that are that stupid, unless it is a setup. [laugh]”

Watts stands by his claim that some in his party have plotted to keep Steele in the dark. But some of today’s black Republican candidates dismiss Watts’ implied claim that race plays a role in the intra-party criticism.

One outspoken candidate is Allen West, the decorated retired army officer running for Florida’s 22^nd district. He is one of three black GOP congressional candidates who have grabbed national headlines for winning their party’s nomination and for running competitive races against their respective Democrats. West, along with Tim Scott (of South Carolina’s 1rst congressional district), and Ryan Frazier (of Colorado’s 7^th congressional district) are poised to break the color barrier in GOP politics by running competitive campaigns.

The new black Republicans rail against the federal government for its meddling in state affairs, much like their white counterparts. Allen West may be the most vocal. He preaches a tough-love bootstraps message that earned him the respect of the Tea Party. At 49, with his salt and pepper hair and drill sergeant demeanor, he fires up audiences with calls to “take this country back.” In one video linked on his website, he drums up images of the American Revolution to great applause. “The United States of America was founded by the original insurgents,” he says, implying that the heavy hand of the British government of 1700s is akin to the America’s overreaching federal government today. “If you are here to stand up, to get your musket, to fix your bayonet, you are my brother and sister in this fight.”

Allen West is a take-no-prisoners Tea Party friendly candidate. He dismisses the claims that race is responsible for Steele’s image as an erratic leader. “Its not race-based,” West says. “I think that there are legit criticism when you misspeak. We have to stop falling back to race.”

When I ask West what role Steele plays in clearing the way for African-American candidates, he pushes the Chairman’s efforts aside.

“Well, as far as I’m concerned, none. I volunteered myself,” he says, taking care to drive the point home. “We should have the duty and the calling to stand up for the country and get it on the right track.”

Despite the hoopla around the record number of black candidates running in Republican races, J.C. Watts does not believe the GOP has demonstrated a serious effort to include African-Americans. The treatment of Steele is only part of the story. Exhibit B has to do with the lack of diversity all-around.

“Look across the board, look at the congressional staff, look at the leadership staff. There are no black people,” he says, excluding Mike Pence, with whom he attends church. “Am I saying they need to have quotas? No. We don’t need quotas, they are illegal. But I am saying that if you are telling me you can’t find qualified black conservative staff, god help us. I know a whole lot of them, do I need to send you some resumes?”

All of this talk of race surrounding Steele’s tenure makes him an intriguing figure in American politics. Here, he explains why being a black Republican is more complicated than Nas or Jay-z could ever imagine.

PARKER REPORT: I talked to Tim Scott and Ryan Frazier. They Seem like something different than the stereotypical black Republican.

MICHAEL STEELE: I find your turn of phrase to be rather amusing from this standpoint: There isn’t anything different about this, it’s just that you are looking at them differently. These guys are the same guys they’ve always been and they reflect generations of black Republicanism. In terms of their views on the issues, it’s just that the national perception in the black community has been formed by caricatures that have been created by our friends on the left that are threatened by determined consistent conservative African-American Republicans who reflect back the values of our communities. I think they are not so much as different as it is the way we approached them allowed them to emerge on their own without the hands of the party dictating their outcome and shaping their image.

How do you combat the caricature of black GOP candidates, which is often depicted as being out of touch with the black community, always portrayed with white wives and… What was that. White what?

White wives. The caricature or stereotype is a black man living with a white wife in a white community which is supposed to depict them being out of touch with the black community. Hahahahah I’m sorry. [more laughter]

You’ve never heard this one? This is new to you? I’ve heard it. When I ran for the US senate it’s the same crap the Democrats threw out about my black wife. I didn’t want to go there. The only way I can answer that is to say one word. STUPID. It’s just stupid. It’s the thing that Democrats throw out there about black Republican candidates because they can’t beat us on the issues. They can’t beat us on wealth creation vs. wealth redistribution…

You’ve talked about your “style” of leadership. How much of that style has to do with being an African-American man? It’s absolutely a factor. My experience, Tim Scott’s experience, our experience is very different coming from the parts of the country we came from and how we were raised.  The things that were emphasized vs. the things that were not emphasized in our upbringing. How we look at questions relating to poverty vs. wealth. How we look at having a job vs. not having a job. How we look at getting an education vs. not getting an education. We all come to that table with experiences that help define the leadership in the time. And that’s just different. I think it’s healthy, I think it’s necessary.

What does the future hold for the GOP when it comes to supporting black Republican candidates and in recruiting black Republicans in general? When we are talking about health care why didn’t the democrats talk about health care disparities in the black community when we know that is a major issue when it comes to AIDS, heart, lung and all types of diseases that affect the body and the mind, and the disparity and the care we get. Why wasn’t that part of the discussion? Where was all the black leadership on the hill fighting for that? When I raised the question I got poo-pooed. Everyone said ‘Steel is off the reservation, you don’t do policy, be quiet.’ I said, If we are going to talk about health care let’s talk about the disparity in delivery, disparity in reception, the disparity in the cost. The disparity in access.

But Republicans didn’t make any of that an issue when it came to health care. Ahhhhh. Therein lies the rub. You’re absolutely right. That’s my point. That’s where you begin to leverage the party. You want my vote in November? Ok, here is my list of six things that are important to me right now, what are you going to do about it. Don’t fall into the trap of accepting the lie that is a promise to do for me after you vote for me or the lie that well, you don’t vote for us anyway so were not even going to bother. Vote is a very powerful tool that the community needs to leverage. Just like other communities leverage, just like all other communities out there leverage. We need to do a better job of that. On our end as witnessed by the candidates we are putting forth on this cycle, we need to do a better job of making sure we have our best foot forward, of having individuals who can fight that cause and carry that message across the board.

-30-

Morehouse College, the historically black institution for men, and Martin Luther King’s alma mater, has a girl problem—a “mean girl” problem to be exact. Aliya S. King’s latest story in VIBE magazine explores the lives of gender bending cross-dressers who fight for their right to express themselves. The story has been causing quite a stir. Before the story hit stands, the President of Morehouse said he was “insulted by what is to be published. Addressing our young men as ‘girls’ is deeply disturbing to me, no matter what the remainder of the article may say.” Here—thanks to my extra special inside track—Aliya S. King responds to the Morehouse president and explains the story behind the story.

WHEN YOU REACHED OUT TO MOREHOUSE ADMINISTRATION FOR THE STORY, HOW DID THEY REACT? I was told that they would not be able to give me a comment in time. I asked continually and finally at the eleventh hour, I sent them some specific quotes and they sent in some email responses. Which I guess is how he knew about the story.

BEFORE THE STORY WENT TO PRINT, MOREHOUSE PRESIDENT, ROBERT M. FRANKLIN, SENT OUT A STATEMENT. I’M GOING TO READ SOME OF HIS PROVOCATIVE EXCERPTS. STOP ME WHEN I GET TO THE PARTS WITH WHICH YOU DISAGREE.

HERE GOES:

“The article, entitled, “The Mean Girls at Morehouse,” purports to examine the lives of some of our gay brothers as it relates to the enforcement of our appropriate attire policy we enacted a year and a half ago. It seems clear from the headline alone that the Vibe editorial team’s intent is to sensationalize and distort reality for the purpose of driving readership.”

The president wrote this letter before reading this story. I don’t know how anything could seem clear from him by reading this headline. I don’t think you can judge an article by its headline alone any more than you can a book by reading its cover.

LET ME CONTINUE …

The title of the article speaks volumes about a perspective that is very narrow and one that is, in all likelihood, offensive to our students whether gay or straight.

I think the president was trying to get ahead of the story and assuage the reaction of the alumni. I think that its unfortunate that he felt he needed to speak out before actually reading the story.

BUT YOU WOULD HAVE TO AGREE THAT IT IS NARROWLY FOCUSED. Absolutely it is narrow. It’s a profile. The purpose of my story was to highlight an admittedly small community at Morehouse but it is one that exists. The profile focuses on four men. Two former and two current students.

OKAY, BACK TO THE PRESIDENT’S LETTER:

“As president of this institution, as a Morehouse graduate and as a father, I am insulted by what is to be published. Addressing our young men as “girls” is deeply disturbing to me, no matter what the remainder of the article may say.”

I think it’s curious that he finds it insulting for certain Morehouse men to be referred to as girls when certain Morehouse men refer to themselves as “her” and “she” in casual conversation. Is it deeply disturbing to him that these students actually call themselves girls? The title came from a quote from one of my subjects, a Morehouse student named Brian Alston. I didn’t stamp this on them.

WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO WRITE THIS STORY? It’s fascinating. I don’t care if it was just one student. If it was only one person on Morehouse campus who wanted to wear a purse and a pocketbook, I would want to do a profile on that one man. The dress code is what initially inspired me to look into it. I didn’t set out to write a story on the Plastics, which is what these girls also call themselves. I started out attempting to write a story about the gay community in Morehouse on a whole.

HOW DID THIS TURN INTO A STORY ABOUT CROSS-DRESSING GENDER BENDERS? In my research, I stumbled across these young men who were gender benders. I became fascinated with them and the story just evolved from there.

Londyn Di Richelieu, a post-op transexual is the only known woman who can say "I'm a Morehouse man."

WAS THERE ANY HESITANCY ABOUT EXPOSING THIS CONFLICT AT A BLACK COLLEGE, WHICH HAS SO MANY OTHER PROBLEMS TO DEAL WITH? As an African-American woman I have a great respect for the Morehouse brand, so of course there was some hesitancy. But then my journalistic instincts kicked in. A good story is a good story.

WITH A STORY LIKE THIS, THERE IS ALWAYS SOME INTERESTING STUFF LEFT ON THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR. WHAT DID YOU LEAVE OUT OF THIS ONE? Um, the story of a Morehouse graduate who is now a woman whose name is Londyn De Richelieu. I wasn’t able to interview London in time for the story. I wish I could have because she is perhaps the only person who could say, “I’m a Morehouse man and I’m a woman.”

THE PHOTO SHOOT, WHICH SHOWS THESE GUYS DRESSED AS GIRLS ON AN HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGE FOR MEN IS A BIT JARRING. HOW DID THAT COME ABOUT? There were three separate parts of the photo shoot. Two scenes on campus this past summer. One in front of the Martin Luther King Statue and one in front of the college sign.

I met the photographer, Alex Martinez, the day before the shoot. We scouted out the location. Then the next day we shot the scenes. It was furtive and rushed. School wasn’t in session but there was an element of we need to get this done quickly.

HOW DO YOU THINK MOREHOUSE PRESIDENT FRANKLIN WILL REACT TO THE STORY, NOW THAT IT’S OUT? He will see where he was mistaken in making the assumption he made but he will still not be pleased with it.

WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE HE WILL SAY ABOUT THE PHOTOS? That’s a great question. I wish I could be sitting next to him when he looks at them.

THIS IS ALL HAPPENING AT DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.’S ALMA MATER. HOW DOES THAT FACT FIGURE INTO THIS STORY?

Wrapped around the MLK statue is a quote that says, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” So, those men are standing up there in makeup, pumps, and pocketbooks, saying: “Morehouse look, we dress this way, we look this way and we refer to ourselves as girls, but if we cannot express ourselves it’s an injustice.” That photo didn’t make the story but that’s how they feel. Like they should be allowed to wear a dress and still be a “man” of Morehouse.

BUT THEY CALL THEMSELVES GIRLS. Yes! I posed that question to them. Their answer was we are males, gender bending men.

DO YOU THINK IT”S UNFAIR THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE WHO IDENTIFY AS GIRLS AT A BOYS’ SCHOOL? No comment.

WHAT ABOUT THE DRESS CODE. ARE THEY BEING UNFAIRLY TARGETED BECAUSE THEY WANT TO DRESS LIKE GIRLS? According to my subjects the dress code is not enforced all around. Because you cant wear sagging jeans pajama pants or du rags.  I must say, I did see students on campus wearing just that this summer.

IN THE FUTURE, WILL HISTORICALLY BLACK COLLEGES HAVE TO OPEN UP TO BE MORE INCLUSIVE TO THIS SORT OF GENDER IDENTITY? Oh, that’s a good question. This small community is only going to get larger it is not going to stay small forever. It will be interesting to see how they handle it.

WHAT DO YOU THINK WILL HAPPEN WITH THE DRESS CODE AT MOREHOUSE? I didn’t write this story with the hopes of changing their ideas. Morehouse is an African-American, Christian-based school in the Deep South. I didn’t have any thoughts that I was going to change the view of the administration on anything.

-30-

“Under what circumstances would I have P. Diddy on the show? Him saying Yes. Any day of the week. Ever. Are you kidding me?”

Rachel Maddow ambles into a Midtown Manhattan steak house on the eve of the Midterm primaries. In real life, she isn’t much different than the smiling lady with the sharp wit that comes on the “TV machine” (which she refuses to watch at home). A t-shirt replaces the smart blazer she wears on screen and a 6 ft. frame eclipses the image of the smallish figure that sits behind the desk. A mug of beer will soon stand in for her pencil, with which she sometimes scribbles notes. But nothing can replace her biting wit. And this night, with a full day of work behind her, everyone wants in on the act. “I’ll have a Bud Light,” she says. The bartender smiles to himself as he slides the beer in her direction. “What have you got against red beer,” he quips, his smile sharpening into devious points. “Does your beer have to be blue, too?”

Alana, NBC’s PR rep, laughs as Maddow’s whole face smiles. The bartender, pleased with himself, adds on: “I love your show.” He looks to me. “She’s the best.”

Anyone who knows me well, knows how I feel about cable news (and MTV JAMS)—I am addicted. Despite its hip-hop topics, The Parker Report TV show was inspired by those yammering heads on cable as well as some network newsmen who dug up the day’s issues. Meet The Press (Tim Russert’s version), Hardball (w/Chris Mathews), even the antiquated McLaughlin Group stays on the DVR taking up space. Nope, won’t erase them.

But unlike the above, Maddow infuses a heavy dose of humor into her meaty broadcasts, a mashup between Jon Stewart and Tim Russert. She mocks, she digs, she explains the process, breaking complex political mechanics down to bite-size chunks. Then she connects the dots. This methodical approach earned her a spot on VIBE’s “Juice” list this year (The Issue is on stands now).

(The very uncomfortable face-off w/Rand Paul)

Since her show debuted in September 2008 (this month she celebrates her 2^nd anniversary), she’s tanked political careers, shined a light on shady dealings and made punch lines out of hypocritical politicians—sometimes accomplishing all three at once. In one classic showing, she called out by name 22 Republican lawmakers who voted against the stimulus plan in Washington only to get “all publishers clearing house” in their home districts, holding up outsized stimulus checks for press opportunities.

Her most memorable kerfuffle came when Kentucky Republican senate nominee Rand Paul quickly found himself playing defense, facing a question about his opposition to part of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. (Paul has said the government overstretched when it banned private business owners from discriminating). “I had ten questions written for him and the first one was on the Civil Rights Act,” Maddow says. “I asked the same question over and over again for like 20 minutes and he wouldn’t answer even though I know what his answer is. So it created this firestorm, but I still want to ask him those other 9 questions.”

And after a series of questions of my own, these are the other things Rachel Maddow told me:

NEXT UP, P. DIDDY

“Under what circumstances would I have P. Diddy on the show? Him saying yes. Any day of the week. Ever. Are you kidding me? I am not that great at culture interviews. Talking to people who are culturally accomplished as interviews in terms of writers, authors, musicians…But I’m trying to get better at it so I’m trying to carve out a niche for that production-wise.”

MSNBC’s SECRET COMPETETIVE EDGE

“NBC-MSNBC is the only news unit that has both broadcast and cable. That offers us, me, specifically, an opportunity that nobody else has. NBC news has all these incredible resources to put people out in the world in a way that a broadcast network can, and they will allow me to piggyback on what they do.  Nobody else has that chance. I realize that even though I’m not a great traveler and I like to go home on he weekend and read comic books and not be in the media world, it allows me to put a lot more on TV than I otherwise could. And you meet people and you can do real reporting and show people what you are seeing. To be able to get out in the field using the resources of the broadcast networks but be able to say this is my opinion about what I’m seeing.”

THROUGH THE WIRE

“I really don’t have time to watch TV. And my girlfriend [Susan] is an artist, she’s a photographer so I consume a lot of visual art. That’s just because I’m staying involved in her life and career. Like I watched the entire Made Men series two years later. I still haven’t watched HBO’s The Wire though. Susan has watched it from the first episode to the last all the way through and all the way through again. She quotes to me from the Wire and talks to me about different characters who are represented by friends of ours or happenings in our lives. I have no idea.”

UNASKED RAND PAUL QUESTIONS

“I had ten questions written for him and the first one was on the Civil Rights Act. Like, he’s this uber small government guy but he is really anti-abortion.  So he wants a government that’s really small but big enough to monitor every pregnancy in the country to make sure they end the way the government prefers. [Laugh] That takes a pretty big government. Let’s talk about that in Libertarian terms. And some his political associations with the John Birch Society and the other groups that his dad [Ron Paul], in particular, has been associated with. They need to answer questions about the white supremacy views of some of the people who have associated themselves with that movement. But I couldn’t get to that part of the interview and I will never get him back now.”

IN HER OPINION

“We’ve always had opinionated press… Since I’m on the opinionated side, and as a really patriotic person who cares about the state of this country, I need to be really responsible with what I’m doing. I think that has to do more with process than substance. It’s not the stories I cover it’s the fact that I am civil, it’s not the fact that I give my opinion but I can also be counted on to give the facts. There are ways to do it that are honest and good for the public discourse and ways to do it that are parasitical. And I just don’t want to be parasitic and cynical. Being in opinion media is a dangerous place to be. You can actually cause a lot of harm if you want to. I not only don’t want to cause a lot of harm, but I want to do right by this country.”

My Own "Moment Of Geek"

Haiti's pre-Carnival Celebration, two days before the quake. A chicken burns in the fire. (photo E. Parker)

OH MY GOD! Are you alright?!” It’s the morning after the earthquake and my wife answers the phone. She’s frantic. In the twelve hours since the quake hit, she’s heard nothing from me. I’ve been trying to get a call out every 20 minutes or so, but this is the first time my phone has rung. I search for words.

“Yeah,” I tell my wife. “I’m alright.”

“I found out you were alive from Twitter,” she says, not bothering to clear the

frog from her throat at this ungodly 4 a.m. hour.

“Huh?”

“Do you know a man named Richard Morse? He was tweeting from the Hotel

Oloffson and he told me that the photographer you were with said you were

okay. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Really, I am.”

“Oh my God, I’m so glad to hear from you. Where are you?”

“I am with Vladimir in Carrefour. We walked here last night after the quake. It

felt like forever.”

“What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to walk back to Port-au-Prince in a little bit. I’ll call you later

when I get better reception.

“But are you okay?”

“I’m okay. I promise.”

Despite my reassurance, nothing is settled in Haiti. The ground rumbles at irregular intervals. Cries of Jezi! [“Jesus!”] cap off each tremor, while people sleep on the ground in open spaces out of fear of falling buildings.

With the threat of another quake looming, a new group shuffles into the yard where I’ve holed up with Vladimir Laguerre, my Haitian guide. The latest arrivals are bursting with whispers and nervous energy. Words are exchanged in Creole. Gasps emanate from a dark corner, and the voices speak quickly, with fervor.

Vladimir emerges from the huddle with a slow gait, looking off into the night. “These people who just came,” he says, as he sits down beside me, “they came from the area near water.” He breathes deeply. “They say the water is rising near the ports. I don’t know how true it is.” He pauses as if to process what he has just said. “This has never happened to Haiti before.”

A veteran Haitian journalist, Vladimir, 34, has been working as my translator and driver. His career as a TV sports broadcaster was stunted after he ran into a burning building to rescue three children. He pushed the final child out the door before the whole place erupted, leaving him with burns over 40 percent of his body. His disfigured hands have only limited motion and his ability to walk long distances is impaired. Vladimir is no stranger to horrific stories, but he furrows his brow at the news of a potential tsunami, ruffling his usually calm demeanor. “I don’t know how true it is,” he repeats, shaking his head slowly, “but this is what they are saying.”

Vladimir was here in 2008, when tropical storms and hurricanes flooded Haiti, swallowing large swaths of the country, drowning most of the crops, damaging more than 100,000 homes and killing nearly 800 people. Malnutrition and disease continued to claim lives over the following months. Vladimir need not mention this recent history. The memory swims in the minds of everyone here.

Awake through the night, set in the open space of a back yard in Carrefour (photo: V. Laguerre)

I lie back down and strain my eyes in the dark, searching for an escape route in case the water makes a move onto land. A two-story building looks like the only possibility, yet I can envision the water splashing through the window and swallowing the structure. With no tall trees or high mountain roads in sight, my mind maps out the quickest path to the building’s roof. The exercise does little to make me feel secure.

I place my head on the concrete, unable to sleep. My mind races, recalling the decimated buildings, the mangled bodies and the quake itself. I flash back to the one-woman triage we encountered when we first arrived in Carrefour after the quake. She was sewing up a lady who had several wide gashes streaming down her arm, exposing what appeared to be bone and muscle. The victim’s husband, a large dark figure, held up a bag full of clear fluid that dripped into an IV tube. She laid on a blanket spread out on the side of a dirt road. Cars and motorcycles rolled by, kicking up dust near the wound as they passed.

Vladimir and I took turns holding a light on the operation while using our free hands to shoo away flies and pour the reddish-brown iodine solution the nurse gave us to clean the wound. Whenever I grew restless and moved slightly, the nurse would bark: Limye! Limye! [“Light! Light!”]. With each poke of the blunt needle, the patient cried out as the nurse steadily stitched the wounds, squatting over her patient for hours until the job was done.

As we lay staring at the sky, everyone waited for another tremor, another quake, or even worse—in the name of Murphy’s Law—a tsunami to come sweep away all remaining earthquake survivors. Seeing no reliable escape route, I asked Vladimir if he’s ready to walk back to Port-au-Prince. “Let’s go,” he said before I could finish my question. I collected my camera bag with no time to process what I had experienced and no idea what horror I would soon witness. As Vladimir grabbed his own digital camera, I pulled my shirt over my head and wiped off the pale gray dust kicked up by the quake.

Before we hit the road, the ground vibrates softly. Cries of Jezi! fade in the distance as we walk off.

The band Relax during Haiti's pre-Carnival 2010. (photo: e. parker)

TWO DAYS BEFORE the quake, Haiti’s pre-Carnival celebration was underway. Haitians of all stripes put their differences aside and individual worries on hold. A live chicken was tossed onto a fire in the middle of a downtown Port-au-Prince intersection. A man who claimed to be a voodoo priest said it was a sacrifice to Erzulie Dantor, the fierce protector of women and children. “She’s a mean black woman,” he told me in English. “You sacrifice the chicken to make her happy. She don’t play around.”

The unlucky fowl flapped its enflamed wings. The more it struggled, the higher the flame grew, digging deep into its feathers until the bird flopped out of the pit and thrashed against the asphalt. It was a brief moment of relative relief for the pitiful bird. But this is Haiti, a country where lucky breaks are often met with deeper, more intense suffering from which no bird nor human is immune. Before the chicken could stamp out its burning wing, a man scooped it from the ground and tossed it back onto the fire.

This cruel lesson of pain, struggle—and then worse pain—is one that the people of Haiti have learned the hard way. Since Haitian slaves won their independence from the French in 1804 with a bloody slave rebellion, the first free Black republic in the Caribbean has suffered a string of false starts and setbacks. Political unrest, epidemics and natural disasters have been compounded by man-made brutality that exacerbates every other ill. Some 78 percent of the population lives on less than $2 per day, resulting in the oft-quoted stat about Haiti being the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere.

Daniel Morel (at right) captures the burning chicken at Haiti's pre-Carnival celebration 2010 (photo e. parker)

In such an extreme climate, celebrations like Carnival are vital to the national morale. This wild time of pre-Lenten partying allows for camaraderie. As the music blares, the trappings of poverty are wiped away with the blissful sweat of revelers. The chicken’s snap-crackle-and-pop was drowned out by a marching band’s triumphant horns and tambourines as jubilant Haitians chant along.

Daniel Morel, the noted Haitian photographer, chased after the commotion with his camera. We had spent a week together traveling from low-lying Port-au-Prince to the mountainous city of Jacmel investigating Haiti’s restavek condition (or “child slave” system) for my masters thesis at Columbia University’s School of Journalism. In the days before the earthquake, I busied myself tracking down interview subjects: restavek children, their families, politicians and social service workers. It was a dizzying experience.

One restavek child, a pretty 13-year-old girl who hadn’t seen her parents in four years, spoke of abuse and mistreatment. “Other kids can go to school,” she explained. “They have nice clothes. Me? I am dirty and have lots of work to do. And I don’t get to go to school.”

One family in the rural area of La Vallée gave birth to eight kids. When the father fell ill he couldn’t do any work in his garden. The goats and pigs he was raising died. The family couldn’t afford to feed all their children, so they gave away four of them to live with other families in Jacmel and Port-au-Prince. “It doesn’t make me feel good to send my kids to live with someone I don’t know,” the father told me. “I miss them a lot. If I can find a mandarin here and eat it, I think, ‘My kid could be here and we can eat the tangerine together.’”

Researching the story was a heavy undertaking for us all. So when Daniel dashed off into the street amidst the blaring Carnival music, I followed his lead, snapping pictures with my own university-issued camera. Sometimes I tried to document the moment. Other times I got swept up in the sweet vibration of the tuba and the joyful feeling of oneness as we all marched along.

All day and into the night, kids tossed up their hands and marched in short choppy steps.

(photo: e.parker)

Girls jump-stopped, pushed their bottoms in the air and gyrated to the pace of the thundering tuba. Wide smiles accompanied the dances as everyone stomped through the streets of Port-au-Prince in a rhythmic trance.

Two days later, the people of Haiti would be confronted with the reality of their precarious circumstances. An earthquake of 7.0 magnitude would turn an already ailing country upside down. The official Carnival celebration would be called off; some band members would be crushed under buildings. No one dancing that night could have fathomed the unsteadiness of the ground beneath their feet or the haunting tremors that refused to let anyone put the horror behind them. Who could have imagined any of it? The National Palace broken. The Ministry of Justice building, the jail, the cathedral, all reduced to rubble. The streets we marched on, littered with dead bodies. And Haiti, heavy with poverty, helpless against the destruction.

All of these things would soon come crashing down on Haiti. But that freewheeling night it was the chicken’s turn to feel the pain. As we made our way through the darkness, one fellow I met—a deportee from Miami—pointed to the crispy chicken, now lying in a lonely lot next to the headquarters of a Haitian band named New York.

“See, now you can write that Haiti is not a poor country,” he said with a smile. “There is so much food on the street and no one even eats it.”

We laugh at the absurdity of his statement. The laughter didn’t last long.

The broken palace (photo: e. parker)

RUNNING THROUGH PORT-AU-PRINCE is the Boulevard Jean-Jacques Dessalines, something of a main road known as Grande Rue to the locals. In the midst of this hub of commerce Andre Eugène oversees an art gallery he calls E. Pluri Bus Unum. Tap-Tap [taxi] trucks rumble over the street in ornately painted blues, oranges and bright reds. Likenesses of celebrities—a pensive Wyclef Jean or Chris Brown smiling broadly—find prominent placement amongst the geometric designs. Art is everywhere in Haiti and Eugène and his “Resistance” collective of progressive Haitian artists is keeping the creative spirit alive.

The gallery sits in a dirt lot between homes. There is no roof, just cinderblock walls from which pieces of art hang while sculptures seem to grow from the ground. Human skulls taken from a nearby graveyard are reincarnated as gnarly statues. Truck tires are engraved, stretched and recoiled into mangled masterpieces. An old antifreeze jug contorts into an angry face. Automobile manifolds, fuel cans, a dented hubcap—first-rate junk is transformed into third world art. The pieces are filled with voodoo themes and speak to the paradox that is life in Haiti: There is beauty, there is poverty and there are delicate moments when the two overlap.

I came here with Daniel to buy some art from two young boys who work under Eugène’s tutelage.

I met them on my first day in Haiti. Alex was the cool kid who made sure to put on sunglasses before he posed for a picture. Racine was the taller boy who smiled brightly, laughed a lot and tried, in broken English, to communicate with me. He took care to teach me many Creole words in our first hour of meeting. Mache [“walk”], he said when we took the trip to the gallery at night by foot. He and Alex would laugh at my pronunciation of mwen [“my”]. “Mwaaaain?” I’d ask. Laughter. “Mweeen?” “Mwwwain?” Laughter and more laughter.

When I arrive, unannounced, Alex grabs my attention. I follow as he points out his pieces. “Mine,” Alex says, tapping his chest with an open hand. He points to a cluster of hanging art before ticking off the list of materials in stilted English: “Wood. Tire. Paint. Metal.” A proud hand pounds his chest. “Mine.”

Racine (left) and Alex are the two young artists proteges of Andre Eugene's.

Eugène sits at his table in a small room with a blue sky above, surrounded by gruesome statues stacked higher than the walls. Daniel absent-mindedly snaps a few pictures of him. I put my camera down, with only minutes of battery charge remaining. Before I can take a seat at the table with Daniel and Eugène, a dull roar starts up from outside the walls. At first, it seems to be rising from next door, then it seems to be marching down the streets toward us.

First thought: A train, a train. Wait. A TRAIN in Haiti!?

“Au-Oh!” Eugène yells, then bolts to the door, which slams shut behind him.

The walls begin to wave. Mounds of earth see-saw, rising and falling in turns. The statues dance an angry dance until they dive at me from their posts. I fall to my knees and take cover.

Last thought: Oh shit! This is an earthquake. An EARTHQUAKE in Haiti!

Just like that, the earth steadies itself, for the time being at least. I let out a breath and look over at Daniel who, like me, has been fending off toppling statues. Realizing that we’ve lived through the drama, we do what comes most naturally. We laugh. A gigantic laugh of relief. Unaware of the devastation beyond the walls that enclose us, Daniel and I replay the hilarious image of Eugène bolting to the door. But our laughter is interrupted by sounds of misery rising over the partitions.

I climb a mound of statues and peek over the wall. Down on the street, we see arms raised to the sky. Calls for Jezi can be heard all around. There is singing. There is chanting. There is screaming. There are cries. And then more pleas to Jesus.

Daniel and I push away statues and cut a path to the exit. As soon as we get out, he aims his camera and fires away, frantically capturing the tableau of wreckage along Grand Rue. Having spent a lifetime photographing unimaginable things in Haiti, he runs directly into the madness. I trot to the car, where Vladimir is parked on the side of the road.

“Where is Daniel?!” he asks. “Where is Daniel? We’ve got to go.”

The car parked in front of Vladimir’s is buried under a building that has spilled over onto the street. I walk around looking for Daniel, but I know he’s already gone. Running back to the gallery, I see a lady trying to get out of a building nearby. She’s elderly and heavy. White dust masks her face and blood is smeared over part of her arms. I duck into the building and try to help her along. She falls, slips right from my hands. I help her up and begin walking with her again. It strikes me that there must be many others trapped in buildings. Without a ceiling to fall on us, Daniel and I were fortunate. Many others around us were not.

From Andre Eugene's gallery (photo: e. parker)

With all my equipment out of memory or battery power, I start recording the scene with my iPhone. One man continues to polish his shoes in the midst of the ruin, as if his simple fastidious act—carrying on as usual—could restore normalcy to this broken mess. Another stops before me, gestures toward the heavens. He grabs my arm, the one controlling the iPhone, and speaks to me in Creole, wildly, loudly. He forces my hand toward the clouds, gesticulating madly. I don’t understand his words but the message is clear. “Say his name,” he seems to be saying. I oblige him. “Jesus,” I say once. Then again, this time louder. He looks at me with moist eyes. Apparently satisfied with my testifying, he glares at me for a beat before rejoining the mass migrating north.

Some limp by, completely covered in dust, their powder-white arms reaching to the sky like zombies in a B-movie. The injured are carried, or walk along with gaping bloody gashes. One man holds a limp infant in his arms, not sure if he is alive. A few people surround the man and child. Vladimir puts his head to the baby’s mouth to check for breath. “He is breathing, I think,” Vladimir says. The man shakes the baby, whose tiny limbs flail lifelessly. Another pokes a finger into the baby’s face and lifts one eyelid. To everyone’s relief, there is a trace of movement. The child is alive and sleeping soundly while adults in all directions despair.

Before long, we head back to the car to assess our position. “Haiti has never seen this before,” Vladimir says as he leans against his car. This is the second time he’s said this. The cries of Jezi come in waves as people walk north along Grand Rue toward Carrefour.

Vladimir’s bewilderment is understandable. The tectonic plates that lie beneath the Caribbean islands and the North American region have been connected since the 1700s, when the island experienced the last series of major quakes. The Enriquillo-Plantain Gaurden fault line runs from the Dominican Republic through Haiti to Jamaica. When it shifted below Haiti, it displaced all the earth that rested above. “This earthquake is not too uncommon,” says Dr. John C. Mutter, a professor at Columbia University’s Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. “What is uncommon is the extent of destruction which is entirely due to buildings collapsing. There have been level seven earthquakes in California but the death toll has been about 50 or 60 people. That is because we have much stronger buildings and we can build stronger,” he says. “But we shouldn’t wag our fingers at these people. In very poor countries you have to prioritize where you put your scant resources.”

Despite the facts and clear science explaining the quake, there will be some—Haitians among them—who supplant scientific method with spiritual reasoning. Most famously, the controversial televangelist Pat Robertson overlooked centuries of oppressive history to make the impossible claim that Haiti was “cursed.” According to Robertson, Haitian slaves entered into a “pact with the Devil” in order to thwart their French colonizers. As far-fetched as his claims sound, he wasn’t alone in his dubious supernatural assessment. “There is no possible response to people like Robertson who have their beliefs. They won’t change their minds no matter what,” Dr. Mutter says. “People who are educated from an early age can maintain a faith but they understand a difference between the things they believe as a matter of faith, such as an after life, and what you can learn from science.”

But Robertson isn’t alone. Amidst the commotion in Grand Rue, an elderly lady stops in front of Eugène’s place with a point to make. She begins to lecture. Perhaps our position in front of the voodoo art shop draws extra attention in this time of crisis. Vladimir translates: “Everybody wants to worship voodoo and now look what happens.” She waves her fists in the air. “God comes and punishes us.” The lady turns and walks against the traffic down Grand Rue.

With no clear way out and no real idea of where to go, we turn our attention to the surrounding wreckage and the people trapped inside. Scurrying up the street, we encounter a group coming out of a home: a man carrying a child on his back, a woman following with dusty grey hair.

“Ask them if there are more inside,” I say to Vladimir. And of course there are. We rush up to a home and peer down a dilapidated corridor, lined with the rubble of a fallen building. One man squats over a hole where a floor used to be.

“Do you need help,” Vladimir asks in Creole.

The man yells back and gestures toward the pile of rubble he sits above.

“There are others inside,” Vladimir says to me. “But you must be careful.”

The building is mostly destroyed. What has not fallen is hanging, sagging or cracked. Another shake may come and finish the job. I rush in as another man, the actual rescuer, emerges from the rubble with the child. Struggling to keep his footing on the jagged rocks, he passes her off to me. The child is ghostly white. Her body trembles as she squeezes tight around my neck. An entire group is praying in the middle of the street. I carry her out. Her head knocks against a low-hanging slab of concrete as she chants, uninterrupted, Jezi Sove’m! [Jesus saves me!]

A group, sitting in the middle of the road rejoices at the sight of the child. Her energy is contagious, electric. The street erupts in praise.

DARKNESS FALLS FAST, as it does this time of year. The car inches along. When not creeping slowly, it sits still in post-earthquake traffic that goes nowhere. “I have to get home to my daughter and my mother,” Vladimir says. He has not been able to get a line out to confirm their safety. “I’ve got to get back home.” I try to comfort him with a few words of encouragement. “Where they are, I’m sure they are alright,” I say. Vladimir is unmoved.

Our getaway vehicle, a 1996 RAV4, has transformed into a makeshift ambulance. We have picked up one lady, holding a crying young boy in her arms who is bleeding from somewhere. Her other child, a little girl of about 4 years, sits on my lap for lack of space. Another lady, who sells hot food on the street, was burned badly. She now occupies the front seat while her husband squeezes next to me in the back. As we creep along, there is a sad symphony of sound. The baby cries, the lady moans in pain, her husband tries to comfort her in hushed tones. There is singing from outside. Horns blow. Meanwhile, this car’s engine hums, but we go nowhere.

With no other rational choice, we decide to walk. I’m overcome by a feeling of helplessness as the lady repositions her son on her hip and grabs hold of her daughter’s hand. She gestures with her head in the direction of Carrefour. “Mashe,” [Walk] she says to the little girl. “Mashe.”

Man sits outside Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) the day after Haiti's earthquake. "God gives them and God takes them away," he said. (Photo: Vladimir Laguerre)

THE MORNING AFTER the quake, with the tremors still shaking our brains and the threat of rising water flooding our thoughts, we begin our descent into Port-au-Prince. Schools are decimated, a funeral home is destroyed and there is a fire at a gas station that people sprint past, scared it will blow any minute.

Before we make it out of Carrefour, we come upon two dead bodies lying on the sidewalk across from the United Nations base. Unaware of the magnitude of the disaster, I cross the street and ask a UN representative what they can do about the bodies, about the suffering. A women emerges who speaks to me in English. “We got a lot of people inside also, some of them already died,” she says. “If you want, you can go to the other side. You will see a lot of people on the street. We cannot count how many,” she continues. “It’s a lot of people and we have already done what we can do for them.”

It’s a matter of grim strategy for emergency forces to take care of the wounded before concerning themselves with the dead. After all, nothing can be done to revive a carcass on a street. But this fact doesn’t make the deaths any easier to bear for the living who walk among them.

In front of the Médicins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) hospital, there are bodies scattered on the ground. People step over an elderly lady’s carcass. A young girl’s small body lies unattended. Her battered head is turned to one side. Her eyes are slightly open as flies exploit the gap. One man lies prone near the door of the hospital, a bloodied tourniquet tied around his leg in a failed attempt to save him. Another man sits on the ground in front of the hospital, smoking a cigarette. Next to him are two little boys covered in a sheet. He pulls back the cover to reveal their faces and tiny bodies. Their eyes are closed, as if not yet awakened by the morning sun. He’s expressionless in the way only shock victims can be, as if his features have turned to stone—that is until he’s asked about his sons. Tears come to his eyes and his voice whines out in pain. “What can I do,” he replies. “God gives them and God takes them away.” He repeats this maxim again and again, soothing himself with words that offer cold comfort to any grieving parent.

(Photo: V. Laguerre)

People stand on cars and try to look inside. But the hospital is overwhelmed, as are the capabilities of the UN, the many social service organizations and the Haitian government. An international outpouring of generosity has yet to reach the ground here in Haiti. The nurse who set up a one-person triage on the dirt road last night has made her way out here on the street, and is working on a patient. She looks in my direction and opens her arms expressing the enormity of the suffering and her own feeling of helplessness.

Despite the destruction everywhere, Hotel Oloffson’s structure built in the 19th century still stands on the hill. From there, Daniel Morel and Richard Morse have been tweeting the first dispatches, including photos, updates and information about survivors. In time I will take a seat in the Oloffson’s makeshift newsroom to add to their on-the-ground accounts of the devastation before I am evacuated to the Dominican Republic.

I’ll fly over the chaos in a helicopter. The beautiful scenery will hide the misery below. The sound of the engines will drown out the cries of the people I’ll surely leave behind. The gorgeous views may scrub away the stench of the bodies, but nothing can erase the looks on their faces, or the feeling on the streets just days before when everybody was dancing and singing their troubles away. [V]

[Originally published in VIBE magazine April/May, 2010]