#dessalines

[haitilegends]

[diasporableus]

On Honesty

(Or, Personal Grief, Collective Despair, and Finding the Will to Survive)

CW: Depression, grief, anxiety, and loss – Please take care of yourself, and only engage if you have the emotional capacity to do so)

Can I be honest? I mean, can I be brutally – if not painfully – transparent? I am not okay, and I haven’t been for a long, long time. At what felt like the height of my professional achievements, my mom was diagnosed with Stage IV endometrial cancer. She died less than a year later. Her sister, my aunt, died six months after that. All of this happened less than a year after my Nana’s passing and only four years after my grandfather’s death.

I’ve been suffering in silence, isolating, struggling to grapple with loss, grief, fear, loneliness, and even shame. The past four years have been the hardest of my life to date. I’ve felt unbalanced, untethered, and, at times, completely broken. I cannot count the number of mornings I struggled to pull myself from bed, nor can I specify the number of nights I cried for the elusive relief of sleep. I’ve been sinking into a depressive spiral – overwhelmed with the burdens of living and paralyzed by the eternal challenges of just being. 

“come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.” Lucille Clifton, “won’t you celebrate with me”

Lucille Clifton writes about surviving the thing that has tried to kill her, but there have been days where I have felt like death is winning its war with me. With every phone call, text, email, private message, and letter to which I struggle to respond; with every bright, clear day that feels shrouded in darkness; with every ruminating thought that pulls me from the present and traps me in the sadness of the past or uncertainties of the future; with each of these things, I have wondered if this is what it feels like, to stop living before your death.

I warned that I would be brutally honest, but I didn’t expect to divulge the ugliest bits in the way I have. It’s clear that my mind and heart were begging for relief. 

I’m writing, in part, because I need to. I have to. Writing, for me, was once (and, I think, still is) a part of my survival. It was – is – as vital as breathing. But writing also requires an honesty and openness that I haven’t been brave or bold enough to bear. That is, I think, why I haven’t written in so long. I’ve been drowning, struggling to articulate just how I’m feeling and why. I’m writing this, primarily, to save my own life. But I’m thinking about our collective survival too. 

The outcome of the recent U.S. election is heavy on the minds of many, myself included. Knowing what can trigger my own anxiety- and depression-fueled spirals, I try to keep myself away from post-mortem analyses. I cannot afford to sacrifice any more of myself to despair. But, I think – hope – that this is a moment where we will dwell upon our relationships to one another and be intentional about caring for ourselves and others too. 

….

How do you survive a war? How do you armor yourself for ongoing catastrophe, crisis, and disaster? To be sure — there are those of us who don’t survive, those of us who don’t make it to the other side. And then, there are those of us who survive, barely.

I think of my loved ones who have lived under dictatorial regimes. Their bodies carry the build up of so much pain. Some live with the physical manifestations of decades of psychological and emotional terror: constant illness, constant sickness, and premature death. Others are scarily silent. They refuse to speak about “those times,” bottling away all their memories and whatever emotions that may surface. I think of my loved ones who are  emotionally distant — never sentimental, rarely loving. Dissociated and detached. So death — be it physical, spiritual, or emotional — is always a possibility in times of authoritarian rule, but it is not the only possible future. 

For over a century, the United States has deliberately prevented revolutionary activism from transforming nations across the globe. In no region is this more true than the Americas. Examples abound, but Haiti immediately comes to mind. Whenever the Haitian people have asserted their freedom and attempted to build a state for and by the people, the U.S. has used its military and diplomatic powers to thwart Haitian self-determination and advance U.S. economic objectives. This was true in the aftermath of the Haitian Revolution, in the years that followed the creation of the world’s first Black republic. This was true during the U.S. Occupation of Haiti in the early 20th century. This was true during the reign of the Duvalier regime when the Tontons Macoutes terrorized the Haitian public. This was true every time liberation theologist Jean-Bertrand Aristide was democratically elected Haiti’s president, ousted in U.S.-backed coups, and forced to live in exile. This was true in the aftermath of the devastating 2010 earthquake, and it continues to ring true in the midst of Haiti’s current political and economic crisis. A few years ago, when there were fierce protests against then Haitian president Jovenel Moïse, I remember watching a U.S. journalist interview Haitian activist David Oxygène in Port-au-Prince. Oxygène castigated U.S. intervention in Haiti:

“It’s American policy that has a problem with Haiti. Jovenel Moïse is in power, under the control and direction of American imperialism. They’ve attacked our culture. They’ve attacked Vodou. They’ve attacked the spirit of our ancestors. They spit on the memory of Jean-Jaques Dessalines.” 

The journalist asked Oxygène if there was anything he believed that U.S. president Joe Biden should know, if there was anything Biden could “do for Haiti.” Oxygène responded, “I have no message for Joe Biden. He is not superior to Dessalines.” He went on to explain that Biden and Trump’s policy agendas towards Haiti were identical despite the politicians’ ostensible ideological differences. 

I think of that interview often, particularly Oxygène’s proclamation that Biden was not and could never be as consequential as Dessalines. For this activist who had spent decades living under the political and economic brutalism facilitated by American politicians, corporations, and even non-profits (the Clinton Foundation is especially deserving of scrutiny), revolutionary leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines constituted a guiding light. American intervention in Haiti has wrought a great deal of pain. But it has not killed Haitians’ critical engagement with the island’s history or isolated them from the beauty of their inheritance. Although centuries apart, in Dessalines, Oxygène found a model of possibility, an ancestral guide in the continued struggle and resistance against imperial rule.

….

There’s a question floating around many Left and progressive spaces across the U.S.: Where do we go from here? 

I most certainly do not have any special insight or clarity, let alone answers. But I keep thinking of how much knowledge there is to be gleaned from people who have lived under authoritarian repression and still organized, still gathered, still written, still hoped, still dreamed, and still fought. I think of folks like David Oxygène. 

One dominant narrative of political transformation positions the U.S. as the “leader of the free world.” In this false narrative, the U.S. instructs so-called less sophisticated nations on how to create an enduring constitutional democracy. After all, the U.S. has the world’s oldest and — supposedly — most stable constitution. 

To be clearer than clear — I do not believe this narrative. It’s as fictional as the United States’ Founding Fathers’ hypocritical declaration, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men were created equal” while creating a government that protected slavery at all costs. No, the U.S. has never been a true democracy, and many of us who have lived under its authority — both within its borders and beyond — have never been fully free. And, while some legal scholars still refuse to acknowledge this, the U.S. is in the midst of a constitutional crisis. What have historically been described as bedrock, foundational constitutional principles are and have long been under assault. This has been a long and steady decline, one that has occurred over the past forty plus years with numerous shifts in both the make-up of the judiciary and the forms of interpretative enterprises deemed acceptable. The depoliticization of legal education has further reversed the modest gains of the mid-twentieth century. The incoming presidential administration will only quicken what has been in motion for some time. 

Nonetheless — I share this dominant narrative because, for too long, U.S. education has wrongfully espoused the notion that the nation has a great deal to teach the world. Now is the time for us to follow in the tradition of writers, thinkers, and activists who have long rejected such a proposition. We who live in the U.S. have so much to learn from revolutionary struggles. And, like the Black liberation activists of the early and mid-twentieth century who understood the relationship between the kinds of violence the U.S. government inflicted upon both domestic and global populations, I hope we see our oppression and liberation as bound up with the plights of many others in this world. 

There’s much to be said about the lessons we can learn from history, from past struggle. And I hope that, over the coming months and years, we will find community with one another as we engage in that critical study. We must also consider the importance of shifting our own temporalities, of neither desiring nor expecting that we might live to see the labor of our work. 

A few years ago, Angela Davis was supposed to receive the Fred Shuttlesworth Human Rights Award in her native Birmingham in honor of her activism, scholarship, and advocacy. However, the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute rescinded Davis’s award due to criticism of her long-standing support of Palestinian liberation. Eventually, the award was reinstated, but a group of Birmingham natives, grassroots activists, decided to host an alternative event in Davis’s honor. In that event, Davis engaged in an hour long discussion with the writer and scholar Imani Perry. I’d like to share the end of Davis’s talk from that night because I’ve thought of it often in the years since: 

“Oftentimes, we assume that when we work for justice and equality and freedom, that we’re going to see immediate results. And capitalism teaches us to want to see the immediate…So we have a relationship to our history that is very much modeled after capital’s market. And we don’t necessarily recognize that the work we do today, while we may not see immediate consequences tomorrow, or even next year —  or even ten years from now —  but maybe down the line, maybe twenty years, or fifty years — or one hundred years from now — the work that we have done, at this particular moment, will have made a difference. I think it’s so important to try to develop that different temporality… I always point out that hundreds of years ago, there were people who were standing up against the institution of slavery, and they were imagining. They were imagining a different world. They knew that a different world was possible. They never got to experience that world, but, that world is the world we’re inhabiting today. They made it possible for us to be where we are, and so we have to begin to think broadly in that way and imagine how consequential our work can be… Let’s see if we can gauge the value of the work we do now by its possible future consequences. And perhaps fifty years from now or one hundred years from now, there will be some people gathered in the way we are gathered here this evening, who will be thankful, who will give thanks to those who came before them, who will be thankful for the work we did when we were called upon to do it.”  ….

I don’t know where we go from here or what comes next. I am, as I have shared, trying to figure out how not to die under the weight of my own depression, anxiety, and personal journey with grief. What this journey has taught me, however, is that survival is not and cannot be an isolated endeavor. To the extent that we are able to survive, we cannot survive without each other. We are moving into an uncertain future, living in an unsettled time. But we cannot make it through this thing called life alone.

I hope this note finds you, and I hope we find each other. I hope that we will be intentional about caring for ourselves and those we love in days, months, and years to come. We must create the world we seek to live in, even if we will never be able to inhabit that world ourselves.

A luta continua. The struggle continues. 

[richardmurrayhumblr]

Title: September 20th - Dessalines Birthday Artist: Chevelin Pierre Chevelinpierre https://aalbc.com/tc/profile/6477-richardmurray/?status=2469&type=status

#rmaalbc #artist #chevelin

[kadansenou]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CxbXPrhriQb/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

[jsuisartistofthestars]

Give it up for year 220!

🇭🇹Haitian History🇭🇹

219 years ago today, the first Haitian flag was created by Jean-Jacques Dessalines and sewn by his goddaughter Catherine Flon.

Dessalines removed the white strip of the French flag to signify the union of the Black and mulatto populations (the latter guided by Alexandre Pétion) during the Revolution. This also was significant as it symbolized the coming removal of the white colonists—and by extension, white people—from Ayiti. Dessalines had the motto "Liberté ou la mort" added for use in his army. Flon is an important figure of Haitian Flag Day and the Haitian Revolution all together.

Haiti was the first independent nation in Latin America, the first post-colonial independent black-led nation in the world, and the only nation whose independence was gained as part of a successful slave rebellion.

Bonus: the flag over the years

[cartermagazine]

Today In History

Jean Jacques Dessalines was a leader of the Haitian Revolution and the first ruler of an independent Haiti under the 1801 constitution. Jean Jacques Dessalines proclaimed the independence of Haiti on this date January 1, 1804.

Dessalines was brought to the French West Indian colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) as a slave. He worked as a field hand for a black master until 1791, when he joined the slave rebellion that broke out in the colony amid the turmoil caused by the French Revolution. In the decade that followed, he distinguished himself as a lieutenant of the black leader Toussaint Louverture, who established himself as governor-general of Saint-Domingue with nominal allegiance to Revolutionary France.

When Toussaint was deposed in 1802 by a French expedition sent by Napoleon Bonaparte to reconquer the colony, Dessalines at first submitted to the new regime. In 1803, however, when Napoleon declared his intention to reintroduce slavery (which had been abolished by the French National Convention in 1794), Dessalines and other black and mulatto (of mixed European and African descent) leaders rose in rebellion.

CARTER™ Magazine

[sankofaspirit]

"You must become like your natural enemies cruel and merciless."

Jean-Jacques Dessalines

[blackbrownfamily]

Ayiti 1805

[stochastique-blog]

Why ?!

•Le petit Golman Pierre. #Marchand #Dessalines #Haïti (at Irvington, New Jersey) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cdv6qfjOf6H/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[readyforevolution]

On this day, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a leader of the Haitian Revolution and the first ruler of an independent Haiti, was assassinated in 1806.

Jean-Jacques Dessalines led the revolution against France, defeating French troops at the Battle of Vertières in November 1803. France then withdrew its remaining 7,000 troops from the island. On January 1st 1804, Dessalines officially declared the former colony's independence as a free African republic, renaming it "Haiti" after its indigenous name. He also freed all slaves making Haiti the first country in the Americas to permanently abolish slavery. Dessalines became the first Emperor of Haiti in October 1804. He was made Emperor for life in 1805, which proved accurate but short-lived as he was assassinated by his political rivals in October 1806.

"..my name has become a horror to all those who want to continue slavery, and depots and tyrants utter it only by cursing the day that I was born."

KEEP EYES ON HAITI!

Stand down Kenya!

Stand up Africa!

Viva the Haitian Masses!

Viva the Haitian Revolution!

Viva the Africa Revolution!

Forward to Pan-Africanism

[dontbestingybaby]

“An article published in Haiti's Political and Commercial Gazette presciently analyzed the broader significance of the changes U.S.-Haitian trade relations underwent under Jefferson. The author of the article wrote that the United States would one day ‘occupy a distinguished rank among the masters of the sea.’ Foreseeing the inevitable decline of France and England, the writer warned, ‘The same thing will befall the powers that are presently dominant; they will undergo an unmistakable decline, while the United States will assume the rank to which it is destined. But this era will become deadly for the Caribbean. It will simply change masters. It will come under the yoke of the United States.’ As for ongoing U.S. slavery, ‘in the states of the south, [it] is a fire that smolders under the ashes, the eventual explosion of which will one day make tremble the hardened and deaf masters who still maintain it, despite the prudent advice of their fellow citizens of the north.’ Like Boisrond-Tonnerre, who observed that the ‘key to liberty’ for the still enslaved across the Americas could be found ‘in their own hands,’ the writer from the Gazette prophesied that one day ‘some audacious avengers will reclaim with interest their natural rights that have been violated.’ While most Haitians believed that France was their greatest enemy, this article asked the Haitian people not to ignore or dismiss the serious danger next door in North America: 

[France's] attempts will come crashing down like the waves of the sea at the foot of the rock of our independence, and from the mountains our rescue squad will descend upon them. But a more hidden danger, and one far less apparent, because it is still distant for now, threatens us anyway. It will not be from Europe that our ills must come, if we are to ever experience them; it will be from the continent of the United States: their proximity, the constant comings and goings of their citizens in our ports, the ambitions that they will bring with them, if our government does not restrict them, must open our eyes to the plots that they may one day attempt against us. 

“The writer did not seek ‘to place a cloud over the conduct of the Americans, nor do I think at all that, either the present government or the individuals who are linked to it through commercial relations with that country, have thus far had any plans to dominate us, nor to meditate on our enslavement.’ Yet, he said, ‘it is no less true that the possibility of such a combination could arise from a concurrence of circumstances, if ever the United States were to erect itself to become a maritime power.’ [42]

“Imperial rage followed the publication of this astonishingly prescient article. Dessalines ordered Christophe to discover the identity of the author and to have him sent to Marchand/Dessalines immediately. Dessalines worried that openly and publicly criticizing the United States might propel the trade embargo being debated on the floors of Congress. [43] Christophe soon learned from the empire's printer, Pierre Roux, that the author was Joseph Rouanez, the official English translator in the empire and editor of the Gazette. [44] Dessalines must not have punished the newspaperman too harshly. Rouanez continued to work as editor of the Gazette; and despite Dessalines's evident displeasure, events on the ground made it difficult to deny the new geopolitical threat Rouanez outlined.”

from The First and Last King of Haiti: The Rise and Fall of Henry Christophe by Marlene L. Daut

Additional citation: "Du Cap," Gazette politique et commerciale d'Haïti, Oct. 17, 1805, 175. 41.

[pasparal]

Jean-Jacques Dessalines Painter: Ulrick Jean-Pierre

[egoschwank]

al things considered — when i post my masterpiece #1340

first posted in facebook august 23, 2024

guillaume guillon-lethière -- "le serment des ancêtres" [i.e., "the oath of the ancestors"] (ca. 1823)

"you may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve all of the world's problems at once but don't ever underestimate the importance you can have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own" … michelle obama

"'the oath of the ancestors,' painted in 1822 by the french artist guillaume lethière, is a heroic vision of the birth of a nation, though not one he ever called home. a towering canvas depicts generals alexandre pétion and jean-jacques dessaline, heroes of the haitian revolution, in crisp military regalia. their hands rest on a stone inscribed with the ideals of their new freedom; broken shackles and chains lay at their feet. their eyes are cast to the heavens, where a billowy god figure bestows divine grace upon them from above. lethière made it as a gift to the nation, and as a gesture of his solidarity with rising abolitionist and liberation movements. but it’s also an emblem of the artist’s own tangle of paradoxes. lethière was born in 1760 in the french colony of guadeloupe, where his mother, marie-françoise pepeye, who was mixed race, had been enslaved. his father, pierre guillon, a wealthy white sugar plantation owner, didn’t officially recognize lethière as his own until later in life, but doted on him nonetheless. guillon took his son to paris as a teen, where he became a central figure in both the thriving mixed-race creole community and the french art establishment. then, not long after his death in 1832, he was all but forgotten" … murray whyte

"for the 21st century viewer, the sight of the two men of color gazing worshipfully upward at a white god is both offensive and painfully embarrassing although a neoclassical artist trained in europe could hardly be expected to visualize god in any other way. the notion of casting morgan freeman as god was still nearly two centuries in the future" … susan wood

"hope is not blind optimism. it's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. it's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be" … barack obama

"i ALways fear the worst, but continue to hope for the best" … al janik

[precisemuzic]

Why Haitian Independence should be important to Black people around the world

January 1, 1804 January 1, 1804 On this day we celebrate defeating Napoleon’s army, affirming our freedom and establishing the first free Black nation on in the western hemisphere. L’Union Fait La Force

[roehenstart]

Le Serment des Ancêtres. Par Guillaume Guillon-Lethière.