Here’s my story for yesterday’s Free Speech Radio News newscast. Some horrific sights at both Cannape-Vert Hospital and the Doctors Without Borders Clinic in Cite Soleil.

MP3. Video probably coming later. It’s really an inefficient medium, from what I see here. Journalists go out, shoot footage, then come back mid-day to begin an hours-long editing process, when they could be out reporting. By tradition they go to the trouble of hiding cuts in interviews with b-roll, instead of doing simple, honest jump-cuts to which the YouTube generation is totally accustomed. There’s no innovation…

Update: Big thanks to the Quixotess in Seattle for transcribing! Global media collaboration FTW. Text below the jump.

We go now to Port-au-Prince, where medical workers are racing to treat patients. FSRN’s Ansel Herz reports.

[We can hear a man's low voice and a girl's voice raised. Throughout, we can hear people's voices in the background--a baby cooing, adults rushing about.]

Cracks run down the wall of Port-au-Prince’s central Cannape Vert hospital. Rooms and hallways are empty. There’s so little staff that for fleeting moments, even the main operating room, directly beneath a fractured skylight, looks abandoned. Then, two Haitian Red Cross volunteers rush in with another wounded person. Doctors run back in from all directions to begin their work again and again.

Florence Burreynau is a Haitian doctor who returned here from Canada just last year. She said she had difficulties setting up a practice there and wanted to live in her home country. Friends and family said she was crazy to go back. Her downtown clinic is unusable, so she came here, one of just three Haitian doctors seen at the hospital. They are helped by a team of ten French doctors who arrived here two days after the earthquake.

“I am trying my best to do some suture, giving some pills to the patient, trying to have the wounds clean.”

The doctors don’t have the materials to do much beyond treating skin wounds, of which there are many, to the head, feet, arms, and other body parts hit by falling houses. Doctors from the French team said medical supplies they were promised had not arrived yet, and they said that the French embassy had demanded that they close the interior of the hospital and return the embassy, a fifteen minute drive away, each day at 5 PM because of security concerns.

Outside the hospital, a 28 year old Haitian who asked only to be called Dr Samedi, does much of the same work, but he’s surrounded by wounded in tents, not the walls of the cramped hallway.

[We can hear a woman's voice, perhaps tense with pain. Once, she takes a ragged breath.]

He tries to soothe a woman as he pulls skin off of her gaping foot wound. “I know it hurts, girl, I know it’s bad,” he says.

Meanwhile, in Cite Soleil, the Doctors Without Borders clinic has enough supplies, but cannot use their building. They operate on three or four people at a time, while hundreds wait in tents for treatment. Many were carried in by Haitians who rescued them, and some have been waiting for more than a day. Samuel Jeanius is a 33 year old medical student.

“I want to tell the international community that we need help. Because a lot of people are suffering. We also need places for people to stay, because we are not safe here. This morning there was an aftershock, and there was panic. People ran away. I wish people would consider our need for medicine and surgeons, because we’re really trying to help people suffering.”

The doctors don’t rest for a moment, treating person after person for hours.

Later, American rescue worker Douglas Cobb arrives at the UN base with a pickup truck and several Haitian women in the back. Cobb said he was a 9/11 first responder, who tried to fly in medicine with the Peruvian military.

“Well, what really happened here, is the UN military were there. And then the US military came in and kicked them out. So they never allowed for any transition. So what they did was they just sent all the planes back, with the medicines and everything. And, right now, we’ve been driving with four people that we have rescued–including a pregnant woman, okay–who have injuries that medicine will stop them from dying, and we’ve been driving around for four hours to all these hospitals, and none of them have the medicines that we need to save their life. Because the US military turned their plane back.”

“Back to where? Where’d it go?

“Went to Santa Domingo. So then in Santa Domingo, we got a bus, and we came in with just everything we could fit in the bus. But we got a whole freakin’ planeful of the friggin’ medicine!”

Nearly a week after the earthquake, the US government says 265 medical personnel are on the ground in Haiti, while more than ten thousand armed soldiers guard the airport and embassy, and begin to distribute aid.

But at City Med Hospital down in Delmas, eight Haitian doctors struggling to maintain a maternity ward in an intact hospital said they’ve received zero assistance since the earthquake. They yelled at this reporter to go away, saying a CNN crew had already stopped by. “We need medicines and help, not journalists,” they said.

Ansel Herz, FSRN, Port-au-Prince.

This started out as a story for Free Speech Radio News but didn’t make it into today’s newscast. I’ve heard of the Flash player not working for a few folks. Listen to the MP3 if that’s the case for you. Cross-posted to Houston Indymedia, now featured on Indymedia.us.

A Fort Hood soldier faced a military trial today for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan, one week after another member of his unit was sentenced to 30 days in jail for refusing to go to war. Sergeant Travis Bishop was convicted on all charges and sentenced to one year in prison, loss of pay, and reduction in rank.

Unlike Victor Agosto, who resisted deployment to Afghanistan on the grounds that the war is unconstitutional, Bishop is a conscientious objector. He opposes all wars because of his Christian faith. I spoke with Bishop on Friday evening before he was sentenced.

“Jesus is very vocal about non-violent conflict resolution. Jesus is very, very anti-war. You can tell from all his sermons. As far as my state of mind I feel good. I feel better about facing prison because of that belief than going to Afghanistan and coming back a quote unquote ‘American hero.’”

Bishop says he realized he could file for conscientious objector status only days before his scheduled deployment to Afghanistan in March. He left the sprawling Killeen base for one week and is now charged with going AWOL and disobeying orders.

Desertion rates among the Army ranks rose 80 percent between 2003 and 2007. With tens of thousands more troops now headed to Afghanistan, anti-war activist Cynthia Thomas says G.I. support networks are crucial. She co-founded the Under the Hood Outreach Center and Cafe in Killeen.

“Our soldiers know here at Fort Hood that if they choose to be a soldier of conscience and resist orders to deploy that we are here, that they have the support, that we have this network here in Killeen. It’s really amazing sometimes when you have all these boys in here, sometimes they just come into sleep, to get away from the base…”

Bishop said he wouldn’t be able to resist deployment orders without the support from the local coffeehouse.

“Under the Hood has been incredibly good to me. They said no matter what my decision, deploy or not deploy, they were going to support me. I don’t think I’d have been able to do this at all, just by my lonesome. I don’t.”

Bishop said he hopes his decision will inspire other troops to question their service in the military. Last week supporters of Victor Agosto from across Texas gathered at Under the Hood cafe and rallied across from Fort Hood. [Chants from rally]

They’ll rally outside the base again for Travis Bishop this evening. Ansel Herz, Austin.

MP3. Cross-posted to Radio Indymedia.

Yesterday the 10-week-long occupation of the Ssangyong automotive plant in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, by striking workers was broken by a final, violent police assault. When Ssangyong went bankrupt and announced the firings of thousands of assembly-line workers, they armed and barricaded themselves inside the plant. I spoke with Loren Goldner, an author writing a book on the Korean working class who visited the factory in June, on Friday about the situation. The workers’ struggle has received stunningly little attention in the US corporate and alternative press. He was speaking to me from New York City. Please share and re-broadcast.

MP3. Cross-posted to Radio Indymedia and libcom.

Update: The podcast does not convey the “epic,” in the BBC’s words, nature of the final four-day fight the workers put up against the police. Below are pictures and videos collected from Youtube and libcom.org.

This was my second time traveling out to Hutto. Transcript and more information below.

[Chanting]

“I’ve known about this place, this is just my first time coming here. When I first got here, I actually felt like crying because I felt so angry that they would do this to people. Everybody talks about peace in the world and stuff, but this has nothing to do with it…”

18-year-old Yvette Garza joined about a hundred people from around Texas on Saturday afternoon in Taylor, a forty-minute drive from Austin. For the third year in a row, activists marked World Refugee Day with a march across town to the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, an immigrant detention center holding undocumented families, including at least 100 women and young children. Jose Orta, a Taylor resident, said the corporate-run facility should be shut down.

“They are incarcerated. And those children have done nothing, nothing wrong. They are non-criminals. Yet they are in a medium-security prison. No matter what you call it – you can call it a detention facility or a residential facility, whatever. It is a medium-security prison, and T. Don Hutto’s got to go!”

[Marching]

“People started making profits for people wanting to make money off of people’s misery.”

Conrado Acevedo, an activist with the indigenous coalition ‘Defense of Our Mother,’ traveled from Houston.

“They used to let ‘em go and then they would show up in court, which was the more humane way. But now when you put people in jail, especially a mother with kids, I mean that’s totally uncomprehensible in a supposedly democratic society. So we’ve been coming here for two years…”

[Sound]

The march eventually spilled onto an field alongside the facility. Marchers raised their voices, hoping the kids inside would hear them.

The group rallied for another few hours with music and speeches in the blazing sun across from the detention center. They vowed to continue protesting until the facility is closed and the families are released.

It’s June 22, 2009, this has been a Mediahacker.org podcast, and I’m Ansel Herz.

Cross-posted to Youtube and to HIMC. Learn more:

• T. Don Hutto blog
• America’s Family prison short film by Matt Gossage
• “The Least of These” film
• More pictures at Houston Indymedia

Apparently Clinton invited a bunch of liberal bloggers to his New York office yesterday to talk about politics, Haiti, and his foundation’s work. Wish I could have been there. One blogger asked about Dr. Paul Farmer, who incidentally I refer to below. AP photo above.

MP3. Full transcript below.

This is a Mediahacker.org podcast published on June 17, 2009. I’m Ansel Herz.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton spoke at length yesterday Monday about Haiti for the first time since his appointment as U.N. special envoy to Haiti last month. At a press conference in New York with Haitian foreign minister Alrich Nicolas and UN Secretary General Ban-Ki Moon, Clinton said he was committed to Haiti’s future.

“We will continue to elevate awareness of both the pain but the promise of Haiti and that there are real, genuine economic opportunities there – particularly as we deal with the government’s priorities in rebuilding the infrastructure and re-constructing the agricultural capacity of the country. I’ll say again: in all the years I’ve been going there, this is the best chance the Haitians have ever had to escape the darker parts of their past and to claim the promise of the future.”

Clinton repeated that statement several times throughout the press conference. But it is difficult to reconcile his optimism with recent events in Haiti. As a new storm season begins, much of the Haitian countryside has not recovered from the devastation wrought by last year’s hurricanes. The first round of elections for the Haitian Senate were boycotted by the vast majority of Haitians, with greater turnout in the upcoming second round unlikely as long as the popular Lavalas party remains excluded from the ballot.

For the past two weeks the Haitian capitol Port-Au-Prince has been rocked by angry protests of university students. They are demanding that Haitian President Rene Preval ratify an increase in the minimum wage to 200 gourdes. The measure was approved by the Haitian parliament, but Preval has delayed signing it into law while negotiating with business leaders.

The students say an increase in the minimum wage is 5 years overdue. The Haitian national police and so-called U.N. “peacekeeping” force MINUSTAH have responded fiercely to demonstrations outside the university. This is Yves Pierre-Louis being translated by Roger Leduc on the June 11 broadcast of WBAI’s Haiti: The Struggle Continues.

“Yesterday on June 10 the occupiers used MINUSTAH soldiers who attacked the faculties of technology, faculty of medicine, the school and they used tear gas at a very accelerated pace. Things really turned for the worse when one student died, Emmanuel Francois, on top of one other who was hurt by rubber bullet earlier in the week. So students and other manifestants burned vehicles and windshields were broken. Even the sick, people ailing inside the state general hospital, had to evacuate because they could not resist the tear gas that MINUSTAH was throwing at not only the faculties, but also inside the general hospital.”

Former President Clinton praised the MINUSTAH force at the press conference. He also said he wants to attract foreign investment to Haiti, particularly in the manufacturing sector. During his visit to Haiti in March, Clinton toured a textile factory accused of forcing sweatshop conditions on its workers. In the early 1990s the Clinton government helped pressure then-Haitian President Aristide into shrinking a proposed minimum wage hike.

No reporter at Monday’s press conference asked Clinton about the minimum wage or the political turmoil in Haiti. Associated Press reporter Elizabeth Lederer had the first question.

Mr. President, you’ve outlined a very long and ambitious plan and the first thing I thought was, ‘This sounds more like a full time job than a part-time dollar a year job.’ When are you planning to go to Haiti and how concerned are you that the current financial crisis and the fallout from it are going to have a really detrimental impact on getting the donors to pay up and really in trying to bring up the economy?”

Lederer’s AP article is a virtual transcription of Clinton’s remarks. Journalists asked about impact of the economy on international donors to Haiti multiple times over. At one point Clinton chuckled at Haitian concerns about the country’s sovereignty in his opening remarks.

“I saw some reports in the Haitian press speculating that this dollar a year job I took was somehow an imperialist plot to take over Haiti [laughter]. All I want to do is help the Haitians take over their own destiny.”

Clinton said one of his deputies as envoy to Haiti would be Eric Schwartz, who during the Clinton administration defended the prolonged detention of 300 HIV-positive Haitian political refugees at Guantanamo Bay. The refugees were eventually freed by court order after a long legal battle waged by Yale law students.

This has been a Mediahacker.org podcast. I’m Ansel Herz.

For more on the Clinton’s administration Haiti policies, see Dr. Paul Farmer’s book “The Uses of Haiti.” For instance, the introduction to that book cites a 1993 report by the Council on Hemisphere Affairs that said the administration’s pressure on President Aristide to negotiate with the military leaders who violently overthrew him in 1990 amounted to a “soft coup.”

Stay tuned for an announcement concerning myself and Haiti soon.

My first second-ever feature story for Free Speech Radio News looks back at the 81st Texas legislative session, which ends today. What’s “chubbing?” You can Google it if you want, or you can listen here.

On the night of November 2, 2004, I was standing outside a polling station with Mark Strama, handing flyers to citizens rushing in to vote before the election ended. I was a 16-year-old intern for Strama’s campaign for State Representative in the 50th District – my district. I won’t forget the moment when Strama got a text message on his Blackberry saying John Kerry was projected to win the presidency. We each let out a few whoops and cheers of joy. Bush’s apparent victory, of course, was all the more disappointing when I got home and saw the news. Strama, at least, beat the Republican incumbent by just 550 votes.

I saw Strama yesterday for the first time since 2004. He spoke with me for nearly a half hour in a Capitol corridor just outside the House chamber, but I couldn’t use more than a few seconds of the interview in my story. So I’m posting the nearly-complete interview below (MP3 here).

I imagine it’s of interest to Texas politics junkies and Strama’s constituents in the 50th District in Austin. For me, now an intense skeptic of government’s contribution to social justice no matter who’s in power, the interview was a useful window into the ongoing work of someone who has put all his energy, talent and passion into electoral politics. I think under other circumstances I would have been more rigorous in my questioning. Here’s his Wikipedia page and a breakdown of campaign contributions.

Also, I highly recommend Marc Becker’s story on an indigenous continental summit from today’s FSRN newscast.

I have a short story on Father Jean-Juste’s passing in yesterday’s Free Speech Radio News headlines.

Listen to a longer version of that piece below. Includes comments from Brian Concannon Jr., Director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, and Ira Kurzban, a Miami-based attorney – both friends of Father Jean-Juste who worked closely with him on several legal cases – as well as audio from an older interview with Father Jean-Juste himself.

Rest In Power, Father Jean-Juste. MP3 here. Transcript and full-length interviews below.

This is a Mediahacker.org podcast published on May 28, 2009. Noted Haitian civil rights leader and former political prisoner Father Gerard Jean-Juste died Wednesday at the age of 62.

Jean-Juste was a Haitian Catholic priest often compared the Martin Luther King Jr. for his non-violent human rights activism. He died in a Miami hospital from stroke and lung problems, but just three years earlier he languished in a Haitian jail suffering from leukemia. The interim government of Haiti imprisoned him following the 2004 U.S.-backed coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, for whom Jean-Juste was a prominent supporter.

Amnesty International designated the priest a “prisoner of conscience” and Jean-Juste was released after 18 months in prison. All charges against him were dropped in 2008, but he continued to receive medical treatment in Miami.

“He was one of the top leaders of the resistance to Duvalier, he was also one of the top leaders to the resistance to the 1991-94 military regime, and again was a top leader of the resistance to the 2004-2006 dictatorship in Haiti.”

Brian Concannon is the director of the Institute for justice and Democracy in Haiti and has worked closely with Father Jean-Juste.

“So every time there’ s been a dictatorship in Haiti in the last twenty years he was one of top people out there resisting it. He was also a leader in the United States where we’ve got a problem of treating Haitian immigrants discriminatorily. He’s not only achieved results including ending all three of those dictatorships, but what’s probably important was how he achieved those results – because he was a steadfast proponent of nonviolent tactics including sit-ins, demonstrations, popular education, those kind of things. He was very effectively able to channel the Haitian people’s desire for justice into concrete activities.”

Father Gerry, as he was known, was raised in Les Cayes, in southeastern Haiti. He became the first Haitian priest ordained by the U.S. Catholic Church in 1971. With Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Jean-Juste helped lead the “Ti Legliz” or “little church” movement in poor parishes that eventually toppled the second Duvalier dictatorship in 1981.

Despite his work for the poor of Haiti, or perhaps because of it, Jean-Juste had a rocky relationship with the official church. In 2006 The Catholic Church of Haiti suspended him, while he was still jailed by the Latortue interim regime, when supporters tried to register his candidacy in Haiti’s presidential election.

“Well I think ultimately he would have been president of Haiti, quite frankly, in a fair and full election – if there was a fair election.”

Ira Kurzban, a Miami attorney, who has represented Jean-Juste and the former Aristide government, says Jean-Juste’s legacy is important to poor people everywhere.

“But just like Father Jean Bertrand Aristide, he represented the poor. I mean, his parish was the parish of the poor. And the poor of course are 95% of the people in Haiti. So they knew whose side he was on, who he stood for, they knew that he wanted to change their economic condition. So he was deprived of that opportunity by Latortue, by the U.S., French and Canadian governments, who really have conspired, I think fairly consistently over the years, to diminish democracy in Haiti and not promote it.

But I think his legacy is really still an incredibly legacy of creating, really, a Haitian community in South Florida and significantly changing the law for all refugees. I mean, we have countless examples where through the grassroots work that he did and the organizing, and going out in the street, and our bringing lawsuits, we for example developed the right that asylum seekers and get work authorization while their cases are pending. That didn’t exist before we brought one of the lawsuits here. The grassroots work he did let ultimately called “The Haitian Refugee Center versus McNiery” that went ultimately to the United States Supreme Court – and protected the rights of over 200,000 farmworkers.

And I think the last mark of what he did, politically, is the work he did everyday as a person, as a priest, as a human being who always had his heart and his mind and his whole being open to ministering for the least well-off, here and in Haiti, has an impact on all of those people.”

In a 2007 interview with Global X, Father Jean-Juste spoke about the miracles he witnessed at a soup kitchen he founded in Haiti.

“I was receiving some friends in Haiti once. They asked me, “What can I do to help?” They visited my parish. And I remember the cry of a young child, a five-year-old boy, who said, “Father, I’m hungry.” That cry, really stays into deeply into my heart. I went to the alter and cried to God, What can I help. This child belonged to a family of ten children – mother ill and father passed away. And then suddenly, this group who visited me with Margeurite Frost, they offer help. And since 2000, we have started a canteen, a soup kitchen and we are feeding thousands and thousands of people, to help so many people.

I wanted to put in practice Jesus’ command, “Feed the hungry.” And a boy came, and I found him. I didn’t know how I was going to do the miracle – it reminds me the embarassment of Philip when Jesus ordered him to feed the crowd! Philip didn’t know what to do…[laughing, unintelligible] “What are we to do, look at this crowd, we have nothing!” And the miracle has been done. This is the type of miracle that really keeps me at work and ready to sacrifice myself, all the way, for these people that we are getting out of hunger.”

The Archdiocese of Miami released a statement saying, “He is to be remembered for his never-ending work with and for the poor both here in Miami and in Haiti.” This has been a Mediahacker.org podcast, I’m Ansel Herz in Austin.

• Cross-posted to Youtube
• Full interview with Ira Kurzban MP3
• Full interview with Brian Concannon Jr. MP3
• Father Gerard Jean-Juste’s interview with Global X video
• Jean Juste of Haiti – Cause of Death: Indefinite Detention

Broken glass from shattered police car windows

Early this morning 18-year-old Nathaniel Sanders was fatally shot by Austin Police officer Leonardo Quintana at the Walnut Creek Apartment Complex in East Austin. I arrived at the scene at about noon and spoke to residents who were gathered outside. These voices are not being heard enough right now. This podcast just aired on KVRX minutes ago.

Download the MP3 here and feel free to re-broadcast. Transcript below.

This Mediahacker.org podcast was recorded on the afternoon of May 11 2009, the day after Mother’s Day. At the Walnut Creek Apartments just south of highway 183 and Manor road in Austin, a mother named Destiny woke up to gunshots earlier this morning.

18-year-old Nathaniel Sanders is dead. According to the Austin Police Department, Sanders and two other men were sleeping in a car parked in the complex, when an Austin Police officer approached the vehicle. Police say they suspected the vehicle had been used in recent robberies.

Officer Leonardo Quintana took the man in the driver’s seat into custody, then came back for the other two men. APD says Quintana saw a weapon in Sanders’ lap and shot him. Police say the third individual got out of the car and charged the officer. The officer shot him too – that man is now recovering in the hospital.

Austin Police chief Art Acevedo said at a news conference he believes the deadly shooting of Sanders was legal.

Destiny, holding her baby and standing just yards away from where Nathaniel Sanders was shot to death, said APD was out of control.

Gathered around their doorsteps and cars in the early afternoon, here is some of what other residents of Walnut Creek Apartments had to say about the shooting. Almost everyone asked not to be identified by name.

Hours earlier, at least one individual was arrested after rocks were thrown at police cars. Destiny said the community’s healing process had just begun.

Nathaniel Sanders’ death comes almost two years after Kevin Brown was fatally shot in the back while fleeing from officer Michael Olson outside Chester’s Nightclub. I’m Ansel Herz in Austin, this has been a mediahacker.org podcast .

5/14 Update: APD is claiming that Sanders reached for a weapon near his waist. Cross posted to Houston Indymedia.

Flashback to two years ago: Shot in the Back: APD, City of Austin, and Corporate Media Blame Shooting on East Austin Club

Download the MP3 here. Embed code here. As always, feel free to re-broadcast and share with others.

Transcript below. Sunday evening update: I made a slight correction to the original, so if there was a problem when you tried to listen, try again. Everything’s working now. Also, apologies to Spanish speakers for my terrible pronunciation.

As the sound of Son Jarocho, traditional music from the Mexican state of Veracruz, echoed off the walls of the Capitol, more than 1000 people prepared to march across downtown Austin on May 1st to demand reforms of immigration policy. They had rallied to almost an hour of impassioned speeches from grassroots organizers – like Wendolnya Menses from the Workers Defense Project.

The march set off down Congress Avenue, stretching a few city blocks. There was music , chanting – even a brigade of moms with babies in their strollers. Placards and banners called for the shut down of the Hutto family Detention center, an end to immigration raids on workplaces, and a halt to construction on the border wall. Maria Rodriguez said hard-working immigrants, like her parents, should be made citizens.

As marchers crossed Cesar Chavez Street and converged on City Hall, Jeshua, a college student, stood in his high school graduation robes. He asked Congress to pass the DREAM Act, which would create a path for undocumented youth to citizenship.

The march was all but ignored by the local TV news media, as journalists stoked fears of the so-called swine flu . The disease appears to have originated in Veracruz near a sprawling corporate hog farm built just after the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, but the media hype hasn’t explored that angle of the story. It didn’t scare immigrants and their allies out of coming together in the streets to celebrate May Day, either.

This has been a Mediahacker.org podcast. I’m Ansel Herz in Austin. Thanks for listening.

Cross-posted to Houston and radio Indymedia. Podcast has aired on KVRX’s On the Fringe and KPWR. Re-published on May 5 at Wiretapmag.org.