How independent journalism can have an effect

As many progressive, principled journalists will tell you, dear reader, the road trod by reporters genuinely trying to make this world a better place is not an easy one. Dangerous locales, long hours, little pay and no security (I myself have had health insurance for about one year out of the last seven) are par for the course of the journalist's life in this sense. But, despite all that, once in a while, an important message breaks through.

When some inspired soul from Connecticut wrote to Senator Christopher J. Dodd and Representative Christopher Murphy “to demand the sugar cane workers in the Dominican Republic (i.e. the Haitian immigrants and those of Haitian descent) be guaranteed full civil and labor rights in exchange for the Dominican Republic's right to sell sugar in the USA,” and in doing so quoted my March 13th article for Inter Press Service, Exhibit Reveals a Bitter Harvest, which chronicled the Esclaves au Paradis: L'esclavage contemporain en République Dominicaine (Slaves in Paradise: Contemporary Slavery in the Dominican Republic) exhibition in Paris, it was just such a moment.

The article, which also referred to the cases of Dilcia Yean and Violeta Bosico Cofi, the struggle of Dominican activist Sonia Pierre and the work of Father Christopher Hartley, was one of two I wrote on the subject of Haitians in the Dominican Republic, and, taken in tandem with the Appeal to Decency on behalf of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent that I delivered at the Journalists & Editors Workshop on Latin America and the Caribbean in Miami, Florida in May of this year, represent my attempt to present an honest picture of some of the issues involved in the largest immigration question confronting the island of Hispaniola at present.

It is good to know that the word is getting out.

The rain is falling here in Paris and the strike is about to begin.