[R-G] Disturbing the Peace, in Haiti and New Orleans

[Anthony Fenton]

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/11/5760/

Published on Tuesday, December 11, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Disturbing the Peace, in Haiti and New Orleans

by Brian Concannon Jr.
Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste, a Catholic priest from Haiti, just does not  
know when to shut up. In the 1970’s he saw his people starved and  
persecuted while Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier lived in opulence,  
so he organized for change. The Duvalier regime responded as  
dictatorships do, and kicked him out of the country. When he reached  
Miami, Fr. Gerry saw that the safety he found there did not extend to  
immigrants locked up in detention centers or sent back to face  
torture or worse in Haiti and countries like it. So he organized  
there for change. He founded Florida’s Haitian Refugee Center to  
bring the struggle for justice to the U.S. courts, and coordinated  
demonstrations to bring the struggle to the streets.

The United States responded as democracies should: it let Fr. Gerry  
do his work, as long as he did not break the law. He did not win all  
the battles here that he should have- our laws and our courts are not  
perfect. But he was at least able to criticize and mobilize without  
fear of persecution, and sometimes even win.

Bill Quigley, a Catholic law professor from New Orleans, cannot stop  
helping people organizing for change. He has been a leading advocate  
for the victims of Katrina since he weathered the storm in a New  
Orleans hospital where his wife Debbie, a nurse, works, trying to  
help. The hospital patients did not need a lawyer then, but the  
families still without homes and the kids still without good schools  
need one now, so Bill is busy. In 30 years of public interest  
lawyering, Bill has stood up for a whole spectrum of people fighting  
for social justice, including peace protestors, death-row inmates and  
advocates for fair education, healthcare and housing.

Fr. Gerry brought the lessons he learned in the U.S. about non- 
violent organizing for social change back to Haiti. In early 2004,  
when the brutal, unconstitutional and U.S.-supported interim regime  
took over from Haiti’s elected government, Fr. Jean-Juste became the  
most prominent and respected political dissident. He denounced the  
killing of political opponents, the political arrests, the looting of  
public coffers and the tax breaks lavished on the wealthy while the  
poor starved. People listened, so the regime responded as  
dictatorships do, and arrested Fr. Gerry on trumped up charges,  
jailing him for over seven months. The authorities accused him of  
many things over the next two years- three murders, treason, gun  
possession, plotting against the state and criminal conspiracy, all  
without a shred of evidence or a single witness.

There was one charge — made by the police at one of Fr. Gerry’s  
arrests, but never in court — that might have stuck: disturbing  
public order. Where public order meant poor kids dying of hunger and  
young men massacred for living in a politically-active neighborhood,  
Fr. Gerry disturbed the order. He fed hundreds of children at his  
church to show that it could be done. He used his pulpit, the radio  
waves and the streets to denounce the repression, and remind people  
that there was a better way.

When Professor Quigley found out about Fr. Gerry’s first arrest, he  
could not help but go down to Haiti to help. Bill appeared in court  
alongside Fr. Gerry’s Haitian lawyer, Mario Joseph, and stood at Fr.  
Gerry’s side during particularly dangerous times. Bill was roughed up  
once trying to shield Fr. Gerry from a crowd before his second  
arrest, which he recounted in a July 2005 Common Dreams article. But  
the police and the courts always treated him with respect, always  
allowed him to do his job.

The American professor’s presence in court and at the police station  
was a potent reminder of how a government should respond to its  
critics. The police, prosecutors, judges, lawyers and even the  
defendant saw Bill as representing a justice system that rejected  
punishing people for their political opinions, tolerated dissent as  
long as it was expressed legally, and respected the right of lawyers  
to assist their clients.

Bill’s presence had a tangible impact. It helped give one judge the  
courage to release Fr. Gerry provisionally (the judge was forced off  
the bench the next month; Fr. Gerry was re-arrested eight months  
later). It helped bolster Attorney Joseph, who managed to obtain  
another provisional release, which is still in effect, in January 2006.

But despite Bill’s efforts, Fr. Gerry’s legal struggle continued,  
even after the restoration of democracy to Haiti in 2006. The latest  
chapter was an appeals court hearing on November 26, to decide Fr.  
Gerry’s challenge to his indictment. Bill had planned to go to Port- 
au-Prince for the hearing, but a few days before, he cancelled. He  
was needed even more in New Orleans, to represent public housing  
tenants in their struggle against the Bush Administration’s plan to  
destroy 4,500 units of desperately-needed housing (see HUD Sends New  
Orleans Bulldozers and $400,000 Apartments for the Holidays, December  
3).

In Haiti, Fr. Gerry’s hearing went fairly well. The judges allowed  
him and his lawyers ample time to make their case, and appeared to be  
under no inappropriate pressure. Hundreds of Fr. Gerry’s supporters  
packed the courtroom for the hearing or protested outside, but there  
were no incidents, and no one was arrested (see My Rosary Is My Only  
Weapon, Fr. Jean-Juste Goes To Court, Again, San Francisco Bayview,  
December 5, 2007). The court has not yet issued its decision, but the  
fact that a politically-charged hearing was held fairly and  
peacefully was a welcome sign of Haiti’s increasing democratization.

In New Orleans, Bill’s work went less well. He was brutally arrested  
by a New Orleans deputy sheriff. The arrest was caught on video,  
which shows Bill quietly standing by as his clients explain why they  
should be allowed to enter a public New Orleans City Council meeting.  
Suddenly a deputy grabs Bill from behind, slams him against the wall  
and roughly handcuffs him. The charge: disturbing the peace. The fact  
that the lawyer whose protests had been tolerated by Haiti’s  
dictatorship was brutally arrested for standing outside a hearing  
room in Louisiana is an unwelcome sign of America’s decreasing  
democratization.

After the arrest, Bill tried to deflect attention from his experience  
to the persecution of his clients. He noted that “we live in a system  
where if you cheer or chant in a city council, you get arrested. But  
you can demolish 4,500 people’s apartments, and everybody is supposed  
to go along with that. That’s not going to happen.” He added that  
“there’s going to be a lot more disturbing the peace before this is  
all over, I am afraid.”

Although the video footage of Bill’s arrest is disturbing, the meager  
press coverage of it is even more so. If a nationally-known professor  
having his head slammed against a wall on film for peacefully helping  
the victims of the most notorious natural disaster of our times ask  
their City Council for help defending their homes against a  
discredited Bush Administration does not generate outrage, what will?

The attack on Bill was clearly designed to intimidate New Orleans’  
political dissidents. The attack itself, and the lack of an outcry  
about it, will encourage more attacks. Even more people will hesitate  
before standing up to the Bush Administration and its local allies.

But the attack will not stop the New Orleans tenants, or their  
lawyer. Today, International Human Rights Day, they went before the  
city’s Historic Conservation District Review Committee, bringing over  
100 protestors to the meeting. They won one: the Committee agreed to  
stop the demolition of one of the three developments. The tenants  
will keep fighting the other demolitions, and they will keep  
exercising their Constitutional rights to speak, to cheer and to  
chant, to disturb a peace that tolerates the destruction of public  
housing during a housing crisis. Let’s hope that New Orleans can  
treat its dissidents and their defenders at least as well as Haiti  
now would.

Human rights lawyer Brian Concannon Jr. directs the Institute for  
Justice & Democracy in Haiti, www.HaitiJustice.org.