The politics of disaster relief

For more info on responsibly supporting Haiti, this article by Tim Wise breaks down some ideas in a way that might be helpful in talking friends or family out of making their donations through huge and/or U.S.-funded aid organizations: “The problem is that aid goes not to projects or services but first to service providers, the agencies themselves. And aid is power. Those who get more aid end up stronger than those who don’t.”

It’s terrifying how easily grassroots support can be mobilized for “aid” that is actually a militarized imperial project. Media coverage of disasters like this is so empty of social/economic/political history – and so filled with incredibly painful images of suffering – that we get traumatized into sending whatever donation we can to the most publicized agencies in order to relieve the immediate devastation we’re seeing. But as Tim Wise points out, “More than half the budgets of most of the largest US-based aid agencies come from the US government…[and] those agencies naturally tend to be accountable mainly to the US government, not…to the local community they serve.”

And as we all know, the U.S. government is not about helping Haiti. The U.S. government is about dominating Haiti through coups, occupations, embargos, and privatization. U.S. imperialism and capitalism are the reason that this earthquake was so devastating – the reason that so many buildings were poorly constructed and collapsed into rubble, that hospitals and clinics were understocked and understaffed, that basic infrastructure and emergency services were so inadequate – the reason that Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

And imperialism and capitalism are the reason that the U.S. is responding to this crisis with massive militarization, and calling it aid. Over and over again, the U.S. has exploited crises like this to push through devastating economic policies that rebuild poor nations into privatized, dependent wastelands filled with resorts for rich Westerners. Aid from the U.S. government can’t be disentangled from the violent disaster capitalism that Naomi Klein talks about here and in The Shock Doctrine.

Already, U.S. response to this earthquake looks sickeningly like what went down all too recently in New Orleans after Katrina, when (poor, Black) survivors were criminalized for attempting to help themselves and their communities, the city was militarized, and billions of dollars of money pledged in aid was tied up in huge organizations like the Red Cross and kept out of the hands of local, grassroots groups.

The compassionate response to the Haitian earthquake from so much of the U.S. and global population is amazingly powerful and heartfelt. It could be an opportunity to send major support to independent Haitian organizations that are helping their own communities, but those organizations are left struggling while millions of well-meaning people in the U.S. text $10 donations to the Red Cross on their cell phones. In the aftermath of a crisis, of course we want to do whatever we can to help, but it’s so unfortunate that the organizations that are able to take the most advantage of that are the ones that are so dubious in terms of their accountability to long-term local struggles.

Six human rights groups issued a statement calling for aid that is grounded in human rights, sustainability, and self-determination for all Haitians:

“There is no doubt that Haiti’s hungry, thirsty, injured, and sick urgently need all the assistance the international community can provide, but it is critical that the underlying goal of improving human rights drives the distribution of every dollar of aid given to Haiti,” said Loune Viaud, Director of Strategic Planning and Operations at Zanmi Lasante. “The only way to avoid escalation of this crisis is for international aid to take a long-term view and strive to rebuild a stronger Haiti-one that includes a government that can ensure the basic human rights of all Haitians and a nation that is empowered to demand those rights.”