#BDS 

UAW 4811

UC officials charge that academic workers strike over pro-Palestinian protests is illegal

Jaweed Kaleem, Paloma Esquivel
Fri, May 17, 2024 

Academic workers at UC Irvine walk the picket line during a strike on Nov. 15, 2022. 

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

As the 48,000-member UC academic workers union announced a Monday strike at UC Santa Cruz over alleged free speech violations during pro-Palestinian protests, the University of California on Friday filed a labor complaint to stop what they allege is an illegal action, heightening tensions roiling the university system.

The union's decision to strike on the 19,764-student campus — where nearly 2,000 students are in graduate school — could deal a blow to operations at a critical time during the final weeks of the spring quarter.

The targeting of UC Santa Cruz came after 79% of voting members across the state this week authorized the union leadership to call for "rolling" strikes — not over wages and benefits, but for alleged unfair labor practices against union members who supported pro-Palestinian student protests demanding that universities divest from Israel and weapons companies.

The union represents graduate student teaching assistants, researchers and other academic workers at University of California’s 10 campuses.

The Santa Cruz strike would be the first of potentially several work stoppages that the union intends to launch one by one across campuses based on how receptive administrations are to pro-Palestinian activists' demands.

The strike threats prompted UC leaders to file their own state unfair labor practice charge against the union on Friday that called on student workers to "cease and desist" the pending walkout.

"This strike directly violates the [collective bargaining agreement's] no strike clauses, and has no relation to UAW members’ employment with the university. Instead, as the UAW and its members’ communications make clear, UAW strikes to support protest activity surrounding the conflict in the Middle East," UC said in their filing with the state's labor board.

UC officials allege the strike is illegal because of a no-strike clause in the union's contract, ratified in late 2022, that won significant pay increases and benefit improvements for union members. The union argues that the strike is within its legal rights because it's connected to an unfair labor practice charge workers filed in early May with the state's labor board.

"Particularly in today’s climate, if UAW [and other unions] can disregard no-strike clauses, the University — and every other public agency in California — would face constant strikes advancing political and/or social viewpoints," the university's filing said.

The union chose to strike at a smaller UC campus where tensions have been lower and police have not been called in to make arrests or sweeps. But the campus is not a stranger to worker protests. In 2020, the university fired dozens of grad students from their teaching assistant positions after strikes there. At least 17 arrests were made during a related student-led demonstration.

This spring, UCLA, UC Irvine and UC Berkeley have been particularly volatile flashpoints of pro-Palestinian protests. A violent mob attack on a UCLA pro-Palestinian encampment last month has led to multiple investigations into how the university handled the melee and the delayed police response to it.

For two weeks, students at UC Santa Cruz, including unionized graduate students, have maintained a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus in support of divestment from Israel. The strike comes as protesters and the university administration have indicated that they've reached a standstill. Protest leaders said on Thursday that they were "under imminent threat of police sweep" after they said the university gave them formal notice to "cease all camping activities on university property."

No length of time was given for the strike, which the union announced with a promotional video on the social media site X, but a UC Santa Cruz union member said it could last through June 30.

Speaking before the strike decision, Rafael Jaime, United Auto Workers Local 4811 co-president and a doctoral candidate in UCLA’s English department, said a strike would mean "all academic work would cease, including research, teaching and grading."

Read more: 'Maximize chaos.' UC academic workers authorize strike, alleging rights violated during protests

Student workers will receive $500 weekly in strike pay, or about 33% less than the average teaching assistant makes for a 20-hour work week, he said.

Jess Fournier, a union representative at UC Santa Cruz, said that while the alleged unfair labor practices did not take place on their campus, workers there view the university’s response as a threat to workers across the UC system.

"If members of our academic community are being maced and beaten for peacefully protesting, our ability to collectively organize as workers, and our fundamental right to have free speech and protest on any issue is threatened."

Fournier said academic workers at the university would continue their walkouts over the coming months until the university resolves the alleged unfair labor practices.

"If they refuse to do so, more campuses may be called as necessary. Workers on every campus are extremely fired up about this,” they said. "This is a statewide issue. Even though we are the ones leading the charge. It seems very likely other campuses will follow unless and until these unfair labor practices are resolved.”

Experts say the union is taking a novel approach in its strike because it is not focused on contract matters but instead on free speech.

The union complaint focuses on the arrests of pro-Palestinian graduate student protesters at UCLA and suspensions and other discipline at UC San Diego and UC Irvine. It accuses the universities of retaliating against student workers and unlawfully changing workplace policies to suppress pro-Palestinian speech.

In a letter sent to graduate student workers on Wednesday, UC officials warned students against striking.

"Participating in the strike does not change, excuse, or modify, an employee’s normal work duties or expectations. And, unlike a protected strike, you could be subject to corrective action for failing to perform your duties,” the unsigned letter from the UC office of the president said.

Read more: UCLA struggles to recover after 200 arrested, pro-Palestinian camp torn down

The letter also defended universities using riot police to break up protests.

“We have a duty to ensure that all speech can be heard, that our entire community is safe, and that our property and common areas are accessible for all. These duties require the UC to take action when protests endanger the community and violate our shared norms regarding safe behavior and the use of public spaces,” it said.

The strike vote comes as campuses throughout the UC system have experienced tensions and protests over the Israel-Hamas war, including a violent mob attack on a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA and the arrest of 47 protesters at UC Irvine on Wednesday.

UC Riverside and UC Berkeley have reached agreements with protesters to end encampments and explore divestment from weapons companies. Leaders at those universities have rejected calls to target Israel specifically or for academic boycotts against exchange programs and partnerships with Israeli universities, as some protesters have demanded.

While some Jewish students have supported pro-Palestinian encampments, national Jewish groups have criticized the divestment movement. They say it is antisemitic because it aims to delegitimize the only predominantly Jewish nation.

In Santa Cruz, emails and calls from The Times to several Jewish student organizations seeking comment on the strike and pro-Palestinian protests were not immediately returned.

"We are aware of the challenges happening on campus and right now are focusing all of our attention on supporting students and working with campus administration," said an auto-reply from Becka Ross, the executive director of the Santa Cruz Hillel.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Graduate workers in California to strike over treatment of Gaza protesters

Michael Sainato
Fri, 17 May 2024 

UCLA faculty and staff members in Los Angeles on 9 May.Photograph: Jae C Hong/AP

California’s huge university system is facing widespread disruption after workers voted to hold a series of strikes in protest of its treatment of Gaza protesters.

The University of California (UC) has more than 280,000 students and 227,000 faculty and staff on campuses across the state.

Members of the United Auto Workers (UAW), which represents 48,000 graduate workers throughout the system, voted to authorize a strike on Wednesday. On Friday, the union called on graduate workers at UC Santa Cruz to walk off the job on Monday. About 2,000 graduate workers are represented by the union at UC Santa Cruz.

The vote was called in response to charges of unfair labor practices filed against universities over their response to Gaza protests where union members were attacked by counter-protesters and police.

The UAW called for a ceasefire in Gaza in December. Best known for its representation of auto workers, the UAW is planning to engage in a series of “stand up” strikes where the union’s executive board will call on campuses to strike on a rolling basis. The tactic was used in the UAW’s successful strike against the big three US automakers late last year.

“At the heart of this is our right to free speech and peaceful protest,” said Rafael Jaime, a graduate worker in the English department at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and president of UAW 4811.

“If members of the academic community are maced and beaten down for peacefully demonstrating on this issue, our ability to speak up on all issues is threatened. As days pass with no remedies for UC’s unfair labor practices, academic workers on more and more campuses are preparing to stand up to demand that our rights to free speech, protest and collective action be respected.”

Graduate workers at UCLA, the University of Southern California, the University of California at San Diego, Brown University and Harvard University have filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board over how their university administrations unilaterally changed policies and responded to Gaza protests.

According to the union, UC Riverside and UC Berkeley have been negotiating with protesters over their demands for transparency on university investments and divestment from Israel and weapons contractors and manufacturers contributing to the war in Gaza. The union is also demanding amnesty for all academic workers who face disciplinary action and arrest for participating in the protests.

The University of California administration has claimed the strikes are illegal despite the union classifying them as unfair labor practice strikes that are protected activity.

“The University strongly disagrees with the UAW that any exception to this general rule applies and strongly believes that the action is an unlawful strike,” stated the administration in response to the strike vote. “In response to an unlawful strike, the University will take action with the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) to assert that the strike is unlawful.”




University of California Workers Authorize Union to Call for Strike Over Protest Crackdowns

Jonathan Wolfe
Thu, 16 May 2024 

Counterprotesters fight with pro-Palestinian demonstrators at the pro-Palestinian protest encampment on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, on April 30, 2024. (Mark Abramson/The New York Times)


LOS ANGELES — Unions are known for fighting for higher pay and workplace conditions. But academic workers in the University of California system authorized their union Wednesday to call for a strike over something else entirely: free speech.

The union, UAW 4811, represents about 48,000 graduate students and other academic workers at 10 University of California system campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Its members, incensed over the university system’s handling of campus protests, pushed their union to address grievances extending beyond the bread-and-butter issues of collective bargaining to concerns over protesting and speaking out in their workplace.

The strike authorization vote, which passed with 79% support, comes two weeks after dozens of counterprotesters attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA for several hours without police intervention and without arrests. Officers in riot gear tore down the encampment the next day and arrested more than 200 people.

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The vote does not guarantee a strike but rather gives the executive board of the local union, which is part of the United Auto Workers, the ability to call a strike at any time. Eight of the 10 University of California campuses still have a month of instruction left before breaking for summer.

The union said it had called the vote because the University of California unilaterally and unlawfully changed policies regarding free speech, discriminated against pro-Palestinian speech and created an unsafe work environment by allowing attacks on protesters, among other grievances.

“At the heart of this is our right to free speech and peaceful protest,” Rafael Jaime, the president of UAW 4811, said in a statement after the vote. “If members of the academic community are maced and beaten down for peacefully demonstrating on this issue, our ability to speak up on all issues is threatened.”

A spokesperson for the University of California president’s office said in a statement that a strike would set “a dangerous precedent that would introduce nonlabor issues into labor agreements.”

“To be clear, the UC understands and embraces its role as a forum for free speech, lawful protests and public debate,” said the spokesperson, Heather Hansen. “However, given that role, these nonlabor-related disputes cannot prevent it from fulfilling its academic mission.”

There are still several active encampments at University of California campuses, including UC Merced, UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis. Protesters at UC Berkeley began dismantling their encampment Tuesday after reaching an agreement with university officials.

In a letter to the protesters Tuesday, Berkeley’s chancellor, Carol Christ, said that the university would begin discussions around divestment from certain companies and that she planned to publicly support “efforts to secure an immediate and permanent cease-fire” by the end of the month. But she said that divestment from companies that do business with, or in, Israel was not within her authority.

After packing up their tents, some of the Berkeley protesters traveled on Wednesday to UC Merced to attend a meeting held by the University of California governing board. More than 100 people signed up to give public comment, and nearly all of those who spoke about the protests criticized the handling of them by university administrations.

The strike authorization vote enables what is known as a “stand-up” strike, a tactic that was first employed by the United Auto Workers last year during its contract negotiations with General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis. Rather than calling on all members to strike at once, the move allows the local union’s executive board to focus strikes on certain campuses or among certain groups of workers, to gain leverage.

Jaime said before the vote that the union would use the tactic to “reward campuses that make progress” and possibly call strikes at those that don’t. He added that the union would announce the strikes “only at the last minute, in order to maximize chaos and confusion for the employer.”

The union said Wednesday that its executive board would announce later this week if it was calling for strikes.

Tobias Higbie, a professor of history and labor studies at UCLA, said that while striking for free speech was unusual, it wasn’t unheard of. The academic workers’ union is also largely made up of young people, who have been far more receptive to organized labor than young people in even the recent past, he said.

“It points to how generational change is not only impacting workplaces, but it’s going to impact unions,” Higbie said. “Young members are going to make more and more demands like this on their unions as we go forward over the next couple of years, and so I think it’s probably a harbinger of things to come.”

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Reflections on Student Activism
And the Struggle for a Better World

By William D. Hartung

May 14, 2024
Source: Tom Dispatch



I’ve spent most of my life as an advocate for a more peaceful world. In recent years, I’ve been focused on promoting diplomacy over war and exposing the role of giant weapons companies like Lockheed Martin and its allies in Congress and at the Pentagon as they push for a “military-first” foreign policy. I’ve worked at an alphabet soup of think tanks: the Council on Economic Priorities (CEP), the World Policy Institute (WPI), the New America Foundation, the Center for International Policy (CIP), and my current institutional home, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft (QI).

Most of what I’ve done in my career is firmly rooted in my college experience. I got a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Columbia University, class of 1978, and my time there prepared me for my current work — just not in the way one might expect. I took some relevant courses like Seymour Melman’s class on America’s permanent war economy and Marcia Wright’s on the history of the colonization of South Africa. But my most important training came outside the classroom, as a student activist.

Student Activism: Columbia in the 1970s

As I look at the surge of student organizing aimed at stopping the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, I’m reminded that participation in such movements can have a long-term impact, personally as well as politically, one that reaches far beyond the struggle of the moment. In my case, the values and skills I learned in movements like the divestment campaign against apartheid South Africa of the 1970s and 1980s formed the foundation of virtually everything I’ve done since.

I was not an obvious candidate to become a student radical. I grew up in Lake View, New York, a rock-ribbed Republican suburb of Buffalo. My dad was a Goldwater Republican, so committed that we even had that Republican senator’s “merch” prominently displayed in our house. (The funniest of those artifacts: a can of “Gold Water,” a sickly sweet variation on ginger ale.)

Although I fit in well enough for a while, by the time I was a teenager my goal had become all too straightforward: get out of my hometown as soon as possible. My escape route: Columbia University, where I expected to join a vibrant, progressive student movement.

Unfortunately, when I got there in 1973, the activist surge of the anti-Vietnam War era had almost totally subsided. By my sophomore year, though, things started to pick up. The September 1973 coup that overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of Chile’s Salvador Allende and the ongoing repression of the Black population in apartheid South Africa had sparked a new round of student activism.

My first foray into politics in college was joining the Columbia University Committee for Human Rights in Chile. It started out as a strictly student organization, but our activities took on greater meaning and our commitment intensified when we befriended a group of Chilean exiles who had moved into our neighborhood on New York’s Upper West Side.

In 1974, I also took time off to work in the New York branch of the United Farm Workers‘ boycott of non-union grapes, lettuce, and Gallo wine. I ran a picket line in front of the Daitch Shopwell supermarket at 110th and Broadway in Manhattan. One of my regulars on that picket line was an older gentleman named Jim Peck. It took a while before I learned that he had been a central figure in the Freedom Rides in the South during the late 1940s and early 1950s. He had first been arrested for civil rights organizing in 1947 in Durham, North Carolina, alongside the legendary Bayard Rustin. He and his fellow activists, black and white, went on to ride buses together across the South to press the case for the integration of interstate transportation. On a number of occasions, they would be brutally beaten by white mobs. In my own brief career as a student activist, I faced no such risks, but Jim’s history of commitment and courage inspired me.

When I got back from my stint with the United Farm Workers, the main political activity on the Columbia campus was a campaign to get the university to divest from companies involved in apartheid South Africa. We didn’t win then, but we did help put that issue on the map. Ten years later, a student divestment movement finally succeeded, and Columbia became the first major university to commit to fully divesting from South Africa. That modest victory, part of sustained anti-apartheid efforts on college campuses and beyond, would be followed nationwide by Congress’s passage of comprehensive sanctions on the apartheid regime, despite a veto attempt by then-President Ronald Reagan.

Many of us kept working on the anti-apartheid issue after graduation. I remained a member of the New York Committee to Oppose Bank Loans to South Africa and, for a while, was also a member of the collective that put out Southern Africa Magazine in support of the anti-apartheid struggle and liberation movements in southern Africa. In New York, our mentors and inspirations in the anti-apartheid movement were people like Prexy Nesbitt, a charismatic organizer from Chicago, and Jennifer Davis, a South African exile who edited our magazine and went on to run the American Committee on Africa. For that magazine, I helped track companies breaking the arms embargo on South Africa as well as multinational corporations propping up the regime, an experience that served me well when I went on to become a researcher in the world of think tanks.

From Student Activist to Think-Tank Expert

By that time, I was fully engaged politically. As I approached the end of my four years at Columbia, however, it slowly dawned on me that I was going to have to get a real job. The good news was that, in my brief career as a student activist, I had learned some basic skills, including how to craft an article, give a speech, and run a meeting.

The bad news was that I had absolutely no idea how to find gainful employment. So, I went home to Lake View for a while and my mom, who was a member of the International Typographical Union, gave me a crash course in proofreading and how to use official proofreading symbols. On the strength of those lessons, I got a job at a New York print shop, where I spent a miserable year proofreading magazines like Psychology Today, Modern Bride, Skiing, Boating, and pretty much any other publication ending in -ing.

Then I got lucky. A friend had just turned down a job, mostly because the pay was so lousy, at the Council on Economic Priorities (CEP), a think tank founded to promote corporate social responsibility. But my expenses at the time were, to say the least, minimal, so I took the job.

The focus of my first CEP project was economic conversion, a process designed to help communities reduce their dependency on Pentagon spending. It had been launched by Gordon Adams (now Abby Ross), then finishing The Iron Triangle, his immensely useful analysis of the military-industrial complex. While at CEP, I wrote about the top 100 Pentagon contractors, the top 25 arms exporting firms, and the economic benefits of a nuclear weapons freeze. My goal: produce research that would help activists and advocates make their case.

And so it went. Other than a stint in New York State government from the mid-1980s through the early 1990s, I’ve been a think-tank analyst ever since. At the moment, most of the issues I’ve advocated for, from reducing the Pentagon budget to cutting nuclear arsenals, are heading in exactly the wrong direction. By contrast, though, the issues I worked on as a student did indeed make progress, though only after years of organizing. South Africa’s apartheid regime actually fell in 1992. In 1975, California Governor Jerry Brown pushed through a state law guaranteeing the right of farmworkers to organize. In Chile, Pinochet was ousted thanks to a 1988 national referendum and lived his last years as an international pariah, even spending 503 days under house arrest in the United Kingdom on charges of “genocide and terrorism that include murder.”

The main difference between the successful solidarity movements I participated in and the other political movements in which I’ve played some small part was that both the South Africa divestment campaign and the United Farm Workers (UFW) boycott took their leads from people and organizations on the front lines of the struggle. Solidarity movements contributed in a significant fashion to those victories, but the central players were those front-line organizations, from the African National Congress and the Black Consciousness Movement in South Africa to UFW organizers working in the fields of California.

The Student Movement for Gaza

Which brings me back to the state of current student activism. I live 10 blocks from the main gates of Columbia University, the site of one of the more active student organizations pressing for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to government and institutional support for Israel’s brutal military campaign there, which has already killed nearly 35,000 people and left many others without medical care, adequate food, or clean water. The International Court of Justice has already suggested that a plausible case can be made for the Netanyahu government being guilty of genocide. Whether you use that term or simply call Israeli actions “war crimes,” the killing has to stop, which makes me proud of those Columbia student activists and deeply ashamed of the way the leadership of my former university has responded to them.

This April, when the president of Columbia called in the riot police to arrest students engaged in a peaceful protest, she inadvertently brought a whole new level of attention to activism about Gaza. Students at scores of campuses across the country started similar tent cities in solidarity with the Columbia students and protests that had largely been ignored in the mainstream media are now drawing TV cameras from outlets large and small.

Opponents of the student demonstrators, whose real goal is to get them to stop criticizing Israel’s mass slaughter of civilians in Gaza, have hurled claims of antisemitism at them that largely haven’t distinguished between actual acts of discrimination and cases of students feeling “uncomfortable” due to harsh — and wholly justified — criticisms of the Israeli government. As Judd Legum underscored at his substack Popular Information, there was no evidence of antisemitic acts by the students running the pro-ceasefire encampment at Columbia. Individuals and organizations outside the student movement seem to have been responsible for whatever hate rhetoric and related incidents have occurred.

Genuine antisemitism should be roundly condemned but confusing it with criticism of Israeli policies in Gaza will only make that job harder. And keep in mind that the Republican politicians hurling charges of antisemitism at students protesting repression in Gaza are, ironically enough, closely linked to actual antisemites.

To cite just one example, House Speaker Mike Johnson, who visited the Columbia campus last month in a purported effort to express his concern about antisemitism, has long promoted the racist “great replacement theory,” which holds that welcoming non-white immigrants is part of a plot to undermine the culture and power of white Americans. That theory has been cited by numerous perpetrators of racial and antisemitic violence, including the attacker who murdered 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.

Despite attempts to slander those student activists and divert attention from the devastation being visited on the people of Gaza, activists associated with groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine continue to bravely build a vibrant movement that refuses to back down in the face of attacks by both college leaders and prominent donors. Such leaders have, in fact, interfered with student rights of assembly and free speech, suspended them for making statements critical of Israel, and used the police to break up protests. As the repression accelerates, with a surge of campus expulsions of protesters and the arrest of more than 2,500 students at more than 40 universities nationwide, the student activists continue to show courage under fire of a kind I was never called on to exhibit in my days in college. In the process, they have echoed the even larger protests of the anti-Vietnam War era.

If you were to look at a list of what the administrations at Columbia and other colleges and universities have done to student protesters in these weeks, without identifying the institutions doing it, you might reasonably assume that theirs was the work of autocratic regimes, not places purportedly dedicated to free inquiry and freedom of speech.

A number of universities — including Brown, Evergreen State, Middlebury, Rutgers, and Northwestern – have agreed to meet various student demands, from making formal statements in support of a ceasefire in Gaza to providing more transparency on university investments and agreeing to vote on divestment. Meanwhile, President Biden has pledged to impose a partial pause on arms transfers to Israel if it launches a major attack on the residents of the vulnerable enclave of Rafah. But far more needs to be done to end the killing and begin to provide reparations for the unspeakable suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, including a cutoff of the supply and maintenance of all the American weaponry that has been used to support the Israeli military effort. Student organizing will continue, even in the face of ongoing efforts to smear the student rebels and divert attention from the mass killing of Palestinians. Those students remain remarkably (and bravely) determined to end this country’s shameful policy of enabling Israel’s devastating assault and they are clearly not about to give up.

Today’s Campaigns and Tomorrow’s

One thing is guaranteed: the commitment of this generation of student activists will reverberate through the progressive movement for years to come, setting high standards for steadfast activism in the face of the power of repression. Many of the activists from my own years on campus have remained in progressive politics as union organizers, immigration reform advocates, peace and racial justice activists, or even, like me, think-tank researchers. And don’t be surprised if the ceasefire movement has a similar impact on our future, possibly on an even larger scale.

Face it, we’re living through difficult times when fundamental tenets of our admittedly flawed democracy are under attack, and openly racist, misogynist, anti-gay, and anti-trans rhetoric and actions are regarded as acceptable conduct by all too many in our country. But the surge of student activism over Gaza is just one of many signs that a different, better world is still possible.

To get there, however, it’s important to understand that, even as we rally against the crises of the moment, suffering both victories and setbacks along the way, we need to prepare ourselves to stay in the struggle for the long haul. Hopefully, the current wave of student activism over the nightmare in Gaza will prove to be a catalyst in creating a larger, stronger movement that can overcome the most daunting challenges we face both as a country and a world.

 

Vodou grows powerful as Haitians seek 

solace from unrelenting gang violence

Canadian Press Videos

Thu, May 9, 2024 

  

Shunned publicly by politicians and intellectuals for centuries, Vodou is transforming into a more powerful and accepted religion across Haiti, where its believers were once persecuted. Vodou believers are seeking solace and protection from violent gangs that have killed, raped and kidnapped thousands in recent years. Amid the spiraling chaos, a growing number of Haitians are praying more or visiting Vodou priests known as “oungans” for urgent requests ranging from locating loved ones who were kidnapped to finding critical medication needed to keep someone alive. (AP video by Pierre Luxama)

Haiti: Transitional Presidential Council Is Sworn in, a President Is Selected, But Disagreements Ensue

BY JAKE JOHNSTON – CHRIS FRANÇOIS

 MAY 10, 2024
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After weeks of waiting, the transitional presidential council (TPC) was sworn in on April 25 at the National Palace. De facto prime minister Ariel Henry’s official resignation letter, signed from Los Angeles, California, was made public immediately after. Former minister of finance Michel Patrick Boisvert, who had been serving as head of government in Henry’s absence for the last two months, was named interim prime minister pending the council’s formation of a new government. For more details on the parties represented on the transitional council and its members, see this explainer by Le Nouvelliste and this previous CEPR post.

As a first step toward forming a new government, the group selected one of its seven voting members as TPC president last week. On paper, the role of president is supposed to be like a coordinator, with no additional powers than the rest of the council. Nonetheless, there were four candidates for the post and days of intense backroom negotiations ahead of the selection. On April 30, it was announced that Edgard Leblanc Fils had secured the support of four voting members and been named the TPC’s president. Controversially, however, in his initial remarks, Fils announced that the same four TPC members had also chosen a prime minister: a former minister of youth and sports, Fritz Bélizaire, who is close to Moïse Jean Charles.

Representatives Smith Augustin, Louis Gerard Gilles, and Leblanc — of coalitions from the, Moïse, Henry, and Martelly administrations respectively — joined with the Pitit Dessalines party to form an “Indissoluble Majority Bloc” within the council. According to a document signed by the four council members, they agreed to reach consensus positions within their bloc “or failing that, by a majority of three out of four.” In effect, the group formed a council within the council that would appear to permanently remove the three minority representatives from participating in the decision-making process.

Though most TPC members seem to have accepted the appointment of Leblanc as president, the three minority representatives rejected the choice of prime minister, with Leslie Voltaire from Fanmi Lavalas arguing that Bélizaire’s nomination violated the council members’ April 3 agreement outlining the selection process for the prime minister. Lavalas also criticized the decision in a press release: “Unfortunately, the farce that took place on April 30, 2024 within the presidential council is a conspiracy aiming to secure power for the PHTK party and their allies during the transition period, as well as to perpetuate the tradition of corruption.”

The Monitoring Office of the Montana Accord echoed Fanmi Lavalas’s sentiments, denouncing a “conspiracy” by “mafia forces” to “take control of the presidential council and the government so that they can continue to control the state.”

Notably, the international community, which had energetically cheered on the TPC’s installation the week prior, remained silent. Luis Almagro, secretary general of the OAS, noted Leblanc’s appointment but added, “the transparent and rule-compliant appointment of a Prime Minister, as well as the rapid formation of a new government, are vital for the stability of the country.”

On May 1, the majority bloc released a statement reversing its prime ministerial appointment and pledging to follow the agreed-upon procedures, the Miami Herald reported. However, the paper added, “there is no indication that his nomination would eventually be dropped by the controlling majority.” On May 2, CARICOM leaders met with the TPC for the first time. Lavalas, Montana, and the private sector did not participate in the meeting.

The crisis within the council, in the first week of its formal existence, threatens to undermine what little credibility it had to begin with. Critics, who have referred to the TPC as a “seven (or nine) headed serpent,” alleged it would quickly degenerate into politics as usual as the same forces that have governed the country for the last 15 years work to again divvy up the spoils of the state. In a May 3 interview with Radio Magik 9, Gilles, one of the majority bloc members, revealed that his group had already distributed ministries among its political coalitions.

On May 7, however, the council members reportedly reached an agreement to resolve the conflict, raising the voting threshold from a simple majority to a qualified majority of five out of seven. They also agreed that the head of the council would rotate among four different representatives, with each serving in the position for five months. Leblanc will serve first, followed by Fritz Jean from the Montana Accord, Voltaire, and then Gilles.

Without any real constitutional or popular legitimacy, the only hope council members have is convincing an overwhelmingly skeptical population that they can put their differences aside and govern effectively.

New Date Expected for Arrival of the Multinational Security Support Mission

After putting deployment hold pending installation of a new government, the United States and Kenya “plan to have the first troops in Haiti by the time President Ruto arrives in Washington, DC for his May 23 state visit,” according to CEPR Senior Research Associate Jake Johnston. POLITICO confirmed the information, noting that the US-constructed base for the MSS had yet to be completed.

That is not the only barrier, however. The mission is expected to cost between $250 and $600 million, but thus far the UN-managed fund for the mission has received just $18 million, including $8.7 million from Canada, $6 million from the United States, and $3.2 million from France. On May 4, POLITICO reported that the Biden administration was providing up to $60 million in equipment for countries contributing to the MSS and to the Haitian police. “The package, the second the U.S. has approved for the Haiti crisis this year, includes mostly small arms but also some armored vehicles. The notification lists at least 80 Humvees, 35 MaxxPro infantry carriers, sniper rifles, riot control gear, firearms, ammunition and surveillance drones,” POLITICO reported.

Recruitment for the mission is progressing, as the UN Spokesperson’s Office recently announced that the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Barbados, Benin, Chad, Jamaica, and Kenya had officially notified Secretary-General António Guterres that they intend to provide personnel. According to the spokesperson, other countries are interested but have not yet made their commitment official. Recently the Canadian Armed Forces wrapped up training for soldiers from the Bahamas, Belize, and Jamaica. Bahamian foreign minister Keith Mitchell told a local news outlet that Kenya would begin deploying troops on May 26.

“I don’t think personnel is going to be our problem. I think resources, financial resources are going to be our problem,” Todd Robinson, director of the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told the Miami Herald. Robinson said the deployment “will happen sometime around” Ruto’s visit, and noted that civilian contractors had arrived in Port-au-Prince to work on the base construction.

“We don’t want to send them into a situation where they’re not securely housed and have a place to sleep, plan and do all of that,” he told the paper.

A key first step will be opening the international airport in Port-au-Prince, which has been closed since early March. In recent weeks, at least seven US military planes were able to land, bringing humanitarian relief supplies, equipment for the local police, and contractors working on the MSS. The pace of such flights has been increasing, with three landing on May 7 alone. The Miami Herald previously reported that American Airlines had expected to resume service on May 9, but has now pushed that date back a week. JetBlue, which also flies to Port-au-Prince, said it tentatively plans to resume service on May 15. One condition for resuming flights, the destruction of some homes surrounding the airport, was recently met, with over 180 homes destroyed.

Though many officers welcome international support, some have raised concerns about the resources available to foreign police. “It’s quite frustrating to hear that they are going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a multinational mission, while the Haitian police officer receives a few hundred dollars,” an officer told Ayibopost.

The outgoing government has also made changes to police officers’ benefits and has created new ones for members of the military in an attempt to bolster morale in the beleaguered security forces. In a special decree published in Le Moniteur, the government’s official publication, 36 months of salary will be granted as severance to police officers after they retire, and military service members who suffer a major accident or die during the course of their duties will receive various allowances, determined by rank.

The members of the TPC agreed to support the MSS as a precondition of their participation in the new governing structure. On May 7, the council wrote to Kenyan president Ruto, noting that they had “taken charge of the file” relating to the MSS. Still, some have questioned the international community’s strategy. “We don’t need the Kenyans, we need support for our police, like equipment, additional training,” council member Leslie Voltaire told the Wall Street Journal. “We can handle it, provided we get the aid from the international community to back us up.”

The police have had a number of successes in recent weeks, belying the impression that they lack capacity. The TPC was able to be sworn in at the National Palace, despite the intense fighting there in recent weeks. Police were also able to secure the airport perimeter, and last week successfully reopened the Varreux fuel terminal after a two-week closure.

In an Al Jazeera op-ed, Doudou Pierre Festile and Micherline Islanda Aduel, two Haitian peasant leaders associated with La Via Campesina, argue against another foreign intervention and raise concerns with the TPC, noting: “civil society, rural communities and grassroots political movements find themselves sidelined in the current transition plan, with just one seat in the presidential council” posing “a serious threat to the credibility of the interim administration.”

“The plight of the Haitian people cannot be ignored or trivialised. It necessitates immediate and concerted action, but the answer is not another foreign intervention. Western powers ought to honour Haitian sovereignty and endorse local solutions instead of imposing their own preferences. The will of the people who are bearing the brunt of this catastrophe must be upheld,” Festile and Islanda Aduel conclude.

Armed Group Leaders Push for Negotiations, Amnesty as Attacks Continue

When disparate armed groups announced they were forming the Viv Ansanm coalition in late February, their leaders pledged to cease kidnappings, urged displaced residents to return to their homes, and apologized for past abuses. With the suspension of territorial fights, residents of certain neighborhoods even experienced a slight reprieve from years of violence. “We want the civilian population to know that we are not in a fight against them,” Jimmy “Barbecue” Cherizier, a former police officer and self-described spokesperson for Viv Ansanm, said in early March.

But a little more than two months later, violent attacks have increased and the leaders’ rhetoric has again shifted, suggesting the population has been unconvinced by the talk of “revolution.” Neighborhoods in lower Delmas, for example, which are under Cherizier’s control, have again experienced repeated incursions by armed groups over the last month following years of relative security.

In early April, Cherizier accused residents of Delmas 3 and Delmas 5 of collaborating with the police to have four of his men killed. In leaked audio from April 21, Cherizier allegedly can be heard telling an associate, “I don’t care whose house it is, burn all of the homes, set them on fire!”

In another recording, from April 27, published on Facebook, Barbecue says: “I want the Haitian people to know that everything that is being done is in the name of peace. All the bullets you see being shot are for peace. Even the people who are dying, are dying for peace. Even the homes that are burning, are burning for peace. The reason? When you want peace, you go to war.”

Though much of the media coverage has depicted the armed groups as attempting to take control of the state, there is little indication this is the case — if it ever was their goal. Rather, Cherizier has repeatedly stated his desire to participate in negotiations with the government. “It’s either we’re all at the table, it’s either we’re ALL at the table, or none of us are there,” he said in late April.

Christ Roy Chery, aka “Krisla,” who has held sway in the Ti Bwa neighborhood for many years, launched a series of attacks in the Carrefour neighborhood, where schools and businesses had largely remained open. In a recording posted on April 18, Krisla said, “The same way everyone else can’t go to school, we must paralyze Carrefour so they can’t go to school either.” Seven people were killed in the assaults and multiple police stations were emptied of prisoners and supplies.

“Today, if the population knew what it was doing, it would stand with us,” Krisla said, an implicit acknowledgement that citizens have largely rejected the “revolution” led by Viv Ansanm.

In an interview with CNN, Vitel’homme Innocent, who remains on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, was explicit that armed groups like his were seeking amnesty, while describing the violence as “collateral damage.” Innocent, however, claimed that the coalition was working to “get rid of the oligarchs who prevent the country from progressing.”

“How can they say they are fighting for the poor, when they are using their guns to kick us out of our homes?” a resident of lower Delmas, whose house was burned, asked a journalist from Ayibopost. The local news outlet has done extensive reporting on the Viv Ansanm coalition and the contradiction between its rhetoric and its actions.

While few seem to trust the armed groups’ motivations, the question of negotiations remains.

In March, staff from the Kenyan first lady’s office traveled to the United States to meet with policymakers, security officials, business leaders, and religious organizations. Serge Musasilwa, a member of the delegation, told the press that they had also participated in a Zoom meeting with Cherizier. The delegation, Musasilwa said, is offering recommendations to the Kenyan government for the MSS’s operations.

“Among the recommendations in his report, for instance, will be that Kenya help Haiti facilitate a peace and reconciliation conference to bring as many Haitians as possible into conversations about its future—including gangs,” Christianity Today reported. The TPC has not directly addressed the issue, but in the political accord signed by all members, it called for the formation of a Truth, Justice, and Reparations commission.

In the CNN interview, Innocent said that, while wanting amnesty, “we are ready too to answer the justice system of our country, so that we can see where the worst evil was hidden.” Innocent’s testimony, as well as that of other armed group members, could be instrumental in holding accountable members of the political and economic elite who have facilitated and funded the violence.

Innocent has called in to local radio stations on multiple occasions to name prominent government officials and politicians he claims have worked with him. A former political activist and businessman, he has hosted political meetings at one of his properties in the Tabarre neighborhood. Local human rights groups have denounced his long-standing relationship with current police chief Frantz Elbe. Innocent told CNN his one regret was getting involved in politics.

Without naming names, Innocent accused politicians of directing kidnappings and facilitating the trafficking of weapons. “If you choose to block them, they’ll call us and say: ‘I have such and such a job … Fix it for us.’ And then you hear so-and-so has been kidnapped. Or so-and-so has been taken hostage,” he said.

“Let’s take a clear example. We aren’t able to travel. We aren’t able to import. We aren’t able to export. Yet there are always weapons coming in. There are always bullets. And we don’t have any representatives at the border. We don’t have any representatives at customs. Yet all these materials go through exactly these channels. How do they get to us?” he said.

Armed group leaders have also repeatedly raised the issue of police violence in their public comments, claiming that civilians in areas under the control of armed groups have been indiscriminately shot at and killed. “If you’re from Village de Dieu, you’re a dead man walking,” Cherizier said in late April. “Because if the police catches you, they will shoot you, they’ll say you’re part of Izo 5 Segond’s gang.” On May 6, residents in the Delmas 6 neighborhood took to the streets to protest against police violence, with some holding signs calling for negotiations with Viv Ansanm. The next day, an armored police vehicle opened fire on a bus transporting civilians, according to a transport union leader.

Colombian President Says Missing Equipment and Ammunition Could Have Been Smuggled to Haiti

At a May Day rally, Colombian president Gustavo Petro suggested that weapons and ammunition stolen from military stockpiles may have made their way to Haiti, noting the country is just seven hours by speedboat from the Colombian coast.

Petro has taken an increasing interest in Haiti. On April 18, in a joint press conference with President Lula of Brazil, Petro acknowledged that Colombia’s illicit economies had caused significant damage to Haiti and that he and Lula had discussed “a peaceful solution” to Haiti’s crises.

Haitian and International Civil Society Groups Call on France to Pay Reparations to Haiti

During the third session of the UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent, a group of Haitian civil society representatives called on France to pay reparations to Haiti for the billions in “double debt” that France forced Haiti to pay in exchange for recognition of its independence. Volker Türk, the UN human rights chief, echoed the calls during his closing speech. The topic has gained greater awareness in the 20 years since former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide was ousted in a US- and France-backed coup motivated in part by Aristide’s call for restitution. In 2022, for example, the New York Times published a series examining how Haitians had been forced to pay reparations to their former enslavers.

The France-based Foundation for the Memory of Slavery also called on French authorities to make 2025, the 200th anniversary of King Charles X’s ordinance calling on Haiti to pay the indemnity, an opportunity to take action. “As for reparations, it is time today to open this question, as urged by a global movement in which other European democracies have already engaged, such as Germany and the Netherlands,” the Foundation said in a press release on its website.

This first appeared on CEPR.

Jake Johnston is a Senior Research Associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. Chris François is an intern in the Center for Economic and Policy Research’s international program.