2004 is the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition. 2004 marks, on the one hand, the bicentenary of the proclamation of the first black state, Haiti, symbol of the struggle and resistance of slaves, and triumph of the principles of liberty, equality, dignity and the rights of the individual, and, on the other, the fraternal reunion of the peoples of African, the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe.
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The Haitian Revolution
Paternalistic attitudes about the Global South pervade the rhetoric or moderate liberals and conservatives when discussing development. This is evidenced most clearly in discussions about the future of Iraq, the latest site of western conflict over natural and human resources.
What would an uprising of the oppressed look like? We have examples not only in Vietnam, right in our own back yard. In Haiti, 200 years ago last November (around Thanksgiving, in fact) after years of war, Haiti found independence. Haitian slaves liberated themselves.
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