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PART I: 

THEORY OF CHANGE 

What is Emancipatory Development

We would like to take this opportunity to summarize the primary tactical and philosophical lessons being drawn from our study of Social Movement Organizations (SMO). 

It is vital to us as Development Practitioners who view the Universal Human Rights as a mere baseline and hold the desire for real change coupled with full emancipation in our hearts; that we help dispel some mythologies and embrace a program fully in line with “emancipatory development”.  

Emancipatory Development (ED) is the collective tactical blueprint by which the masses render the sources of their dependency obsolete, the violence of their oppressors is neutralized and they emerge with full human capability as well as the agency to uplift their fellow humans. There are four primary tactical sets of ED framework for resistance. First are the Development Technologies; the aspects and technocracy of infrastructure to both sustain life in austere environments but more importantly to achieve baseline control of the Maslow hierarchy of Needs. Post survival comes Mass Capacity Modules; this is didactic/practical expansion on life saving humanitarianism to begin cultivating vocation skills and livelihoods with dignity out of a recently oppressed, traumatized and impoverished populace. The third aspect is Militant Nonviolence or Peacefare; the 198+ tactics codified by the Albert Einstein intuition coupled with every advance in non-lethal warfare coupled strategically to dislodge the iron heel of the oligarchy off our collective neck. 

That is to say, active and passive resistance maneuvers that refuse to take human life. Finally, the Parallel State the subject of this pamphlet; the ongoing effort to break apart the global plantation system into communities of choice and free association. Not by smashing the existing state architecture or engaging the agents of repression in the forests, hills and streets, instead by taking responsibility for our own development. We will achieve self-determination by dispelling the fallacy that we must pay government taxes to survive or that these governments act in our interest.

We will prove the legitimacy of solidarity, mutual aid and human agency.

The most nefarious victory of the “global elites” over the human masses was to remove the legitimacy of our vocabulary to speak of real change. To keep billions on the precipice of survival (3 billion plus living under $2.50 a family a day) requires a vast campaign of delegitimization and historical revisionism as well as vile and periodic atrocity. “Neoliberalism” and globalization itself are an exploitative construct to force an intellectual and tactical break between those fighting for freedom and those attending to the immediate Maslowian needs of billions of our poor. As if to disconnect acceptable from unacceptable change and sanitize the strategic action field of actors with a means to provide as they engage to resist. The poor are poor because of overt political decisions made to pre-determine their non-development. Hiding behind the veil of Human Rights is their open and acknowledged widespread violation. Behind the wool; the smoke screen of development is but a complex, vaguely sanitized version of colonialism. But neo-liberalism is only one school of thought in development. There are dozens of both drivel of crude reductive economists or utopian fallacies hiding the purpose of the architecture. 

The purpose of the global Westphalian state system is not mere extractive servitude from periphery to center. It is also not purely about economics. It is not just about an elite group of ‘capitalists’ and ‘robber barons’ raping the earth and its people for a profit. It is not just about control over finite resources. Or some imagined a clash of civilizations.

It has everything to do with psychology.

Three billion poor are victims of an organized structural violence perpetrated by the economic elites of the traditional hegemon powers and each nation’s cabal of local oligarchs. But, as we prepare to wage wide scale peacefare; as we prepare to organize and train for our total liberation we must attempt to articulate a Social Movement “ideology” that incorporates the lessons of the historic freedom struggle with the most cutting edge arsenal of anti-poverty development capabilities. But, that wouldn’t be enough to get “free”. 

It would likely only unleash further holocaust.

    “Emancipatory Development” is both an ideology and a tactical framework in the service and liberation of the poor. Those of us who are fighting for baseline Universal Human Rights and speak of real socio-political freedom must now embrace the tools of development cautiously as a supplemental mechanism to the tactics of nonviolent resistance. 

    Development means nothing unless it is emancipatory, egalitarian, and led by the people it serves. It must also rely on and invest in the capacity of the masses to be their own agents of delivery, progress, and victory over oppression. We must fully break from neo-colonialist controls, “poverty entrepreneurship”, and measure all our work by its value in national struggles for human liberation. 

    We have to question our own evolution. Our own awareness of the so-called “human condition”. Because we cannot see the soul in a normative sense and perhaps should call to question a deity that has so many prophets and so few deliverables; that is why development itself becomes for a now an issue of psychology; of waking up the dying and asleep.

The poor are so poor because they are victims of a global economic system. A system which breeds technocratic dependency on “aid”, whose structural adjustments gut social systems and place control of national resources in the hands of multinational corporations. It is easy to identify our primary targets. There is not a government on earth without some varying degree of culpability. “Development” however means absolutely nothing unless it is completely rooted in tangible victories of the poor over the sources of their poverty, the external and internal. We stake our legitimacy as a social movement on our ability to wed resistance fully with development. 

To hit the nail on the head; we must utilize tactics that model the world we see in our hearts as well as the conduct. The parallel state is not built on the ashes of a burned out revolution. It is the piece meal adaptation of a new world’s values into incremental liberation. Territory has been shown to be worth far less than opened minds.

It should be a radical notion in light of thousands of years of carnage that we are actually capable of being rewired to collective care. That we are capable of achieving the rights and beyond without implementation form above. 

Any overview of social movements begins with theory. Why they form and theories on their success or failure. Drawing from this I bring attention to the “Resource Mobilization Theory” which states that movements take preexisting organizations able to marshal resources of various types and their synergy yields movement success. Charles Tilly said that Social Movements are “sustained campaigns that make collective claims aimed at authorities” Sidney Tarrow called them: “collective challenges based on common purposes and social solidarities, in sustained interaction with elites, opponents and authorities.” What is clear from the recent mobilizations of Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, Brazil, Bulgaria, Thailand and the Ukraine is that mass mobilizations are most successful at resisting government repression when they can a) clearly articulate demands and b) mobilize the resources of pre-organized associations to sustain the movements operations and c) supplant the corrupt government as the primary agent of delivery of services ie; DEVELOPMENT. That failure of all of these movements so far, even ones that have brought down highly repressive governments in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Ukraine is to have incorporated any development component that makes their confederation of SMOs, viable alternatives to the states they dismantle or assail.

The main reason the Black Panther Party and Nation Islam were the two greatest recent threats to the oligarchy of the United States was that they embraced bootstrap social services. Occupy did to some extent but they were suppressed in less than three months.

Referring to Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach; Mass Capacity is a social movement led development methodology that declares “human capability” most liberated via education on the skills and technologies human’s need to survive.

In Theory of Fields we read that “defection of economic elites is one of the most critical aspects to the success or failure of a social movement to seize power” They cite the Marcos regime in the Philippines in 1986 and the Somoza Regime in Nicaragua in 1979. There is a correlation between expanded social movement activity and expansion of state strategic action fields. Modern states are stronger by separating from economic and social bases, then forming alliances with the vital players of the major non-state fields. “Development” via the third (NGO) Sector and government aid is itself a strategic field to conquer. Social Movements for Emancipatory Development must in fact make mastery of development and delivery of services more of priority than resistance to regimes they oppose.

In fact we can clearly see that every single group of partisans that have taken up arms and challenged a violation of rights is either crushed in time; unleashes such carnage that their claims to be liberating anyone are suspect; and or take power and become exactly the as their oppressor. As has been the case is most of the existing parallel state.

In our case studies, we learn the obvious moral strength of non-violent resistance, economic boycott, and mobilization out of intuitions of cultural relevance. In both the cases of the American Civil Rights Movement and the Indian Independence Movement, we see the moral superiority and tactical relevance of non-violence. We read in these cases the necessity of harnessing economic buying power away from assets owned by your oppressors. We see that militarily it would have been disastrous for the Indian people to take up arms against England or the American Negro to fight the Federal government with arms (as the Black Panthers learned in 1968). Instead, both movements achieved considerable constitutional victory without arms. Yet looks at the millions of oppressed Dalit (untouchables) in India or the state of blacks in America. In modern day Syria we can see just how quickly a non-violent pro-democracy movement can devolve into a protracted war with nearly 200,000+ dead and a new Caliphate (ISIS) in Iraq and Syria systematically raping and exterminating all non-believers on their territory; a perversion of parallel state theory as we shall examine later in the pamphlet, albeit a type of one.

Never underestimate the violence unleashed combing greed, grievance and imagined identity. Never forget how many generations are later affected by the traumas of war.

In our studies of Liberation Theology, we examined the power of subverting traditional mechanism of reaction and repression into new social gospels for change. We identify the power seen in Latin America via the “little Church” and in Political Islam in the recent 2011 uprisings across the Middle East. Clearly, Zionism is profound example of utilizing a religious framework coupled with development technology for geo-political ends. As was the Islamic Revolution in Tehran in 1979; Revolutionary Shi’ism, and Hezbollah. It was used to topple the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti. We fully advocate that the Movement continue to embrace the universal messages of justice found in the world’s religions as long as no aspect of the movement will seek to impose a singular religious norm over communities not of that religion.  Liberation Theology is so subversive because it conquers one of the elites’ traditional main fields of social control. In the case studies a large chunk of the parallel state was liberated via various liberation theologian movements.

In our examination of Paulo Freire we analyze humanization/ dehumanization; internalization of oppression; and understanding of the elite as divided, uncompleted human beings. Isolation of the mind, disempowerment, and mental slavery was his diagnosis of the oppressed. He spoke of the “false generosity” of philanthropy. And of how the poor live in an “ahistorical world”; a completely deterministic world that they cannot escape of total resignation about their plight. He states that “liberation is painful like childbirth” and that only via the direct empowerment of the people can we achieve political rights or social freedom. In agreement with this philosophy and that of Amartya Sen in “Development as Freedom” Mass Capacity is different from “State Capacity”. The most vital tool of a movement for Emancipatory Development is direct investment in the education and technical training of the masses to develop their own communities as they collectively determine. The concept of mass capacity is vital to the success of our movement because only by achieving self-determination can a people enjoy rights, development or freedom.

In our readings on the anti-caste movement, we see the emancipatory power of abandoning imposed identity. We read about mass conversion for Hinduism to Buddhism.  Forced to “act out one’s oppression” via the caste rituals millions are enslaved. Stopping the belief that you are inherently a slave goes back to Paulo Freire. Breaking ones “psychological isolation in an ahistorical world.” It would not be a strategic social movement position to oppose Hinduism, which is the foundation of the Indian State. The conversion of millions to Buddhism is profound example to the rejection of outsider imposed identities that allow class and ethnic exploitations. There is no cultural relativism to be respect to universal human rights, simply cultural paradigms that either can be understood and adopted (liberation theology) or rejected out of hand as the invention of an oppressor (Hutu/Tutsi). 

 In our cases on land reform of course we go back to the most fundamental question of movement; what is your turf? What is your territory? What is yours as people? To what extent do 206 governments built nearly all by historic rapes and expropriations have legitimacy to declare some land yours? I would argue that not one nation-state on earth has a legitimacy the masses should respect. This movement cannot be defeated if it is universal in demands and universal in expectations. It cannot regard one last repressive regime standing to be acceptable. It cannot abide one single person living in starvation as an acceptable norm. It cannot have national aims. The reality of nation state experiment is that in the guise of security, it usurped control and it build a global system where most of the species would be subjugated to the minority.  

In our cases on resistance to Apartheid, we see that just because a social movement can take state power does not in any way make it able to wield political power to the end of economic empowerment for its poor. We think it should be clear to us that violent revolutions and non-violent revolutions do not improve the economic situation of countries poorest citizens, in fact protracted widespread violence via civil war comes after every violent revolution. The aim is not to improve the existing state system. We would argue that the primary aim of emancipatory development is to completely circumvent the state system and place tools directly in the hands of the people. It is historically clear that taking control of an instrument of mass coercion, i.e. the state; is not a successful means to use its power on the behalf of its citizens. It has historically only fostered a new predatory elite.

We are often confronted with the “apolitical  northern generation” raised post-Cold War that do not have an “ideological” paradigm to view world events. It is quite likely that due to historical revisionism and the previously discussed sanitization of political vocabulary for change many young people in the West may actually believe that globalization is the face of progress. I would say frankly that little has changed since the days of colonialism except that direct rule has been replaced with proxy rule. I would go so far as to say that 3 billion poor and extreme poor, also means 3 or 4 million more pliable workers that can be utilized in the global supply chain. Except right now it is not necessary to mobilize 6 or 7 billion workers, half will suffice and the other may hover on the brink or ruin as a reserve. This is not about economics as much as it is about control because even in the hegemon and metropol nations there are percentages starving, percentages working nearly cradle to grave, and a tiny controlling elite. The fallacy of our entire “Development Enterprise” thus so far is to pretend, to trick ourselves in that the governments were acting in good faith. If Development is not an instrument of political power then it is simple charity. The poor do not need our manipulative carrots and their governments’ sticks. They are not empowered via your charity. We reject that dichotomy that aid is either politics or charity. It’s always politics. It’s got to stop being charity. We have to divest our development from states and put it squarely into people. 

The slogan of our entire movement is simply to “teach a person to fish.” 

With one arm of the movement we strike back at the violators of human rights and with the other we build up the global capacity, the ‘Mass Capacity’ of the people to secure their universal rights and more. This will not come from mobs in streets, from civil disobedience or rifles.  We will bring our oppressors to their knees by illustrating their functional irrelevance. A free people can teach their children to read, tend to their people’s health, and operate the means of development needed by a community. Let it be clear. The liberation of a people comes not from the barrel of a gun but in via control of the means of development; the schools, the hospitals, the civil service, sanitation, and all other trades that by their nature promote self-determination and the public good. And any development practitioner that is not working to build that mass capacity; they are “poverty profiteer”, a “bright eyed idiot”, or worse a “dirty collaborator” perpetuating the system that keeps so many destitute.

We came here to unite a movement hiding in the shadows and fighting for survival in the streets. We know that in every slum, in every city, in the mountains, deserts, woods and rural interior are partisans holding out, fighting disconnected in the darkness. We know in every NGO and CBO, even in elected office are those who still believe in real change but are shackled by politics. We must connect the underground, to the partisans to the sympathizers; to the change makers in the halls of power. 

Above all we will rely on indigenous knowledge and empower the people. It is our goal to open the lines of communication. You are not fighting alone.

January 4^th, 2012

It has been two years since I first arrived in Port-Au-Prince. It is remarkable how short it feels, the eyes close just for a second and flashes of the dream on fire emerge in a slew of most visceral memories; as if they were the lips of a lover parted with just one moment before. Yelizaveta, how I miss her already; and if the last two years has erupted now in snap shots, bombastic escapades and grind; well in just eight hours I miss her as if it were a month, then a year, a forever passing in rapid cycle. Time is relative, memory subjective but for the past two years, really two human moments, there has really been only the desire to possess Yelizaveta juxtaposed with my total solidarity with the Haitians. The moral empathy, endless struggle to know them as a people so that I might wed my trade and toil and talent to the cause of their inevitable liberation.

    The attainment of human rights long deferred and structurally denied.

    I am now on a plane. It is Continental Flight 1647 and Victor Emile Cange, my stalwart comrade and partner in this operation slumbers silently, Christianly even. Next to me. We have succeeded in moving 840 kilograms of Basic Life Support medical equipment past U.S. customs and home land security. Long boards have become surf boards, bags loaded with stethoscopes, sphygmometers, training manuals, wound care supplies, are all just our non-declared tourist items. The second anniversary of the quake is eight days away, it is 4th January, 2012, by body is tried still from the ethanol athletics of New Years. Yelizaveta is still on my very lips, I can still feel where she grabbed the blue collar of my uniform and pulled me in.

    Victor and I are wearing the unmarked blue battle dress uniform fatigues of the movement we are affiliated to; the Banshee underground, and the z.o.b. We suspect these uniforms will allow us more scrutiny going into country while lending less scrutiny to our bags. There is an embargo on all bulk items entering the country not coming in as declared and taxes humanitarian cargo until January 15^th. 

    Like most Blan initiatives pre/post-quake; the dynamics of doing any so-called good are maddening and inexplicable; and have many factions to blame themselves on. Principally always the tiny 5% of the Neg, Mulatto and Arab bourgeoisie, followed by the MINUSTAH UN authorities, the cartels, and the Republic of NGO technocrats. And also the heat, and also history and illiteracy, and famine and rampaging Nepalese Cholera too. 

    Once again, we are flying into a hell. Flying into the city of lost children and shattered dreams; the land of many mountains. Ayiti Cherie! We are the third wave of the reinforcements from New York. We will meet Tiputti Capois, our oldest associate and brother at Toussaint L’Ouvature International Airport. And re-supply the Gwoup Ayisyen pou Ijans, the Haitian Emergency Group. We will meet their members and prepare them rigorously. EMT practical drills and negotiations on their future, and plans. We will ready them to stand before the archangel Michael Mastroianni who arrives 21^st January to administer a witnessed practical and written EMT exam. For whatever good it will do I pray we find them stalwart and reasonably well organized.

    I pray too that the city isn’t exactly as I left it two years ago.

    Around us on the plane are the faces of Haiti; noire, mulat, blan and representing all things. Things tragic, things ineffective, things self-serving, self-dealing, against and for human dignity, faces of perseverance, of calm of nervousness of taking and of giving. There is also the hard face of Haitian pride, indomitable. 

    So many trying with the mandate of science, God, and reason to remake the face of Haiti; save her somehow in some small way.

    So many never even asked the Haitian people. Too many are simply short sighted interventionists. Or cowered by the ten million masses shackled in the modes of survival. Today we will ask the GAI and their members where to from here? Victor, myself, Michael, all of us in Banshee and LAHAF; all the supporters of the movement; all the veterans of the first and second waves; one and all are fighting for a small dream too.

    But thankfully none have died for it, yet. I remember so many faces from the first time; from 15 January, 2010 to 28 January, 2010; the first wave. The Bed Stuy-AMHE Detachment. Our tumultuous landing in the 6^th day of relief, before the bodies were buried or the smoke had cleared. Indomitable will; fearlessness and selflessness and all of that faith we had in our humanity. The cooperative solidarity of a Kombit Medikal. That two weeks, that slaughter of so many Haitians; who knows whether it was 1, 2, 3,000,000 people; no one knows at all. That laid the basis of my dream, the dream I sold to Victor, to Cassidy, to Dominich, to Lou Auguste Jr and LAHAF, to Jenn Slitter, to all of the Banshee underground, well I’d sold the dream even to myself convincingly. We dreamed that the Haitians would have the training, will and organization to save lives.

    I must always remember the steams of the bathhouse, where me and my first partner, my first co-conspirator beautiful Yelizaveta Kotlyarova gave me true support and true unflinching council. Must also keep my parents in mind, or in a heartbeat I would lose myself in the people of Haiti and never return to America at all. Go big or go home, banshee-motherfucka-if-ya-ain’t-running-with-it-run-from-it.

    Victor knows this well.

    We were both there in the blood and rubble of the trembling earth. Our tears and their lack of tears our blood and their blood, mixed into the casement and cracks on the pavement. I may have the face of a blan, but my heart is that of a Haitian. My constitution to take the struggle to where it must logically go, all the way up the great mountain, to secure this people, my adopted people from vicious exploitation, mismanaged sympathy, foreign rape and plunder. For two whole years we organized volunteers, we supplied the GAI with trainers and gear. And reinforced the shared dream. Not EMS in Haiti! Not mere ambulances! The power to respond to human and natural disaster on their own, the ability to rescue their own people. Liberty through control of their own social services, full human rights would come later, full reclamation of sovereignty. Realization of emancipation and the conclusion of the revolution. Haiti, finally in the hands of Haitian people. 

How am I such now a major patriot for a foreign people? In their eyes I see my own people, maybe I see myself in another life. That is what the earthquake showed me about myself and my destiny. I see my reflection as a human in them. I see a way to reclaim my own humanity, restore my own life through something much more important than mere me.

And I have lost so much on this battle already, they think, some think I am a mad man possessed by the spirits. Which spirit I do not even bother to guess. Something had entered me in those grisly days of the first wave. I saw the world to come.

I saw that were I to show ineffable might, like a Haitian; I would live to see the liberation. I would live to see our victory over that oligarchy.

    The Haitian oligarchy first and then the tyrants in my own nation and all of the other plantations too. For it was in this country, this was the beginning of the Great Revolt, it was the very first time a rebel alliance took on European hegemony, slavery and colonialism; and for a time won.

    There was no only Yelizaveta and the slaughter I saw from the quake. Both opened my eyes to hating and to loving, to despair and to a possible freedom. With my eyes opened now they can never close until I am cold and dead. Haitian and foreigner, blan, mulat, neg; l’union fait la force! We are here to keeping laying a base.

The ability to heal and help is not the ability to save. Wounds and sickness across a body politico cannot be helped with small cosmetic Band-Aids. The blame for what happened here is a shared blame. There are so many people black and white and in between that have conspired to ruin Haiti. To keep her people backwards and maldeveloped as lesson to all those who would join the revolt.

Haiti hemorrhages now for 200 plus years and they kick her when she is down, they steal whatever there is to steal, they plunder and they rape and they abuse her while she lies long vanquished. 97% of the fucking trees are gone! 84% of the people live below $2 a day. No one even knows how many died in that quake because there was no census since 2004! When US marines kidnapped the first and only elected President Aristede and dragged him off to house arrest in the Central African Republic. 

But Haitians will never be exterminated. Or long brought to their knees. They are capable of incredible resistance. Résistance to both foreign and domestic enemies. A year ago Jean Claude Duvalier (Baby Doc the last dictator) returned to a city of barricades and a populace demanding his arrest. Aristede returned to be celebrated though his party Lavalas is banned an illegal still. Resistance to and beyond death. In one generation or two in diaspora Haitians have become doctors, lawyers, nurses, lawyers and business men. More millionaires than any other Caribbean diaspora. They make up 1/5 of the Greater New York healthcare work force. Who knows if these statistics are true, they reflect a fact on the ground.

In Haiti, despite the best efforts of 10,800 non-governmental organizations (Klass ONG), charities and missionaries unleashed in the 1980’s after the fall of Duvalier in 1986; things have gotten as bad as sub-Saharan Africa. A UN garrison of roughly ten thousand Brazilian and Argentine soldiers occupies the only UN peacekeeping mission in a nation with no declared ceasefire between combatants; neo-Duvalierist oligarchs and the Famni Lavlas party. 

Here everyone is dying.

Of cholera, of being a restovik child slave, of preventable disease, of Cholera, of road accidents, of child birth, or exposure and tropical storms, of hunger. Life expectancy is below 58. There are over 46,000 mostly white development technocrats here, they live well. On the top of the hills with servants and drivers. Parts of Kenscoff and Petionville look like high society France. With chipping paint. There is an opera house at the top of the mountain called Tara’s. You can see plays there or famous international musicians. There are so many Haiti’s except the one that most of its citizens live in; one of early death and great squalor.

If you are blind to that then you have not really been to this place. Or you are part to blame for it.

Many but few, have made Haiti what she is. The iron heel is elusive and complex. The violators are of all colors and creeds. NGO imperialists, human and drug traffickers, Dominican businessmen, the local oligarchy. But before we can know our enemies we must know our friends. Tiputti and his sister Tipudine Capois do not talk politics. They are not affiliated with Lavalas or any faction we are aware of.  They met us during the quake and have told our grand alliance; Alliance 01 that they will organize their people.

We began with 68 EMT trainees and I am told we now have only 25 or 26 that are ready to test out, a year later. The other possible 100 members of GAI dropped the course Paramedic Instructor Howard carried out for 6 months, but they hang around the club and see what will be offered. Their motives are as diverse as our own collection of idealisms, but they want jobs in the medical sector. They want to leave the island some. They have varying degrees of patriotism, none speak English except Tiputti and his sister Tipudine. Many were original responders like Tiputti Capois who met Victor and I two years ago during the first wave in “unit C” when we enlisted several hundred to secure the General Hospital. Many are new. Most of the serious opportunists are gone allegedly. The GAI has held out with no pay for nearly two years, we sent a scout Wilkinson Francois to assess them three months ago, he reported enthusiasm but virtually no command structure of program for the future. He reported 25-30 possible EMTs and 40-100 first aiders, Haitians despise making rosters and lists of names, so they don’t do it. 

These 25 potential EMT trainees, and 100 some odd responders, their family and friends are what we are here to properly assess the operational capability of.

Are they young bold visionaries seeking change in Haiti? Or are they opportunists as so many warned. Do they want real change, or do they just want jobs and livelihood? Well only Wilkinson had asked. Paramedic Instructor Howard has disappeared. Wilkinson as a Haitian and speaker of Haitian Creole had reported to us that they were sincere. And also a bunch of disorganized civilians in their early 20’s.

His report was what got authorization for Victor and I to proceed with a third Wave.

All the experts and much of the diaspora had told our Alliance that EMS in Port Au Prince is simply impossible. They told us our volunteers would be kidnapped, our supplies stolen or killed. They told us Haitians don’t do anything without being paid. Thinly guarded racism, a lot of it.

Victor has faith. I have zeal. And Michael Mastroianni has a great deal of expertise and we all wish to see if two years of effort had a result. Hundreds of other members and volunteers are waiting for our unit to validate or invalidate a lot of sacrifice. They came from Atlanta, from New York, from Miami, from Las Vegas, from Seattle and Chicago; 104 in the first wave, 28 medical and communications volunteers in the second wave. Now, just 3 in the third. Civilian volunteers all, mostly EMS, fire, and communications backgrounds kept this going for two years. GAI survived without pay or resources cut off from LAHAF and BANSHEE in the states except phone calls and email, periodically. They and we are fighting to give the people here and abroad something to believe in.

Hope floats? Maybe.

Soon people will testify. Haske & Mapfre, Greenlee, Denby, Marriana, Fishman and Resnick who shot a lot of film and took a lot of pictures. Hundreds of hours of never gonna be seen footage. How this occurred was wrongly held faith in the power of the media. No film was ever made. Thomas later made a short one.

Victor and I are emergency medical professionals, I’m an EMT, and he’s a paramedic. We have to determine alongside paramedic Mastroianni; was this all for nothing or is the GAI real. Can GAI pass BLS exams, take multiple choice tests and pass? They never even had power points or text books. Can they complete the eight stations of basic life support practical skills, can they hold up as real EMTs? Are they school kids or potential heroes and avenger of their people? We have to testify in less than 20 days.

Testify about the birth of Haitian EMS, and if a clandestine Haitian human rights movement can grow from that or not. In an hour we land at Toussaint L’Ouvature.

This time I bet they stamp my passport.

Thank god this is all finally happening. Despite all the struggle and all of the loss and hardship I feel as though we are close to the edge as well as the tipping point too. Real change. I pray I will never forget Yelizaveta’s face, how could I? More I pray I never fail to separate FACT from EMOTION, as all too many do in Haiti coming from the outside. I must make sure I sleep more, a little more. We have a lot of work cut out for us. Making the GAI ready for Michael, the 22 January test, the 26 January Consortium on EMS in Haiti, a lot must be done in just 22 days. 

If you ain’t running with it, run from it. That’s what my life coach Lil Wayne told Yelizaveta and that’s what she told me.

The man was beleived to be an informant and so we seized him off the street and put a bag on his head. Which was overall uncomplicated except that he was Austailian. It is of course customary to clean your own house before you attempt to deal with the oppression of others. In this particualr case, we had to confirm a suspicion that a. Kirkuk was being auctioned to the Iraqi Army, and b. The foreign fighters database was actually legit. This man knew the answer to at keast one and a half if those questions. Perhaps, after we filed off his right knuckels, and put out an eye, hed talk like he talked to the Australian intelligence.
The idea that you can induce confidence by offering things is rarely as effextice as torture. But you have to be judicious with torture, since people will sometimes say anything to not be tortured anymore. We are hardly amateur at both being tortured, and when push comes to shove torturing our enemies.

The Kurdish word Josh quite literally cones from the word Donkey, but its more vile. Its origin qas during the Al Anfal genocide when our own people sold us out to the murder of the Saddam regime. Its very much a know and universally rule of the guerrilla, taught to us by the Palestinians that before you take in the enemy, you liquidate the traitors in your midst.

Now this man is a Westerner, a YPG veteran whi did 9 months in Rojava mostly in Mambij. But, a man has got to do what his leadership twlls him, there is no life with out a leader and this cones from the top of the Party. People who sell us to the Turkish intelligence, or anyones intwlligence are marked to die.

People say that the PKK is a terorist organization. The European nations do not allow us our flag or the flag of the YPG YPJ, SDF or of Serok Apo. But I say only this Heval, who is the biggest terorist. Us, or Turkish fascist state who emptied 5,000 villages and killed 40,000 civilians? Us, or the Iraqi military and Saddam who killed 800,000 of us in death camps. Us or the butcher Assad who has tortured 1 in 18 of all Syrians and wioed out 500,000 and growing in this war? Us, or the howling Shiites of Iran who hang our leadrers one a month. Us, or vicious Daesh with their sick perversion of Islam. Us, or the U.S. lead forces and CIA that set in motion the rise of Daesh? Perhaps we are terrorists only of vatying gradients. I will say this heval, if the Australian intelligence know about the list, and the Slovaks have a copy, then everyone already knows. This man took the list while infiltrating YPG at mambij.

This list of 5,700 foreign fighters, with photo with real names and more is a proof. A proof that Turkey, Saudi, Pakistan and the UAE cultivated ISIS with full knowledge of the CIA. It confirms in essence the word on the street, that leading Daesh at the highest rank, perhaps Baghdafi himself took money from U.S. allies, intermediaries.

I use so something like a file to grind the cartilage off his left hand. This goes on a bit and is messy. I then put out his left eye.

The situation was such that Turkish artillary and airstikes pummeled our primative defenses around the clock, not even bringing the enemy in rifle range.

The Party had over estimated the local preparations for defense, the ideological commitment of the population as well both Russia and Americas failure to intervene and reign in the Turkish state.

Soon, after just a week of combat, Afrin City was fully encircled, many small towns had been take by the FSA irregualrs, and little pockets of resistance were fighting fir survival.

Heval Ana’s tabor was trying to reenforce the positions in Afrin but most of the fighters didnt even get to fire a single shot. War planes killed almost everyone on the roadway to the city, charring the ground and pulverizing out forces in firey deluge.

The Kurdish revolutionary jangles, played on until the very very end. A series of heavy airstrikes rip apart the convot. The grisled survivors taking firing positions at the road side. Most of the tabor was simply anniellated in the death from above. It happens very quickly. In several loud rapid rumbling bursts. About thirty people die immediately, about thirty died later from terrible wounds. A few survived, ingloriously maimed at least on the inside.

A Policy Recommendation for Urban Revitalization in the Age of Sustainable 

Development 

First Draft

12/18/2019

The ultimate objective of this legislative measure by bundle would be to take aim squarely at housing, education, infrastructure and healthcare for the middle class and working class people of New York City  in order to fund long term redevelopment of our regressive welfare institutions. 

These measures would propose a complete reprioritization of public spending aimed at achieving a greater equality of the fundamental social services. 

Side by side incredible wealth and poverty exist in our city. Some 57,000 Manhattanites worth 37 million and up living alongside the neighborhoods of Central Brooklyn and South Bronx which appear to depend entirely on a regressive welfare state and multi-generational poverty to furnish Manhattan with the lowest paid castes of wage slaves, welfare dependants, and ongoing quality of life blights.

This analysis approaches this non ideologically. Though its recommendations are based on Democratic Confederalism/ Municipal Confederalism. There is no blame cast here on demographics, i.e. specific underserved ethnic groups, new immigrants and the extremely poor, only on public policy. To allow a continuation of such poverty on our door steps is actually a betrayal and embarrassment of the American dream. 

We will in 10 stepwise points address underdevelopment causality, and immediately prescribe broad radical policy for solution oriented approaches. Of course we invite criticism and encourage public dialogue in the solution process.

1. On Language, there is no valid reason to have large bodies of people with no ability to integrate to culture and economy. 

The inability of immigrants to speak English directly degrades their prospects for successful integration to our society.

Recommended: All new immigrants must be sent to language immersion programs immediately on their arrival. All existing and Recommended service programs must be contingent and encouraging of language acquisition. Encouraging undocumented people to live lawfully and provide a way to build a new life is more desirable than a permanent victimized under class.

2. On Social Service Apartheid, as all hospitals, public schools, and public housing in these neighborhoods are sub-standard, barely fit for dignified habitation; an active program must made to aggressively demolish and replace existing stock.

Recommended: This will require new taxes on the Middle and Upper classes to fund better hospitals and schools, as well as a systematic destruction of all decrepit city public housing.

A. Funding for Jacobi, Lincoln, Woodhull and Kings County should be tripled. The city should municipalize (i.e. reverse privatization of vital services) Interfaith and Bronxcare. New monitoring and evaluation standards will be placed on city health services alongside a Cuban style system of proactive community paramedicine and public health work.

B. Funding for Public High schools, all Public High schools in these neighborhoods will be triple funded, salary structures for all teachers will be increased with differentials to bring new talent to this intuitive. All private schools will be partnered with public schools to reanimate curriculum and pedagogical training. All private, charter and religious schools will be funded by the city to absorb larger scholarship cohorts. More magnet schools and city as school internships will be established. 

PUBLIC SCHOOLS

To triple the current funding levels of all public schools and triple the wages of all teachers, a partnership tax will be placed on all private schools for development of a public institution. 

All private schools will accept a percentage of high scoring public students at a rate triple what is offered now.

PUBLIC HOSPITALS 

Triple funding and the establishment of citywide a single payer system charged in relation to annual income will be based on the flat tax.

C. A systematic policy of public housing demolition will begin with a transfer of the elderly and disbaled last to acceptable housing outside the 5 boroughs. The wealthiest most expensive city in America will  no longer indefinitely subsidize rent. In a stepwise pattern all able bodied persons will be sent to vocational training centers or paid labor battalions. All elderly and disabled persons will be transferred to external sites complaint with best norms and standards befitting improvement in their living conditions. All existing public housing will be demolished. Affordable middle class and working poor stock will be erected in its place. 

All women’s shelters will be replaced with dormitory style centers with vocational training, child care and temp work placement programs. 

All homeless shelters will be systematically demolished and replaced with dormitory screening sites that will transfer these people, suffering from mental illness and long term drug use to special detox facilities set up peripheral to New York.

3. On EBT Cards, The electronic benefit system is wrife with fraud and a key element of regressive welfare. It will be eliminated in its present form.

Recommendation: EBT, WIC and Varying EBT schemes will be replaced with meal voucher cards for cafeterias. You will no longer be able to use the EBT as an ATM card, where fraud is occurring at the Bodegas. You will be able to obtain varying essential rationed goods, and 3 meals a day but no longer will the EBT payments be applied as tender.

Elderly persons and disabled persons must be screened from those capable of paid work. In cases of the elderly a new type of EBT Medicare will be issued insuring basic needs are met. Those with physical and mental disabilities will be considered for a type of Medicaid EBT but greater controls will be placed on them. People are entitled to clean bedding, clothing, water. Not flat screen TVs, pets, motorcycles and luxury sneakers. 

A new policing initiative on welfare fraud must police the spending habits of all recipients.

5. On Dignified Work and Labor Battalions, the South Bronx/ Central Brooklyn has become a festering labor ghetto, a reserve for the worst lowest paid jobs and exploitation of undocumented workers.

Recommended: The formation of new temp centers, vocational schools and paid labor battalions to provide work for unskilled workers while they transition to high paid, higher skilled jobs. We must fund this effort to show that everyone willing to work, is working and everyone able to go back to school has a system to accommodate that.

6. On the Toxic Environment.The daily trucking operations, widespread use of cars and the emissions from this have created an asthma epidemic. The streets are covered in trash and the neighborhoods look like blighted slums. Fast food, liquor stores, and bodegas have proliferated in a food desert, i.e. green fresh food depots.

Recommended: trucking will move to Yonkers and Pelham based depots where it will load goods on new supply trains. Public transit citywide will he triple funded. Single occupant vehicle use will completely restricted. New taxes will be placed on all personal vehicles. Labor battalions will focus on enhanced trash collection, public mural painting and neighborhood clean up. City run green market projects will be enhanced.

7. On Criminal Justice, despite widespread citywide gentrification these areas remain wrife with violent crime and illegal activity.

Recommended: Membership in gangs, mafias and drug dealership groups, as well as all manner of violent crime will lead to municipal deportation post incarceration. 

We will close Rykers island and replace it with 5 smaller detention/rehabilitation centers. Non violent offenses will lead to unpaid labor battalion sentences and heavier fines. 

Violent crime will lead to citywide deportation. Membership in any organization of criminal conspiracy will be grounds to revoke municipal citizenship. In some regards the prison population will be greatly reduced and persons of criminal inclination expelled from the city.

8. On Incentivizing the Working Class,

Approximately half of population does in fact work currently for minimum wage or off the books for less if undocumented. We must understand that rewarding labor and creating further pathways to economic security are integral to this revitalization program. 

We are triaging those who cannot work, from those that will not work from a small minority of outright criminals. Then we are eliminating structural impediments to progress, i.e. healthcare, education and infrastructure funding. But crucially we must show a return on investment to our working and middle classes, not unsustainably displace our underclass. 

Recommended:

A. Rent Control/Stabilization & Subsidy/ Zone, Control and Freeze. See attached rent scheme.

1. Luxury developments should by law help fund off site affordable housing developments and or public infrastructure in adjacent districts concurrent with construction of future hugh rise and luxury rentals.
2. Higher property taxes, especially for people with multiple properties, and a special tax on pied a terres and vacant properties 
3. A system of preferential longevity where native New Yorkers and ten year or more residents are entitled to differentiated sets of prices for ownership called Rent Ceiling renting. 
4. Rent ceilings, capped every four years to the median net income in a city district, all rental  properties must be zoned 2/5 rent ceiling apartments, 1/5 rent controlled, 2/5 market rent. Existing housing stock must switch to this modality on death or vacancy of residents under older rent regime.
5. Setting up a system of 5 income tiers that very clearly indicate what an individual or family is entitled to, which can be upgraded each year. Rent ceiling, rent stabilized, rent controlled or market zones units must give preference to the teir an applicant falls in. This someone above 250K income is not entitled to lease a rent controlled apt. This tier is linked to your after tax income. 
6. Rent depreciation  after 5 years of consistent leasing, your rent will go down not up to stay put. 
7. More mixed zones large scale residencies like Waterside Plaza or Coop city, market rental, rent control, rent stabilize and coops or condos in the same development. 
8. The ideology here is not social equality or home ownership. This is a city of extremes and a city of constant newcomers. But there is extreme wealth here that should pay for the right to have luxury goods and services by assisting in the elevation of the bottom 1/5 that are in public housing on regressive welfare payrolls. This is about squeezing the wealthy to subsidize a bigger welfare state. It is based on the idea that affordable housing should be considered a right earned by working. 
9. Linking the ideas that mixed zoning, denser development and privileging working residents I link this housing policy with a City Service policy where we have youth ages 18 to 21 joining the city services similar to the Israeli modal in exchange for access to rent controlled housing. We would also like to make students eligible for that as well.

1. Dissagrigation By Income

In order to establish legislation that is actually beneficial to working class and middle class taxpayers payers, as well as capable of uplifting the working poor and welfare dependent class we must arrive at some agreement on the illusion of their being a middle class in this country. 

As the average American worker does not make a much higher income than the people on public assistance and the jump into the 4% of high income earners is approximately 40x the so called middle class, disaggregating and taxing by after tax take home allows a much more equitable redistribution to the public services by taxation.

Thus this legislation focuses on designated income classes and positions within an improved tax bracket system accordingly.

Persons on Public Assistance 

No taxable income. Must demonstrate physical or mental disability, be beyond working age 65, and or be pregnant with no clear means to be self-sustaining.

I.e. (Recurrent Welfare Mothers, Mentally ill and the physically disabled)

Person who are Working Poor T1

Persons earning at or below 50K. 

I.e. (retail workers, EMTs, bartenders, delivery staff, unskilled workers.)

Person who are Working Poor T2

Persons earning at or below 50K, with up to 100 K in bank or assets. I.e. savings, property or a car.

I.e. 

Persons who are Working Class T1

Persons who are earning between 50 to 90K.

I.e. (Semi-skilled workers, truck and livery drivers, not for profit staff, dental hygienists, paramedics)

Persons who are Working Class T2

Persons earning between 50 to 90K with up to 200 K in bank or assets. I.e. savings, property or a car. I.e. (cops , fire fighters, nurses, 

Persons who are Middle Class T1

Persons in range 90 to 110K.

Persons who are Middle Class T2

Persons in range 90 to 110K, 

with up to 300 K in the bank or in assets. I.e. savings, property or a car.

Persons of High Net Worth T1

Annually earning 110 to 400 K with between 100 to 500k in bank or assets.

Persons of High Net Worth T2

400K to 1 Million with between 500 to 5 million in bank or assets.

Persons of High Net Worth T3

Between 1 and 5 million in annual earnings or revenue with any amount above 5 million in a bank or in assets.

Persons of High Net Worth T4

5 to 50 million and up in annual earnings or revenue with any amount above 100 million in a bank or in assets.

Persons of High Net Worth T4

1 billion and up in annual earnings or revenue with any amount above 10 billions in a bank or in assets.

B. Municipal Participation/ Campaign Finance Transparency 

All candidates must list by total percentages where their campaign was specifically funded by in order to determine conflicts of interest and access buying. 

Public Financing of Campaigns 

Setting matching funds for all candidates that achieve a certain number of electoral endorsements. 

Housing  

Rents would be annually set to the median after tax income of the district electorate based on five tiers. In essence what a community actually earns will establish a rent ceiling which holds the duration of a lease. This would disaggregated by incomes at or below 30k, 60k,100k, 250k, and all high net worth incomes above. 

Rent control, where ones rent decreases every 5 years. Ensuring a percentage of the market is kept stabilized at all times. Forcing luxury development to be taxed at a higher percent and demonstrate all projects have social return on investment. 

B. City Citizenship a program of incentives, protections and subsidies for new arrivals and long term multi genrational New Yorkers.

C. City Years: an Israeli style program of uniformed municipal service ensuring 17 to 21 year olds health and education subsidies. 

CITY SERVICE

All public service departments will set aside a large percentage of new hire seats for young men and women take a three year national service track later entitling them to major subsidies of their future health and education.

9. Restructuring of Municipal Services: i.e With augmentation of paid and unpaid labor battalions and city years corps, we will be halving the size of paid Fire Suppression, tripling the size of the teaching services, doubling the EMS services with new role of community paramedicine, enlarging sanitation services, and expanding city health services. At the same time wages of city council workers will be decreased, the social work fields will be radically reimagined, corrections cut by 3/4s. All existing NYPD precincts will be partnered with new community appointed policing units and arrest quotas will be eliminated.

10. New York City will reduce its Federal and State tax contributions and increase its Citywide taxes. 

Taxes will involve a flat tax where by payment ensures your vote in city elections and a wealth tax with gradients that move sharply upward at annual wealth and income calculations. See attached taxation scheme.