EDITOR'S NOTE
Rothschild, Matthew
EDITOR'S NOTE Matthew Rothschild Good Intentions Icome home the other night and turn on the CBS Evening News With Dan Rather. Like Stephen King, I watch Rather just so I can be there the night...
...at that point, the Clinton Administration chose to return Aristide to power as a way to defuse the immigration crisis, save some political face, and restore some stability for U.S...
...His first example: there are no traffic signs in Haiti...
...I'm too young to have seen the Weavers in concert, but I did see Wasn't That a Time?—the movie about the folksingers, which includes footage from their 1980 reunion concert—and I remember thinking, "Who is that woman with the voice...
...government alter its position...
...Then the United States co-zied up to the coup leaders, who overthrew Aristide the first time around...
...Then he goes to a hospital that has no lights...
...On the poster are the words "Poetry Like Bread Is for Everyone," a famous line from the Latin-American poet Roque Dalton...
...Poetry is vital for me...
...Oh, those good intentions of the United States...
...Ronnie Gilbert has certainly lived a lot of it, so I thought she'd be a perfect match for Studs...
...Gilbert spent the next two decades pursuing a dual career as a stage actress and psychotherapist...
...And so she did—and what a tremendous review it is...
...As Julia Preston of The New York Times so gently put it, Aristide's "lonely sojourn in Washington forced him to learn the art of compromise and to moderate his oratory"—which means to bow down to U.S...
...But not until the Administration had taught him a thing or two...
...businesses and the International Monetary Fund and stop talking about raising the paltry $2-a-day minimum wage...
...government has none...
...This night, he's got a report on Haiti, and he sends it off to CBS correspondent David Martin...
...He said the hospital that now has no lights is "perhaps a fitting symbol: good intentions overwhelmed by Haiti's ills...
...I hope you enjoy your bread...
...I have a new poster on my wall from Curbstone Press, which publishes a lot of good political poetry...
...It's the anniversary of Jean-Bertrand Aristide's return to power, and all the media are running Haiti stories, but none more loathsome than Martin's...
...But fortunately for us, she's returned to singing...
...So much for "good intentions...
...And the voice was of such astonishing power and feeling and joy that it left an indelible print on my mind...
...If I were Elvis, I'd have pulled out my gun and shot up the TV then and there...
...Hi, this is Ronnie Gilbert," she said, calling one afternoon...
...Now I'm finally getting around to it...
...The U.S...
...That woman, of course, was Ronnie Gilbert...
...It restores my spirit...
...army also brutalized the nation and set up seven decades of dictatorship while it was there...
...I have vowed for years to publish original political poetry in The Progressive...
...No matter that she'd never written for us before, or that I'd never even spoken to her before...
...government set up the Duva-liers, who pillaged the country and terrorized its people...
...I'd be glad to do the review for you...
...Like Stephen King, I watch Rather just so I can be there the night he flips out entirely...
...When it comes to Haiti, the U.S...
...It also enriches my political life, for there are hundreds of poets in America today who are writing compelling and insightful poetry that touches, directly or indirectly, on our current predicament...
...What have been the good intentions of the United States in Haiti...
...Army built this hospital eighty years ago," he said, not bothering to tell his viewers that the U.S...
...Instead, Martin drew a preposterous conclusion...
...The U.S...
...Only when Haitian boat people began to come ashore in massive numbers did the U.S...
...Then the CIA organized and financed FRAPH, the brutal death squads that killed 3,000 Haitians while Aristide was in exile...
...In the last decade or so, Gilbert's been touring on and off with Holly Near, and she's also been on the road with her one-woman play, Mother Jones—The Most Dangerous Woman in America...
...Out of the blue, I wrote Ronnie Gilbert to review Studs Terkel's latest book, Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who've Lived It...
...The Weavers (Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman, and Ronnie Gilbert) were blacklisted in the 1950s and eventually disbanded...
...I try to read some poetry every day, usually before bed...
...If you bottled them, you'd have a couple cases of swamp gas...
...investors...
...And I'm forever grateful to June Jordan, who clued me in a long time ago...
...I'm indebted to Martin Espada (who kicks things off for us), Marilyn Hacker, and Adrienne Rich for their advice and encouragement for this poetry project...
...I love the precision, the magic, and the beauty of black words indented on white paper...
...Martin acknowledges that Aristide has brought peace to Haiti, but he complains that the country is in chaos...
Vol. 59 • November 1995 • No. 11
