The 19-year U.S. occupation of Haiti, which started on July 28, 1915, is a significant marker of Yankee imperialist aggression. In the era of Big Stick policy, the U.S. invaded and/or occupied many of the countries in the Caribbean and Central America, including Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Panama… Since the start of the 20^th Century, not counting secret operations, there have been over 120 U.S. military aggressions, more than one per year on average. There are more than 865 U.S. military bases abroad in more than 63 countries. The U.S. budget for defense and security-related activities represents 41% of the world’s military budget. The U.S. Navy is larger than the combined navies of the next 13 countries, 11 of which are U.S. allies. The U.S. maintains 5,113 nuclear warheads, enough to exterminate humankind many times over. Right now, the U.S. is engaged in at least 8 theaters of war: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and the Congo and the Philippines, not counting the “Global War on Terrorism”.

While most of this country’s population has been brainwashed into believing that the U.S. is a worldwide peacekeeper and a defender of democracy, the facts prove quite the contrary. For over a century, the U.S. has been and is still today the leading international imperialist aggressor. U.S. military aggressions have been “the iron fist behind the invisible hand of the Free Market.” From neo-colonial to neoliberal, these policies have included setting up “banana republics” to privatization of state services, austerity plans, reductions in wages and living standards, cutbacks in pensions, cutbacks in education, cutbacks in healthcare, cutbacks in social services, union busting, Free Trade Zones, WTO enforced free trade agreements… The U.S. military is the enforcement arm of U.S. economic policy: the enforcer of “investor friendly” policies, orchestrated through invasions and coups, coerced, through financial crises and the accumulation of state debt, onto working peoples all over the world, including the U.S.

These policies have wreaked misery on working people in dominated countries and are now striking workers in industrialized nations throughout Europe and here in the US. Finally, as the threat of catastrophic environmental change collides with bursting economic bubbles and rising global popular unrest, working people all over the world are becoming the targets of an increasingly repressive surveillance state.

But the first U.S. occupation of Haiti, which lasted 19 years stands as a singular symbol of the racist character and rapacity of U.S. military aggression. In Haiti, these traits have been perpetuated since by puppet regimes and new US/UN proxy occupations in 1994 and 2004. These occupations have maintained the dominance of U.S. imperialist interests in Haiti, in alliance with local ruling classes who have collaborated in the continued exploitation of the working masses.

The current US/UN MINUSTAH occupation of Haiti, under the leadership of Brazil, seeks to impose the imperialist agenda of exploitation of sub-subsistence wages in “Free-Trade Zones”, tourist resorts, agro-industry and the plundering of Haiti’s natural resources. All of this while Barak Obama, Hillary and Bill Clinton, present a human face to U.S. imperialism, and pretend to be helping Haiti.

Imperialist domination and occupation are major obstacles to the liberation of the Haitian popular masses from the shackles of oppression, extreme poverty, repression and exploitation. The Haitian popular masses have to fight imperialist domination and occupation and its local ruling class allies. The toiling masses are the backbone of this fight, under the leadership of the working class.

Workers all over the world want to live in a world liberated from the yoke of capitalism and war-mongering imperialism. We want to build a new world free of exploitation and injustice, a world of democracy and peace. Our struggles must link up in a chain of international solidarity.

Join ONE STRUGGLE-NY and GRAN CHIMEN Cultural Group in an event on opposing the U.S./UN MINUSTAH occupation of Haiti and opposing imperialist aggression throughout the world.

Saturday, July 26, 2014 – 6 PM

La Difference Auto School

836 Rogers Avenue, Brooklyn, New York 11226