The second of two 2021 Record Store Day “Drops” events takes place this Saturday, July 17. Some of the limited-edition vinyl discs that will be available exclusively independent record stores include offerings from Hall & Oates, The Rolling Stones, ex-Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman John Fogerty, Donna Summer and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
Hall & Oates are releasing a clear-vinyl reissue of their smash 1980 album Voices packaged with a booklet featuring a new interview with the duo.
The Rolling Stones are putting out a reissue of their classic 1971 two-LP compilation Hot Rocks, pressed on yellow vinyl and featuring expanded original artwork.
Fogerty’s release is a four-song EP featuring selections from his 1973 debut solo album, The Blue Ridge Rangers. The project was a collection of country and traditional cover tunes that he issued under the fictional band name The Blue Ridge Rangers.
Summer’s Record Store Day offering is a colored-vinyl two-LP deluxe version of her classic 1979 disco album Bad Girls, featuring one red and one blue disc.
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young are releasing an LP titled Déjà Vu Alternates that features alternate versions of the songs from the group’s classic 1970 debut album, Déjà Vu. Those tracks also appear on the recently released deluxe Déjà Vu reissue.
The July 17 installment of Record Store Day 2021 also includes exclusive releases from The Allman Brothers Band, Yes‘ Jon Anderson, Canned Heat, The Clash, The Cure, The Kinks‘ Dave Davies, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Hot Tuna, Badfinger‘s Joey Molland, The Monkees, Randy Newman, Queen + Adam Lambert, Lou Reed, Small Faces, Cat Stevens, The Sweet and War.
Check out the whole list of releases and participating independent record stores at RecordStoreDay.com.
(WASHINGTON) — The director of President Joe Biden’s Domestic Policy Council, Susan Rice, has divested herself of millions of dollars’ worth of holdings in a company that’s leading a contentious pipeline project supported by the Biden administration.
According to newly released financial disclosure reports and a White House official, Rice has liquidated nearly $2.7 million worth of shares she and her husband owned in Enbridge, a Canadian company building the Line 3 pipeline, which would carry hundreds of thousands of barrels of Canadian oil through Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Last month, the Biden administration gave a public boost to the Trump-era pipeline project, calling for the dismissal of a court challenge brought by environmental groups seeking to protect Minnesota watershed and tribal lands from the pipeline.
The Enbridge stock sale is part of a series of large divestments that Rice, one of the wealthiest members of the Biden White House, has recently made or is planning to make in the coming days. Divesting is a common measure that newly appointed public officials take to ensure that their government duties don’t overlap with their personal interests.
A certificate of divestiture issued by the Office of Government Ethics last week shows Rice’s plans to sell holdings in more than three dozen companies and several investment funds that she and her family own — assets currently worth a total of more than $30 million.
Enbridge’s stock price has been on an upward trend since November, and the value of Rice’s holdings in the company has increased from roughly $2.4 million when she joined the Biden administration earlier this year to nearly $2.7 million as of Friday.
It’s unclear if Rice netted any capital gains from the sale of her Enbridge shares, but those who divest assets under a certificate of divestiture are allowed to defer taxes on capital gains.
A White House official told ABC News that during the transition period leading up to Biden’s inauguration, Rice had agreed to divest from all of the listed assets. In the meantime, while waiting for her certificate of divestiture to be issued, she recused herself from matters involving companies in which she had investments.
The official said that as of early this week Rice had divested all of her Canadian assets, including the Enbridge holdings and more than $14 million worth of shares in Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd., as well as many U.S. assets.
Her remaining U.S. stocks are in the process of being divested, a process that will be finished before July 27, the official said.
Among the other assets she is divesting, according to her disclosure reports, are $1 million worth of shares in Johnson & Johnson, more than $823,000 worth of shares in Apple, and nearly $289,000 worth of shares in Comcast.
She will retain major holdings in Canadian banks, including $5 million to $25 million each in the Royal Bank of Canada and the Toronto-Dominion Bank, according to her disclosure reports.
Rice’s certificate of divestiture was first reported by the Daily Poster.
As ABC News previously reported, several other senior members of the Biden administration similarly divested themselves of their assets to comply with ethics rules earlier this year.
Biden’s White House climate envoy John Kerry was issued a certificate of divestiture in March for liquidating $4 million to $15 million in assets from more than 400 companies, including energy-sector interests. In May, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm divested $1.6 million worth of shares in electric vehicle producer Proterra.
Kedric Payne, general counsel and Senior Director of Ethics at the good-government group Campaign Legal Center, said that considering the large number of diverse stocks that Rice is divesting, it’s difficult to say whether the timing of the Biden administration’s support for the Line 3 pipeline project and Rice’s divestiture raises any questions.
But he said that Rice’s divestment from those assets shows the highest level of effort to avoid a conflict of interest.
“Ethics laws allow an official to resolve conflicts of interest with recusals, waivers, and blind trusts, but divesting assets is typically the most extreme remedy,” Payne said. “When officials are transparent about conflicts and sell their relevant assets to avoid such conflicts, the ethics laws are working as intended.”
Jon Bon Jovi‘s JBJ Soul Foundation is helping to provide housing for homeless veterans.
The charitable organization has given a $100,000 grant to the American Legion Post 107’s nonprofit Veterans Center of Hoboken in Bon Jovi’s native New Jersey, which will be used to provide new housing and supportive services to homeless veterans.
“JBJ Soul Foundation is dedicated to continuing our work with veterans, addressing issues of hunger and homelessness, and we are all inspired by the Veterans Center of Hoboken,” Bon Jovi says in a statement.
“The Center is not only expanding with 18 additional furnished housing units, but is also providing services including physical and mental health care and employment opportunities for these struggling veterans,” the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer adds. “This is exactly the kind of mission and positive impact the Foundation is proud to support.”
(WASHINGTON) — One day after the surgeon general warned Americans about what he called the “urgent threat of health misinformation,” President Joe Biden didn’t mince words when asked for his message to platforms like Facebook about COVID-19 misinformation.
“They’re killing people,” he said.
As the president was leaving the White House for Camp David on Friday afternoon, he was asked, specifically, “On COVID misinformation, what’s your message to platforms like Facebook?”
Biden answered, “They’re killing people. I mean, it really — look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people.”
It was the only question Biden took before boarding Marine One to leave town for the weekend and follows comments by other Biden administration officials warning of the dangers of misinformation in combatting COVID-19.
On Thursday, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued the first public health advisory of the Biden administration to addresses an epidemic of misinformation and disinformation and its harmful impact on public health. The Biden administration is now calling on social media companies to take further action to combat misinformation around the COVID-19 vaccine.
Ahead of Biden’s departure, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was pressed Friday by ABC News Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott over whether Facebook was doing enough to combat the issue.
“Clearly not,” Psaki said, “because we’re talking about additional steps that should be taken.”
“We’re dealing with a life-or-death issue here. And so, everybody has a role to play in making sure there’s accurate information,” she added. “It’s clear there are more that can be taken.”
The decision to elevate misinformation comes as some Republicans have used the government’s coronavirus response and vaccine messaging as a political wedge.
It also comes amid the government’s current push to boost stalling vaccination rates while the delta variant takes hold of the country’s unvaccinated, in what Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky called “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” on Friday.
The Biden administration has doubled down on their efforts to get more people vaccinated — particularly after the country missed the president’s goal of getting 70% of adults with at least one dose by July 4.
The surgeon general’s new advisory specifically digs into social media platforms as having greatly contributed to the “unprecedented speed and scale” of misinformation’s spread and Murthy calls on technology and social media companies to “take more responsibility to stop online spread of health misinformation.”
It argues that misinformation, particularly on social media websites like Facebook, has hindered vaccination efforts, sown mistrust, caused people to reject public health measures, use unproven treatments, prolonged the pandemic and put lives at risk.
“Simply put, health misinformation has cost us lives,” Murthy said from the White House Thursday.
(MOSCOW) — Trevor Reed, one of two American former Marines that U.S. officials say is being held hostage by Russia, has been transferred to a prison camp a few hundred miles from Moscow, according to a prison rights monitoring group.
Reed, 30, and the other ex-Marine, Paul Whelan, have spent about two years in detention in Russia imprisoned on charges their families and American officials say were fabricated by Russia in order to seize them as bargaining chips.
President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the two Americans’ detention and the possibility of a prisoner swap to free them at their summit in Switzerland last month.
Reed has now been moved to a prison camp in Mordovia, a region about 350 miles from Moscow, Alexey Melnikov, an official at Moscow’s Public Monitoring Commission confirmed to ABC News on Friday. The other former Marine, Whelan, has already spent nearly a year in a camp in the same region, known for its high number of prisons.
“Trevor Reed was removed this morning from Moscow’s Investigative Isolation Jail No. 5 to one of the Republic of Mordovia’s camps,” said Melnikov, whose commission is empowered by the Russian government to inspect prison conditions.
What to know about 2 former US Marines held by Russia ahead of Putin-Biden summit
Melnikov said he did not know which camp in Mordovia Reed had been sent to and that it is not yet clear if it will be the same camp where Whelan is held, which is a prison used to house foreign convicts.
Reed fell into the hands of Russian police in the summer of 2019 following a drunken party in Moscow where he was visiting his girlfriend.
Police initially said they were taking him to sober up at the station but after agents from Russia’s FSB intelligence agency arrived to question him Reed was charged with assaulting a police officer, according to his family. He was put on trial on the charges that U.S. officials have said were absurd. A court in July 2020 sentenced Reed to nine years in prison.
Reed, whose family lives in Texas, spent nearly two years in detention in Moscow pre-trial jails. But last month, a court rejected his appeal against the sentence, clearing the way for him to be moved to a prison camp.
From early in their detention, Russia has suggested trading Reed and Whelan for Russians serving prison sentences in the United States.
Hope for a potential trade have risen recently following Biden and Putin’s summit in Geneva, where both sides signaled a willingness to discuss finding a possible deal.
Since 2019, Russian officials have named several Russians they would like to see released, including Viktor Bout, one of the world’s most notorious arms dealers, and Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot jailed on drug smuggling charges.
Russia state media has more recently highlighted another Russian citizen jailed in the U.S., Roman Seleznev, who is serving a 27-year sentence on criminal hacking charges.
Bout’s release has been seen as a non-starter for American officials because of the severity of his crimes. But Yaroshenko and Seleznev are seen as more likely to be included in any trade.
Yaroshenko was arrested in a 2010 Drug Enforcement Agency sting in Liberia during which he agreed to ship cocaine to Africa and the U.S. He is serving a 20-year sentence.
Seleznev was captured by U.S. law enforcement agents in Maldives in 2014 and convicted of running a massive hacking scheme to steal credit card data from small businesses in the U.S.
All three men are suspected to have links to Russian intelligence. During Seleznev’s trial, prosecutors provided documents alleging that Seleznev was tipped off to an earlier FBI investigation against him by Russia’s Federal Security Service or FSB, after FBI agents met with the Russian agency.
The Biden administration has said freeing Reed and Whelan is a priority, and last month, the U.S. ambassador to Moscow John Sullivan said he expected there would be talks with the Russian government on them both.
Reed’s family had hoped he would remain in Moscow until a deal to free him was negotiated.
The Russian news service Interfax cited an anonymous source as saying that Reed’s transfer did not mean a trade for him was less likely. The move instead may just be the Russian judicial process continuing. Russian prisoners are usually moved a few weeks after an appeal is turned down.
“Reed’s transfer to a penitentiary absolutely does not mean that his possible exchange for a Russian is no longer on the table. He may still be extradited to the United States if the relevant consensus is reached with the U.S. side,” the source told Interfax.
Whelan, 51, was security executive for the auto parts company BorgWarner when he was arrested in late December 2018 in his hotel room by FSB agents while visiting Moscow for a friend’s wedding. He was accused of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison in a closed trial on charges his family and U.S. officials have said were fabricated.
Whelan spoke to ABC News by phone from the former Gulag camp last November.
“It’s pretty grim. Quite dilapidated,” Whelan said. “There’s probably like 50 to 60 of us in the building. So we kind of live on top of each other.”
He said the inmates work eight-hour shifts in a workshop he described as “Dickensian” and that they are only permitted to shower twice a week. But other prisoners treated him well he said, nicknaming him “Tourist.”
The cameras just started rolling in New York City on the Sex and the City sequel series And Just Like That…, but the fashions worn by its cast members on and off the set have already spawned a viral Instagram page called @AndJustLikeThatCloset.
The brainchild of a 23-year-old fashion student from Ukraine named Victoria Bazalinchuk, the feedfocuses on the fashions the cast members are seen wearing, and adds information about where to buy those same looks.
And just like that, the page has started getting noticed by the show’s stars.
“The first to notice my account was Sarah Jessica Parker,” Bazalinchuk tells the New York Post. Parker, of course, plays the series’ fashion icon, Carrie Bradshaw.
“She watched my stories and replied to one of them. Then Willie Garson reposted my post, as well as Nicole Ari Parker, who also followed me,” Bazalinchuk added. “All of them, including Kristin Davis, occasionally watch my stories.”
The popularity of the fashion in the original Sex and the City — which put the words “Jimmy Choo” into the mouths of millions — inspired the sharp-eyed student.
“I knew there is a rush around SATC fashion, and this time I didn’t want to make people wait because by the time the show airs, most of the clothes will be sold out, and I know how upsetting that might be,” Bazalinchuk tells the paper.
“Knowing [a] brand’s DNA and having basic knowledge in fashion helps a lot, and some brands have reached out to me with the products they sent to the costume design team,” she explains.
She explains that her nearly 18-thousand-and-growing followers are also sharing information, and act as detectives to deconstruct the clothing if she draws a blank.
(NEW YORK) — Friday’s New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox game is on after Thursday’s clash in the Bronx was postponed following six positive COVID-19 tests on the Yankees roster.
“After conducting testing and contact tracing involving members of the New York Yankees’ organization, the Club’s home game tonight vs. the Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium will proceed as scheduled,” said Major League Baseball in a statement.
The game gets underway at 7:05 ET.
During his pre-game press conference, New York Manager Aaron Boone announced there were no additional positive tests on Friday.
Aaron Judge, Gio Urshela, Kyle Higashioka, Jonathan Loaisiga, Nestor Cortes Jr., and Wandy Peralta are all on the COVID-19 injured list after their tests were confirmed, according to ESPN.
Thursday’s game will be played as part of a double-header on Tuesday, August 17.
The Yankees are in fourth place in the American League East, eight games behind the first-place Red Sox.
Fans often refer to Lil Durk and his girlfriend India Cox as relationship goals on social media. The unproblematic couple have been together for years, share two daughters and like to keep their relationship issues private.
Now, after reports the couple was involved in a shootout with intruders at their home, fans are calling Durk and Cox the new Mr. & Mrs. Smith — a nod to the film starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as married assassins.
“Durk and India [are] the new Mr. & Mrs. Smith. That’s goals [for real],” tweeted one fan, while another said “I’m weak. Lil Durk and India [are] the new Bonnie and Clyde out [here].”
Yet another said, “People really saying Durk and India are Bonnie and Clyde but don’t actually know how Bonnie and Clyde died.”
As previously reported, Lil Durk and Cox were victims of an attempted home invasion that took place last Sunday. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation told TMZ that the couple were awakened around 5 a.m. by armed intruders who were trying to break into their Braselton, Georgia, home. According to investigators, both Durk and Cox had access to firearms at the time and fired at the intruders, which escalated into a shootout. Neither the two-time Grammy nominee nor his girlfriend were injured.
Police are currently investigating the incident as an alleged home invasion and aggravated assault. Anyone with information pertaining to the incident is encouraged to contact the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
(WASHINGTON) — Washington Nationals infielder Starlin Castro has been placed on administrative leave, Major League Baseball announced on Friday.
The Athletic reported earlier on Friday that the league was investigating an alleged domestic violence incident that took place earlier this summer. Castro would be on leave for seven days, during which he is still paid his normal salary.
The leave could also be extended by additional seven-day increments if the league and the MLB Players Association agree to do so.
Castro was placed on the restricted list on June 16 due to what Nationals manager Dave Martinez then referred to as “a family matter.” The Athletic says that matter is not believed to be related to the alleged domestic violence incident.
Castro was previously accused of sexual assault in 2011, but charges were not filed.
(PORT-AU-PRINCE) — Mamyrah Prosper moved to the U.S. in 1998 with some of her family members. But while she came looking for opportunities, it’s Haiti that she calls home.
The Africana studies professor and mother of one often visits her family and friends on the island. But she says that these days, even before the assassination of the country’s President Jovenal Moïse a week ago, the country is scarier than it used to be.
“I arrived in Haiti at the end of May, so well before the assassination, which, I guess, we could have said was not quite surprising. … There were several massacres that took place at the beginning of June,” she told ABC News, referring to an influx of gang violence that has displaced thousands of residents. “So, before the Jovenal assassination, that was really what was weighing on everybody’s mind: ‘What’s happening next?’”
“You have an entire city that is controlled by gangs that are able to circulate very freely… And so, people were generally feeling extremely scared to even do very basic things like go find food, which is something we all must do inevitably,” she added.
Moïse’s death has thrown the country further into turmoil. Having spent years working to dig itself out of economic and political strife, the president’s assassination has created a power vacuum and made residents vulnerable to the widespread fear they’ve long faced.
A week ago, Moïse was home in the capital of Port-au-Prince sleeping with his wife when mercenaries entered the fortified home and killed the president, leaving the first lady critically wounded.
More than two dozen people, mostly foreigners, have been accused of playing a role in the assassination. However, authorities have arrested Haitian-born Florida resident Emmanuel Sanon, 63, accusing him of acting as the middleman between the alleged assassins and the unnamed masterminds.
Haiti’s national Police Chief Léon Charles said Wednesday that Sanon, a longtime critic of the Haitian government, wanted to take it over himself. He said that Sanon arrived on the island via private aircraft in June and accused the Miami doctor of contracting with a security company to enlist the services of the men who are now under arrest, including 18 Colombians and three Americans — one of whom occasionally worked as an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
Sanon told police he had no knowledge of the attack, CNN reported on Wednesday.
In the wake of the assassination, Haitian officials declared a state of emergency and Martial Law, the latter of which was lifted by the weekend. However, with the country still reeling, many were hesitant to leave home.
“Life has been very hard,” Francois Jean, a shoe seller in Port-au-Prince, told ABC News in French on Sunday. The father of four said he hadn’t eaten in three days. “Since Wednesday up until today, I haven’t made a dime. … It’s just today that I see the activity has restarted, and even though it has restarted, the people don’t have any money.”
Makeson Pierre, a shoe-shiner, says he’s facing the same struggles and that he would improve his situation if he could.
“The country is difficult,” he told ABC News in French. “We have no water to bathe. We have no food to eat; we’re hungry. … See how I’m cleaning these shoes here. Yeah, if I could find something else to do, I would do it. … I’d like to get out of this situation.”
The shortages don’t just apply to food, though. At a gas station on Sunday, a group of people could be seen clambering for their turn at the pump.
“You have to fight to find gas,” a father told ABC News in French. “The opportunity to get gas is spontaneous.”
He noted that many of the people at the pump would have probably been at church instead.
The predominantly Catholic country is also highly religious, and at the same pump, Helene Jean appeared in her Sunday’s best, with her Bible still in her purse.
“I came from church and when I saw that they were giving fuel here, I went home and went back to get the gallon [containers] and came back to get some fuel,” she told ABC News in French.
Prosper said there is a lack of opportunities for everyday Haitians struggling for a better way of life. She’s among a younger generation of Haitians and Haitian Americans asking for the international community to support Haitian-led solutions to the country’s problems.
“If the U.S. people should do anything, right, it’s to support the actual Haitians who are embedded in their communities and have been organizing for decades — Haitians who say we are ready to take on the role that people have already chosen for us to do,” Prosper said.
“It’s actually the international intervention that has prevented Haiti from being able to determine what it wants to do,” she continued.
Many activists like Prosper have long criticized the way foreign humanitarian aid is distributed in Haiti. She says that the aid, though necessary for providing vital support to the country, has instead motivated further violence and corruption in the government and business sectors.
A century-long debt and the current struggle for power
Once a wealthy French colony built off the backs of enslaved laborers producing sugar and coffee, the country fell into economic hardship after a slave revolt that resulted in their independence in 1804.
But it paid a price for becoming the world’s oldest Black republic: France demanded the new nation pay indemnity for overthrowing the French slaveholders. The debt of 90 million gold francs — estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars today — was so high that the country spent over 100 years paying it off. In the years since there have been growing calls for France to pay that money back.
Over the years, Haiti, currently the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, had gone through periods of dictatorship, most notably that of Francois “Papa Doc” Duvalier in the mid-1900s. The country was dealt a severe blow in 2010 when a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck, killing an estimated 250,000 people. The country again faced another natural disaster with Hurricane Matthew in 2016.
The president’s assassination has further entrenched the turmoil occurring in Haitian cities, even though many Haitians did not view Moïse favorably.
With the line of succession remaining unclear, Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph has stepped up to lead the country’s scattered government with help from its military and national police force even as he faces opposition from its Senate. Joseph has declared a “state of siege” and has indicated he’d only assume control of the nation until a new president is elected — presidential and legislative elections had been slated for later this year.
Moïse’s political opponents had argued that his five-year presidential term had ended in February. The late president had argued that he had another year left after a disputed 2016 election pushed his inauguration to 2017.
He’d been governing by decree since January 2020 after the country failed to hold legislative elections and the legislature’s mandate expired. Opposition leaders accused him of trying to restore Haiti to a dictatorship. Then, earlier this year, the late president ordered three supreme court justices to retire and arrested nearly two dozen people, including government officials, for allegedly plotting a coup.
Moïse told a Spanish-language newspaper in January that he feared people wanted to kill him. The Haitian ambassador to the U.S. Bocchit Edmond told reporters following the president’s death that there was “no warning” ahead of his assassination.
The escalating constitutional crisis had sparked protests and intensified gang violence amid the COVID-19 outbreak throughout the country.
As a result of the political chaos, some activists and politicians are living in fear of being targeted by gangs. Ralph Francois is a social entrepreneur and CEO of Cocread, an organization focused on building sustainable communities in Haiti.
In January, he organized a protest demanding the government step up the search for his kidnapped friend. Then, two months ago, Francois told ABC News that he fled Haiti after learning that a gang had allegedly attempted to kidnap him.
“That day, I was supposed to be there but … because I had a Skype meeting where we had to plan — doing a demonstration for one of our friends that had been kidnapped that day,” he said. “So my neighbor was kidnapped. It’s like a whole house, and I live upstairs and she lives downstairs. She had two daughters. … It was shocking.”
Francois described the situation in Haiti as a “monster” the government can’t control and said that it has culminated in the president’s assassination.
“Our president has been killed … in a humiliat[ing] way, in his room,” he said. “So, if the president is not safe in Haiti, who’s safe? How can we trust the government who failed to protect us — who failed to protect the president — to engage us in the political process and bring serenity and security? They don’t have credibility for that.”
Haitian activists and educators are demanding better leadership, hoping it’ll help put an end to the country’s political corruption.
“Even though the situation of employment in Haiti is difficult, for women, it’s especially difficult,” Shawma Aurelier, executive director of Port-au-Prince-based women’s empowerment organization SOFA, told ABC News through a translator.
She said the president’s assassination will cause more people to lose hope in changing the country’s future.
“They come to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to leave Haiti,” she said.
“It will be very difficult for Haiti to be rebuilt if all the residents and persons living in the country should decide the best solution is to leave,” she added.
Support from afar
Families and friends of Haiti’s residents are currently the largest source of external financial aid sent to the struggling country.
In Miami, much of the staff at the Chef Creole restaurant in the Little Haiti neighborhood send money to loved ones back home. Eslane Charles has been working there and told ABC News through a translator that she’s been supporting her parents and children from across the Caribbean.
“She said it’s tough,” said Wilkinson Sejour, chef and owner of the restaurant, translating for Charles. “Although you send money, it’s never enough.”
Sejour sees his restaurant as an economic engine for his employees and their families and said they need the money now more than ever.
“As soon as they get paid, they are dashing out of the restaurant so they can go to a local supermarket to do a money transfer,” he said.
Sejour said he’s noticed the glimmer of hope in his fellow Haitians and Haitian Americans grow dimmer recently as all the money they send seems to have no impact on the country’s outlook. But he implored people not to get discouraged.
“I know it’s depressing sometimes when people give and give and give … and they feel that their giving is not doing anything,” he said. “And I’m saying, on behalf of Little Haiti, on behalf of mini Haitis, on behalf of big Haiti herself, please don’t lose hope on us. Continue giving us everything that your conscious and your heart will allow you to give. And with the grace of Christ, we’ll be all right.”
Self-determination in Haiti
Francois, the first Haitian to be a Yale World Fellow, says he intends to return to and live in Haiti with his friends and family members. He said the next generation of young Haitian leaders like himself have been ready to take on the responsibility of making a better Haiti.
“We are ready. We are ready to take the lead and make sure that Haiti could become a land of security, a land of prosperity for its children because we have to,” he said. “I spent my whole life in Haiti. I work[ed] hard for that, and I don’t see myself living in other countries and I’m sure that there are other people in my generation who see that also.”
“I want the international community to listen to Haitians’ self-determination, to listen to civil societies,” he added. “To stop looking at Haiti as a land where we have two sides of political opponents fighting for power. It is more than that.”Prosper says she recognizes the privilege she has in being able to travel in and out of the country amid its many conflicts but said she remains optimistic that there will soon be a stronger Haitian-led solution to the country’s problems.
“I have no other choice but to be optimistic … when the people who are experiencing the hardship — and who are really faced with very dangerous situations — continue to have hope and are always fired up for the next fight,” she said. “So, I only have hope.”
