By Jerry D. Rose

Helping Hand in Haiti

By: Nate Beeler
Examiner Cartoonist
01/14/10 10:25 PM EST

In all the TV and newspaper coverage of the earthquake that destroyed much of Haiti a week ago, there is been precious little commentary on the conditions that generated that destruction, with a gross failure to acknowledge that the damage from disasters is profoundly anthropogenic (man-made). However “natural” may be windstorms, floods, earthquakes and volcanoes, what people do or fail to do before, during and after these occurrences have everything to do with the human damages caused by these “natural” events.

With these thoughts in mind I was astonished to see a blatant piece of cartoon propaganda that appeared in my local newspaper, The Gainesville Sun, a subsidiary of the New York Times, the work of Nate Beeler, a syndicated cartoonist for the Washington Examiner, on whose website the carton as shown here appeared. Like the Times, the Sun assumedly prints all the news that it sees fit to print, and I was so incensed by the gross unfitness of this cartoon that I submitted yesterday the following Letter to the Editor:

To the editor:  The cartoon by Nate Beeler that you published on Saturday January 16 represents a piece of propaganda about the Haiti earthquake that Americans might like to believe, but which is profoundly flawed.  It depicts the rubble of the quake on one side of the cartoon with the label “Act of God” and with the label “Act of Humanity” on the other side an image of Uncle Sam extending help to a hand stuck out of that rubble.

I have no qualms at all about a helping hand to the earthquake victims and I’ve contributed myself to that hand.  My fear is that this cartoon simply perpetuates a tendency among Americans to think of natural disasters as acts of God for which  America itself bears no responsibility.  But even the most cursory review of the history of the relationship between the U.S. and Haiti will show that the government of the U.S. for decades and even centuries has engaged in acts of suppression of Haiti’s efforts toward prosperity and independence, helping mightily to create the conditions of extreme poverty in the country that led to people being overcrowded into housing with little if any earthquake protection, and without the means to provide “relief” for themselves from their meager resources left over after an extended period of colonial and neo-colonial domination. If we really want to be “humanitarian” in our dealings with other countries, let us work to limit our own country’s destructiveness of the well-being of other countries, rather than simply waiting around for opportunities to congratulate ourselves when we rush to the aid of “impoverished” countries when “God” wreaks a disaster on them.

I have no idea whether the Sun will print this letter.  If it does, I will post a link to the publication on the comments section of this website.

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Jerry D. Rose is editor of The Sun State Activist