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Open Forum on Haiti
Presented by PEN Oakland, Pro Arts and the Oakland Public Library
Open Forum on Haiti: A panelist discussion | View the poster
Sunday, May 2, 2004 5:00 p.m.
Pro Arts
550 Second Street Oakland
Free to the Public
On Sunday, May 2nd Investigative reporter and host of KPFA's Flashpoint, Dennis Bernstein, will moderate an Open Forum on Haiti with guest speakers: Marguerite Laurent, Kiilu Nyasha, Pierre Labossiere, JR, and Maria Gracia.
Important points that will be discussed include: The Destabilization of
Haiti; Historically-debt, dependency, foreign domination since 1806; and
the human consequences of U.S./France 2004 orchestrated Coup D'etat.
Moderator
KPFA's Flashpoint Producer Dennis Bernstein
Panelists:
Marguerite Laurent
Kiilu Nyasha
Pierre Labossiere
JR
Maria Gracia
Donna Wallach
Panelist bios
Marguerite Laurent is an award winning playwright and a performance poet, dancer and activist attorney. She was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised in Stamford, CT. She holds a BA from Boston College and a JD from the University of Connecticut School of law. She is a gifted spoken word artist and the writer, performer and producer of the "Red, Black & Moonlight" series - her critically acclaimed one-woman Jazzoetry Vodun dance theater work, which she has toured internationally and performed at colleges and universities, performance art centers, and theaters, including at non-traditional theater venues such as the United Nations and Carnegie Hall.
Ms. Laurent is also an essayist and educator who specializes in teaching about the light and beauty of Haitian culture. She has been a Partner Artist with the Bushnell, Connecticut's largest performance art center, and is an Urban Artist Fellow with the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and the Institute of Community Research. She also works as an entertainment business attorney within the Hip Hop and R&B music, recording, merchandising and independent film industries, representing numerous national and international recording artists and independent film directors, producers and screenwriters. She conducts workshops studying and analyzing the impact of Hip-Hop message music and African culture globally.
She is founder of The Haitian Lawyers Leadership, a network of lawyers dedicated to institutionalizing the rule of law and protecting the civil and cultural rights of Haitians at home and abroad. She has also written a judicial reform agenda for Haiti. Her most challenging and memorable work thus far has been as legal advisor, in 1994-1995, to Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide promoting the democratizing process in Haiti. The "Red, Black & Moonlight" performance series is a musical memoir based on that story and her life and work in the United States.
Kiilu Nyasha joined the liberation struggle in 1969 with the New Haven
Chapter of the BPP. She has been a revolutionary artist, writer,
broadcaster and agitator in a number of international and domestic
movements for change, including the struggle to restore Pres. Aristide
to Haiti in 1994.
Pierre Labossiere is a longtime Haitian activist and founder of the Haiti Action Committee. Labossiere, a native-born Haitian, is on the Board of Global Exchange.
Investigative reporter, radio host, human rights advocate and poet Dennis Bernstein is a regular contributor to Pacifica's Democracy Now, and Associate Producer of Pacific News Service. He is currently cohost of KPFA's Flashpoints News Magazine, and is a frequent commentator on WBAI airwaves.
Today, Dennis Bernstein is at the forefront of covering the conflict in Haiti, and the illegal eviction notice to the DULY ELECTED African President of Haiti, Aristide. Berstein is known for pursuing CIA dirty tricksters, white-supremacist church-burners and their high-level political associates, and hard-core pentagon liars and the dirtiest cover-up of the decade: that hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians were wounded by chemical weapons during the war with Iraq.
Bernstein's articles, essays, and poetry have appeared widely in newspapers, journals and magazines in this country and abroad. His publications have appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, London Observer, Newsday, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Dallas Morning News, Dallas Times Herald, San Francisco Chronicle and S.F. Examiner, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News, Japan Times, Village Voice, The Nation Magazine, Utne Reader, Mother Jones, The Progressive, Texas Observer, Spin Magazine, Vibe, New Age Journal, New York Quarterly, Pulp Smith, Dark Horse and many others.
Bernstein is also the author, with Laura Sidel, of The Savings and Loan Scandal Trading Cards, Eclipse Books 1993, and The Friendly Dictators Trading Cards: 36 of America's Most Embarassing Allies, 1990 Eclipse Books. His collaborations with book artist Warren Lehrer included in 1987: A Study of Social Patterns, Narratives, Chants, Stories and Songs and in 1984: FRENCH FRIES: A Fast Food Murder Mystery with Warren Lehrer, Visual Studies Workshop (included in the Special Books Collection of The Louvre and The New York Musem of Modern Art), and in 1980: Anne at 94, a musical with Biaja Teal,and Particles of Light, poems with woodcuts by Stan Kaplan, Tortoise Press, 1980.
Bernstein has held lectures and workshops at: Stanford University, University of California Santa Cruz, Berkeley, Los Angeles, San Diego, CSU Sacramento, Sonoma, San Francisco, University of San Francisco, Mills College, Laney College, New York University Law School, Columbia University Graduate Center, Hunter College, Queens College, SUNY Purchase, Rutgers University, Fairleigh Dickinson, Hofstra University, SUNY Stony Brook, Friends World College, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Boston University, Visual Studies Workshop, Clark University, United Nations: United Methodist Seminars, Dia Art Foundation, and others.
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