Haitians to Protest Hillary Clinton’s Speech at New York

On June 8, Hillary Clinton is scheduled to serve as the Class of 2017 commencement speaker at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, New York, where she will also be awarded an honorary degree. The announcement has incited protests from several members of the Haitian community who plan to protest the speech and are pushing the college’s president, Rudy Crew, to rescind the invitation.

“Every time the Clintons get in a bind, they run to the black community to whitewash their tarnished image,” said Komokoda, the Haitian group protesting the speech, in a statement. “After Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath in the Monica Lewinsky affair, he brought in Jesse Jackson and a host of black preachers to lead prayers with him at the White House. To divert attention from her ‘deleted emails’ debacle, Hillary had Bill DeBlasio’s wife, Chirlane McCray, bring her to Brownsville, one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in Brooklyn, for a photo op with little black children. When newspaper editorials and cartoons were blasting her for her unending lies and demanding investigations and prosecutions, former New York City mayor David Dinkins brought her out for a keynote speech at his Dinkins Leadership & Public Policy Forum at Columbia University. Today, for her resurrection from a shameful defeat by the last person most reasonable people felt could ever be president of the United States, the dirty work falls to Rudy Crew.”

The Clintons’ role in Haiti has incited immense criticism and has tarnished their relationship with the Haitian community. In 2010, Haiti suffered a massive earthquake. Several NGOs and the United Nations flocked to Haiti to help relief efforts, but their intervention came with several costs. In 2011, UN Peacekeepers caused a massive cholera outbreak that killed at least 9,500 people and sickened 800,000 others. During this time, Bill Clinton served as the United Nations Special Envoy to Haiti while Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state. While the Clinton Foundation has staunchly defended their role in Haiti, their involvement in the country has been far from successful. “Many of the most notable investments the Clintons helped launch, such as the new Marriott in the capital, have primarily benefited wealthy foreigners and the island’s ruling elite, who needed little help to begin with,” wrote Jonathan Katz for Politico in 2015.