Haiti Needs Our Help

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MEEKS of New York. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding. I, too, want to join with the others in thanking him for his leadership for the past year and a half, but particularly on today, on this day where crisis and time is of the essence.

I want to thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) for their leadership on the Haiti Task Force. One always has to thank the great gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters) for simply being Maxine Waters.

Mr. Speaker, it is indeed again another one of those times where it is true that the Congressional Black Caucus is indeed the conscience of the Congress, and I would hope that with today's meeting we have awakened the conscience of those individuals that are currently at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, that we must not stand idly by as a Nation, a Nation that believes in democracy, and allow a people to die and a democracy to be wiped out.

We are indeed the world's only superpower, and just off our shores, in our hemisphere, is a case of democracy being dismantled by individuals who, by every account that I have heard, are violent, are thugs and criminals. In fact, the opposition is supposed to be peaceful, though they will not get to the negotiating table or agree to anything that has been put on the table so that this can be resolved in a peaceful way.

But because we are the only world superpower, it seems to me that we would have the ability to drive to get people to the table, to make that kind of difference, to save the lives, so that we can never see people dying in the streets, as we did just a short time ago in Rwanda.

In fact, I appeal to Americans that even in being selfish about this, when you think about what is going on in the world, if you want to be selfish about this, you know, if you have instability in Haiti, there could be instability here. In fact, people are coming now. The President says, "Don't come." But they are going to come if their lives are on the line. They are going to go somewhere, and they are going to try to come here.

I think it is in our best interests to make sure that we intercede and have peaceful negotiations take place, and those negotiations are obviously not going to take place unless there is something affirmatively done to cause it to happen. We have the strength and the ability to do that.

Now, we do not have to do it alone. Clearly there are others that have agreed that they will come. They are just looking for a word; they are looking for some kind of indication to say, "Go do this," so we can bring Canada, we can bring France, and we can bring CARICOM along with us.

[Time: 20:45]

Now, I will start wrapping it up, because I know that we have a lot of Members who want to say something in regards to this. I will conclude by saying that without military intervention, be it the United States, not just by ourselves, or an international military intervention at this point, I fear that the leaders of Haiti with the most guns will feel that they can rule Haiti. It becomes the law of the jungle. And I seriously cannot see how those who would kill and destroy the institutions that currently exist, such as hospitals and other institutions that are being burned, will bring this great country back up. Let us act now, because the camera of history is roaming. Let it not be on our time that we say that we stood by and did nothing, allowing democracy to topple and people and bloodshed to fill the streets.
Mr. Speaker, I urge the President of the United States to do something to act, to lead, to save lives and save democracy
in the country of Haiti.

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