Board Members

April 27th, more than eighty high schools students and adults attended a screening of Deported the documentary.

I’ve been hustling like I have never hustled before. Writing and losing my wits as I write for each and every grant I can get my hands on in the month of February. I started with a bang the beginning of the year with creating a celebration soup called Soup Joumou for Haitian Independence on January 1^st and I have not let up once. I have continued churning and burning the proverbial midnight oil to submit documents on time. I am astonished at my self. I am amazed at my level of commitment. I am also deathly afraid that I will burn myself out. And yet I can’t stop this feeling of elation as possibilities keep on churning in my head and I see visions of what could be. This possible future that I have access to if I would let go of these constraints that still hold me back from being fully self affirmed.

When I started this journey of creating Dominicans Love Haitians Movement in 2009, prior to the conceiving of the name Dominicans Love Haitians Movement, it was with the desire to do something, to stop the hate and violence in the Dominican Republic towards Haitians. And then in researching it, really digging in deep, shit honestly I have just scratched the surface of the depth of this prejudice that infuses everything that we do. There is pain in these blood cells that come from my ancestors blood. I understand prior to me delving in deep that I had a very simplistic view and yet at the same time it is a very simple concept. We have to dismantle the racial mythology that has been created.

The problem, as I see it, is that too many people are invested in keeping this story alive as if it were reality. As if it were truth. And why is that? What keeps us human being so involved and invested in our continuing to make people the “other”. At this point, it’s not a mystery, it’s not like we haven’t discovered every human being that exists on this planet. It’s not like we don’t know that it’s round and that we revolve around the sun. We have nothing to fear from each other. We can simply look into each other’s eyes and say you are human.

But the old cogs don’t die off fast enough to allow us to catch up to enlightenment. And if you keep those haters around they infuse the youth with their putrid ideology. I hope to be part of the wave that makes a difference. Let’s see.

#52essays2017

Week 7

clarivelruiz.wordpress.com

Jan 1, 2017, I celebrated Haitian Independence by making and serving Soup Joumou, Haitian Freedom Soup in Washington Heights, New York City. (more to come)

On Dec, 2016 we screened Deported at CUNY’s Documentary Forum. (One of the adults in the room stated youth should view this movie.)

Dominicans Love Haitians Movement second poetry and musical event celebrating and honoring the theme of Sankofa.

The first event of Dominicans Love Haitians Movement, it was brick outside with a house full of love.