Haiti’s Revolutionary Legacy Lives On: Fight for TPS and Against Imperialism

The Caribbean nation of Haiti, whose people have stood proud as the mountains that populate the island, have faced imperialist attacks since its people decided they will not be subjugated by any master. 

From France, Spain, and Britain’s attempts to crush the revolution, to the United States imposing harsh debt on a nation whose enslaved labor built the wealth of the largest economies, militarily occupying the island, sabotaging Haiti’s rice economy and, most notably, installing political tyrants such as Papa Doc and Baby Doc to rule violently and crush dissent- the lives — the dignity and the political rights of the Haitian people have been sacrificed to uphold history’s most recent and most violent empire. 

With the nation in shambles in the wake of imperialist intervention similar to our Caribbean siblings of Cuba, our siblings of Venezuela, Palestine, and Mexico, those fleeing the destruction of their nation face further state terror here in the heart of the imperialist beast responsible for the carnage.

These attacks serve to tear profit out of a starved country as well as convince its inhabitants and the oppressed Black and Brown workers of the world that domination can not be resisted, nor defeated. These attacks serve to convince us that we do not come from a lineage of maroons and revolutionaries, that suffering is our destiny and our role in history is to be dominated. 

I say as a proud Haitian and as an eternal revolutionary, that my country’s history of struggle serves as a rejection to this idea and as a vision to the future of the international working class that freedom can be won when there is great solidarity and sound revolutionary strategy. 

Haiti is what imperialism fears the most because it was a revolt by enslaved folks that defeated three empires. 

Let us recreate the vision of our ancestors in our struggles of today. If they attack our family and our neighbors, calling them illegal as they revoke Temporary Protected Status, then let’s come together as students and workers to discuss and build a strategy to mobilize with our full strength.

If they want to attack us and tell us we can’t fight, may we match them blow for blow with heavy fists. 

And this time, may we do it with our own strength, independent of the capitalist thieves and depraved warmongers. May we do it as workers and students, as neighbors and working-class immigrants and all their generated force — the truest forces we have in seizing our liberation. 

Because the Democrats are no allies. They are charlatans and con artists. They claim they stand for immigrants, yet let ICE creep through our neighborhoods, shoot activists, and kill our community members in detention centers. It was a Democratic mayor that sent police to crush the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis. It was Democrats like Bill Clinton that destroyed the farming economy of Haiti, it was under Biden that we saw Haitian refugees whipped by border patrol in Texas as if to erase the revolution and place us back into the status of objects on a plantation. 

Both Democrats and Republicans fund and direct the racist violence on Black immigrants we’ve come to know profoundly. Both Republicans and Democrats have led attacks on the Caribbean from imperialist debt on Haiti, to sanctions on Cuba that have subjected this other island of revolution to rolling blackouts, ailing hospitals and rotten food. Both parties have allowed the sovereign leader of Venezuela to be captured by the U.S. military forces and imprisoned right here in New York City. 

So it is up to us, the Black and Brown people of this crowd, the workers and students of this crowd, the immigrants and children of immigrants of this crowd for us to take the lessons from Indigenous folk of Bolivia and rely on ourselves to fight the Far Right from below and claim our own collective freedom through the triumph of our struggles.

It is up to us to engage in democratic assemblies amongst ourselves, independent of the political parties that lay siege to the nations of our mothers and fathers. It is essential that we call on our unions to mobilize for full rights for immigrants and an end to deportation. It is essential that we build a mass independent movement against imperialism and its financial institutions like the IMF that continue to extract wealth out of semi-colonies 

It is up to us to remember where we come from as they try to make us forget our revolutionary history. That all empires crumble at the power of a revolutionary movement. That the spirit of our ancestors survives through the pride we carry in our battles of today.

Let us remember that L’Union fait la force when they try to make us feel helpless. Let us use the spirit of the Haitian Revolution to end oppression and create a world free of masters. 

This article is adapted from remarks delivered at All Out for TPS by Haitian women for Haitian Refugees on August 28, 2026