Tagged: aime cesaire

literature + liberation: a Haiti fundraiser at The Shrine

In his epic poem, “Cahier d’un retour au pays natal” (“Notebook of a Return to My Native Land”), the Martinican poet and freedom fighter Aimé Césaire, refers to Haiti as the place “where négritude stood up for the first time.”

Come to The Shrine in Harlem  Thursday, July 15th to experience this masterpiece performed in French and English as a liberatory literary gathering to benefit two grassroots Haitian organizations working to rebuild the first black republic.

what: literature + liberation: a Haiti fundraiser at The Shrine

when: Thursday July 15th, 2010, 7pm

where: The Shrine, 2271 Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard (7th Avenue between 133rd and 134th Streets)

Suggested Donation $10-$25

Spread the word! If you’re out of town or otherwise occupied, please tell your friends! Stay tuned for Facebook updates at The Freedwomen’s Bureau www.facebook.com/TheFreedwomensBureau

The beneficiary organizations are: SOIL Haiti ( http://www.oursoil.org ) focuses on ecological sanitation, working alongside communities to create composting toilets that remove dangerous pathogens from the water supply and provide nutrient rich compost to farmers. Since the earthquake, SOIL Haiti has been working in Port-au-Prince along with OXFAM and the Haitian government to implement environmentally sound sanitation strategies urgently needed to serve the 1 million+ people living in tent cities since the disaster.

Seeds for Haiti ( http://www.seedsforhaiti.org ) works in concert with Mouvman Peyizan Papay (Peasant Movement of Papay), to support farmers in Haiti’s Central Plateau in achieving social justice and assertingfood sovereignty. With the reverse migration from the city back to the countryside since the earthquake, their work is even more urgent. Recently farmers of MPP made headlines when they promised to burn anyseeds donated by Monsanto, a gift-horse of seeds that will not reproduce and are laced with pesticides, thus subjecting farmers already facing a state of emergency to the vicious cycle of industrial agriculture.

[with thanks to Yego $. V. Moravia / 21Trillion Design Collaboration Studio for art direction]