Kate Patterson ’04, a member of the Wesleyan chapter of the Student Global AIDS Campaign (SGAC), traveled to Haiti over winter break to study a complex, deeply rooted public health crisis with other students from a larger group called Global Justice. They have returned with a commitment to educate Americans about the situation and to change U.S. foreign policy regarding Haiti.
SGAC, as part of the larger Global Justice group, focuses on public health and its relationship with fair trade, debt relief, gender, and access to medication. Last year, Patterson became involved in Wesleyan’s chapter, which was started by Rebecca Brigham ’05.
“Global Justice decided to put together a group…to look at issues of HIV/AIDS and child survival in resource-poor settings, and the impact of U.S. policy on Haiti’s ability to address these issues,” Peterson said. “They chose Haiti because it’s a microcosm of the different issues. It’s the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, with a huge number of people suffering from AIDS.”
According to Patterson, the U.S. is hesitant to support President Aristide, Haiti’s controversial leader. Aristide was first elected in 1990, in Haiti’s first democratic election. He was forced out by a coup before completing his term, but was reelected in 2000. A populist who has been mostly successful at resisting privatization, Aristide has been attacked from both sides of Haiti’s political spectrum, most significantly by the elite class whose economic policies are more palatable to the U.S. This group, although in the minority, is halting the democratic process by refusing to take part in elections. The U.S. refuses to provide more aid to Haiti until Aristide and his opponents form a coalition government.
On the SGAC trip, students discussed these issues with an Aristide assistant, representatives of a leftist organization, and a number of NGOs.
“It was really hard to understand and to come up with the truth,” Patterson said. “To me, it’s not a matter of whether Aristide’s policies are wrong. What matters is that the democratic process has been shut down entirely. Basically, Haiti’s really poor and we’re keeping them that way. This perpetuates poor health, unemployment, malnutrition, illiteracy…everything.”
Despite Haiti’s rocky relationship with the U.S. government, Patterson said the Haitians she met did not dismiss her for her nationality.
“It was incredible,” she said. “The people were wonderful; their ability to distinguish between us as individuals and our government was astounding. I was amazed by how much we learned. We were treated as official visitors—they asked us to go back and change things.”
Patterson thinks that improving media coverage of the situation is a good place to start, calling the coverage that currently exists “at best inaccurate and at worst grossly unfair.” According to Patterson, the media tends to downplay Haitian support for Aristide, which in turn justifies U.S. foreign policy.
The Wesleyan SGAC chapter meets Mondays at 9:30 p.m., in the Campus Center. Some of the group’s other recent activities have included co-sponsoring AIDS Awareness Week in early December, and researching the disproportionate toll AIDS has taken on women in developing nations. A report will be given to the other 160 SGAC chapters around the country, and AIDS and Gender will be a focus of World Women’s Day on campus in March.
Rebecca Brigham, who founded the Wesleyan chapter, is enthusiastic about the group’s activism.
“We’ve been doing a lot of work around the Democratic primaries,” she said. “[Students] have gone to candidate appearances around the country to ask questions, and to make sure that the candidates know that this is something people care about.”
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