Assignment: Immigration Camps in the United State

Assignment: Immigration Camps in the United State ORDER NOW FOR CUSTOMIZED AND ORIGINAL ESSAY PAPERS ON Assignment: Immigration Camps in the United State Read the short article and answer these questions. 3-5 sentences. Assignment: Immigration Camps in the United State 1. Why has the story of the Haitian refugees housed in camps in the 1990s remained mostly untold? 2. On a general level, how is the placement of immigrants in camps today similar to the experience of Haitian refugees? How is it different? 3. Why might someone believe some immigrants deserve to be in these camps? 4. No matter what your beliefs are, how might you engage with someone who has a different perspective on whether these immigrants should be in camps or not? In other words, what might be some steps you could take to engage with them? attachment_1 This art icle was downloaded by: [ Universit y of Wisconsin – Madison] On: 23 January 2012, At : 18: 59 Publisher: Rout ledge I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK Quarterly Journal of Speech Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions for aut hors and subscript ion informat ion: ht t p:/ / www.t andfonline.com/ loi/ rqj s20 ACT UP, Haitian Migrants, and Alternative Memories of HIV/ AIDS Karma R. Chávez Available online: 19 Jan 2012 To cite this article: Karma R. Chávez (2012): ACT UP, Hait ian Migrant s, and Alt ernat ive Memories of HIV/ AIDS, Quart erly Journal of Speech, 98:1, 63-68 To link to this article: ht t p:/ / dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/ 00335630.2011.638659 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Full t erm s and condit ions of use: ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm s- andcondit ions This art icle m ay be used for research, t eaching, and privat e st udy purposes. Any subst ant ial or syst em at ic reproduct ion, redist ribut ion, reselling, loan, sub- licensing, syst em at ic supply, or dist ribut ion in any form t o anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warrant y express or im plied or m ake any represent at ion t hat t he cont ent s will be com plet e or accurat e or up t o dat e. The accuracy of any inst ruct ions, form ulae, and drug doses should be independent ly verified wit h prim ary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, act ions, claim s, proceedings, dem and, or cost s or dam ages what soever or howsoever caused arising direct ly or indirect ly in connect ion wit h or arising out of t he use of t his m at erial. Quarterly Journal of Speech Vol. 98, No. 1, February 2012, pp. 6368 ACT UP, Haitian Migrants, and Alternative Memories of HIV/AIDS Downloaded by [University of Wisconsin – Madison] at 18:59 23 January 2012 Karma R. Cha?vez Just outside the front doors of the Immigration and Naturalization Service Varick Street Detention Center in Manhattan, a diverse group of 2530 activists marches in a circle. Their homemade signs declare, ‘‘Don’t Jail People for their HIV status,’’ ‘‘ACT UP lucha contra HIV borders,’’ and ‘‘INS Koupab.’’1 They chant in an eclectic cacophony of accents, ‘‘2468 INS Discriminates,’’ and ‘‘Hey hey, ho ho, send Bush to Guanta?namo.’’ In the midst of the action, a woman brings out an effigy of President George Bush and places it amidst the protestors with a sign strapped around its neck: ‘‘Vote for me. I’m the concentration camp president. This self determination thing will not stand. (That’s a promise*Ask Barb).’’2 DIVA TV (Damned Interfering Video Activists), a crucial media component to ACT UP’s activism, captured this October 30, 1992 protest and several others like it in which ACT UP activists participated during 199293.3 The slogans, the effigy, and the disruption of public space reflect tactics for which ACT UP is commonly remembered, but the occasion is somewhat unique. These protests and actions challenged the Bush and Clinton administrations’ policy on HIV-positive Haitian migrants fleeing political repression in Haiti after the ousting of democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in September 1991. First Bush and then Clinton detained nearly 300 political refugees at ‘‘Camp Bulkely’’ on Guanta?namo Bay, Cuba, some for nearly two years, simply because the US government said they tested positive for HIV and the government had issued a ban on HIV-positive migration to the United States in 1987. Assignment: Immigration Camps in the United State The sheer existence of this modern-day concentration camp has received very little scholarly attention,4 and the activism that took place in US cities, including ACT UP New York’s5 role in denouncing the ongoing detention, has been essentially forgotten.6 The only physical remnants of ACT UP’s work on this issue include a small archive in the New York Public Library, consisting of DIVA TV videos, meeting minutes, newspaper clippings and flyers, and two interviews in the ACT UP Oral History Project that feature activists talking about the Haitian actions. Considering Karma R. Cha?vez is Assistant Professor of rhetoric in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin*Madison. She wishes to thank Chuck Morris, Sara McKinnon, Sarah Schulman, and the New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division for help in preparing this essay. Correspondence to: Karma R. Cha?vez, University of Wisconsin, Communication Arts, 821 University Ave, 6050 Vilas Hall, Madison, WI 53706, USA. Email: [email protected] ISSN 0033-5630 (print)/ISSN 1479-5779 (online) # 2012 National Communication Association http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00335630.2011.638659 64 K. R. Cha?vez the common memory of ACT UP as a group comprised of and concerned with white gay men,7 and interested only in reforming medical and health policy, and further considering the ways in which poor people of color’s struggles with HIV/AIDS in the United States are often recalled secondarily to those who are white and more affluent, remembering ACT UP’s work on Haiti has profound implications for the memory of past AIDS and queer activism and the possibilities for AIDS and queer coalition building in the present and future. Downloaded by [University of Wisconsin – Madison] at 18:59 23 January 2012 Why Haiti? In 1983, the US Centers for Disease Control designated those at high risk for contracting AIDS. Those groups were colloquially referred to as the ‘‘4-H Club’’* homosexual men, Haitians, hemophiliacs, and heroin users. The separate designation of Haitians proved highly controversial as they were the only national group originally marked at-risk,8 and Haiti was already maligned in the US public sphere as the supposed origin of AIDS*a claim disputed by experts such as Paul Farmer.9 With the CDC designation, Haitian groups, though acknowledging Haitians had been afflicted, denounced the singling out of the Haitian population. Haitians in both countries felt the impact of the stigmatization. Those in the United States faced rampant discrimination by employers, landlords, the media and the general public. In Haiti, the once flourishing tourist industry saw a virtual halt in business.10 Even without AIDS, the political climate in Haiti already languished.11 Haitians had brief hope in December 1990 with Aristide’s election. When a military coup overthrew Aristide, however, his former supporters were subject to horrendous treatment, compelling many to flee the island and seek political refuge. By November 1991, the Bush Administration realized that thousands of refugees were fleeing toward the United States. If they reached US soil, under international refugee law to which the United States is obligated, the asylum seekers could not be returned. Thus the Administration began erecting an emergency refugee camp at Guanta?namo Bay in order to house and process refugees, and circumvent international law. Assignment: Immigration Camps in the United State Shortly after, because refugees continued to flee, and on the premise that most of those fleeing were economic and not political refugees, Bush issued a repatriation policy and ordered the US Coast Guard to deter any ships leaving Haiti and send the people back to Haiti.12 Thousands of refugees were stuck in limbo for extended periods of time in Guanta?namo, and while some earned asylum in the United States, many migrants were returned to Haiti. When all others had been processed, those refugees who the government claimed had tested positive for HIV remained in Guanta?namo, even as many argued that the HIV ban should not apply to political refugees.13 Numerous groups filed a lawsuit against the government to challenge the detention.14 These refugees lived in deplorable conditions, were subjected to violence and repression by the US military, deprived of proper medical care, and left without any legal recourse or rights.15 Typically, only when their health deteriorated so far that they could no longer be adequately cared for on base, would refugees be shipped ACT UP 25 65 16 to detention centers on US soil. Two HIV-positive Haitian political refugees, Rigaud Milenette and Silieses Success were held at the Varick Street Center after their health declined in Guanta?namo, which prompted ACT UP’s first documented public protest regarding the Haitian issue.17 After months of international protest, an extended hunger strike by the refugees on Guanta?namo, and hunger strikes around the United States, including by prominent black leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, a federal judge ordered all of them released in June 1993. Downloaded by [University of Wisconsin – Madison] at 18:59 23 January 2012 ACT-ing UP for Haiti Though only one part of this coalitional complex, ACT UP served an important function in the eventual release of the Haitians. As shown in both the regular membership meeting and coordinating committee meeting minutes, ACT UP was first asked to be involved with the issue of the Haitian detention in late March 1992.18 Beginning in the fall of that year, reports about the detained Haitians and ACT UP’s involvement regularly showed up in ACT UP meeting agendas. ACT UP members including Walt Wilder, Betty Williams, and Esther Kaplan often offered reports and announcements as a part of the Emergency Coalition for Haitian Refugees (ECHR) and the Shut Down Guanta?namo Coalition NY, which resisted the quarantine of the Haitians. In six episodes, DIVA TV documented ACT UP and its coalitional partners’ work on ending the Haitian imprisonment. These episodes and segments depict the protests and acts of civil disobedience outside of INS and other federal buildings, including footage of an action that resulted in the arrest of more than 20 people on February 23, 1993.19 They also feature speeches, interviews, and letters from various experts and people impacted by the crisis, which offers insight into some ACT UP and ECHR members’ rhetorical perspective and performances.20 For example, some of the speakers in the videos are survivors of Guanta?namo who denounce the deplorable conditions, offering specific details about their treatment at the hands of US military officials. Others are Haitian activists living in the United States who describe the inconsistency of the medical information provided to the refugees, or who read letters from the refugees pleading for assistance. Assignment: Immigration Camps in the United State At an event denouncing US policy, one activist read a letter written by detainees: ‘‘Here they humiliate us and treat us like animals. Our peaceful protests are brutally repressed by helicopters, planes, hundreds of soldiers and dogs. We are hand-cuffed, beaten, and forced to sleep outdoors. Lizards, rats, snakes, scorpions and flies attack all of us, from infants to adults.’’21 In another instance a lawyer defending the Haitians describes the position of the US government, which ensured that the refugees had no legal rights while on Guanta?namo and could be kept in such inhumane conditions. She explains: The point is that it’s a place of absolute military and governmental power, and the people who live there literally have no rights, that’s the government’s whole position in our lawsuit. ‘‘You can’t come into court and challenge what we’re doing to these people.’’ ‘‘Why?’’ ‘‘Because they have no rights.’’ ‘‘Why do they have no rights?’’ ‘‘Because they are aliens on a military base which is outside of the 66 K. R. Cha?vez Downloaded by [University of Wisconsin – Madison] at 18:59 23 January 2012 United States.’’ Ok, if you point out why they are on a military base outside the United States except [sic] that you went and put them there, they’re like, ‘‘yea, that’s true, but people, aliens in that position have no rights.’’22 These videos reflect a coalition of voices, each speaking about a different dimension of the horrific impacts of this US policy. ACT UP members were also involved in coalition work DIVA TV did not capture. ACT UP member Betty Williams, a white, heterosexual Quaker, details her and Bro Broberg’s active involvement in helping to resettle Haitians who were released from the camp into the United States. Williams depicts the extreme lack of resources they had available as they attempted to resettle refugees. For example, eventually Housing Works and other AIDS housing organizations no longer could accept more refugees, which likely would have meant that the US government could have simply returned those refugees to Haiti. Williams remarks, ‘‘And Bro and I took a really deep breath and we lied. We lied to the Justice Department. We lied to the military and said, yes, we had housing.’’ In the end, they resettled more than 100 Haitians. Williams also describes her and Broberg’s trip to Guanta?namo to interview the refugees and learn the gravity of their situation in order to figure out how best to help.23 Alternative Memory? Despite the severity of the Guanta?namo situation, and the active role some ACT UP members played in calling attention to and eventually resolving the crisis, this moment has escaped public memory, almost entirely. The explanations for this absence are surely more complicated than I have time to unpack here. For instance, in response to a question about the demise of ACT UP, Williams explained in her interview archived in the ACT UP Oral History Project that she agreed that issues such as housing, Haitians and immigration led to ACT UP’s crumbling. Similarly, ACT UP member and human-rights journalist Anne-christine d’Adesky noted in her interview that generally speaking, and in her memory, ACT UP did not reach out to or actively coalesce with Haitian communities.24 Given what I have already highlighted, such flagrant contradiction may cause alarm, but these memories of ACT UP do not have to be read as contrary to the fairly extensive archival materials revealing ACT UP members’ efforts. Williams and d’Adesky suggest that ACT UP, like most groups, experienced tensions over the question of its scope. Assignment: Immigration Camps in the United State The memories members have and that scholars and journalists have created about ACT UP appear to reveal primarily one part of the ACT UP story: that which centers white gay men, and focuses on actions against pharmaceutical companies, homophobic churches, and medicine and health-related governmental policies. The Haiti archive reveals another part of the ACT UP story. Imperialism, poverty, homophobia, sexism, and racism promulgate what continues to be, for many, a deadly disease. Perhaps it was not always true, but ACT UP’s work clearly considered these factors in the ways it built coalition and understood the disease. ACT UP, then, supplies one model for queer coalition building and AIDS activism that accounts for the complexities of oppression, repression and illness. The revitalization of such ACT UP 25 67 memory is crucial for learning to build coalitions that address such complexities in the present and future. As Alexandra Juhasz writes of the importance of what she calls ‘‘queer archive activism,’’ it is necessary to ‘‘relodge those frozen memories in contemporary contexts so that they, and perhaps we, can be reanimated.’’25 Notes Downloaded by [University of Wisconsin – Madison] at 18:59 23 January 2012 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] ‘‘Lucha contra’’ is Spanish for ‘‘struggle against,’’ and ‘‘koupab’’ is Haitian Creole for ‘‘guilty.’’ DIVA TV/AIDS Community Television, Haitian INS Demonstration (#2), Video 01230-A, October 30, 1992, from New York Public Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division, AIDS Activist Videotape Collection, 19852000. See also DIVA TV/AIDS Community Television, David Wojnarowicz Political Funeral, Video 00876, July 29, 1992. DIVA TV and the role of media activism in facilitating the goals of AIDS activists have been widely addressed. See, e.g.: Ann Cvetkovich, ‘‘Video, AIDS, and Activism,’’ in Art, Activism, & Oppositionality: Essays from Afterimage, ed. Grant H. Kester (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 18298; Roger Hallas, Reframing Bodies: AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009); Lucas Hildebrand, ‘‘Retroactivism,’’ GLQ 12 (2006): 30317; Alexandra Juhasz, ‘‘WAVE in the Media Environment: Camcorder Activism and the Making of HIV TV,’’ Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 10 (1992): 13451. Only a few scholars have addressed the HIV detention, see: Rebecca Kidder, ‘‘Administrative Discretion Gone Awry: The Reintroduction of the Public Charge Exclusion for HIV-Positive Refugees and Asylees,’’ The Yale Law Journal 106 (1996): 389422; Harold Hongju Koh, ‘‘The ‘Haiti Paradigm’ in United States Human Rights Policy,’’ The Yale Law Journal 103 (1994): 2391435; Elizabeth Mary McCormick, ‘‘HIV-Infected Haitian Refugees: An Argument against Exclusion,’’ Assignment: Immigration Camps in the United State Georgetown Immigration Law Journal 7 (1993): 14972. This paper focuses only on the work of ACT UP NY, which I refer to as ACT UP. A key exception: Merle English, ‘‘Rally Hits Haitian HIV ‘Prison Camp,’’’ New York Newsday, September 23, 1992, 28. E.g., Peter F. Cohen, Love and Anger: Essays on AIDS, Activism, and Politics (Binghamton, NY: Harrington Press, 1998); Patrick Moore, Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004). Philip J. Hilts, ‘‘Haitian Doctors Uncover Clue to Mystery of Deadly AIDS,’’ Washington Post, October 23, 1983, A12. Paul Farmer, AIDS & Accusation: Haiti and the Geography of Blame, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); See also: The Uses of Haiti, 2nd ed. (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 2003); Cindy Patton, Inventing AIDS (New York: Routledge, 1990). Several reports in the mainstream and gay press, as well as in medical journals, linked Haiti and HIV/AIDS, often in very problematic ways. See for example: Lawrence K. Altman, ‘‘The Doctor’s World; The Confusing Haitian Connection to AIDS,’’ New York Times, August 16 1983; Anne-christine d’Adesky, ‘‘New Haitan AIDS/ASFV Link,’’ New York Native 1986, June 9; James E. D’Eramo, ‘‘Is African Swine Fever Virus the Cause?,’’ New York Native 1983; Robin Marantz Henig, ‘‘AIDS a Disease’s Deadly Odyssey,’’ New York Times, February 6 1983; Hilts, ‘‘Haitian Doctors,’’ A12; Sheldon H. Landesman, ‘‘The Haitian Connection: AIDS in Persons of Haitian Origin,’’ New York Native 1983; Jean-Robert Leonidas and Nicole Hyppolite, ‘‘Haiti and the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome,’’ Annals of Internal Medicine 98 (1983): 102021; Peter Moses and John Moses, ‘‘Haiti and the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome,’’ Annals of Internal Medicine 99 (1983): 565; Charles L. Ortleb, ‘‘Pigs in Belle Glade Test Positive for Antibodies to HTLV-III,’’ New York Native 1986, 8; Jane Teas, ‘‘Could AIDS Agent be a New Variant of African Swine Fever Virus?,’’ Lancet 321 68 K. R. Cha?vez [10] [11] [12] Downloaded by [University of Wisconsin – Madison] at 18:59 23 January 2012 [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] (1983): 923. More recently, the ‘‘Haitian connection’’ has been reintroduced by an evolutionary biologist from the University of Arizona. See: ‘‘HIV First Came to the US in 1969,’’ Gay People’s Chronicle, November 2 2007. Farmer, AIDS & Accusation. For a brief review of Haiti’s political situation since 1957, see: ‘‘‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier Returns to Haiti from Exile,’’ BBC News, January 17, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world11943820. Brunson McKinley, … Get a 10 % discount on an order above $ 100 Use the following coupon code : NURSING10