Overview:
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Haitians need a clear agenda if the community hopes to advocate for itself and Haiti.
NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams said New York City’s Haitian community must develop a clear agenda it can pursue with “laser focus” if it aspires to become as organized as other diaspora groups in the city and, in the long term, reach a point where it can change federal policy toward Haiti.
The mayor made the suggestion during a wide-ranging interview with The Haitian Times on May 3, held after a separate meeting Adams had earlier that day with a group of 50 Haitians at City Hall. Adams was responding to a Haitian Times question about how Haitians might be able to affect change in Haiti the way that other New York City diaspora groups are able to do for ancestral countries such as Israel and Ukraine.
“Right now, if you want to go and ask the Jewish community what their agenda is, trust me, they’re very clear,” Adams said. “‘We need this amount of money for Israel.’ If you were to go to the Ukrainian [community], the same thing.”
“If you go to the Haitian community, people are not clear on what’s needed,” Adams said. “When you’re inundated with so many asks, you don’t have time to try to figure out the needs of another entity.”
Because Haitians are in the city’s top 10 immigrant groups, politicians have long considered Haitians a key group to court. Adams is no different, going back to his days as Brooklyn Borough President, and his outreach efforts as mayor have included stops in Haitian enclaves, leadership roundtables, hosting cultural events, recognition of Haitian leaders, and calls for federal support for asylum seekers and Haiti. However, in last Friday’s interview, Adams showed signs of frustration with the community as he spoke about the lack of a collective vision among Haitians.
His statements about the need for a unified community agenda also stand out because they highlight a significant disconnect between elected officials’ views of Haitians as a group and some Haitian community leaders’ efforts to improve Haitian American lives here and influence change in Haiti.
Specifically, Adams suggests that Haitians in the diaspora choose five to 10 items to agree on and pursue with “laser focus.” The unified list, as he called it, can then be delivered to the myriad of elected officials with Haitian constituencies, including City Council members, the state Senate and Assembly and Washington, D.C.
“We need to fully understand that Haiti is still catching hell from beating the French with Toussaint,” Adams said. “We need to really come to a reckoning and say, ‘Okay, I’m not inviting you to my barbecue, I’m not gonna invite you to my wedding. But you know what, there’s some general things that we need. And let’s speak in a unified voice.’”
“So no matter what the organization is or what the entity is,” Adams explained, “we’ve got a common denominator.”
Based on an example Adams gave, vague goals would also have to go. Instead of simply saying, ‘We need money for Haiti,’ when addressing the federal government, the community could say, “We need $500 million for Haiti.”
In the 30-minute interview, Adams touched on several issues pertinent to the city’s Haitian families, such as programs for newcomers and hot-button topics. Speaking with candor, he struck a scolding tone at times as he discussed potentially having “hiring halls” in the Haitian community to help fill city jobs, the need to consolidate nonprofit organizations across the city, turning to Haitian elected officials for discretionary funds, and his “heartbreak” at seeing a Haitian parade he fought for land in court.