Highlights of press coverage
Danny Glover - Haiti & Venezuela: A Personal View
Saturday 3 April 2004

... Hollywood, Hampstead and Haiti, three worlds whose orbits rarely trouble each other, were united possibly for the first time since 1953 when CLR James, author of The Black Jacobins, the story of the 1791 slave revolution which created Haiti, was exiled by McCarthy from Los Angeles to Parliament Hill with his wife, Selma.

She is Selma James, founder of the Crossroads Women's Centre, who sat beside Mr Glover and chaired Saturday's meeting.  It was reading The Black Jacobins as a student in San Francisco, said Mr Glover, which helped form his political conscience...

"The first time I went to Haiti was 30 years ago because I had intended to go there for some time ever since I read CLR James' book The Black Jacobins, and I wanted to see the place he had written about"...

His family grew up in the southern American state of Georgia and he spoke with equal pride of his grandmother, who was the first of her generation to escape a life picking cotton.

"I was born in 1947. I'm a child of the civil rights movement and came of age during the civil rights movement" he said ...

Mr Glover's political career began at college, when as an economics student at San Francisco State he became involved in a series of sit-ins and was briefly jailed.  But the man who became the activist was molded years before in an educated liberal family whose parents and grandparents had worked their way out of the grinding prison of the cotton fields of the southern states of America.  His grandmother was able to go to college and it was she who ensured that "her children were the only ones who didn't have to go picking cotton in September".

They went to school.  They might have had to walk ten miles to get there and they might have had to wear dresses fashioned from pillowcases, but they went to school.

Mr Glover went to school and onto San Francisco State, and on eventually, to Hollywood.  He saw no conflict and saw no reason to downplay his role in the Lethal Weapons films, which on the surface seem a  thousand miles away from his work as a political animal.  Apart from lifting him onto another plane professionally, he said, they gave him the freedom and the means to support his work.

It also, as Mrs James pointed out, gave him the power to enable voices which would not otherwise be heard, not only to be heard, but fill a hall to capacity while Arsenal were playing Man U in the FA Cup semi-final.

My visit to London was unlike the others because I met Danny Glover, the African American Film Star.  On March 25, I received a call summoning me to London for a women's conference.  On Saturday 27, we landed at Heathrow Airport aboard Kenya Airways, and I proceeded to the Crossroads Women's Centre in North East London, the venue for the conference.  Our NGO, Kaabong Women's Group, is an affiliate of the Global Women's Strike, which is opposed to the oppression of women, especially those who live in rural areas.

We were to be held up for 10 days in North Eastern London, exchanging ideas on how to advance the cause of the rural women, and how to persuade governments to stop wars and spend more on education, health, agriculture and other developmental areas.  At one point we demonstrated at 10 Downing Street, where British Prime Minister Tony Blair lives.  We were surrounded by the Police.  I thought they would clobber us, but they just silently stood by.  I wonder what would happen if Ugandan women marched to State House hurling abuses at President Yoweri Museveni like we did to Blair.  We chorused that we were the women whose children he had taken to war and that he should bring them back and tell George Bush to do the same.

"Blair, we are mothers of Children you have sent to war, tell Bush we don't want war.  Invest in caring not killing, why are you sending a lot of money into war and not development aid," we shouted.  On the last day, Glover the UN Ambassador of Good Will, flew in from Sweden.  Glover was so excited when I talked about Uganda that he invited me to sit near him in the panel and kissed me out of joy.  He was touched by stories of women and children suffering in Uganda as a result of war and disease.  Glover said he appreciated the efforts of Museveni in the fight against HIV AIDS and that he would like to visit Uganda.  He promised to help with the global campaign against war and poverty.

A third panelist, Nina Lopez from Argentina, coordinator of the GWS in French and Spanish-speaking countries, spoke about the repeated attempts by the Bush administration to overthrow Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez in order to grab control of its oil. ...

Drawing out the connections between Haiti, Venezuela and Africa - the squandering of the world's resources for global military spending instead of meeting basic needs - Grace Loumo of Kaabong Women's Group in Uganda, spoke with great passion and authority about rural African women whose work keeps communities from starvation. Women are forced to walk for hours to collect dirty water that makes their families ill. Women are taking the lead in demanding that military spending be diverted to end poverty, starvation, war and rape...

[Danny Glover said] "The first time I went to Haiti was 30 years ago ... I'd read CLR James's Black Jacobins in college about a country and a revolution I had never heard about. I wanted to see who these people were. Haiti did the unthinkable ... it undermined the whole premise of white supremacy by overthrowing slavery. It was the first victory over slavery of Africans. And for that it has continued to be dismissed, beaten and just torn apart ..." President Aristide with 67% of the popular vote, while those supported by US interests only recieved 14% of the vote, even after millions of dollars were siphoned in for their campaign ...

In response to a question about young black people, Danny Glover said, "We need to talk about the work we need to do to create the kind of caring world which is necessary, and they have to be part of it." ... 

... Drawing parallels with other acts of US intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean, he called on Europeans to lead the way in opposing US aggression.

He added: "We have made some extraordinary progress in terms of our struggle.  There was and unprecedented mobilisation against the war in Iraq.  It was an upsurge in people saying: 'We will determine our fate.'  These voices are not to be dismissed."

He said that George Bush might as well be president of the UK too, given how little opposition to him Tony Blair mustered...

An early day motion tabled in the House of Commons by MP John McDonnell, backed by the GWS, warns against US intervention in Venezuela, where women who work in the home are paid state benefits...

... "The face of Venezuela is a face where 60 per cent fo the country are afro-descendents," said Danny, a political activist since the 1960's.

"We visited barrios, schools, cinemas and were profoundly affected by our discussions with those who are part of unions, the literacy programme, the shanty town programme which provides medical services.

"We were there to bear witness to a process where real true participatory democracy exists and we were proud to be a part." ...

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Reports also appeared in:

The Big Issue, 19-25 April 
The Independent, 9 April
The Voice, 5-11 April
New Nation, 5 April

Flyer for the event - Danny Glover: Haiti & Venezuela: A Personal View

Campaigning Hollywood actor Danny Glover visited north London at the weekend to describe his contrasting experiences of struggles taking place in Venezuela and Haiti.

The Lethal Weapon star was in Kentish Town on Satruday as a guest of the Global Women's Strike, which was holding a benefit for the Bolivarian Circle of the Campaign.

The Strike has been working with grassroots women's groups in Haiti & Venezuela against US-led intervention.

Mr Glover has been a polititcal activist since the 1960's.  In January, he was invited to Venezuela as a Board member of TransAfrica Forum to celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King.

He was also in Haiti on the 200th anniversary of the slave's revolution which won their freedom and has been active in opposing the coup which removed the elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Speaking of his time in Venezuela, Mr Glover said: "We were three to bear witness to an extraordinary process where real true participatory democracy exists and we were proud to be a part.

"We were profoundly affected by our discussions with those who are part of unions, the literacy programme and the shanty town programme which provides medical services."

Mr Glover sharply contrasted the situation in Venezuela with the latest action by the US and France to crush true democracy in Haiti.

Close to tears at times, Mr Glover recounted how he had cried on hearing of Jean-Bertant Aristide's ousting.

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