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THE MICHIGAN CHRONICLE


June 9-15, 2010


Page A-3


Second Front From Detroit to Haiti How Wayne State medical students are changing lives


By Steve Malik Shelton Haiti is a relatively small country, with


only about 8 million people. And although it has the proud distinction of being the second oldest republic in the Western Hemisphere (the United States is the first) and the nation whose enslaved people won a war for their freedom against colonial powers, it remains one of the poorest nations in the world.


For decades half of the people of Haiti had


no access to clean water. A third had no access to proper sanitary facilities. 90 percent went without electrical services, and a mere 5 per- cent of the nation’s roads are in decent shape.


Last January’s record earthquake severely


aggravated conditions in the island nation, causing hundreds of thousands of deaths and plunging millions of Haitians into a health crisis of incredible and catastrophic propor- tions.


Africans in Medicine (AIM) is a non-profit or-


ganization established in 2005 by young Afri- can medical students with the purpose to make a positive impact on African communities’ both in Africa as well as the diaspora.


In 2009, two Wayne State University medical


students, Ebere Azumah and Ukamaka Atueyi started a chapter here in Michigan.


AIM is unique and comprehensive in its


approach to use medical knowledge and con- nections to address the many problems that burden Africans around the world. And they have organized seminars and free health fairs in Detroit as well as in Haiti.


About a year ago, executive board members


Ebere Azumah, Patricia Oyetakin, Uka Atueyi, Danielle Djoumbi and Amanda Braham decided that Haiti was an ideal place to begin their med- ical mission.


“Last year six of us went to Haiti,” said


Azumah who graduated this week from the medical school. “We brought medical supplies and we worked with local physicians to diag- nose and treat the people. Many of them are orphans whose parents have died because of disease and harsh living conditions.


This time 22 people from our group are


going. We have doctors, nurses, medical stu- dents, and dentists and while we’re there we’re going to be setting up make-shift clinics and we’re going to go to various communities and provide care.”


In reaching out to Haitians, AIM is providing


desperately needed medical care and supplies. Even before the recent earthquake, only 28


percent of Haitians had access to health care and a mere 3 percent had health care insur- ance, and nongovernmental organizations ac- counted for 70 percent of health care services in rural areas.


AFRICANS IN MEDICINE (AIM), the medical project led by Ebere Azumah, prepares to leave for Haiti.


In the aftermath of the earthquake and the


areas rainy season, the need for services and supplies has increased drastically.


AI.M’s next trip to Haiti is scheduled for


this summer and it will be geared towards the unique needs of those who survived the mas- sive Jan. 12 catastrophe.


It is the kind of personal involvement and


Lawmaker who snubbed Black media, got rejected by Alabama voters


By Frederick Cosby Rep. Artur Davis’ failed quest to win Alabama’s Democratic


gubernatorial nomination did succeed in debunking two politi- cal myths: That Blacks will blindly vote for anyone who looks like them and that America is in a post-racial period just be- cause a Black man lives in the White House.


Despite pre-election polls that indicated his contest was


tight, Davis, a four-term congressman from Alabama’s only Black-majority district, got smoked big time night in his drive to become Alabama’s first Black governor. He lost to state Agri- culture Commissioner Ron Sparks by an unofficial 62 percent to 38 percent tally in the state’s Democratic primary election.


Davis was unable to muster enough White support to beat


his opponent and couldn’t generate enough Black support to at least make the contest as close as the polls predicted it would be.


“It may be that our vision was flawed,” Davis said in Birming-


ham Tuesday night. “It may be that I was just not the right can- didate.”


Several political analysts suggested Wednesday that maybe it


was the head-scratching political strategy that Davis’ campaign employed that contributed to such a lopsided defeat.


Davis, a Black man running for office in the deep South state


that spawned segregationist Gov. George Wallace, tried to win the governor’s mansion by keeping the state’s Black political establishment at arm’s length, by carving out a centrist-con- servative voting record in the House of Representatives, and by alienating many Black Alabama residents by voting against a health care bill last March that they supported.


He was the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus


to vote against the health care bill, which Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed into law earlier this year.


“It was an absolutely flawed strategy,” political scientist Ron


Walters told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “He was trying to put to- gether a Black-White coalition — more White than Black. There were two problems: Black organizations endorsed his opponent, which took away his base, and then people he (Davis) expected to show up at the polls didn’t.”


“He disavowed his natural base,” Walters continued. “Racial


politics is fundamental, and you can’t do that in states like Ala- bama and Mississippi. Any successful politician will be respect- ful of the reality he’s dealing with. Here’s a politician who wasn’t respectful of the reality he was dealing with.”


Walters, a retired University of Maryland political science pro-


fessor, and other political experts view Davis’ defeat as a rebuke of so-called post-racial, post-civil rights Black politicians who try to win elections and win over White voters by de-emphasiz- ing Black political concerns.


“The Black establishment, the iconic leaders from the civil


rights era and the traditional Black organizations, ironically and successfully deprived Artur Davis of the nomination,” Glen


Artur Davis


Browder, a former Democratic Alabama congressman, told the New York Times. “But they felt he had shunned his own race, and he could not win the general election.”


Even the foreign press wondered what Davis was thinking. “I don’t have much sympathy for Davis,” Michael Tomasky,


American editor-at-large for The Guardian, wrote in a blog for the British newspaper. “He was always in dreamland if he thought he was going to become governor of Alabama (almost no Dem- ocrat could win that state in today’s political atmosphere, let alone an African American), and yet he cast some vote(s) against his constituents’ needs.”


Davis was banking on significant White support based on


the record he built in the House. He advocated a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and voted against a bill in 2007 to ban workplace discrimination against gays. He was one of 27 Democrats who voted to permit oil and gas drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and backed renewal of the George W. Bush-era Patriot Act, which many Democrats and civil liberty advocates complained gave law enforcement to power to engage in domestic spying.


Davis was one of 63 Democrats who voted for a ban on so-


called “partial birth” abortion. He was the first member of the Congressional Black Caucus to call for Rep. Charles Rangel (D- N.Y.) to step down as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee because of ethics complaints against him.


The NAACP gave Davis a “B” or 80 percent rating in its


NAACP’s legislative report card for the 111th Congress. The Na- tional Journal gave Davis a 51.3 percent conservative score and a 48.7 liberal score in its grading of House and Senate members and their voting patterns.


But perhaps no vote sealed Davis’s fate with Black Alabama voters more than his “no” on health care reform, Obama’s sig-


nature issue. Ironically, Davis and Obama were classmates at Harvard University, and Davis campaigned enthusiastically to get Obama elected president, only to actively pan some of the Obama White House’s key initiatives


Davis’s big complaint about the health care bill — which


eliminated pre-existing conditions as a hindrance to coverage, helps small businesses provide coverage for its employees, and provides subsidies for poor people to afford health insurance — was its price tag


“But all of these things can be done at half the cost without


a 3,000-page, near trillion-dollar overhaul of the system,” Davis told the Birmingham News in March. “That’s the point of my disagreement. Where I stand is in support of a more targeted approach that is less expensive.”


Davis cast his vote with the blessings of the White House and


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in deference to his gubernatorial run. While he was the only CBC member to vote against the bill, Davis wouldn’t have been the only black lawmaker to potentially pay a political price had he voted “yes.”


Reps. Sanford Bishop and David Scott — both CBC members,


both members of the mostly White fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democratic caucus and both representatives of Georgia dis- tricts with sizable White constituencies that largely disliked the health care bill — voted for the bill and will likely have tough re-election battles in November’s general election.


The Jesse Jackson questioned Davis’ Blackness because of


his health care vote, though he later softened his initial com- ment. But others in Alabama said the seeds of Black animosity towards Davis were sewn long before the health care vote.


“Artur Davis did do something to make Black people not


want to vote for him, and that is his ‘no’ vote for health care reform,” Angela Lewis, an associate professor of Black political behavior at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, told CNN. “Even before the Black political groups stepped in the picture and refused to endorse him, he already established a negative relationship with some of the Black voters.”


In addition to sidestepping his state’s Black political es-


tablishment, Davis apparently also shied away from the Black media, declining repeatedly to appear on programs like CNN contributor Roland Martin’s “Washington Watch” Sunday news show on TV One.


As Davis tried to distance himself from Alabama’s Black po-


litical leaders during the campaign, Sparks embraced them. Sparks campaigned hard in the Black community, Walters said.


Walters said Davis’ loss is a cautionary tale for the new gen-


eration of Black office seekers who heavily court White voters almost to the exclusion of Black voters.


“Former Virginia governor Doug Wilder, former New York


mayor David Dinkins, former Chicago mayor Harold Washington all won state or citywide office by appealing to White voters, yet they did not reject Black voters,” Walters said.


EBERE AZUMAH, who graduated June 8 with an MD from Wayne State University School of Medicine, is seen here in Haiti where she has been leading a Detroit medical project with fellow students.


care which is crucial in a country that often has huge logistical and political challenges in getting money and supplies to the people that are most in need of them.


“Many people are dying because of negli-


gence,” said Rev. Soma Muma, who has made four humanitarian trips to Haiti. “And from not having enough food to eat, and they are dying because of ignorance and the inability to take care of themselves and it is very important to do whatever we can to come to their rescue.”


Haitians have also suffered under brutal dic-


tatorships, international blockades and embar- gos; foreign occupations and economic as well as military meddling in its internal affairs. Most experts believe it to be a result of centuries of racism against Haiti stemming from the time when it was exploited as a slave colony under the French and acerbated when it violently yet heroically won its freedom in 1805.


It was feared by colonial powers that Haiti’s


noble example of throwing off the shackles of slavery and oppression would spread to other areas throughout the Western hemisphere.


These fears were grounded in truth for slave


insurrectionists Gabrielle Prosser, Nat Turner and Denmark Vessey were all inspired by the Haitian revolution when they planned their own uprisings against the evil of American slavery in the 19th


century. Whatever the causes (and most agree that


they are complicated and multifaceted, com- bining exploitation by foreign corporations and governments with avaricious and incom- petent Haitian military and political leaders) the people of Haiti are suffering and are in dire need of attention and help.


AIM has merged good intention into viable


action. “This effort is important because Haiti’s been


a devastated country for years,” said WSU jour- nalism student and trip participant, Chidinma Ogbuaku. “And now that the earthquake is over most people have forgotten about it. So I think this trip is very necessary to provide medical relief.”


Azumah explained they also have plans to


set up sponsorship programs for Haitian or- phans, whereby Americans can corresponded with them and donate funds for schooling, medical needs, food, water and clothing.


“We will fellowship with them and let them


know we want to help as much we can.” Anyone wishing to support AIM in their ef-


forts should contact Ebere Azubuah by going to the AIM website at wwww.med.wayne.edu/ studentorgs/aim/.


Steven Malik Shelton is a journalist and


human rights advocate. He can be reached at malikshelton19@aol.com.


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