NEW YORK – WND's feature of acclaimed Haitian-rights activist Ézili Dantò’s endorsement of Donald Trump for president has prompted a flood of sharply critical mail from self-described Haitian Hillary Clinton supporters who accuse Dantò, among other things, of selling out to Republicans.
One critic warned Danto she is committing "political suicide," charging Trump is "evil."
"I love Haiti and I love Haitians but I am so disappointed that you have embraced and endorse a totally corrupt mega-capitalist Donald Trump," the email said. "I know how you feel about the Clintons but you traded a devil you know for a bigger devil that you don't know."
'You do not owe me anything and I will not expect a reply, but I am truly disappointed in this political suicide that you are leading people to," the writer said. "Donald Trump is Evil ... and I hope we don't have to find out how evil he really is. I pray for you and the work you do."
Dantó told WND she received emails like that "all day."
"No matter what I do I am going to pay for this," she said. "We're already losing donors and supporters who keep this work going. So let's win. I pray when Trump wins he is not worse than the Clintons as this writer fears."
Despite the risk of losing donors and supporters, Dantò, in an email to WND, confirmed she is still endorsing Trump and asked WND to publish her "Haiti Message to the Donald Trump Team" in full.
In a separate email to WND, Dantó indicated her willingness to advise the Trump campaign regarding Haiti.
“That common ground can be shared on the Haiti issue and if Trump took the actions we suggested, Haitians would be more likely to vote for him,” Dantò explained to WND in her separate email.
“We are also very happy to provide Trump's Team with all the ammunition they need to take down Hillary Clinton and the Clintonites who have disenfranchised the Haitian voters, hurt the quake victims and robbed Haiti of its lands and riches when we were at our most vulnerable,” she wrote.
Dantó, the founder of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network and the Free Haiti Movement, is a prolific Haitian human-rights lawyer, playwright and poet who has used her considerable influence in the Haitian community both in the United States and in Haiti to endorse Trump for president.
She was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and raised in Stamford, Connecticut, earning a BA from Boston College and a JD from the University of Connecticut School of law. She attended the Hartford Conservatory for Ballet, Jazz and Modern while studying Haitian dancing at home. She has toured internationally, including dance performances at the United Nations and Carnegie Hall.
'Haiti Message to the Donald Trump Team'
In her message to the Trump campaign, Danto is critical of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s earthquake relief efforts in Haiti through both the State Department and the Clinton Foundation.
Dantó’s endorsement of Trump is qualified by her insistence that Trump continue to reach out to the Haitian people by pledging to implement policies of true humanitarian charity and promote the freedom and democratic rights of the Haitian people should he win the White House.
Dantò's “Haiti Message to Donald Trump Team” reads:
Free Haiti’s interest converges with that of Donald Trump. We both do not want a third Obama term with the Clintons back in the White House. We are the independent thinking Haitians who want to put a wrench in the workings of imperialism in Haiti. This year, that wrench is called Donald Trump.
The Clintons and Obama brought Haiti the former crack head and gross sexist, Michel Martelly, who ceded over 30% of Haiti lands and offshore islands to foreigners. Under Barack Obama with Hillary Clinton at the State Department and Bill Clinton as U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti, 30,000 Haitians were deported back to an earthquake, cholera-ravaged Haiti, overrun by white people, riding out the world economic recession at Paul Farmer’s charitable industrial complex, living behind high gates and new luxurious compounds paid for from earthquake funds and other so-called “aid to Haiti.”
- If the decrees of illegally elected president, Michel Martelly, starting from when the Clintons took over Haiti, and through his presidency from 2011 to 2016, are not reversed by the next Parliament, then Haitians have lost more lands under the Obama Administration than under any other previous US president in history. More than 30% of Haiti territory have been cordoned off and placed in the hands of foreigners, most of whom are big Clinton Foundation donors. This was done when Haitians were at their most vulnerable after the apocalyptic earthquake. The Clintons and their extraction company buddies, like Frank Guistra, VCS and Newmont Mining, might yet give Haiti another terrible earthquake. At least 15% of the lands taken from Haiti is in the Northern mining belt on an earthquake fault line.
- If Trump can stop a third Obama term; if Trump pledges to Haitian-Americans that when he becomes President, he will stop funding the rapist U.N. troops in Haiti, Haitians who are undecided would vote for this. Trump will get some more Haitian-American votes if he publicly calls to end the U.N. presence in Haiti and supports free and fair elections without the sort of Obama/Hillary Clinton/Cheryl Mills/Susan Rice strong-arm bullying tactics that disrespected the Haitian vote in 2010/2011 and have continued to do so in 2015 to the present.
- Trump should pledge his administration would veto and stop funding the U.N. presence in Haiti because they’ve been there for 12 years and have brought rape, the cholera disease and devastation, not democracy. He could use that wasted imperial US millions that is funding occupation and oppression in Haiti, to help suffering Black people in US cities like Baltimore, Flint Michigan, Chicago, NY, Washington DC; to name just a few.
- If Donald Trump uses his platform to say there is no reason for the U.N. to be in Haiti; that Haiti has one of the least violence rates in the Western Hemisphere; that the Dominican Republic is more violent than Haiti; the Bahamas is more violent than Haiti; Brazil, Mexico, Jamaica have more homicides and violence than Haiti. If Donald Trump told these truths, and stopped the warmongering Clinton-Obama trajectory in Haiti, (in AFRICOM also), than he’ll be doing Haiti and the world of suffering and exploited humans, a good turn.
- If Donald Trump pledges that when he is president, he will use US power to convince the U.N. to pay restitution to the Haiti cholera victims and to pay to detoxify Haiti’s water, not using the same people who fouled it up and then covered up their wrongdoings, but Haitian companies, chosen by Haitians not related to the U.N., the Clinton Foundation or USAID’s regular subcontracting thieves, we would ask Haitians to vote for him.
- If Donald Trump would help Free Haiti reverse the damage of Obama-Clinton and void all the Martelly decrees, especially the decree that allows for open-pit mining on an earthquake fault line in the North of Haiti, he would be helping to save Haiti lives and lands and we would ask Haitians to vote for him. Free Haiti has been battling to get these issues heard for over a decade. We want the world to know Haiti doesn’t need false charity. Haiti has massive riches, rare and priceless iridium (asteroid remains), more than $8 billion in copper, the most gold in the Western Hemisphere (more than $33 billion), massive, massive oil on its lands, waters and offshore islands.
- If Donald Trump is the non-establishment politician who will hear us, work with Haitians, in an environmentally safe manner, using the resources of our lands to make the ten million people in Haiti live well and comfortable in Haiti, from the assets of their own nation, not fake charity, then we are here to talk to him and tell him how we think he can beat Hillary Clinton and her promiscuous, politicians-for-sale, Clintonite team.
- If Haiti resources were used for Haitians, than no Haitians would leave Haiti to immigrate to the US to look for a better life and Donald Trump would need no wall. The same is true for the entire global South.
Haitians want a stop to the US meddling in Haiti elections and illegal taking of Haiti resources. Haitians want the US occupation forces, fronted by the U.N., immediately removed. The US millions are best used in the United States to help US citizens in great need, not to exploit and oppress defenseless Haitians. Haitians, like all human beings, want free and fair elections, for their votes to count and for the US oligarchs, the EU and OAS to stop manipulating Haiti elections, forcing corruption in Haiti with internationally rigged elections as was done in 2010 and 2015.
Haitian cholera victims are entitled to reparations and compensation from the U.N. which admits to bringing in cholera through their troops. But the indecent Obama Administration, the Clintons and their agents have worked, to both, cover up that wrongdoing, project the blame onto Haiti pre-existing conditions that required their better care, while the Obama’s justice department insisted, in court, that the U.N. has blanket immunity for a civil tort, like dumping its raw feces in Haiti’s drinking water.
Haitian-Americans would more likely vote for Trump if he insisted on the U.N. paying due compensation to the people it harmed in Haiti and paid for the installation of locally controlled water treatment and purification systems. Haiti also battles to revoke the Free Trade Zone quota swapping the major elites do and call it “giving jobs” to Haitians. Haiti wants a stop to the unfair and plundering trade agreements and land deals, the ending of fracking and a living minimum wage for Haitians from foreign corporations in Haiti. These are small matters to the Trump campaign in the larger scheme but central, we believe, to a Trump victory in the battleground state of Florida.
In a request for a correction, she told WND that Èzili Dantò is her legal name, not her pen name. Born Marguerite Laurent, she said the name Dantò was taken from a historic Haitian spiritual woman whose conversion to Christianity predated the Black Madonna of Częstochowa.