Rasanblaj

Every community has a story it tells about itself. It speaks of order, of safety, of shared sacrifice and shared benefit. But beneath that story is another truth, quieter and far more dangerous, the truth of what happens when someone in authority allows their loyalties to drift from the present toward the shadows of their past.

There is a kind of solidarity that begins in memory but ends in betrayal.
It is born from identification, from the soft ache of seeing a younger self in the trespassers who swarm the court. It starts as empathy, as understanding, as the familiar pull of old habits and old neighborhoods. But when left unchecked, it becomes something else entirely. It becomes a loyalty to disruption, a sympathy for the ones who violate the space, and a hardening against those who honor it.

This is solidarity turned inward, then twisted outward against the people who keep the community alive.

The trespassers shout late into the night, curse across the pavement, let smoke rise in the air that drifts into homes where children sleep. And yet the authority who should see this as a breach sees instead a mirror. The noise becomes memory. The disorder becomes nostalgia. The violation becomes a story he once lived and therefore feels compelled to protect.

But a community cannot survive the weight of someone else’s romanticized past.
And the people who pay the dues and trust the boundaries are left standing alone.

The faithful in authority understand this. They know that solidarity is not a matter of shared origin or shared struggle. It is a matter of shared responsibility. They know that real solidarity stands with the community, not with the people who test its limits. They know that nostalgia is not a principle. It is a temptation.

When authority chooses nostalgia over responsibility, the community pays the price. The loudest and most reckless become the ones protected. The most responsible become invisible. The covenant is broken from within.

This is how a neighborhood begins to fracture.
Not because outsiders pushed through the gate, but because someone on the inside held the gate open for the sake of a memory.

Solidarity captured by nostalgia is a dangerous thing.
It is the shepherd who sees himself in the wolf.
It is the guard who mistakes intrusion for innocence.
It is the leader who sees a trespasser and says, with a strange kind of pride, I remember being him.

But a community is not a stage for resurrecting old versions of oneself.
It is a living thing, fragile and dependent on the vigilance of those entrusted to protect it.

The faithful can hold the line for only so long.
They can endure only so much reinterpretation of harm, only so much indulgence of disorder. At some point, the authority shaped by nostalgia must confront what it has become, what it has enabled, and what it has allowed to erode.

Because the truth is this:
A community is not undone by its trespassers.
It is undone by the people who defend them.

Solidarity, when turned in the wrong direction, becomes betrayal.
And if a neighborhood is to survive, the authority within it must remember that loyalty to the past is no substitute for responsibility to the present.

A community is not held up by good intentions. It is held up by discipline, by the unromantic work of boundaries and the people who honor them. Every neighborhood has those steady souls who understand this, the ones who treat responsibility as a living thing, not a slogan. They enforce what must be enforced, not because they enjoy confrontation, but because they know what disorder becomes once it takes root.

These are the faithful in authority.
And they stand in quiet contrast to another kind of authority entirely.

Because there are those who look at trespassers and see not a breach, but a reflection, some soft remembrance of who they were long ago. The loud voices on the court remind them of their own youth. The rough talk, the swagger, the disregard for space that is not theirs, it all stirs something familiar. Nostalgia becomes a lens, and through that lens the trespassers appear less like intruders and more like a younger version of themselves.

This is where the trouble begins.

Instead of guarding the community, this kind of authority guards its own memory.
Instead of drawing a line, it redraws the story.
Instead of naming harm, it names relatability.

The noise becomes a rite of passage.
The profanity becomes boys being boys.
The weed smoke drifting across fences becomes a phase.
The intrusion becomes something I used to do.

But nostalgia is a poor substitute for stewardship.
And when nostalgia governs authority, authority becomes unmoored.

The faithful, those who take the role seriously, are left carrying the burden. They uphold boundaries while others blur them. They enforce rules while others reinterpret them. They see trespassing as a threat to order, while others see it as a flashback. They understand that a community cannot survive on memory alone; it survives on responsibility.

But nostalgia has its own gravity.
It pulls weak authority backward into a boyhood long gone until the present loses its shape and its urgency. The courtyard is no longer a problem to solve but a story to relive. The trespassers become protagonists in a narrative the authority figure cannot bear to let go of.

And when authority identifies with disorder, disorder wins.

Not loudly.
Not violently.
But slowly, in the way a fence leans before it breaks.

The faithful watch this happen with a kind of quiet sorrow. They know what nostalgia disguised as empathy can do. They know how quickly a community unravels when the people charged with safeguarding it instead nurture the very behavior that undermines it.

Authority is not memory work.
It is boundary work.

And when those in power choose their past selves over the present needs of the community, the neighborhood bends, not under the weight of trespassers, but under the nostalgia of the very people meant to protect it.

The faithful remain.
They hold the line as best they can.
But they know this truth in their bones:

A community survives only when authority faces forward, not backward.

“Men anpil, chay pa lou.” (Many hands make the load light.)

I have carried this proverb with me for as long as I can remember, and I hear it now as I think about the lifelines our people send home — those steady streams from Boston, Miami, Montreal, Paris, Santiago — and how they flow into the hands of mothers, brothers, cousins, neighbors.

They are the many hands already at work. And yet, as I reflect, I see how much lighter the load could be if we gave these streams a common direction, a deliberate course, so that they might carry more than survival — they might carry transformation.

My own study of the Philippine experience has left me in that curious state of being impressed and unsettled at once. I have admired their breadth of vision — a policy that works on the national, bilateral, and multilateral fronts — and yet I have been aware of the seams and fractures beneath it: the difficulty of enforcing protections, the temptation to celebrate deployment numbers while neglecting the conditions under which people live and work abroad.

I want us to learn from that model, but also to surpass it — to do, in short, what Haiti has never been afraid to do when necessity and imagination conspire.

Principles I Cannot Let Go

First, I must insist on equity. If we are to take these billions in remittances and make them the backbone of development, they cannot serve only those fortunate enough to have relatives abroad. They must spill over into infrastructure, education, and the patient building of local economies.

Second, I believe in protection. It is not enough for a Haitian to find work in Santiago or New York; it matters profoundly that the work is safe, that the wage is fair, that dignity travels with the passport.

Third, I think constantly about sustainability. We must invest these funds in structures and institutions that outlast the moment — that survive political seasons and personal fortunes.

And finally, I see that none of this can be done in isolation. Our approach must be layered — the national machinery, the bilateral agreements, the multilateral commitments — each speaking to and reinforcing the other.

On Our Own Ground

I would begin at home, with an institution that could both serve and defend our people: the Haitian Office for Diaspora and Migrant Affairs (HODMA). I imagine it as autonomous, yet answerable to the Prime Minister, and unlike certain foreign models, entirely free from the conflict of selling our labor while pretending to protect it.

Alongside it, a Haitian Diaspora Development Fund (HDDF), independent, audited, and jointly governed by diaspora voices, civil society, and the state.

I would finance it modestly — a voluntary solidarity contribution on formal transfers, matched by state or donor support, and the issuance of diaspora bonds. In this way, the remittance, without losing its private character, takes on a public one.

Turning Private Flows into Public Growth

I have been struck, in the Philippine case, by how much of the remitted dollar ends up as consumption. Necessary, yes — but insufficient. In Haiti, I would make it possible for every gourde saved in a certified remittance account to be matched for investment in small and medium enterprises, agricultural cooperatives, and the sort of community infrastructure that changes daily life.

I would insist on universal digital access to these services. To leave whole communes outside the financial map would be to admit, from the start, that the policy is for some Haitians and not for all.

Before They Leave

I think often of the moment just before departure — the farewell in the airport’s humid air, the weight of the suitcase, the uncertain future. It is here we can equip our people: a National Pre-Departure Orientation Program (NPDO) that teaches rights, financial literacy, and job-specific skills. This is not charity; it is strategy.

The Necessary Conversations Abroad

I have learned that agreements made face-to-face matter more than lofty declarations. I would seek binding Bilateral Labor Agreements (BLAs) with the countries where our people go in greatest numbers — the United States, Canada, France, the Dominican Republic, Chile — with enforceable clauses on wages, conditions, and automatic enrollment in portable social security.

I am not interested in the polite but toothless Memorandum of Understanding; I have seen how such documents soothe consciences without changing realities.

And I would go further: using these talks to lower the cost of sending money home, until the fee no longer feels like a tax on love.

Our Place in the World’s Forums

I am persuaded that we must take our voice to the broader tables — the International Labour Organization (ILO), the United Nations’ conventions on migrant workers, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) — but only if we are prepared to enforce at home what we ratify abroad. Too often, membership has been the end of the effort. I would make it the beginning.

How I Would Keep Us Honest

I want an annual State of the Diaspora Remittance Impact Report, published in Creole and French, co-written with diaspora representatives, and read not only in Port-au-Prince but in Brooklyn, Montreal, and Santiago. I want an Ombudsman for Migrant Affairs, with the power to investigate, to shame, and to correct.

The Road I See Ahead

In the first two years, I would set up HODMA and the HDDF, launch the solidarity contribution, and negotiate two pilot labor agreements. In the next three, I would expand investment programs, deepen the CARICOM initiative, and ratify key ILO conventions. By year ten, I would want to see half of all formal remittances flowing through accounts that double as development engines, and universal access to digital transfers.

I do not imagine this as a perfect design — policy rarely is — but as a framework that recognizes what we have: a diaspora willing to give, a nation in need of more than subsistence, and a moment in which the gap between the two can be bridged.

If we treat our people abroad not merely as senders of money but as co-architects of Haiti’s future, then perhaps the remittance, born of absence, can become a presence in every Haitian life.

“Piti piti zwazo fè nich li.” (Little by little, the bird builds its nest.)
This, too, is what I believe: that steady effort, wisely guided, can make something enduring.