Talk about development in Port-au-Prince does political work, and this dissertation follows that work through two Haitian organisations, a human rights group and a youth group, across several years of fieldwork. Joersz records meetings, debates and press conference drafting sessions, then analyses them as linguistic interaction: who claims the floor, how blame is assigned, how a diagnosis of what ails the country becomes a bid for standing. Arguments about foreign aid, national character and the failures of past governments turn out to be ways of contesting hierarchy, staking authority and discrediting rivals. A closing chapter traces the Brothers Posse carnival song Aloral as its refrain travels from stage to radio commentary to a presidential reply, showing a critique circulating and changing hands. Development emerges here as a shared idiom through which Haitians argue about power, and as a practice with real effects on who gets heard.