Haiti's Solidarity Soup: Celebrating Workers’ Power

Département du Sud, Haiti—January 1 is an important date on the Haitian calendar; it not only marked the beginning of a new year, but also liberation from chattel slavery and the formation of the world’s first Black republic. Traditionally, workers in Haiti mark the day by eating pumpkin soup—soup joumou, a thick stew with meat and lots of vegetables—recalling that under slavery, they were prohibited from enjoying this soup (it was reserved only for the slave masters and other exploiters).
This year, however, because of the ravages of Hurricane Matthew last October, not only did over 1,000 Haitian workers die, but the pumpkin crop was virtually destroyed in the three southern departments affected. Thus pumpkins were rare, expensive, and unaffordable for most workers in the region.
So another tradition was born. In one provincial town, the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) organized a collective “solidarity soup.” “Solidarity” because we know from our international history that the unity of our class is fundamental to our liberation and emancipation. The slaves of the French colony of Saint-Domingue gave humanity an example of unity in the 18th century by battling one of the greatest armies of imperialism to gain their liberty from slavery. In fact, before mobilizing armed fighters, solidarity of purpose was the cement that bound them in common struggle.
Fightback takes many forms. For our first “solidarity soup,” we solicited financial and other support from our base, both locally and internationally, bought pumpkins where available, and served soup to hundreds of workers and their children. Along with the soup, we used the opportunity to discuss why Haitian workers face the conditions they do: rampant poverty and disease, unclean water, 83 percent unemployment, occupation by a United Nations military force, death and destruction by “unnatural” disasters. Capitalism, a system of profit for the few and misery for the masses, is squarely to blame.
 “Solidarity soup” was a successful event. The participants remarked that they were served with dignity and respect. We served the people both literally and figuratively, feeding their bodies and arming them with communist consciousness about the source of their problems and how to escape the hell of capitalism and imperialism with communist revolution.
For the working class, internal solidarity and solidarity with our communist party is key. Capitalism pushes individualism, which is the negation of solidarity. Yet, while the bosses compete with one another for markets and power, they are united as a class to defend their own interests. They unite to sow divisions inside the working class, using a three-pronged weapon of racism, sexism and nationalism. Our task is to defeat those ideas ideologically and in action, build our mutual confidence, and put the working class in the driver’s seat of humanity.