In a November 1797 Letter to the French Directory, Toussaint L’Ouverture writes a warning to the French and its allies in Haiti of any attempts to (re)institute slavery in Saint Domingue: “Do [the forces of reaction] think that men who have been able to enjoy the blessing of liberty will calmly see it snatched away? ... If they had a thousand lives, they would sacrifice them all rather than be forced into slavery again. But no, the same hand which has broken our chains will not enslave us…” Though most reports point to this current iteration of Haitian resistance are being sparked by the Haitian government’s announcement that it was going to cease subsidizing gas and diesel, it must not be lost that the current uprising in Haiti is a reverberation of what was started in the late 1700s and early 1800s, but intentionally interrupted over the next few centuries. As a result, this announcement can be better understood as an accelerator that added to the conditions of poverty, which was proliferated by massive corruption involving members of the previous and current government, including the president, Moïse. To date, “journalists, human rights groups, and a state auditing body have all issued hundreds of pages of reports documenting how up to $2 billion from the Venezuelan fuel assistance program PetroCaribe has been diverted into politicians’ pockets. According the article, Why Haitians are Protesting En Masse via Jacobin Magazine, as well as other sources, “every day on the air, elected officials sling accusations of kickbacks and graft at one another. In addition to this, last January at the Organization of American States, Haiti voted with the United States against its longtime former benefactor, Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. According to Haitian human rights advocate Marie Yolène Gilles, this vote was a quid pro quo. Yet, not surprisingly, the US-dominated OAS has yet to meet officially about the Haitian crisis —although there was a secretive and unofficial US-led trip—even though conditions on the ground are pretty close to the circumstances decried in the January resolution on Venezuela. Environmental [neo]Colonialism The conditions in Haiti are a direct product of the continued conditions of colonialism, neoliberal economic policies and an unjust approach to tackling climate change. The environmental degradation, which is exacerbated with each drought and hurricane season, can be traced back to French colonial rule over Haiti when land and forests were abused, rendering large swathes of the country barren and infertile (https://portside.org/2019-10-01/what-really-behind-crisis-haiti). The US approach to the Haitian economy has been predominantly extractive. The country has an estimated $20bn of mineral deposits consistently exploited by US and Canadian corporations. Today, we take another look at the conditions on the ground in Haiti, through a recent conversation between AWNP’s Mwiza Munthali and Nicole Phillips . Nicole Philips is an attorney, specializing in human rights and rule of law and professor at the University of the Aristide Foundation law school in Port-au-Prince, Haiti as well as a professor at UC Hastings College of Law at the University of San Francisco. Our show was produced in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock, Venezuela, the Avalon Village in Detroit; Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, Cooperation Jackson in Jackson Mississippi; Palestine, South Africa, and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!