Name: Luke Niziol
Social Justice Group: Violence in Haiti (B)
Date of Fieldwork: February 7, 2025
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Mission of Hope;Todd Lowans and Paige Oberlag
What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork:
We had an interview with Paige Oberlag, the leader of Mission of Hopes Women Empowerment Team, and Todd Lowans, Mission of Hopes Vice President of operations. It was a pleasure interviewing them as they work at a Non-Governmental Organization that helps Haiti. Paige Oberlag currently lives in the DR with her husband helping out on the issue. In this interview, we learned Todd’s and Paige’s thoughts of Haiti in the media and some personal stories of theirs.
During our interview today, we asked the two how they think Haiti is portrayed in the media. Todd said that there is little to nothing about Haiti in the media, but there are some things when there is a heavy assassination, like the president a couple years ago. But ultimately, Todd thinks Haiti is covered when there is an American person stuck in Haiti and can’t get back to America. There are a couple things in the media, but once they are back to America there is nothing new. Paige had previously lived in Haiti in 2019, but when the gangs were on the uprise, they had to go to the DR, and they went from the north coast to the south coast only because of the gangs.
Todd had a story where overnight, the streets where he had his campsite were completely destroyed, and there were hundreds of roadblocks in the area. Another note, this only happened overnight. They had been trapped in the area, and someone had to come help them. Some friends from a separate organization had been kidnapped by some gangs in Haiti, but thankfully they were able to rescue them.
With all of the stories they told us about, it really just tells me how dangerous and quickly things can escalate there. The part with the media also just screams at me that the US really just doesn’t care about issues in places like Haiti.
