Yanick etienne biography definition

November 14, 2012

Yannick Etiene is an organizer for the May First Union Federation and a member of the Haitian social movement Batay Ouvriye. MSN had the opportunity to speak with Yannick in Washington DC in October 2012.

I first got involved in the workers’ movement after the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in 1986 when I was working with a health centre and I met a child who had been badly burned all over his body.

I went to visit the boy’s mother, and I found out that she was working in a factory and didn’t have any place to leave her child. So she had left her son alone in their house where he was playing with fire and got burned.

We talked about her situation and the need for a child care centre in the community. And she said, “Maybe you should come and talk to the other workers from the factory.”

Later I got a job in one of the maquila factories, but I didn’t last more than two weeks; I was too outspoken. That factory has long since closed, but I got into organizing more and more, and we decided that we had to have a union and build a workers’ movement.

And then the 1991 coup happened, Aristide had to leave the country, and we had to go underground.

Birth of Batay Ouvriye

As the economic embargo against the military

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