Haiti

I was very relieved to learn yesterday that Austin journalist, Ansel Herz, who has been living in Port-au-Prince and writing about Haiti for the last four months, survived the earthquake and hopes to stay and continue reporting from the country. He was interviewed yesterday by several media sources, including PBS and CNN. Here is a video of his interview with Wolf Blitzer.

Ansel is a fine young journalist with whom I was pleased to be able to collaborate several years ago while he was a student at UT. We interviewed historian, Howard Zinn, together, when Zinn was in Austin to keynote a Historians Against the War conference.

The AAS lists a number of agencies that are collecting funds for Haitian relief efforts. I would add the organization, Partners in Health which operates a highly regarded free clinic system in Haiti that was co-founded by Dr. Paul Farmer in 1987. Farmer was featured in a book some of you may have read, "Mountains Beyond Mountains: the Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World," by journalist, Tracy Kidder, published in 2003. Because Partners in Health, like Doctors Without Borders, already have staff and an established presence in Haiti, they can make use of relief funds effectively in crisis situations like this.

Kidder wrote an excellent opinion editorial about Haiti, published in today's New York Times.