In Brooklyn, A City Councilman Stands in the Midst of Haiti’s Crisis
City Councilman Mathieu Eugene
Mathieu Eugene’s election to the City Council three years ago was widely celebrated not only in New York, but as far away as his native Haiti. He became an instant celebrity in New York City’s emerging Haitian community and beyond, receiving congratulatory calls ranging from his friends on Brooklyn’s Nostrand Avenue to Haitian President René Préval.
But in recent weeks, following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, Mr. Eugene has learned that celebrity can come with high expectations. As the first and only Haitian American elected official in a state with one of America’s largest Haitian populations, his office has become the bull’s eye for an unending torrent of calls and visits from the distraught, the bewildered and the desperate.
“On the day that the earthquake happened, someone called me and told me to watch television,” Mr. Eugene said. “Then, I saw the tragedy. It was so horrible. And people started coming to my office from then on. They came in crying, yelling. I didn’t close my office until three in the morning and it’s been that way since. Since then, I haven’t rested. I never seem to sleep. I’ve been running from one meeting to another. Sometimes all you can do is listen. ”
People have poured into his office on Linden Boulevard in Brooklyn, he said, for every conceivable request related to the crisis. Some have come seeking sought information to determine whether their loved ones were living or dead. Others have come seeking assistance to get to Haiti to look for relatives. Still others came simply to grieve.
The time since the earthquake has amounted to a period of tortuous pain, the Councilman said, because he has been inundated by requests and pleas from his fellow Haitians, desperate for any form of assistance. “They come to me because I’m the only Haitian American that they have ever heard of in the American government,” Mr. Eugene said. “People come to me hoping that I can resolve their problems. And I want to do anything I can, even though they bring problems that I can’t possibly resolve.”
Some, he said, “want to go to Haiti to bring their loved ones home,” Mr. Eugene said. “They know that their relatives have been sleeping in the streets and they want to go and get them. This has been heartbreaking.”
The Councilman, who is also a medical doctor, is frustrated, he said, by the poor state of Haiti’s infrastructure, making it excruciatingly slow to get medical assistance to people who he said will surely die without its timely delivery. “Disaster can happen anywhere. But the worst part of this is that the country was not in the position to give any significant first response,” he said. “The country couldn’t provide the kind of aid to the people who were in trouble. And it’s still very difficult.” He added: “There are people dying not because they have to die. They are dying because the doctors don’t have the supplies they need.”
But his most searing concern, he admitted, is that after the telethons end, the fund raising ceases and the army of good-will volunteers departs, the world’s attention will likely fade from Haiti.
“This is my biggest fear,” he said, adding that he is trying to establish an organization to ensure that there is continued international awareness of the conditions in Haiti and to develop continued sources of international financial support. The outpouring of good will has been extraordinarily heartening, he said. But it’s crucial that it continue.
“I’ve been talking with people in Washington, to my colleagues in government at every level. I’m trying to create a permanent structure in the Haitian community to work together with our friends, who are not Haitian,” he said.
“No matter what, we have to keep the unity,” he said. “We have to keep working together.”
By Jonathan P. Hicks
