Social Worker And Community Activist Marleine Bastien

Marleine Bastien Grew Up In Pont Benoit, A Village In Central Haiti.

In 1974 the family moved to Port-au-Prince, where Marleine Bastien attended the prestigious Swiss school, College Bird. In 1980, Marleine's father went into exile in the US, and in 1981, at the age of 22, she joined him and he rest of her family in Florida.

Since fleeing the "Baby Doc" Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti in 1981, Marleine Bastien has dedicated her life to striving for freedom and justice. Whether challenging racist U.S. immigration laws or founding the nonprofit organization Haitian Women of Miami (better known by its Creole acronym, FANM), Marleine Bastien agitates for society's least powerful. As FANM's president, and executive director, Marleine Bastien has nurtured projects that help prevent domestic violence and child abuse, provide micro-loans for Haitian women to start small businesses, and teach Haitian immigrants about the citizenship process.

Bastien spent most of 2000 motivating Florida's black citizens to vote. For Marleine Bastien, as for thousands of her Haitian American peers, the elections marked the first time in her life that she would have the right to vote for president.

But on November 7, numerous obstacles for black voters shattered the joy of that opportunity. Haitian Americans, for example, arrived at polling places to discover that Creole-speaking volunteers were blocked from providing language assistance and that legally required ballots in Creole were nowhere to be found. "Voting is a fundamental right," Bastien says. "We weren't killed by bullets, as in countries run by dictators, but our souls were wounded that day."

In the weeks that followed the botched election, hundreds of disenfranchised voters, including many who were not Haitian, called Marleine Bastien, knowing that she was one person who would stand up for them. "People came to me saying they would never vote again, that it was too painful. But that should be the fuel that motivates us to make the system better, for us and for our children." Marleine refused to allow the voices of black voters to go unheard. She helped organize protests and spoke at numerous rallies. She also testified for the NAACP and before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. At this writing, Bastien was working to prevent a similar breakdown in Florida's 2002 gubernatorial elections.

As the U.S. battles to "defend democracy," Marleine Bastien reminds us that we need a democracy to defend. "People consider the U.S. the champion of human rights," she says, "but during that election, people's most sacred right was denied. We must make sure it never happens again."

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