On Tuesday, September 18, the Bay Area-based Haiti Action Committee (HAC) held a rally in downtown San Francisco to call attention to the unresolved kidnapping of veteran Haitian human rights activist Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine.

East Bay drummers Ustadi, Tacuma, Rondo and Lanier kicked things off by playing West African percussion near the intersection of Market and Montgomery. MC Dave Welsh of the SF Labor Council, thanked the drummers and called Robert Roth to the microphone.

Robert Roth, a San Francisco high school teacher and long-time HAC activist, explained, "It's been over a month since Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine has disappeared. He is a human rights worker, he's a psychologist, he's worked with victims of torture from the coup of 1991-1994. He's continued his human rights advocacy in Haiti during this recent coup in 2004, a coup organized and created by the United States government.... I want to just say that he is a deep thinker, and he is a very, very important leader of the people's movement in Haiti. And he has disappeared for over a month, and that's a crime against the people of Haiti... We will not give up hope for his safe return, we will not give up our demand that the authorities in Haiti account for his disappearance, and bring him safely back to his family, his people."

Haiti Action Committee co-founder Pierre Labossiere also spoke: "this beautiful brother, psychologist, human rights worker, someone who's at the forefront of the movement for justice, for economic and social justice for the people of Haiti, and for people throughout the world." Labossiere concluded that there was one message to deliver "to the US embassy in Haiti, to the Brazilian authorities, who are in charge of the UN mission in Haiti, to the Haitian authorities." That message: "we need them to exert all their influence...they are very powerful, very influential with all sectors of Haitian society, from the very top politicians to the underworld, to demand one thing: that brother Lovinsky be returned to his family safely. We can do that, it's important, it's necessary that we do that."

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