Reading · Woy Magazine · RSS Amplifier

Welcome to the latest edition of Woy Magazine’s biweekly newsletter, providing you with must-know news and commentary on Haiti and our Diaspora.

We can’t do this work without you. We have introduced a paid subscription option for our newsletter. Consider switching your free subscription to a paid one to support our work! Click the button below.

Jean-Adrien Seide, *Haiti From Above,* Acrylic on Canvas Source: Etsy.net

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

Abitid se vis
Habits are a vice
(Haitian proverb)

*We translate the Haitian proverbs literally (word-for-word) to challenge our readers to reflect on and discover the spirit and poetry of the proverb for themselves. Today’s proverb signals the dangers of complacency. Did you understand today’s proverb?

Editor’s Note

This is a space for intentional reflection and exchange on Haiti and Haitians by Haitians for Haitians and the people who wish to be in solidarity with us.

I’m so excited to invite you to visit and browse through our new website, WoyMagazine.com.

Much like the trope of opening fairy tales with “once upon a time,” Haitians have a go-to line for how we end stories. It’s a funny line that reminds the listener of the journey, even if fictional, that brought the raconteur here to share this story with them. The storyteller cleverly places themself at the tale’s scene as the story reaches its conclusion—imagine the end of Cinderella, the site of the royal wedding, as she is about to go off into her happily ever after. The storyteller would say something like, “Se pase m t ap pase…I was simply walking by the wedding, epi yon moun fout mwen on gwo kout pye… when somebody kicked me in the butt, epi mwen ateri la pou m vin rakonte w… and I flew until I landed right here to tell you this story.”

The last 10 years for me have been like this proverbial kick in the butt, a violent jolt that calls us all to document what we’ve witnessed and lived through in Haiti so that we never pretend that what is happening today is happening in a vacuum.

January 1st marked the start of the new year, the 222nd anniversary of Haiti’s independence, and Woy Magazine’s 11th birthday. When we started this project in 2015, I don’t think we fully understood what we were creating. Now, in our 11th year, we have built a space where Haitians in Haiti and the Dyaspora come together to speak our truths, convictions, fears, and triumphs in one place. In the process, we have created an archive that documents a crucial moment in Haitian life: the complete deterioration of Haitian institutions; a new peak of Haitian exodus; the transformation of life in Port-au-Prince and its surrounding areas; a disruption in how we move and organize; the assassination of a president; the rise and fall of a major political movement; the repetition of cycles.

Woy Magazine is a space for intentional reflection and exchange on Haiti and Haitians by Haitians for Haitians and the people who wish to be in solidarity with us. The website and this newsletter are our offering to folks who want a starting point to learn, discuss, and struggle through the issues we’re facing, and what we can build together.

Thank you for visiting us. Please dig through this library and witness how we have learned and grown together. You’ll see shifts in our perspective, growth in our ideology, and analysis that have deepened over time. This is what doing this kind of work requires. Thank you for being part of it.

Bòn fèt lendepandans, Ayiti. Bòn fèt, Woy. Happy New Year.

Talie Cerin
Lead Editor
Philadelphia, PA 2026

CHAY LA | Main Story

As we enter the second year of Trump’s presidency and the February 3rd expiration for Haiti TPS draws near, the need for solidarity and action becomes more urgent. Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, a Brooklyn-based immigrant justice organization that has been fighting for Haitian immigrant and refugee rights since 1992, has extended an invitation for all to join in the cause through a recently published a crucial report in December titled “A Critical Hour for Haitian Immigrant Justice: Community Testimony and Policy Solutions Amid Relentless Racist Attacks on TPS and Humanitarian Parole.”

Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees conducted a Participatory Action Research project with our legal partners at TakeRoot Justice. Our findings are documented in a new report about the extraordinary challenges facing Haitian refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants right now, particularly with the impending deadline for TPS, and how we can come together to protect our communities.
While the Trump administration continues to strip Haitians of immigration statuses and protections they rely on for their safety and well-being, HWHR understands now is not the time for us to back down or give up. Now is the time to build on our community power, show up for each other and fight to keep our families together. (Source: Haitianrefugees.org)

Arguments were heard in a federal court hearing in Washington, DC, on behalf of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians on January 6th and 7th. The hearing was presided over by Judge Ana C. Reyes, who stated, on the second day of the hearing, that the current security and humanitarian conditions in Ayiti remain unsafe. No decision in this case has been reached at the time of writing.

Other outcomes in cases brought against the removal of TPS have been favorable. On December 31st, a federal case in California on behalf of beneficiaries of TPS from Honduras, Nepal, and Nicaragua determined that the Trump Administration's early removal of TPS was unlawful. Similarly, last year, a judge in New York blocked the Department of Homeland Security(DHS) from ending TPS early for beneficiaries from Haiti.

Haitian immigration advocates are calling on people who stand in solidarity with Haitian immigrants to show up and participate in an upcoming federal TPS hearing for Venezuela and Haiti on January 14th in Pasadena, California.

Politik/Polemik

Meanwhile, in Haiti, Haitians celebrated 222 years of independence on January 1st at a crossroads. The end of the Transitional Presidential Council’s (CPT) two-year term is drawing near on February 7th, without a clear path forward after the nine-member entity is dissolved. The departing council has failed to significantly improve the security situation or organize elections. And so, Haitians are debating again what to do next after February 7th.

James Beltis🇭🇹@BeltisJames

Pèp ayisyen an dwe peye 9 manm CPT yo yon ranson 600.000 USD, sinon yo pap lage peyi a. 5.4 milyon dola; se pa pou ede moun ki viktim, ki nan kouri akoz yo 9 la pa fè travay yo non…

5:22 PM · Dec 23, 2025 · 1.05K Views

1 Reply · 3 Reposts · 3 Likes

The issue isn’t a lack of proposals. There are plenty of roadmaps proposed by various political parties and institutions. Some analysts estimate as many as 150 proposals for the transition. When you categorize the plans, there are five main directions being discussed. Here are the scenarios:

Pick a president among the Court de Cassation (Supreme Court) or Koudèkont (Court of Audits) judges, and a new Prime Minister. This is how Ertha Pascal-Trouillot came to serve as provisional president of Haiti in 1990, for example.
Pick a president from the Haitian civil society who is trusted and respected, and a new Prime Minister
Keep the current private sector allied Prime Minister Fils-Aimé, and have him govern without a president:
This third option seems to be what the United States prefers, reflected by the sanctions levied against Presidential Councilmember Fritz Jean after he made his desire to replace Fils-Aimé clear to the Core group representatives. This is the same de facto setup that existed when Ariel Henry was Prime Minister.
A new transitional council with only three members, plus a new Prime Minister.
This position is backed by collectives like AkòMontana.
Maintaining a version of the existing presidential council:
The current members of the presidential council back this option, understandably out of an inclination for self-preservation. They would like to participate in a national negotiation process to develop a new plan that includes them. They claim there are major security and election-planning gains that should be secured and built upon.

Against the backdrop of the United States’ recent imperial violence in Venezuela, Haitian political actors and civil society leaders will need to agree on a path forward. The failure of the CPT and the Kenyan intervention exist as lessons to draw from.

NEW ON WOY MAGAZINE

This week on Woy Magazine, we invite you to explore the significance of the destruction of the famed Hotel Ollofson last year and the implications of destroying sites that hold cultural, social, and political value in the current political context. Written by Woy contributor Valerie Jean Charles, Hotel Oloffson, The Neverending Cycle of Forced Forgetting:

Extremist erasure such as this is excruciating, but in a larger context, it is, unfortunately, unsurprising. Not-so-distant events in the Middle East serve as harsh examples of how domestic groups hellbent on domination use such tactics to gain an upper hand over the greater population.
Considered “a local offshoot of Al Qaeda,” the Islamic State, also known as ISIS, went on a quest to either destroy or sell prized Syrian and Iraqi artifacts. NPR reported that, “during its 10-month occupation of Palmyra, the Islamic State razed two ancient temples and a triumphal arc.” Members of the group also “...beheaded…the archaeologist who had been Palmyra’s antiquities custodian, because he refused to reveal the location of artifacts he had hidden.”
Experts like Yale University’s Eckhart Frahm believed view this tactic as a way for ISIS to eradicate the sites as they were previously used by political leaders to “build some kind of national identity across religions, sects and ethnic groups.”
In such an explanation, we can find some understanding of the destruction of the Oloffson. On Thursday nights, fueled by RAM’s performances, the institution served as a rare zone of equity, as free of class and socioeconomic structures as you could find in Port-au-Prince. Together, natif natals, dyasporas, nèg anba yo and the elite – along with a random ambassador or foreign journalist – could co-exist in the same space with little to no hierarchy.
For the gangs to impose a new order, a new identity upon Haiti, structures representing any kind of unity could not exist… (Source: Woy Magazine)

MIZIK Break

Rest in peace to Haitian music legend, Dieudonné Larose.

DEGI | Recommendations before you go

No posts