Citizen Penn’s ‘act of redemption’ in Haiti
Daniel Nelson
Hollywood bad boy Sean Penn shows how aid agencies should work in emergencies.
Really? Sean Penn – who was jailed for assaulting a photographer, repeatedly married and divorced, never out of the headlines for conduct unbecoming to a gentleman? That Penn?
Yes, that’s the one. The documentary Citizen Penn chronicles his dash to Haiti after seeing TV news shots of the devastation in Haiti caused by the 2010 earthquake: perhaps 200,000 dead, 300,000 injured, and some 280,000 homes and offices flattened or severely damaged.
Aid agencies poured in, but the film suggests that Penn’s unorthodox methods and common touch got results while, by implication, many other agencies floundered. Friends in high places (Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez sent him 350,000 vials of morphine) helped kickstart the operation. Film star status obviously helped, too, particularly with the US military, which he praises as No 1 in the world for delivering emergency relief. Attracting a conveyor-belt supply of ultra-enthusiastic volunteers, local and international, willing to work around the clock, was another asset.
Penn tells a good story, and the film highlights some dramatic incidents, such as a desperate all-night attempt to find a hospital and drugs to treat a child with diphtheria. Through effrontery, cunning, dedication, luck and a willingness to break rules (Penn admits stealing thousands of dollars worth of medicines from a US medical store during the emergency dash), the boy is saved. With the father’s thanks ringing in their ears, the rescue team crash gratefully into bed in the early hours of the morning: a job well done. They awake to discover that in an unsupervised moment the boy had regained consciousness, pulled out the drip and died.
The film gives a vivid picture of the chaos of the earthquake aftermath and the commitment and fast-moving improvisation of Penn’s organisation. Many people expected him to milk the publicity and leave, but he stuck at it: “Young Haitians saw we were being effective and came to join our team.”
The film, too, stays the course, and throws in a little US colonial history in Haiti and some strong jabs at Westerners who turn up with no local knowledge expecting praise for being happy to help “and by happy I mean ‘You do it my way.’”
By 2015 it was time to move from emergency relief to development, and Penn hands control of CORE (“an act of personal redemption”) to Ann Lee. She has long experience in humanitarian work, and is glamorous enough not to look out of place at the organisation’s annual fund-raising gala – surely the glitziest, richest, most bankable NGO fundraising event in the world.
Envious not-for-profits can only agree that ”the gala is what separates us out from most other organisations” and in a breathtaking contrast to conditions in Haiti the camera turns to Penn working the room in order to get donations.
It’s not as easy as it might seem, Penn ruefully admits. A million or more dollars or more will be raised but of the 300 wealthy, lavishly entertained guests only half a dozen will actually stump up money.
The star is rightly proud of what he’s achieved, but keeps his feet on the ground (“I’m just a guy who says “I think I can do this, I can do some good here”), is aware of the importance of local people in aid and development projects, and generous with spreading praise: “We were an airplane that built itself after take-off, and that’s a perilous ride in so many ways, and how we ended up surviving was the force of will of hundreds of people … You always need activists. You need citizen participants. And that’s all I can claim to be, a citizen who tries to participate.”
However. The film is entertaining, empathetic to Haiti and Haitians, and with interesting points to make about aid and relief. But it is, essentially, hagiography and doesn’t question the implication of Penn’s initial justification that “in an emergency you have to stop the bleeding and then deal with the situation.”
If you don’t know what you are doing in an emergency you can kill the patient. A body of guidelines has been built up by years of NGO experience. Yes, they are cautious and rule-bound. For example, volunteers from many countries flew in to work for a fortnight alongside Penn’s team. What about safeguarding? Were all these people vetted? Are doctors working around the clock heroic – or a risk to patients?
The only explicit analysis in the film of a serious policy issue is the belated clearing of rubble in parts of Port au Prince: the action encourages a few families to return to live in the new spaces, often bringing their camp tents, which in turn results in the resurrection of trades and jobs and the stirrings of a resumption of old lives.
That’s an example of creating the basic, unsupervised conditions for social and economic recovery, rather than leaving people in camps while waiting endlessly for bureaucratic, top-down “town planning” measures to be implemented.
Ok, perhaps that discussion needs a different platform. Enjoy the film, but consider what it reveals about aid.
* Citizen Penn was part of the Raindance Film Festival. Info: https://www.raindance.org/festival/