Several hundred members of the local Haitian community marched through downtown Boston Sunday afternoon, rallying for the passage of a federal bill designed to bring US attention and accountability to corruption in the island nation’s leadership.
The march was one of dozens calling for “Relief for Haiti” taking place across the country and the world, organized by Gregory Toussaint, senior pastor of Tabernacle of Glory Church in Miami.
As the marchers walked from City Hall Plaza, heading toward Boston Common, they carried signs proclaiming “Haiti won’t perish” and “Haiti, God hasn’t forgotten you!”
At the front of the charge marchers carried white banners with red and blue lettering demanding that Congress “Pass the Bill (S.396).”
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Also known as the Haiti Criminal Collusion Transparency Act of 2023, the proposed law would require the State Department to compile an annual report on ties between criminal gangs and Haiti’s political and economic elites. It would also require the US president to impose sanctions on some of those political and economic figures identified in the report, blocking their ability to travel into the country or own property in the United States.
As the crowd set off, around 11:45 a.m., organizer Kelly Mallebranche, who works for the Globe, led the marchers in a chant, recalling the first Hebrew prophet, who walked from Judah to warn of the destruction of northern Israel.
“Amos,” Mallebranche called out.
The crowd replied: “Agi,” a Haitian Creole word meaning “to act.”
The march also aimed to express support for President Biden’s legally challenged Parole Program, which allows individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela, or Nicaragua to enter the United States for a limited time — typically, two years — for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit, according to Basenal Dessin, one of the event’s main organizers. In an interview Friday, Dessin also called for a pathway to permanent, legal residency for individuals enrolled in the program.
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Dessin said Haitians like him want to show that they’re willing to do “whatever it takes” to help the situation in their home country, where gangs have taken control of up to 80 percent of the capital city.
In June, according to the Associated Press, United Nations officials called for the creation of an international force to work alongside local police and the immediate implementation of a weapons embargo.
“We want to take responsibility to fix the country,” Dessin said. “We sometimes as Haitians let things happen without asking questions, and we need to put a stop to that.”
Massachusetts is home to more than 80,000 Haitian Americans, the third most in the country — behind Florida and New York — according to data from the American Community Survey, last taken in 2019.
Among them, Gaelle Esperance, who pushed a stroller and shepherded her other children on foot as the crowd wrapped around the Common, filling a path parallel to Beacon Street.
She said “nothing can stop” Boston’s Haitian community or the passage of S.396.
“I’m screaming justice for my country,” Esperance said, before joining fellow marchers as they filled a swath of grass near the intersection of Beacon and Charles streets.
The first marchers arrived around 12:15 p.m., cheering, chanting, and singing.
“It is not a social march, this is spiritual,” cried Borneon Accime, a pastor at Tabernacle of Glory’s Boston campus. He spoke in Haitian Creole, while a woman translated and pointed into the crowd, pounding his fist against the air with each word. “We work in this country, we pay taxes in this country.... You must sit down with us, to ask us what we want.”
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A massive screen showed the text of S.396, alternating with images of crowds at similar events across the world.
Accime compared the “dangerous” situation in Haiti to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, charging that citizens in both countries struggle to feel safe in their own homes.
“If they don’t close the door for Ukraine, they cannot close the door for Haitians,” he said, drawing applause.
On the Common, the celebrations continued — people standing and flags waving — until around 3:35 p.m., when Toussaint, the organizing pastor, appeared on the screen to give a closing address.
Speaking from Miami, he called the marches “a historic moment” and said being Haitian is not defined by being born on the island, but by “our link of brotherhood.”
“When our forefathers broke the shackles of slavery in 1804, they saw themselves leaving the house of servitude to step into the open plain of self-determination,” Toussaint said in a blend of English and Haitian Creole. “But 200 years later, we find ourselves languishing in a wilderness of poverty, division, inequality, and oppression.”
He said there were two types of “bandits” terrorizing Haiti: those “in sandals,” and those “in suits.”
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At several points in the afternoon, those gathered raised their right hands and lowered their heads in prayer.
Pastor Dieufort Fleurissaint, of Mattapan’s Total Health Christian Ministries, told those gathered earlier that he had never been as optimistic about Haiti’s future.
“Haiti will not remain as it is today,” Fleurissaint yelled.
The crowd cheered its agreement.
Daniel Kool can be reached at daniel.kool@globe.com. Follow him @dekool01. Sarah Raza can be reached at sarah.raza@globe.com. Follow her @sarahmraza.