May 8, 2008--At about the same time my little sister was getting married three weeks ago – it was a lovely beach ceremony in the Florida Keys; she was beautiful, and I was teary, having the bittersweet privilege of subbing for our dead father on the walk up the aisle – food riots were breaking out across the picture-perfect waters at her back, on the island nation of Haiti. Putting the two together – a wedding and a riot – is more than an article-opening flourish: My sister and I were both born in Queens, N.Y., but our family is Haitian, and some of the relatives in attendance barely made it off the island in time for the nuptials.

Our cousin Leslie, a priest in a small, rural town north of Port-au-Prince, was not so lucky. He got all the way to the airport before being called home. His rectory had been broken into and looted by parishioners looking for stores of rice used by a church-administered meals program. ("A church!" some of the older ladies tut-tutted at the rehearsal dinner, as if the building's powers of sanctuary should have included the ability to bar hunger and desperation at the door.)

more over at The Root.