1:30 Update

Ben just home to report on what's happening out there:

• 10s of 1,000s of people in the street
• No cars on the road
• Roadblocks almost every 50 feet
• Fighting at the CEP on Delmas, with people throwing rocks at UN soldiers and UN throwing flash grenades and shooting tear gas and rubber bullets back 
• Tear gas into IDP camps
• Carried guy to Red Cross whose foot was torn up by flash grenade
• Fighting at the CEP in Petionville
• Inite headquarters burned down
• All of the paintings on Place St. Pierre have been burned
• Gunbattle in Belair between Celestin and Martelly people 
• Hard to gauge the momentum of the protests, so I'm not making any guesses as to how long this will go on 
• There are people trying to protest peacefully 
• Found the world's greatest moto taxi driver, who happens to know people at every roadblock

Alexis: from the security of my living room (and we do feel safe at home, so don't worry!):

• Avoiding listening to the radio, so I missed Preval's statement which apparently justified the election results
• Glad to see this statement published by the US embassy
• Understand that the largely marginalized Haitian population feel they have no voice, especially if they can't even vote. Ultimately this is at the root of the protests that are taking place. 
• Most of the news reports that I've read so far have been surprisingly balanced, but I fear that if this continues, the story will become about violence and protestors' destruction of private and gov't property instead of about fraudulent election results.
• In other (or more) words, concerned that violence will de-legitimize very legitimate opposition to these elections