Ready for a revolution

By Claude Mills, Staff Reporter

Ian Allen photo

YEARS AGO, a senior editor told me that "no one good lives in the ghetto. Those who are not murderers and thieves, protect and profit from the murderers and thieves".

That expresses the nation's geopolitics in one sentence - you are where you live.

But I do not subscribe to this view. Many of the people in the ghetto are hardworking, decent human beings who have strong moral codes by which they abide. At times, they are held hostage by the base motivations of the armed men with whom they are forced to live, but let us judge them by the content of their characters rather than by the geography of their homes.

A friend of mine believes that events of the past week in West Kingston will soon be forgotten. If this is so, it will be because the violence has no face. The people who died are conveniently labelled 'labourites' or 'ghetto people' in the minds of a populace determined not to lose any sleep over this incident.

When I saw the photographs of the bloated, distended bodies that had been deposited at the Madden's Funeral Home on Monday, something huge moved inside me. Those images will murder my sleep for God-knows-how-many-nights to come -- images of men of all ages who had died badly, and had been left to roast and swell under the heat of the summer sun.

I still have not really recovered from the Braeton Seven incident, and seeing the sheet-covered bodies on the gurney triggered a suspicious lump in my throat. I had to fight to get control of my emotions, and still, the reluctant tears came. I hurt for my people.

I believe it was ego and hubris that led to the death of those 27 persons, the egos of Edward Phillip George Seaga, and Reneto Decordova Valentino Adams (why do arrogant men always have four names?) in particular.

Both men must suffer from some sort of madness in the blood, the kind that allows innocent people to die - mere pawns in some base, egotistical political chess game. Seaga appears to want to protect his 'foot-soldiers' while Adams, the megalomaniac, feels that 'no lickle dutty bwoy must be allowed to challenge the police force'.

This sort of thinking created a situation ripe with bloodlust that precipitated the events that led to the killings between July 7 through 9.

There is no denying that there are criminals in Tivoli, but the police could have used other tactics to apprehend the criminals without endangering the lives of innocents. Several policemen were seen firing random shots in the area on television. This sort of behaviour is hardly calculated to inspire confidence in the police force.

I am not pro-PNP, pro-JLP, anti-government, or anything... just anti-@#$%^.

There is a robust grief-industry chugging away merrily in Jamaica. There are people here whose lives have been touched by tragedies so enormous and difficult to bear that there are temptations to seek mystical answers to the cruelty of the world.

There are none.

The preachers come in. The business leaders talk. The women dramatise their pain for the benefit of the TV cameras. The foreign press writes no-context accounts of the latest spasm of unrest. The Prime Minister feigns sympathy. The Opposition Leader accepts the fig leaf. Then they all hold hands and sing cum-bah-ya around the campfire, or a big wooden table. The local media observes it all with a smirk, before moving on to the next Big Killing.

Gimme a break.

I grow tired of all the talk about change and 'devising solutions'. What is needed is a revolution that will change the hearts and minds of men. The security forces cannot be allowed to continue to slaughter people like cattle, and to use their guns as a substitute for understanding.

Many young people like myself are ready for the revolution. Cities will burn, smoke shall swallow the sky. Many of us are willing to fight in the streets for our people, extinguishing the embers of our anger with the blood of our enemies.

Are you ready for the revolution?

You can e-mail me cmillsy@yahoo.com

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