THE EDITOR, Sir:

I am often amazed at how casually Jamaicans use the word 'garrison' to refer to our communities. Do we really understand what it means, and even more important, what it represents? Originally, the word garrison meant a "fortified stronghold","body of troops in fortress," or "military stations".

To name our communities garrisons is to say that we are somehow a stronghold, with troops defending or fighting for a territory.

The name garrison creates a separation and the stigmatisation of a community. To say garrison is to say that one community is separate and apart from another community. After years of separation because of political affiliation, do we want to continue this corrosive culture of separation among our communities? Doesn't a man have the right to interact with his brothers and share for the common good?

A man in Jamaica has the right to live in a community together with all the other communities around him and not be separated by a name. We are all brothers who have to strive together to achieve the common good of the country.

Besides a separation created by the name garrison, there is also stigmatisation. Calling a comm-unity a garrison is a way of creating a certain type of lifestyle and presenting the lifestyle as true because the lifestyle now goes with the name. We have seen the lifestyle and the consequences of the lifestyle of the so-called garrisons in Jamaica.

This lifestyle is very different from a regular community. Since it's a garrison, 'a military station', people have the right to take the law into their own hands because a garrison is supposed to be independent and able to carry out its own style of law. These communities bear record of the consequences of a self-governed community.

I am, etc.,

Nylon Blake

nyronblake@yahoo.com