Jamaica’s fight on crime missing key recognitions
AS we begin the third decade of the 21st century, our nation still has some subliminal, underlying issues that we, as a people, ought to address as we get closer to achieving our Vision 2030.
These underling issues are rooted in three areas — our unresolved identity, propentesity towards gangs, and gang violence.
Talk show host and columnist Dr Orville Taylor best describes our identity as “a different kind of African — derived population. A synthesis of European and Asian elements into the African gene pool, we demonstrate a kind of hybrid vigour”. (The Sunday Gleaner, January 3, 2021). Here, I can identify with Dr Taylor’s description as a Jamaican with nine ethnicities, and who has been successful in connecting with my cousins from my different ethnicities — the most recent are from Afghanistan, now living in Canada.
In ‘Out of many, one people — our heritage’, published in the Jamaica Observer, October 22, 2019, I shared how the knowledge of my different ethnicities has enabled me to appreciate our national motto “Out of Many, One People” or, as a friend once described me, “a walking United Nations”, because what makes me a unique Jamaican is my nine ethnicities. Having such a knowledge must guide me in not disowning parts of myself; for example, by disowning my north and west European ancestors or West Asian ancestors, or denying my Africanness, but mobilising all of my parts for inner wholeness.
During 2020 I had written to the minister of culture recommending that a sample of our people’s ethniticies be done via DNA testing, as a means to aunthenticate our nation’s motto. I also believe that it can provide information to assist with the understanding of what drives our high levels of homicide among us.
In most countries around the world, ethnic groups live in different areas, even within a nation. Most genocides committed are due to ethnic rivalries. However, in Jamaica these ethnicities now find expressions through the “different African – derived” Jamaican.
This has unleashed a subliminal force that ought to be tamed/controlled through our ability to recognise who we are, “mobilising all our parts for inner wholeness” and the greater well-being of the nation.
This leads to the second and third issues — our propensity to gangs and gang violence.
The Gleaner is noted to be the creator of the phrase, “The gangs of Gordon House”. This is in reference to our two major political parties — the Jamaica
Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP). Both parties have been successful in dividing the nation into two tribal political groups in what is a manifestation of ethnic rivalries found in other countries. This form of tribalism has resulted in over 40 years of political and economic turmoil that still characterises our current quest for justice and economic development.
Since the 80s, our dollar has lost some 96 per cent to devaluation (from US $1= $3.94 to US$1=$143.71). There has been the unabated rape of the nation’s resources by the “genetically politically connected” and we have battled the
Each new year provides us an opportunity at a fresh start. however, that start can only be practical if we learn from the past and use it to make deliberate and meaningful changes for the future.
Indeed, 2020 was not a lost year, despite the fact that many of us want to forget it and the challenges, losses and pain it brought, which were made more excruciating by the novel coronavirus pandemic and its impact on our lives, movement, and comfort zone. The year brought with it many lessons. I take the view, that 2020 will propel us to strategically develop as a country and as individuals to embrace the future — once we find the lessons to implement the changes and make 2021 a success.
Recall: The only thing constant is change. Like many, I too suffered personal loss. My beloved grandmother died. So many other devastating issues emerged. For a while I was stunned, gutted even, and numbed by pain. In the midst of it I was reminded that the pain of the immediate is never more than the joy of your future. Yes, in the midst of pain there is hope for a brighter day. So, I take away a few lessons from 2020 into 2021, cliché though they may be:
• The most valuable entity in life is time. During the pandemic, for many, it seemed like time stood still. Yet, for others, especially those who lost loved ones, they wanted more time with them, time was the single most valuable entity we soon found. Use it wisely!
• Life must never be taken for granted; for where there is life there is hope.
• We can adapt and recover. Indeed, we can recover stronger. This was manifested as, though I was apprehensive, the simple thing that brought me joy was hearing my four-year-old son read his first simple sentence and spell words — despite online school in the midst of the pandemic. Joy also came from not taking anything for granted on a daily basis and working on projects that help to impact lives.
• We are stronger than we think and more courageous than we can imagine. Our strength really lies in how we carry our burdens. That said, we should always be willing to take a chance on life. Beauty is behind the fear. Human beings were built to be resilient. Indeed we were built to last. To withstand adversities and evolve.
On a national level, I share some perspectives that all of us, as Jamaicans who love our country and who want to secure this space for future generations, should contemplate.
As a communications practitioner, I must say communication is key. As a people, however, we must be attuned to the spoken and unspoken words and watch trends. Clarity is found in the totality of actions and words. My former boss in media always said words to the tune of: Balance is seen over time. This is true.
In 2021, the lessons that must be applied nationally so that we will bear fruit for the future.
But, it is also true that a country divided among itself cannot win. As a country we must pause and reflect on all our issues and apply the lessons learnt over the years.
Dialogue is important, but so too is action. As we seek to decisively address our crime problem we must implement strategies that work and reduce the bureaucracy that comes with it. While we have signed the National Consensus on Crime, let’s also implement Peace and Security Task Force – PAST (covers face), and make our high crime and violence rate a thing of the past.
While, as a country, we clamour for more to be done, it is clear — if you lower the level of noise in the market — that a crime plan exists. Ask yourselves, was it by luck that two billion dollars of drugs were seized by the police last month? That the Government has strategically invested high-tech patrol air and sea vessels and police cars, or that Jamaicaeye cameras are now bearing fruit, and, importantly, that there is a reduction in non-violent confrontations by the police are visible signs some things are happening. The narrative of there being “no crime plan” is a fallacy when we see incremental results for a monster created over decades.
We must swiftly integrate all social intervention programmes, both private and public sector ones. While many corporate entities are intervening in our inner-city communities, education, and where real needs are, there must be greater and more targeted coordination to reach more people and create greater change.
As well, though not often considered a priority, we must implement quickly a programme geared towards building national identity and pride. Not NIDS, but who we are as Jamaicans — a people who are resilient and proud and full of potential waiting to be unleashed. There is need for a programme on civic pride and duty. And, remember, the youth are the future.
These are issues that have been raised in the past. And Government has worked to address some of them. In addition to the commissions on violence and education, I expect a transformation to start to take shape in the country. It is imperative that in 2021 we are united as we build back lives and livelihoods from COVID-19.
Patience with the process is critical. In fact, we need all hands on deck with targeted perseverance, which will lead to success and growth. In managing our expectations we must remember that you don’t reap the fruit from the tree you plant today. The seed you plant today, once the soil is watered and it is nurtured, the tree that emerges will bear fruit.
For we are a mighty people who are more than enough to conquer our battles, to triumph in the midst of storms that may come.
For 2021, as we individually and collectively seek to improve our lives and project Jamaica, we must make concrete plans and take strategic action, to change circumstances, and enhance our space through making the right connections. We must seize this moment and take charge of opportunities. We must embrace the value in ourself, to focus and execute, despite the noise.
May favour fall upon you and your household as you strategically work to improve you and the space you occupy. We are unstoppable!
TODAY IN HISTORY
2000: US Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner Doris Meissner rules that six-year-old Elian Gonzalez “belongs with his father” and must be returned to Cuba. Gonzalez was rescued after his mother died when their Us-bound boat capsized off Florida and was living with Miami relatives.
OTHER EVENTS
1809: Britain and Turkey conclude Treaty of Dardanelles.
1869: Joint Argentine, Brazilian and Uruguayan forces take Asuncion, Paraguay, during Triple Alliance war.
1895: Discovery of X-rays is announced by German physicist Wilhelm Roentgen; French Captain Alfred Dreyfus, convicted of treason, is publicly stripped of his rank. He is ultimately vindicated.
1919: Communist Spartacist revolt begins in Berlin; Nationalist Socialist Party formed in Germany.
1925: Nellie T Ross succeeds her late husband as governor of Wyoming, becoming the first female governor in US history.
1929: King Alexander I suppresses Yugoslav Constitution and establishes dictatorship.
1947: Singer Winston “Delano” Stewart was born in Kingston, Jamaica. He becomes a member of The Gaylads in the 1960s before embarking on a solo career.
1949: In his State of the Union address, US President Harry Truman labels his Administration the “Fair Deal”.
1953: Samuel Beckett’s two-act tragicomedy Waiting for Godot, considered a classic of the Theatre of the Absurd, premieres in Paris.
1964: Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Benedictos of Jerusalem meet in Holy Land on Mount of Olives — the first meeting in five centuries between a Roman Catholic pope and Eastern Orthodox Church patriarch. It is also the first papal pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
1972: US President Richard Nixon orders the development of the space shuttle.
1987: Cheering students in
China burn hundreds of copies of newspaper Peking Daily to protest the government publication’s harsh criticism of student demonstrations.
1991: Cuba and the Soviet Union sign agreement ending trade at easy terms and artificially low prices.
1992: Rebels pound Georgian President Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s stronghold with rockets and machine guns, and he offers to hold a referendum on their demand that he resign.
1993: The tanker Braer runs aground on the Shetland Islands and spills 26 million gallons (98.42 million litres) of oil in the next few days.
1994: Easing fears of a nuclear arms race in north-east Asia, the Clinton Administration says North Korea has agreed to allow renewed international inspection of seven nuclear sites.
1995: With oil tanks ablaze on the horizon, troops move in to quell a peasant uprising in southern Colombia that reportedly leaves one child dead and costs millions of dollars in oil revenue.
1996: Yehiya Ayyash, the suspected mastermind of a string of suicide attacks that killed dozens of Israelis, dies when a boobytrapped mobile phone blows up in his hands in the Gaza Strip.
1997: French trains are diverted to pick up stranded skiers, and German rail stations are converted into homeless shelters as the death toll from Europe’s longest cold spell in a decade passes 230.
1998: Arab interior ministers give preliminary approval to an accord to combat terrorism in the Middle East.
2000: Two US medical firms and a Dutch organisation offer to pay up to US$2.36 million to Dutch haemophiliacs infected with the AIDS virus during blood transfusions in the 1980s.
2003: Two Palestinians carry out a coordinated suicide bombing in Tel Aviv, the Israeli capital, killing themselves, 22 others and injuring more than 100. The attack marks the first suicide bombing in Israel since November 2002.
2005: The US military command that oversees the detention mission at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, opens an internal investigation into allegations of prisoner abuse stemming from recently released Federal Bureau of Investigation documents.
2006: A suicide bomb explodes in a crowded market in an Afghan town just a few hundred yards (metres) from where the US ambassador is meeting with local leaders. Ten Afghans are killed and 50 wounded in the deadliest of a recent series of attacks.
2007: In a wave of Palestinian fighting, assailants outside a Gaza mosque gun down a Muslim preacher known for his anti-hamas views, and thousands march through Gaza carrying the bodies of seven slain Fatah men.
2008: Indonesia’s former dictator Suharto, 86, is put on a dialysis machine in critical condition a day after being admitted to Pertamina Hospital. He dies January 27 of multiple organ failure after more than three weeks on life support.
2009: Russia’s cut-off of natural gas to Ukraine forces several European countries to dip into reserves, with Moscow tightening the tap even further.
2011: Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-sadr, a fierce opponent of the United States and head of Iraq’s most feared militia, comes home after nearly four years in selfimposed exile in Iran, welcomed by hundreds of cheering supporters in a return that solidifies the rise of his movement.
2012: An apparently coordinated wave of bombings targeting Shiite Muslims kill at least 78 people in Iraq, the second large-scale assault by militants since US forces pulled out last month.
2013: President Barack Obama hails a last-minute deal with Congress that pulled the country back from the “fiscal cliff”, but warned in his Saturday radio and Internet address that he would not compromise over his insistence that lawmakers lift the federal debt ceiling.
2014: Secretary of State John Kerry says the United States will support Iraq’s fight against alqaeda-linked militants who have overrun two cities but will not send American troops.
2016: President-elect Donald Trump, in a series of tweets, urges Republicans and Democrats to “get together” to design a replacement for President Barack Obama’s health-care law. Four black people in Chicago are charged with hate crimes in connection with a video broadcast live on Facebook that shows a mentally disabled white man being tortured. Friends and family members gather at the nextdoor homes of Debbie Reynolds and daughter Carrie Fisher in the Hollywood Hills for an intimate memorial to mourn the late actresses.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Konrad Adenauer, German statesman (1876-1967); Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto, Pakistani prime minister (1928-1979); Friedrich Duerrenmatt, Swiss playwright and novelist (1921-1990); Robert Duvall, US actor (1931- ); Umberto Eco, Italian writer (1932-2016); Charlie Rose, US talk show host/ journalist (1942- ); Diane Keaton, US actress (1946- )