WHAT INDEPENDENCE DAY MEANS TO ME

What does Independence Day mean to you in 2015? Is there reason to celebrate or is it a pointless holiday? Responses from our online readers.

Free from ‘backra master’ and, thanks to Bob Marley, free from mental slavery.

– Atina Williams Lisa Hanna is talking ’bout, ‘don’t let anyone tell you not to celebrate’. What is there to celebrate? Corruption? Hardship? Poverty?

– Kerry Ann Passley

Oschia Harris: Jamaica is like a bus going down a very steep hill so fast that only God alone can help us.

Marko Anthony: Ask Queen Elizabeth II if she still rules Jamaica.

Sheryl Brown: How can we be independent when the Jamaican people don’t own any of Jamaica?

You Laylah: I have met some outstanding people in my life who stand strong and are independent. Jamaicans are a Jah blessed people. One love!

Elton Brown: It means the biggest mistake ever made in the history of mankind. We should have stayed with the Brits. Look at Cayman and Turks. We used to govern them.

Kira Clarke: It’s a time to look back at our journey through the decades and the work left to be done.

Cissy Pringle: Independence? More like dependents. Crime, murders on top of murders, fear, prisoners in our homes. We should have left it to the British.

Marian Thomas: Jamaica has to take the steps necessary to be independent.

Shan Shand: What is there to celebrate? Rising crime rate, the abuse of underage children, water shortage, the poor getting poorer. The justice system sucks. We don’t need to be independent. Let’s go back under England.

Shan Reid: Independence is nonexistent here, actually. Sandy Blackwood-Mctavish: Tax, poverty, unemployment, no water, poor roads, high rate of crime, high food prices, high tuition fees, and the list goes on.

Sydy Penny: It’s a day to rest from all the struggles I’ve faced the previous months and the ones to come. So, thanks for the day off!

Suzette Morgan: It means nothing to me.

Munchie Foster: Not a thing.

Diana Hall-Henry: To be free from bondage and debt.

Abegail Hill: There is no cause for celebration. So many poor people can’t find jobs, children not eating properly. Instead of using money to celebrate, use it to help the children who won’t be able to go to school, and those persons whose homes burned down.

Adrian Ormsby:

Independence Day means IMF. Momo Naturalista Staciann: A day of rest. Independence from my work and school.

Heather Lewis: I don’t see where we as a nation are independent, because nothing in this island is ours to own. They’ve sold us out.

Desreine Taylor: Because of ignorance, most of us think that nationalism is based on a arrangement, that is, ‘I will love my country IF my coun- try does something for me’. So, if I have poverty, water lock-offs, drought, crime, low wages, etc, then obviously, as far as we understand, we are not supposed to be ‘nationalistic’. In real nations, people understand that nationalism is automatic. War and crime and poverty rage and they are still nationalistic. What have WE done for Jamaica lately?

People forget that we are still a young country.

Karen Duncan: We don’t have our culture anymore. Our country is not prosperous. God bless Jamaica, land we love.