Time For A Change

“Too many so-called leaders of the movement have been made into celebrities and their revolutionary fervour destroyed by mass media. The task is to transform society; only the people can do that – not heroes, not celebrities, not stars. A star’s place is in Hollywood; the revolutionary’s place is in the community with the people.”
Huey P. Newton

“We don't need another hero”
Tina Turner

“As it's been said already, now let it be done, I tell you who we are under the sun”
Bob Marley

These days it seems the popular literary and rhetorical devices for writers and columnists is a combo of epiphany and personal testimony through which the writers seem to take you on a personal journey of insight and realization, its triumphs and tribulations. I guess what readers have come to expect is vicarious insight, momentary wonder, a sliver of hope and small inner tingle and feeling that maybe it's all going to work out after all. Like the Bob Marley song "Every little thing is gonna be alright!" A semi social spiritual buzz or high of sorts!

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I must regretfully inform you dear reader, my long time friend, that this gimmick, the DIY feel good high... it fails to meet the challenges that confront us today. These are complicated and difficult times and are not the days of tidy ready done solutions. The beasts that confront us now, the monkeys on our backs and the Elephant in our rooms don't care about anyone's experience of optimism or your personal gains. Given what is at stake, our great future... then letting our best and brightest waste their time – and the reader's time – cooking up more Chicken Soup for the Soul food crowd than Iyanla Vantz on a Sunday with a living room full of friend with heart break and spiritual influenza. It is repetitive regurgitation of pop psychology and expounding on FaceBook memes. I contend it doesn't fix a soul, the system doesn't change and in general that formula now just doesn't work.

Black authors, writers and leadership today have few or little successes and victories to boast of since the late seventies, the eighties, the nineties or the new century, apart from their own illustrious careers. What of social or activist achievement and outreach? How far has it reached? All this is taking place because black leaders, TV personalities, politicians, musicians, journalists and writers are now into placebo politics and placebo innovation. They recycle on stale ideas and peddle them for more than they are really worth.

What I am getting at is this... those who tell us to “think different,” or it's "time for change" in other words, almost never do so themselves. Year after year, new installments in this unchanging genre are produced and consumed, till re-runs become our history. Who doesn't watching 80's sitcom and cartoons on Youtube? I go to use new technology like the Internet and Project Gutenberg to read"old books." Who hasn't heard politicians recycle old policies and re-branded old documents? Everyone knows that guy in another community that reminds you of someone in your own community. Everyone knows the same jokes, we all hear those nowadays songs that you say but I know that song from somewhere before. We all chit chat on the ends and race each other to the puns and quips we see on TV and rehearsed.

I have an Uncle Bunny from England who is a lofty but inebriated philosopher... he calls it "the procession of the simulacrum" which is to say we are a species and generation of copycats. So it seems the system is suggesting and we are all conforming to the ideas that creativity, is too important to be left to the creative. Our prosperity depends on hustling and idea and inspiration and milking it for what it is worth. This is a system and generation hell bent on cracking the code of creativity and unleash its moneymaking power. Hence everybody peddles their new creative brand of whatever in their particular field. All the P's: JLP, PNP, politicians, pastors, performers, publishers. It' what I call a VistaPrint Paradox... people want to project the image of being unique and creative, but end up at a place that offers designs ready-made via a formula of templates.

We invest our energy in futuristic information technologies, including our cars, but drive them home to rustic charmed homes copied from the 18th century. The future on offer is one in which everything changes, so long as everything stays the same. This timidity is our path to the future and it cannot work. In the words of His Imperial Majesty, Haile Selassie I "we must look into ourselves, into the depth of our souls. We must become something we have never been and for which our education and experience and environment have ill-prepared us. We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook. We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community."

Today more than ever there is a need for bold imagining and designing, different systems of valuation, exchange, accounting of transaction externalities, financing of coordinated planning, etc. Because states plus markets, states versus markets, these are insufficient models, and our conversation is stuck in Cold War gear.

The most recent centuries have seen extraordinary accomplishments in technology and science have improved quality of life. The paradox is that the system we have now – is in the short term what makes the amazing new technologies possible, but in the long run it is also what suppresses their full flowering. The potential for these technologies are both wonderful and horrifying at the same time, FaceBook for all its connectivity and social good, is still an agency which the U.. Government uses to spy on us. A new socio-economic architecture is needed.

However black thinkers and the intelligentsia at home and abroad are utterly self-interested. It cannot begin to mobilize black communities to come up with creative solutions to our current problems. It seems our egotistical black intelligentsia can't begin to make these things happen because foisting itself and its own advancement off as “representing” the black oppressed masses is the beginning and the end of who they are and what they do. They are not truly about the black diaspora and its plight, they do not truly care to ease the existential condition of his brothers, neighbors and friends.

If we really want transformation, we have to slog through the tough issues like history, economics, philosophy, art, ambiguities, contradictions. Bracketing it off to the side to focus just on technology, or just on innovation, actually prevents transformation. Playing with new gadgets, trinkets and toys won't make life better and you know it. Instead of dumbing-down the future, we need to raise the level of general understanding to the level of complexity of the systems in which we are embedded and which has been embedded in us. This is not about "personal stories of inspiration and validation", it's about the difficult and uncertain work of demystification and re-imagining our future, as well as change how we think.

A City Under Seige

“Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I'm beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it's actually the other way around. Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative - they colonize us. They commission us. They insist on being told. Fiction and nonfiction are only different techniques of story telling. For reasons that I don't fully understand, fiction dances out of me, and nonfiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.” ~ Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things 

 

 As we ride through the intense heat and crime wave washing the city in tsunami like fashion, the schemes, shanty towns, communities are erupting as the victims of poverty, global financial warfare, IMF debt, personal debt, urban and spiritual decay begin to break out violently and virulently. Sometimes I wonder if the public knows what is happening... do you know what is happening in Paradise, in Norwood, in Flankers, in Meggy Top, in Salt Spring, in Granville, in Cambridge, in Orange and Sign? Peoples lives are shattered, men are in splinters, women in despair, children losing fathers and mothers to guns and disease. Children living with the faint anguish of hunger in their little eyes. Then there are the unknown valiant heroes, the ones who with out pay, not given the respect due, the ones running youth clubs and residents associations, not in the name of politics, but simple activism, to simply take up the challenge of building a better community, trying to safeguard the future, some conservative, some vanguard, but all unknown heroes who are not worshipped on facebook or instagram, the ones the media and the press miss. And rising fast out of the shadows, brooding in these dire economic times, the evil, the misguided, the perverted... spreading its tentacles out into communities, spreading warfare, spreading rumors, spreading mental diseases, ruining young children. 

 

Do you get the picture? Or is your mental image of Montego Bay still pretty girls at parties on twitter, youtube and instagram, is it Burger King and the HipStrip, is it romanticized garrisons through Samsung lenses and photo effects? Is it escapist worlds that Fairview and Ironshore and Coral Gardens can be? Is it Casinos and taboos? Is it playing politics on FB? Did you miss the bodies at KFC, at Whitter Village, in Paradise, in Cassava Walk, in Gulf, In Waltham, in Salt Spring, Sam Sharpe Square, Taboo parking lot, Pier One... or was your time spent on 50 Shades of Grey, Avengers 2, rum bottles, chasing skirts, stroking your own ego, taking selfies, posing, posturing... not really doing anything? I know I do the FB and IG thing but life is more than that. I know I seem filled with righteous indignation or some righteous anger, but it isn't that, I am writing from a place of utter despair and brokeness hoping someone hears, that more of you step out into the battle field and fight to change our future, that more of you commit your brains to good ideas and spend your computational and processing power in productive and positive fashion. Surely I am not prososing that we all become good little socialist working for the common good that everything will turn out to be sunshine and roses... but he have to commit ourselves to the hard challenges that confront us now. 

 

The last two years was a year like no other for me in Paradise... I have watched Chik V decimate the community, as well as cancer, AIDS, gunshot, heart attack, strokes, diabetes and the list goes on. The passing of community members and staple in what seems to be an unending cycle of trauma. The trend continued into the new year as people whittle away... as violence continues to visit the community, as people come to realize Marcus Mosiah's prophecy, not knowing themselves till their back is against the wall, as they can't no food to eat and no money to spend. Now to have Zik V at our doorsteps! 

 

Somethings like Youth Club and Residents Association prove to be a glimmer of hope, but the wider circumstance of Paradise, it's surrounding Norwood and even Montego Bay. The economy isn't exactly stagnant, the ratings from international agencies show that, so now how does government and the private sector pass the savings of lower light bills and oil prices to the consumers, as children are missing school more often, children are becoming parentless, the population is thinning, not through conscious effort but through owing to the economics of living, the simple costs of living. More people are applying for ways to leave the country. As the maddening crowd hurries on into elections and carries a season of irrational debates to communities, whilst the unsung heroes, suffer and wilt away. 

 

As we see what seems to be an epic crime wave washing the city and western Jamaica with reports of shootings in the city almost daily. One can say without a doubt that this epidemic of cancerous crime is out of hand, radical approaches to joblessness and unemployment have to be put in place, the economy addressed, the culture fixed, religious institutions doing more social outreach, more entrepreneurs and solopreneurs, then better crime fighting techniques, 21st investigations and forensics!

As a people we need a serious and comprehensive and dynamic coming together, pooling of resources and ideas to secure the future of the community. Homework programs, safety nets and cheap solutions for children who are skipping schools, more culture and cultural events, we need to bolster the effort in youth club, in residents association in the senior citizens associations. Support entrepreneurs, buy local more, clean up our hearts and seek a more spiritual life... not religious but spiritual... inject more love into the youth into our families... we need now an in-gathering... build back, rebuild. We need a new and revitalized "Save-the-dollar" Initiative, one that is robust and encompasses, social media and online crowdfunding, pooling members of the diaspora, reaching out to grassroot, involving conventional banks and the private sector being patriotic... at least a few banks. This bolstered with novel ideas like local community or parish currencies like the "Bristol Pound" and Bitcoin. 

 

Let us meditate on the successes of the Sunshine Girls, Reggae Boys, Merlene Ottey, Herb Mckenley, Shelly Ann Fraser, Cuthbert, Campbel-Brown, Asafa, Bolt, Swimmers, Special Olympians, Onandi Lowe, Walter Boyd, Tessanne, Marcus Garvey, Bob Marley, Harry Bellafonte, Andre Mcdonald, Claude McKay, Shaggy, Sean Paul, Dustin Brown... So much so much... IF ONLY WE HAD POLITICIANS that performed to the same standard and calibre that ordinary citizens step out to achieve... JAH we woulda be capital of planet Earth! 

 

Yes the politicians are inept, yes some police corrupt, yes lots of exploitive businesses are there and yes some business leaders join Chamber of Commerce to advance their personal missions and as personal platform. Yes this country and this city is a mess, a tangled web. Yes yes yes, but wasn't our god Anansi? Were'nt we the first storytellers... so it is time we imagined a new tale... one where we survive, where we are the victor and there is no armageddon. Isn't it time we committed truly in our hearts to be agitators for change, to begin to curb the potential disaster of the things we do and things we create. 

 

I don't know about you, but I cannot close my eyes to these things... I will not! There are couples living in hovels, Rasta Elders and shut ins living in leaking houses and rotting board, children hungry and every fast food place throws away unsold food at 10-11pm. This city has broken heart, it is filled with a history of injustice, sons and daughters of slaves that ran up and down on the Barnet Estate, Jarrett Estate, scions of insurrectionists that participated in the Christmas Rebellion and the others, generations of uncompensated families, a cycle and trend that if you don't know history, you wont see it carry on into today. I don't want to ever become numb to these things, comfortable with human suffering and injustice, but some I worry that it may make me bitter and angry. I wonder if this is just the vestiges of idealism in me and the dying flickers of youth. But until the flicker of every last revolutionary fervor dies in me and no ember or spark is left, let it be known from Maroon Town, to the Hill on which Sam Sharpe teacher's College stands to the Clock, up Jarrett Street and on to Sam Sharpe Square...

All Hail the Queen of the Republic of Montego Bay: Queen Ifrica

Now as Montego Bay's image and along with it Jamaica's image as well, is being torn apart by foreign press and media. It seems the identity of the city is in dispute and on debate. Which Queen represents Montego Bay is it Queen Ifrica or is it the Gully Queen alleged gay martyr!

As Cliff Hughes, J-Flag and international gay lobby groups will issue their sanctimonious denouncements from their farcical moral high ground. "In times likes these, when we are missing our heroes," men like Obama, not just the president, part of a rich black elite, would "stand up" for homosexuality and gay right, yet stand down on matters of the black community, while black unemployment is at its worst. When Jamaica is willing to highlight Scamming from Montego Bay yet ignore the undeniable root in and link to homosexuality, when Jamaica endorses Tommy Lee as the best of Montego Bay, some refuse to let go off Jah Cure's past conviction, and fail to endorse Queen Ifrica. When Carolyn Cooper is willing to highlight Vybz Kartel, promote him in the hallowed halls of academia. In an age where Poorsha promise to put away allegiance to the British crown. In an age where Rasta is appropriated by whomever to do whatever... Why is it the that a strong black Rasta woman from Montego Bay has to stand up as Queen... and I believe right now, not just for Montego Bay but Jamaica? Why is it that she is not getting the recognition she deserves.

I think JFLAG is out of line on this and need to hop of Montego Bay's Queen back... OK!

Ifrica a represent Mobay the realest way! She is carrying on in the theatre of the public's collective consciousness, the role of Nanny, Nanna, Goddess Inanna, in the tradition of Queens like Sheba, Nefertiti, Nefertari, Cleopatra, the Candaces. First she schooled Peter Bunting, "Don't Cry Mister Bunting," so till if even only symbolic or effectual or for the sake of PR had to call her in and get advice, She stood up on the issue of Beedies, she has shown she is not afraid to say the unpopular when she sang "Daddy don't touch me there" "And no boy cyah draw mi round no corner," and "Keep it to yourself." She blessed up this city by titling one of her albums after this city... this in an age where everyone does just a city song or a big up weh come from song. Now she makes a stand for another cause, now JFLAG and Cliff Hughes want to make her a big deal for all the wrong reasons... this is how I would love to see other artistes using their powers for good, in a socially active way, more activism, as part of peaceful protests, lobbies, rallies, ganja rallies, ecological fairs etc.

Right now I wish she would attack Minister Ferguson on GMO and car pollution, it would seem he is only concerned with smoking and the financial incentives it can accrue via penalties and taxes. As a matter of fact she should see all the rest of the ministries on matters of education, culture, ecology and the environment. Teach "Hoggish Greedly" aka minister of Agriculture bout organic and urban farming, eco-city, ecopolis, vertical farms etc... She fi kunk Paulwell and step up the urgency of alternative energy!
Ifrica Mobay Love You...

"Keep it to yourself" by Queen Ifrica

As horrific as Dwayne's death is, as mob justice is horrific and irrational, he is no martyr nor any Queen!
Look at the pic on the wall in the background, the carving, is a man with an enlarged penis, and on the other side a picture of another dubious looking character. 

Long Live the Queen! Ifrica vs JFLAG & Cliff Hughes

Once again... a prominent Montegonian makes her voice heard on the issue of Gay Rights, only to be lambasted by JFLAG and accosted by Cliff Hughes... I would have risen to her defense but this write does a suitable enough job... read his take on the matter!

In Defense of Queen Ifrica!

 

 VIA FACEBOOK: Winston Gilling: Posting @ Speak your Mind Jamaica 

DOES SOMETHING AFFECT REASON WHEN THE TOPIC OF HOMOSEXUALITY IS DISCUSSED?? 

It's as if one cannot put up some argument in support of homosexuality and/or homosexuals without sounding silly.

Heard parts of an interview with Cliff Hughes and Queen Ifrica about an incident at the Grand Gala where she asked all straight people to identify themselves (or something to the effect).

Now, Cliff Hughes argued that the "Jamaican Family" was gathered at the stadium, which included heterosexuals and homosexuals, and it was therefore in poor taste for her to single one group.

How silly can we get?

Could someone ask Mr. Hughes for me if, included in the "Jamaican family" at the stadium were men who support their children and men who don't.

Would it have been in poor taste if she gave a shout out to men who support their children? Would Cliff Hughes then tell her she was insensitive to men who don't support their children?

What if she asked all women who would never sell their bodies to raise their hands? Would Hughes have a problem with her being insensitive to prostitutes?

And since we are getting silly. What if she asked for an acknowledgement of all who would never take another man's life. Would Cliff Hughes say she was being sensitive to the murderers among the "Jamaican family" gathered at the stadium?

What is this passion that we feel and this need to come to the rescue of our very sensitive men who have sex with men, who are apparently in a crying mood whenever someone dares to suggest that something is wrong with homosexuality? Even if Cliff Hughes is comfortable with that, it is still WRONG. I'm sorry, Mr. Hughes, but you cannot sanitize it.

And let me just say this one last time - because Hughes went down that road too - no one was murdered in Western Jamaica recently, merely for being homosexual. He was murdered (AND I CONDEMN HIS MURDER) for apparently deceiving a straight man.

Queen Ifrica can understand that and pointed it out tho him. Apparently, Cliff Hughes cannot understand that point. Just to finish that point.

The cross dressers in this photo

- IN WESTERN JAMAICA - were not murdered - though in full sight of everyone. Apparently, they danced with their own, or did they?


FINALLY - Queen Ifrica sounded much more intelligent than Cliff Hughes when she asked him to define homophobia. Which public is it that FEARS homosexuals or homosexuality?? KMT

Read the link below for more insight into the Queen Ifrica JFLAG Saga!

The Montegonian: Queen Ifrica's Grand Gala performance disappoints JFLAG :: News

The Sly Hypocrisy of the Homosexual Agenda: Making Dwayne Jones into a Martyr

Now when the international press comes feasting for a story in Montego Bay and on Montegonians, I and I as The Montegonian have to chant. The story is that of the Gully Queen, whose real name is Dwayne Jones. He was a trans-gendered individual who died because of deception, yet his murder is being portrayed as a hate crime and is a stereotyping of Jamaica's attitude towards homosexuality. He is the new poster boy of all anti-Jamaica and gay lobby groups. However once again, the homosexual bias has "reared" its ugly head. With the recent KGN Squatter issue, they made it a gay issue.

You probably won't see this Blog or article being mentioned on the Huffingtonpost or Global Voices... owing to the fact that to be cool and savvy in today's Web 2.0, 3.0 world of social networks and personal brand identities, one has to stay politically correct to gain popularity, climb through the mystery of S.E.O. ranking schema, matrices and algorithms, one has to be espousing "progressive" neo-liberal, globalist, capitalist, "forward thinking views" and anything that may not be PRO-homosexuality is usually maligned as backward and antiquated. I have spoken to this homosexual hypocrisy already. If one is not saying yeah for gay... you will be shut up and shut off as homophobic.

Certain realities fail to be addressed by foreign media and local when examining the Dwayne Jones case... it can very well be contended, that the man's crime was not truly cross dressing. The most articles only look at a part of the issue. The young man was not murdered because he was gay or homosexual, his offense was not being a cross-dresser. He was killed because he violated the space and right of another man and other men by dancing (simulating a sex act, erotic dance: one drop) while pretending to be a woman. He made physical contact with heterosexual males, danced with them, it is alleged as one witness put it "even the selector tek a dagger offa him." I agree wholeheartedly that executing him was harsh and wrong. I never advocate for extra-judicial killings.

I will never agree to the murder of any human being for biases of sexuality, I have to wonder, has anyone given thought to the fact that persons have committed suicide after being tricked like this? That on some level that act like this are tantamount to sexual harassment? It causes arousal and stimulation by deception and physical violation.

But this small bit of truth will no doubt be shoveled and buried by the media, the spin doctors, liars and lobbyist. Huffingtonpost and Global Voices for all their citizen journalism, all the moral high ground, all the insightful commentary, they never examined once the tyranny of terror that was Bebe and Jasper and how they were the origins of scamming in Montego Bay... a pair of maniacal cross dressing gun wielding homosexual scammers, parading with "straps" and thongs from Fairview's Texaco to KFC downtown to Baywest to Pier 1. How they rooted themselves in Granville is fairly common knowledge in the city. But the darker sides of scamming money and murders, poverty and gay pedophilia in Jamaica are swept under the rug for this untruthful campaign against Jamaica and what is perceived as its attitude to homosexuality. NO ONE investigated the serious link with homosexuality and scamming.

You won't hear this from Minority Insight or Active Voice but I live in Montego Bay and I know gay women living in communities now, flouting their life and lifestyle on the corners and on Facebook now in Montego Bay from Norwood, Flankers, Salem, Canterbury, to Ironshore, Westgate Hills, Spring Farm and Bogue, chilling on corners without harm. Yet I see no interview with them, no expose asking them how they navigate their existence so peacefully. Or what are the rigors of the Homosexual condition in Jamaica, outside of the iconic misrepresentation from the likes of Stacy Chinn.

Forward to the issue of what Dwayne Jones really did again. Let us make it clear... He aroused males by dancing with them and not letting them know he was a male. A woman spotted him out. Now I have even heard media calls for her to be spotted out, what vile hypocrisy now to try and punish a woman for revealing the truth. Not even blinking to content that Dwayne may have been naive to even think cross dressing was cool in Jamaica, but it think it fun to violate peoples belief on the notion and practise of homosexuality by letting them unknowingly participate in a homosexual ritual.

To some males and individuals, being "played" like and played with like in such a manner is equivalent to death- socially and physical. It is my sincere belief that this young 17-year-old would still be in the land of the living had he not taken away, by deception, the right of other males to decide if he wanted to be involved in a homosexual activity and by this I mean: dancing with another man.

Gay people go about their business in Jamaica every day without being provoked. Dwayne should have kept his antics to just YouTube. This is what happens when one provokes and deceives a crowd... the metamorphosis into maddened mob.