A Cry to Save our Black Youths…

Just whose battle are we supporting?

The saga of an ‘SC ‘Oman’ vs Our Societal Demons in an era of Political Incorrectness.

One of the black youths killed by the police in a recent gang-related incident was a maths wiz with five O’level passes who could have easily become a model citizen. His story is a familiar one: a broken home, fatherless, an irresponsible mother, societal sneers and judgement. Exposed and vulnerable to the [illicit] elements, not unlike countless others, he was ripe for exploitation. Who’s there to care enough to pull him back? As far as society is concerned, he was just another statistic. His name and academic brilliance were deeply buried and long forgotten, except by a venerable maths teacher, whose voice broke with emotion as she regaled with sad commentary on his life.

When the smoke clears, who are the victims of gang warfare? Who lies dead in the streets? Who populates our overcrowded jails, and who are the homeless [drug] junkies? Our marginalised black youths- Africans, Indians, and Douglas.

Who are the financiers of criminal gangs that prey on vulnerable and troubled youths? And why are we not fighting for the souls of our black youths-victims of bleak circumstance and a too-quick-to-judge [civil] society?

Instead, we choose to fight someone else’s battle.

As I insert the final full stop in the opening paragraphs, be warned: should you venture further, this editorial for Bucked-Up Men’s Magazine is highly inflammatory, emotional, and candidly obscene. In a nutshell, it’s bad journalism. No spin, sans political correctness. My defence: I’m not a journalist. What I am is blasted pissed off at the callous manner in which we black people-Afro, Indo, and Dougla – have thrown our marginalised youths under the bus.

As the saga of the one per cent wages on, there’s conspicuously not a single, solitary thought for our black youths – the sacrificial lambs in this unfolding saga of financiers and gang violence. All they are to us are nameless black faces who populate our jails, shot down like wild animals in the streets, and menacing junkies who pose a threat. Isn’t this a paradox in a black country? Have we relegated the liberators of 1970 to the dustbin of history?

So pissed off by society’s indifference to the plight of our black youths, that if an ‘SC ‘oman’ is willing to put her political career and reputation on the line to audaciously confront the demon that’s possessing the souls of our youths, we at Bucked-Up Men’s Magazine are proud to stand with her.

What started as an exercise to dismantle criminal gangs and the illicit drug and weapon trade craftily morphed into an ugly political and racial imbroglio. [With dissident factions employing psychological trickery to stir emotions and stifle logic. [Repeating strategic words and phrases: UNC vs PNM, African vs Indian, the N and C words…]

No government. Absolutely none in the past two decades have made a dent on the escalating crime wave. In fact, we are a nation under siege by criminal gangs fighting for turf.

Criminologists all agree that the solution lies in the state’s ability to ‘mash up’ the gangs. Over the decades, this has proven easier said than done. The answer lies in crippling the funding to these gangs. And herein lies the [political] roadblock.

Who funds criminal gangs? Is it the same people who fund political parties and launder money for politicians? If offshore banking is not meant to hide illicit wealth, it certainly facilitates it.

Going after the untouchables can be likened to placing a nuclear bomb under civil society. Such levels of corruption allegedly involving government officials have, in essence, blurred the line between the legitimate and underground economies.

Upending the underground economy, which may very well rival the legitimate economy, is bound to result in calamitous [socioeconomic] tsunamis, the impact of which will be devastating not only for the underground players but law-abiding citizens alike.

If tackling gang violence head-on is tantamount to cutting off one’s nose to spoil one’s face, what the hell is KPB thinking? Why not simply let sleeping dogs lie?

And why the hell are we writing this in a publication that focuses on men’s issues? It’s for that very reason.

Like the man said in his song, ‘Every form of refuge has its price’. If you haven’t woken up to the sinister reality that the sacrificial lambs in this sordid affair are our black youths, then we are all unwitting pawns in someone else’s battle. A battle that benefits everyone else but us.

Perhaps the people currently under investigation are innocent. That’s for the law to decide. Not us.

We need, however, to confront these questions as honestly as we can:

1. For whom or what are we fighting? Politicians whose bread is buttered on both sides with imported butter and whose children are secured? Our political parties and their financiers? Illegal narcotics and arms traders? Is it a racist battle?

2. Is the welfare of politicians {in a corrupt political culture} more important than our black youths?

3. It’s been bandied about that the people who finance political parties are the same businessmen who employ a large segment of the black population. If this is true, and it’s also true that they are the financiers and the lifeblood of criminal gangs, does the means justify the end?

4. Why are media outlets attempting to turn the citizenry against not only the police, but a ‘lawfully unorthodox’ tool within the constitution to gather invaluable information to tackle crime stealthily? These are desperate times that demand desperate measures.

You can witness a murder, know who the murderer is, and a crafty lawyer can use the technicality of the law to tear your evidence apart [to establish sufficient doubt] that allows a guilty murderer to walk free.

The purpose of an SOE is to arrest persons suspected of criminal activity to elicit information and connect the dots. Given the law’s technical nature, the information may be insufficient to prosecute the arrested persons. In any event, under an SOE, the police are duty-bound by law to justify their actions to a sitting judge adequately.

We must appreciate that the same democratic rights that provide us with individual rights and freedoms are guided by the same constitution that can set a guilty criminal free and ‘lawfully’ pervert the course of justice. Paradoxically, one scenario cannot exist without the other. It’s simply the nature of the [democratic] beast.

5. The ZOSO proposal, given the empirical [zonal] crime data, if constitutionally implemented, can prove effective in crime fighting. One may objectively disagree, and that’s their prerogative. An Independent Senator, in attempting to justify her ‘nay’, tells us: People in such zones will be ‘negatively branded.’ Is being negatively branded worse than being murdered?

In life as in politics, perception is reality. Independent Senators have found themselves in a tenuous position—some for past party affiliations; others for being selected by a partisan President. The current president has been too deeply entrenched in party politics to be viewed as conclusively independent. Politicians possess sinister party secrets and are well aware of individuals who are ‘secretly independent’. In accepting her appointment, the sitting president is, in our mind, selfish, greedy and unpatriotic. We at Bucked-Up Men’s hope that this current administration will not choose a party patriot as her replacement to prove a point. The architects of our constitution expect our elected officials to act responsibly and ethically in the country’s interest. In this regard, Dr Williams and his predecessors executed this power with grace and dignity. To cut to the chase, we need someone with the unwavering integrity of Dr Terrance Farrell to be our next President, if we are to regain some measure of trust in our governance process.

We have digressed a little too much. To bring the editorial back on track: The plugging of funding to CEPEP contractors, separating high-risk prisoners, and crippling cell phone access to the incarcerated population have, for a few months, cut the crime rate by half. We can therefore deduce that gangs are highly resilient and sustained by sources other than CEPEP funding.

The involvement of the US in the complex ‘sting’ operations to purge the country of criminal gangs and crime related to the drug and illegal ammunition trade is a welcome move. Without US and the Western Alliance intelligence and military involvement, this exercise would not be possible or effective given the [potential] tortuous links to multiple jurisdictions and ‘venerable’ officials.

This editorial will be incomplete without us giving the media a piece of our Bucked-Up mind. A crucial dot has seemingly been erased in an effort to distort the picture. Why did the US revoke the VISAs and confiscate the properties of certain people? Or is this fake news?

Had it involved ordinary citizens, the media would have by now chartered a flight to Washington and names and photos would be emblazoned on the front pages for weeks to come.

And finally, factions within the Muslim community must grasp the changing geopolitical order. We are a small nation state that’s heavily reliant on the US for economic stability and protection. Nothing comes for free. We play by their [scratch-my-back] rule, or else…

Both the US and T&T have embraced Palestine as a sovereign state. Should we compromise our crucial relationship with the US because they are defenders of Israel? In war, even the eventual winner loses a battle or two. Besides, as far as the free world is concerned, Israel is a pariah state. All in all, we seem to have played the game well so far. We have survived the targeted list of regional countries whose nationals have had their [US] Visas revoked. ‘Working for the Yankee dollar’ continues to provide a steady and legitimate income for many Trinbagonians.

We are at the crossroads. We need to decide once and for all whose side to choose. Let’s not wait until the end and find out that we’ve been kicking the ball in the opponent’s goal. The future of our black youths is the trophy.

RPJ

Interim Editor

Bucked-Up Men’s Magazine