Category: Ethos

Repairing the Breach: Image Impacts Economics

Posted on March 6, 2018 in Economics, Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Here is an American experience that the Caribbean region can learn from and take to heart:

  • Martin Luther King was a great man – No Doubt!
  • When a community names a street “Martin Luther King Street/Drive/Boulevard”, the property values … go down!

Wait, What?!

This is a matter of image … impacting economics. This point was highlighted in a previous blog-commentary:

“In many instances (but not all), public opposition has led King’s name to be socially and geographically marginalized within cities, which has worked to stigmatize these streets and create public anxiety about renaming more prominent streets”.

See more in Appendix A below.

This is not about justice; this is about the economic reality.

According to a White Paper by a Caribbean academician, Dr. Donald McCartney of the Bahamas, the Black men and boys of the Caribbean region is a dysfunctional population sub-group. Their outworking on the general society is one of crime, violence and image degradation.  They are victims and villains and have experienced a breach in good citizenship in our society – “hurt people hurt people”. The White Paper addresses the question: “How to repair this breach?”. It also identifies some viable solutions for the region to consider. See that full White Paper here, and an Excerpt as follows:

White Paper Title: Repairing the Breach in the Caribbean – EXCERPT
By: Dr. Donald McCartney

 … Questions, regarding Black men and boys, are being raised … these questions are being revived because many, too many Black men and boys are not a part of the economic structure or the body politic. Upon close examination, it becomes clear that many of them are not in community with their ethnic group.

For the most part, Black men and boys live in isolation, better yet, they are marginalized. They find it difficult to connect with society in general and the significant persons in their lives in particular.

The spiraling  murder rate and other acts of violence (particularly against young men and the elderly), makes it clear, that many Black men and boys in the Caribbean, pose a serious and critical problem of interpersonal violence in every corridor and thoroughfare that Caribbean peoples and residents must cross. Consequently, Black men and boys in the Caribbean are feared, demonized and vilified.
…
Even though [this] question goes far beyond Black men and boys, it is directly related to our young men in particular and their inability to participate and develop within the body politic and the economic structure of the Caribbean:

… How do we expect to engage Black men and boys in constructive dialogue and participation within Caribbean society while, at the same time, refurbishing the image that has now been unfairly placed upon the entire population of Black men and boys?

… In order to accomplish the goal of creating a better society for all stakeholders, there must be an integrated plan of action.

See the full White Paper here: https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14392

This commentary completes the 4-part series on Repairing the Breach; using the foregoing White Paper by Dr. McCartney as the premise. This entry is 4 of 4 in this series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of solutions – Way Forward – to assuage the plight of Black men and boys. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. Repairing the Breach: Hurt People Hurt People
  2. Repairing the Breach: Crime – Need, Greed, Justice & Honor
  3. Repairing the Breach: One Option – National Youth Service
  4. Repairing the Breach: Image Impacts Economics; Get on board!

While all of these commentaries relate to “how” the stewards for a new Caribbean can assuage the failing dispositions of the Caribbean among our Black men and boys, this final submission highlights the economic consequence of having a substantial segment of the population in a dysfunctional state: it depresses the economic value on the whole community.

Economics is an important consideration for this discussion. There is an “elastic” relationship – see Appendix B – between community economics and community dysfunction. When there are failures in the economic engines, then the good people in the community leave and abandon the homeland. This causes a spiral to a worse disposition in that the number of dysfunctional men and boys increase compared to the overall population. With a majority Black population in 29 of the 30 Caribbean member-states, the focus of this series of commentary has been on the problematic population of Black men and boys.

The opening role model referred to Rev Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. His Civil Rights advocacy helped elevate the image of the African American population; his life course made a huge impact. Just before his death (assassination) in 1968, he waged another campaign addressing issues of economic justice; one historic report related:

King traveled the country to assemble “a multiracial army of the poor” that would march on Washington to engage in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol until Congress created an “economic bill of rights” for poor Americans.[156][157]

… The campaign culminated in a march on Washington, D.C., demanding economic aid to the poorest communities of the United States.

King and the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Council) called on the government to invest in rebuilding America’s cities. He felt that Congress had shown “hostility to the poor” by spending “military funds with alacrity and generosity.” He contrasted this with the situation faced by poor Americans, claiming that Congress had merely provided “poverty funds with miserliness.”[157] His vision was for change that was more revolutionary than mere reform: he cited systematic flaws of “racism, poverty, militarism and materialism”, and argued that “reconstruction of society itself is the real issue to be faced.”[161]

The Poor People’s Campaign was controversial … [and] its demands were unrealized… .

———

VIDEO – MLK, Poor People’s Campaign, and Economic Justice – https://youtu.be/DNR_28RberA

Published on Jan 20, 2015  

The “baton” for a Poor People’s Campaign has been passed on to a new generation: the Repairers of the Breach, founded in 2015 by the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II. This is a nonpartisan not-for-profit organization that seeks to build a moral agenda rooted in a framework that uplifts the deepest moral and constitutional values to redeem the heart and soul of the country (America). They declare that the moral public concerns of faith traditions should be how society treats the poor, women, LGBTQ people, children, workers, immigrants, communities of color, and the sick. The name of this modern Poor People’s Campaign is derived from the same scriptural premise as the foregoing White Paper by Dr. McCartney: Isaiah 58:9-12, to …

“raise up the foundations of many generations and … be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in”.

See the portrayal here of the new the Poor People’s Campaign/Repairers of the Breach in this VIDEO:

VIDEO – Revival: Time for a Moral Revolution of Values – https://youtu.be/7UYxPoDxPnU

Repairers of the Breach

Published on Aug 30, 2016 – An overview of the powerful 2016 Revival tour being led by Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, Rev. Dr. James A Forbes, Jr., Rev. Traci Blackmon and Sister Simone Campbell.

This discussion is relevant for the movement behind the Go Lean book – there is an advocacy to “Battle Against Poverty“ (Page 222). It delves into strategies, tactics and implementations to mitigate economic chaos in the Caribbean region. In fact, the prime directives of the roadmap strewn from the book is described as follows:

These role players – Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II – are American role models with a scope of impacting America. There is the need for our own Caribbean effort. This is the quest of the Go Lean book. It serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The goal of the roadmap is to elevate Caribbean societal engines, to Repair the Breach for all the population in the region, but especially too, Black men and boys.

The reality of the Black men and boys in the Caribbean is even worse than the disposition of African-Americans in the US (or other Diasporic countries). We are considered “Less Than“, even among the population of “Less Than” North Americans and Europeans. This has been a consistent subject in previous Go Lean blog-commentaries; consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11420 ‘Black British’ and ‘Less Than’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8099 Caribbean Image: ‘Less Than’?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5088 Immigrants account for 1 in 11 Blacks in USA
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4613 The Image of Ireland and the Irish – A Diasporic People
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2547 Image of Miami’s Success Due to Caribbean Failure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2251 The Image and Reality of Ethnic Names
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2025 Image of the Caribbean Diaspora – Butt of the Joke
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=857 Lesser Image of Caribbean “Dreadlock hairstyles”

This is real talk about the Caribbean Black men and boys.

We will not assuage the Caribbean Less Than image until we Repair the Breach. Thank you “Dr. McCartney” for your White Paper, showing us a Way-Forward for effecting change.

This is also the goal of the Go Lean/CU roadmap, to reform and transform our region’s societal engines so that all of our people, including Black men and boys, can prosper where planted here in our Caribbean homeland. We must fix our identified societal defects!

“Fixing our defects” is a point that is pronounced early in the Go Lean book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 & 13) with many statements that demonstrate the need to remediate Caribbean communities and elevate the disposition of our young men and women:

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

xix. Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

xxiv. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of ship-building, automobile manufacturing, pre-fabricated housing, frozen foods, pipelines, call centers, and the prison industrial complex. In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism, fisheries and lotteries – impacting the region with more jobs.

The American role models of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II does not mean that the US is the desired model for the Caribbean to emulate. While Black men and boys amount to only 6.5 percent of the US population – they are minorities there – but they are the majority population group in their Caribbean homelands – that makes a difference. The majority status allows for race – and other matters outside of an individual’s control – to not be a reason for continuous oppression.  Repairing the Breach is the opposite of oppression.

Repairing the Breach in our societal eco-system for our Caribbean youth would also mean success for our Caribbean image, local and abroad.

The only image we seek is the worldwide recognition as the greatest place on the planet to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

———–

Appendix A – Additional References on MLK Street Naming Economics

———–

Appendix B – Economic Elasticity

Elasticity is a measure of a variable’s sensitivity to a change in another variable. In business and economics, elasticity refers the degree to which individuals, consumers or producers change their demand or the amount supplied in response to price or income changes.

Source: Investopedia definition for “Elasticity”; retrieved March 7, 2018 from: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/elasticity.asp

Share this post:
, ,

Repairing the Breach: One Option – National Youth Service – ENCORE

Posted on March 5, 2018 in Ethos, Social, Strategy

Blood, sweat and tears …

… that is all we want from the people in our Caribbean communities. If people sacrifice for their community then they tend to be more loyal to it.

There are problems in the Caribbean for managing our young people – they are not loyal to the concept of community – so we need to consider strategies, tactics and implementation for change. Some segments of the population are more troubled than others; in particular the disposition among “Black men and boys” in the Caribbean is of serious concern.

One option to effect change in this target population is a Military-style Draft …

Wait, what?!

We want to change/improve the Caribbean member-states. Any attempt to change Caribbean society’s community ethos must start with the youth. But when we say “blood”, we are not contemplating any sacrifice of our young men on the altar of the God of War. Rather, as related in the previous commentary encored below, our region is missing the ingredient of wholesale commitment of these young men to any national cause. Thusly, the recommendation is for conscription/draft into a National Youth Service (NYS) program but for the entire Caribbean region; see the ENCORE below.

This is a workable plan! When people sacrifice their blood, sweat and tears for a homeland, then they are less willing to disregard or abandon that homeland. We need this ingredient … urgently.

According to a White Paper by an academician, Dr. Donald McCartney of the Bahamas, the Black men and boys of our region need to be productive contributors to our society. He asserted that this population had experienced a breach in good citizenship in our society – “hurt people hurt people” – so he composed a White Paper to address this question of “How to repair this breach?” and identified some viable solutions for the region to consider. See that full White Paper here, and an Excerpt as follows:

White Paper Title: Repairing the Breach in the Caribbean – EXCERPT
By: Dr. Donald McCartney

…
As we approach the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, the same questions, regarding Black men and boys, are being raised again.

These questions are being revived because many, too many Black men and boys are not a part of the economic structure or the body politic. Upon close examination, it becomes clear that many of them are not in community with their ethnic group.

For the most part, Black men and boys live in isolation, better yet, they are marginalized. They find it difficult to connect with society in general and the significant persons in their lives in particular.

The spiraling  murder rate and other acts of violence (particularly against young men and the elderly), makes it clear, that many Black men and boys in the Caribbean, pose a serious and critical problem of interpersonal violence in every corridor and thoroughfare that Caribbean peoples and residents must cross. Consequently, Black men and boys in the Caribbean are feared, demonized and vilified.
…
There is a breach within the fabric of Caribbean society, which has led to a breach in the lives of Black Caribbean males. A serious attempt must be made to repair this breach at all cost.
…
There must be a regional response with respect to the issues confronting Black men and boys in the Caribbean. This is no time for throwing up our hands as a gesture of capitulation, (posing the useless question: “What is wrong with these young men?) and rolling our eyes. It is time for action…serious sustained, positive action!
…
See the full White Paper here: https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14392

This commentary continues the 4-part series on Repairing the Breach; using the foregoing White Paper by Dr. McCartney as the premise. This entry is 3 of 4 in this series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of solutions to assuage the plight of Black men and boys. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. Repairing the Breach: Hurt People Hurt People
  2. Repairing the Breach: Crime – Need, Greed, Justice & Honor
  3. Repairing the Breach: One Option – National Youth Service
  4. Repairing the Breach: Image Impacts Economics

While all of these commentaries relate to “how” the stewards for a new Caribbean can assuage the failing dispositions of the Caribbean among our Black men and boys, this one in particular proposes a revolutionary approach on constricting all young people (males only initially) into a National Youth Service or public service in the region in general. The White Paper proposed these 3 questions, that the NYS scheme addresses:

  • First: How do we bring relief and assistance to communities and families that are experiencing the great hurt and harm of violent behaviour?
  • Secondly: How do we find a way to reestablish community and make inroads into violent behaviour, the major social problem of the day? 
  • Thirdly: How do we expect to engage Black men and boys in constructive dialogue and participation within Caribbean society while, at the same time, refurbishing the image that has now been unfairly placed upon the entire population of Black men and boys?

See here as follows, the ENCORE of the original blog-commentary from January 15, 2015 detailing the specificities of the National Youth Service scheme as an expression of the National Sacrifice community ethos:

——————

Go Lean Commentary – National Sacrifice – The Missing Ingredient

CU Blog - National Sacrifice - The Missing Ingredient - Photo 3The term National Sacrifice is defined here as the willingness to die for a greater cause; think “King/Queen and Country”. This spirit is currently missing in the recipe for “community” in the Caribbean homeland.

To be willing to die for a cause means that one is willing to live for the cause. Admittedly, “dying” is a bit extreme. The concept of “sacrifice” in general is the focus of this commentary.

The publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean wants to forge change in the Caribbean, we want to change the attitudes for an entire community, country and region. We have the track record of this type of commitment being exemplified in other communities. (Think: The US during WW II). Now we want to bring a National Sacrifice attitude to the Caribbean, as it is undoubtedly missing. This is evidenced by the fact the every Caribbean member-state suffers from alarming rates of societal abandonment: 70% of college educated population in the English states have left in a brain drain, while the US territories have lost more than 50% of their populations).

The book Go Lean…Caribbean opens with the acknowledgement that despite having the “greatest address in the world… the people of the Caribbean have beat down their doors to get out”, (Page 5).

CU Blog - National Sacrifice - The Missing Ingredient - Photo 4The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU); a confederation to bring change, empowerment, to the Caribbean region; to make the region a better place to live, work and play for all stakeholders (residents, visitors, businesses, organizations – NGO’s and governments). This Go Lean roadmap also has initiatives to foster solutions for the Caribbean youth. The Go Lean book posits that permanent change for Caribbean society will only take root as a result of adjustments to the community attitudes, the national spirit that drives the character and identity of its people. This is identified in the book as “community ethos”; and that one such character, National Sacrifice is sorely missing in this region.

Any attempts to change Caribbean society’s community ethos must start with the youth.

At no point should it be construed that this commentary is advocating sacrificing young men (and women) on the altar of the God of War. But rather, this commentary laments the missing ingredients of wholesale commitment to any national cause. Thusly, the recommendation is for conscription/draft (Appendix B) into a National Youth Service (NYS) program for the Caribbean. Take it one step further and make the Youth Service program regional in its scope rather than “national”; with applicable exemptions for:

  • military/police enrollments
  • student/research deferments (at regional institutions)
  • religious/missionary assignments
  • medical/disability exceptions

This quest relates a commitment so vital to a community that everyone should be willing to sacrifice and lean-in for the desired outcome. This Caribbean effort is not new to the world; it is currently being championed by a Washington-DC-based global Non-Government Organization (NGO) branded the Innovations in Civic Participation (ICP). Much can be learned from analyzing their successes … and failures. See details here:

Innovations in Civic Participation – NGO – Leaders for Youth Civic Engagement (Retrieved 01/15/2015):

Innovations in Civic Participation (ICP) is a global leader in the field of Youth Civic Engagement. ICP envisions a world where young people in every nation are actively engaged in improving their lives and their communities through civic participation. We believe that well-structured youth service programs can provide innovative solutions to social and environmental issues, while helping young people develop skills for future employment and active citizenship.

ICP carries out its mission through four main activities:

  1. Incubating innovative models for youth service programs;
  2. Creating and expanding global networks;
  3. Conducting research and publicizing information on youth civic engagement, especially national youth service and service-learning; and
  4. Serving as a financial intermediary to support program innovation and policy development.

In addition to these activities, ICP regularly consults with its extensive network of over 2,500 academics, policymakers, program entrepreneurs, and other leaders in the field on program and policy work.

Contact Information:

Innovations in Civic Participation
P.O. Box 39222
Washington, DC 20016
202-775-0290

http://www.icicp.org/about-us/

A quest for a National Youth Service has previously been advocated in Sub-Saharan Africa (see Appendix C). There, the NYS was designed to explore the potential to foster youth employability, entrepreneurship, and sustainable livelihoods. This effort stemmed from an existing tradition of NYS programs in Sub-Saharan Africa, which were originally designed to cultivate a sense of national identity and mobilize skills for development in post-independence nations; (see Appendix A). Today, NYS programs operate in the context of a deepening regional youth unemployment crisis, which averages over 20 percent, according to African Economic Outlook. NYS programs engage hundreds of thousands of young people each year and have the potential to equip them with strong civic skills and prepare them for employment and livelihood opportunities.

Despite its potential as an economic strategy, little is still known about how effective NYS programs are at increasing youth employability in Africa. But there is no doubt for the commitment to community that is forged from these efforts. Young people cry, sweat, and bleed for their community, embedding a desire to sacrifice for the Greater Good.

This corresponds with the Bible precept: “There is more happiness in giving than in receiving” – Acts 20:35

There are NYS programs already deployed or proposed for these Caribbean member-states, (though many have been snagged or stalled):

CU Blog - National Sacrifice - The Missing Ingredient - Photo 1

The purpose of the Go Lean book/roadmap is more than just the embedding of new community ethos, but rather the elevation/empowerment of Caribbean society. In total, the Caribbean empowerment roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance and industrial policies to support these engines.

The roadmap details the following community ethos, plus the execution of these strategies, tactics, implementation and advocacies to forge permanent change in the region:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Choose Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Cooperatives Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact a Turn-Around Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate 30 Member-States Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Enact a Defense Pact to Defend the Homeland Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Keep the next generation at home Page 46
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Separation-of-Powers Between CU & Member-States Governments Page 71
Implementation – Assemble – Incorporating all the existing regional organizations Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Security Initiatives at Start-up Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean – Confederation Without Sovereignty Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better Page 131
Planning – Lessons Learned from the West Indies Federation – Military Units Page 135
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Manage Federal Civil Service Page 173
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Communications Page 186
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Youth Page 227
Appendix – 30,000 Federal Employees Page 299
Appendix – Previous West Indies Integration – Caribbean Regiment Page 301

Previously Go Lean blog/commentaries have considered historic references and have also stressed fostering the proper and appropriate community ethos for the Caribbean to prosper; and reported on the repercussions and consequences of bad ethos. The following sample applies:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2830 Bad Ethos: Jamaica’s Public Pension Under-funded
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2809 A Lesson in Bad Community Ethos : East Berlin/Germany
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2480 A Lesson in History: Community Ethos of WW II
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2297 A Lesson in History – Booker T versus Du Bois – to Change a Bad Community Ethos
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1531 A Lesson in History: 100 Years Ago – World War I – Cause and Effect in Community Ethos
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=841 Having Less Babies is Bad for the Economy – Need People
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=623 Only at the Precipice, Do Communities Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=353 Book Review: ‘Wrong – Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn…’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=228 Egalitarianism versus Anarchism – Community Ethos Debate

All in all, there is a certain community ethos associated with populations that have endured change. It is a National Sacrifice, a deferred gratification and focus on the future. Any losses of privileges are appreciated by the entire community, not just the affected individual or family member. This is the purpose of the US Memorial Day Holiday on the last Monday in May, honoring the military service of all our men and women in uniform, their families at home, and those who have made the ultimate sacrifice in dying for their country. A quest to unite the country in remembrance and appreciation of the fallen and to serve those who are grieving is a good way to forge a community ethos of National Sacrifice.

See VIDEO here of a community’s great honor to a slain soldier:

VIDEO: Sky Mote: Community Honors a Fallen Soldier from El Dorado County with a Hero’s Welcome –   http://youtu.be/MVQORRQvTpU

Published on Aug 17, 2012 – Starting with a Marine Honor Guard carrying the transfer case containing the body of Staff Sgt. Sky R. Mote of El Dorado, CA, upon arrival at Dover Air Force Base, Del. on Sunday Aug. 12, 2012. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana). Then continuing with the great Welcome Home the community gave. His family will never forget!

Though this Fallen Soldier is mourned and missed, his sacrifice is duly acknowledged, appreciated and honored in his hometown. This community spirit creates a value system for public service and National Sacrifice.

The US is not the only country that memorializes their war dead. Those countries that do, experience less societal abandonment. The British Commonwealth of Nations (representative of 18 Caribbean member-states) shows likewise homage to their Fallen Soldiers. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) is responsible for maintaining the war graves of 1.7 million service personnel that died in the First and Second World Wars fighting for Commonwealth member states. Founded in 1917 (as the Imperial War Graves Commission), the Commission has constructed 2,500 war cemeteries, and maintains individual graves at another 20,000 sites around the world.[107] The vast majority of the latter [however] are civilian cemeteries in Great Britain. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_War_Graves_Commission).

The former British colonies did not adopt this National Sacrifice value system. As most Caribbean (notwithstanding the US Territories) member-states do not even have a (work-free) holiday to honor the sacrifices of those that fought, bled and/or died for their country.

No appreciation, no sacrifice; no sacrifice, no victory. It is that simple!

It is the recommendation of this blog/commentary that all Caribbean member-states should mandate a civilian conscription service for their citizens (1 year between ages 18 and 25); it is common for a confederation – the CU for the Caribbean – to marshal a multi-state, allied military force. Then the CU should facilitate a complete eco-system of engaging the conscripted NYS participants to serve and protect the people and resources of the Caribbean. After which, the communities should show proper appreciation and honor to those that make these sacrifices for “King/Queen and Country”, from all conscription services: military service, public and civilian.

(Many times school teachers and administrators are lowly paid; their service to their country is a great sacrifice).

Veteran-style benefits should thusly be considered for all these “national” servants. This commitment from the community would go far in forging deep loyalty within the citizenry, thus mitigating quick abandonment of the homeland.

There is a separation-of-powers between the CU federal agencies and Caribbean member-states, so the CU would have no authority on how member-states manage, appreciate or honor their civil servants; unless some CU grants/funding apply. But for CU personnel, the practice will be institutionalized to recognize the service of long-time civil servants (active or retired) and their sacrifices. So for any human resource that die in the line of duty, the funeral processions will be filled with pomp and circumstance, much like the foregoing VIDEO.

“The [servants] who perform well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard …” – Bible 1 Timothy 5:17

Now is the time to lean-in to this roadmap for Caribbean change, as depicted in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. All the mitigations and empowerments in this roadmap require people to remain in the homeland. No people, no hope! A community ethos, a spirit or attitude of sacrifice for the Greater Good is a great start to forge change; no sacrifice, no victory.

🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

——————-

Appendix A – ICP Studies and Results

Overview of the National Youth Service Landscape in Sub-Saharan Africa

National Youth Service Project on Employability, Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa: Synthesis Report

——————

Appendix B – Conscription (or Drafting)
This is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of National Service, most often military service.[2] Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names. The modern system of near-universal national conscription for young men dates to the French Revolution in the 1790s, where it became the basis of a very large and powerful military. Most European nations later copied the system in peacetime, so that men at a certain age would serve 1–8 years on active duty and then transfer to the reserve force.

CU Blog - National Sacrifice - The Missing Ingredient - Photo 2Conscription is controversial for a range of reasons, including conscientious objection to military engagements on religious or philosophical grounds; political objection, for example to service for a disliked government or unpopular war; and ideological objection, for example, to a perceived violation of individual rights. Those conscripted may evade service, sometimes by leaving the country.[4] Some selection systems accommodate these attitudes by providing alternative service outside combat-operations roles or even outside the military, such as civil service in Austria and Switzerland.

As of the early 21st century, many states no longer conscript soldiers, relying instead upon professional militaries with volunteers enlisted to meet the demand for troops. The ability to rely on such an arrangement, however, presupposes some degree of predictability with regard to both war-fighting requirements and the scope of hostilities. Many states that have abolished conscription therefore still reserve the power to resume it during wartime or times of crisis.[5] (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription)

National Service is a common name for mandatory or volunteer government service programmes. The term became common British usage during and for some years following the Second World War. Many young people spent one or more years in such programmes. Compulsory military service typically requires all citizens, or all male citizens, to participate for a period of a year (or more in some countries) during their youth, usually at some point between the age of 18 and their late twenties. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_service)

——————

Appendix C  – National Youth Service Corps in Nigeria
The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) is an organisation set up by the Nigerian government to involve the country’s graduates in the development of the country. There is no military conscription in Nigeria, but since 1973 graduates of universities and later polytechnics have been required to take part in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) program for one year.[1] This is known as national service year.

“Corp” members are posted to cities far from their city of origin. They are expected to mix with people of other tribes, social and family backgrounds, to learn the culture of the indigenes in the place they are posted to. This action is aimed to bring about unity in the country and to help youths appreciate other ethnic groups.

There is an “orientation” period of approximately three weeks spent in a camp away from family and friends. There is also a “passing out ceremony” at the end of the year and primary assignment followed by one month of vacation.

The program has also helped in creating entry-level jobs for many Nigerian youth. An NYSC forum dedicated to the NYSC members was built to bridge the gap amongst members serving across Nigeria and also an avenue for members to share job information and career resources as well as getting loans from the National Directorate Of Employment.

The program has been met with serious criticism by a large portion of the country. The NYSC members have complained of being underpaid, paid late or not paid at all.[2] Several youths carrying out the NYSC program have been killed in the regions they were sent to due to religious violence, ethnic violence or political violence.[3]

A series of bomb and other violent attacks, especially in the North, rocked the country’s stability in the period preceding the 2011 gubernatorial and presidential elections. Most common of these attacks was perpetuated by the Islamist extremist terrorist group called Boko Haram. “Boko Haram” means “Western education is a sin” in the local hausa dialect in Nigeria. The group “Boko Haram” is against western education and wants to establish an Islamic state in Nigeria’s northern region.

Worst hit were National Youth Service Corps members, some of whom lost their lives.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Youth_Service_Corps)

Share this post:
, , ,
[Top]

Repairing the Breach: Crime – Need, Greed, Justice & Honor – ENCORE

Posted on March 4, 2018 in Ethos, Government, Social, Tactical

Here is an interesting fact about “Black men and boys” in the country of the United States:

They amount to 6.5 percent of the total US population.

They amount to 40.2 percent of the prison population.

Surely, there are some special issues associated with this special interest group. In the field of Public Health Management, there is the concept of “Triage”; consider this definition here:

tri·age

noun: (in medical use) the assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or illnesses to decide the order of treatment of a large number of patients or casualties.

verb: assign degrees of urgency to (wounded or ill patients).

So the concept of “Triage” allows for immediate, expedited attention to those suffering more. The fact that more and more “Black men or boys” are entrusted to the criminal justice system – true in the Caribbean as well – indicates that this population needs more help. More and more, they are the victims and villains of crime. It brings to mind these questions:

  • What can we do to Repair the Breach for “Black men or boys”?
  • How can we reduce crime since this is so prevalent among this special sub-population?

These are legitimate questions. There are answers. We can explore these answers so as to Repair the Breach. This expression is derived from a White Paper by an academician, Dr. Donald McCartney of the Bahamas. He composed a White Paper to address this question of “How to repair this breach?” and identified some viable solutions for the Bahamas and the rest the Caribbean, especially related to the crime problem. See that full White Paper here, and an Excerpt as follows:

White Paper Title: Repairing the Breach in the Caribbean – EXCERPT
By: Dr. Donald McCartney

…
As we approach the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, the same questions, regarding Black men and boys, are being raised again.

…
The spiraling  murder rate and other acts of violence (particularly against young men and the elderly), makes it clear, that many Black men and boys in the Caribbean, pose a serious and critical problem of interpersonal violence in every corridor and thoroughfare that Caribbean peoples and residents must cross. Consequently, Black men and boys in the Caribbean are feared, demonized and vilified.

…
The answers to these questions must be found; so that we can free those Black men and boys who have become slaves to violence and crime. We must come to the realization that, that which impacts Black men and boys impacts all Caribbean people and those who reside among us.

…
The primary aim will be to create a long-term structure of sustained intervention for Black men and boys who find themselves in trouble. The emphasis of the [remediating] Thurston Foundation will be on systemic change that will bring together a multiplicity of ideas in an effort to reduce violence and crime, thus making the Caribbean’ social life whole again.

The Thurston Foundation must not shape itself around the issue of violence. Violence, in the Caribbean, has been painted with a broad brush because Black men and boys are looked upon as the face of the violence.  This violence appears to have immobilized law abiding citizens into a state of panic and fear.

…

See the full White Paper here: https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14392

This commentary continues the 4-part series on Repairing the Breach; using the foregoing White Paper by Dr. McCartney as the premise. This entry is 2 of 4 in this series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of solutions to assuage the plight of Black men and boys. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. Repairing the Breach: Hurt People Hurt People
  2. Repairing the Breach: Crime – Need, Greed, Justice & Honor
  3. Repairing the Breach: One Option – National Youth Service
  4. Repairing the Breach: Image Impacts Economics

While all of these commentaries relate to “how” the stewards for a new Caribbean can assuage the failing dispositions of the Caribbean among our Black Men and boys, this one in particular addresses the root causes of possible solutions to mitigate and reduce crime.

This is an ENCORE of a previous blog-commentary addressing crime and inter-personal violence. This original submission from February 18, 2016 cataloged the reasons for street crimes as: 1. Need, 2. Greed, and 3. Justice. Though not re-published here, an additional form of violence was addressed in a different prior blog, though not a street crime: 4. Domestic Violence – the act of wife-battering.

There are certain ethnic groups where domestic violence is more prominent than others. Sadly, our communities in the Caribbean is prominent for this 4th category of crime as well; honor or not, it is still criminal. Many times, men in our society feel that it is their honor to discipline their wives … as they see fit. Remediating and reducing crime among our Black men and boys, means help-seeking for domestic abusers.

See here below, for the ENCORE of the blog-commentary on assessing, mitigating and reducing the crimes based on 1. Need, 2. Greed, and 3. Justice:

—————–

Go Lean Commentary – A Lesson in the History of Interpersonal Violence – Street Crimes

No justice, no peace!

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean, and accompanying blogs, has prioritized public safety and remediating/mitigating crime as paramount for the region. Despite the focus on economics, the book asserts that to elevate Caribbean society there must be a focus on the region’s security and governing engines to provide justice assurances. So in addition to economic empowerments (jobs, investments, education, entrepreneurship, etc.), the book posits that security concerns must also be front-and-center in any roadmap along with these economic efforts.

This is easier said than done.

In the previous blog/commentary in this series, the effort to reduce crime and remediate violence was identified as an “Art” and “Science”. This heavy reliance on artists and scientists have provided a lot of history for us to study and glean best-practices in this cause. What can we learn today from a study in the history of interpersonal violence as related to street violence?

This is commentary 2 of 3 considering this subject of interpersonal violence, and how it relates to the Caribbean homeland in 2016. The historic issues addressed are:

  1. Duels
  2. Street Violence
  3. Domestic Violence

Street violence stems from 3 considerations: 1. Need, 2. Greed, and 3. Justice.

CU Blog - A Lesson in the History of Interpersonal Violence - Street Crimes - Photo 3The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate the region’s economic, security and governing engines. The roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy and create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to provide public safety and protect the resultant economic engines from economic crimes.
  • Improve Caribbean governance, with a separation-of-powers between member-state administrations and the CU federal government (Executive facilitations, Legislative oversight and judicial prudence) to support these economic/security engines.

So the CU/Go Lean roadmap addresses the issue of more jobs; this will lower the “need” factor for crime; (there is no expectation that these efforts would fully eliminate violent crime; but this start will mitigate the risks). The book relates that with the emergence of new economic drivers, that “bad actors” will also emerge thereafter to exploit the opportunities, with good, bad and evil intent. The second factor, “greed” is tied to opportunities. The executions of the Go Lean roadmap (Page 23) are specifically designed to minimize opportunities for crime with these security mandates:

  • Adapt the Ethos: Public Protection over Privacy
  • Embrace Electronic Payment Systems – Carry less cash
  • Whistleblower Protection – Consider all allegation, anonymous and overt
  • Witness Security & Protection – Ensure Justice Process
  • Youth Crime Awareness & Prevention; Anti-Bullying and Mitigation – “Nip it in the bud”
  • Intelligence Gathering – Universal Video Surveillance
  • Light Up the Dark Places – Eliminate the figurative and literal “shadows”
  • Prison Industrial Complex – Engage to reduce recidivism

The third contributor, justice, is tied to street riots, civil unrest and other outbursts against perceived injustices. The marching call of many of these movements is “No Justice; No Peace”.

Consider here the historicity of street violence (including sexual violence from strangers) in this AUDIO Podcast (48 minutes) here:

Click on Photo here to Play AUDIO Podcast; Click BACK to Return

CU Blog - A Lesson in the History of Interpersonal Violence - Street Crimes - Photo 2

What’s Behind Trends In U.S. Violent Crime Rates?
Guest Host: Indira Lakshmanan; posted February 9, 2016 – For more than 20 years violent crime rates in the U.S. states have been declining, but data from the first six months of 2015 suggest an unwelcome change: The FBI reports that from January and June 2015 overall violent crime was up nearly 2% and homicides jumped more than 6 percent with spikes in both small towns and big cities. The Justice Department cautioned it’s too soon to know whether the latest data signals an upturn in violence in America. Join us to talk about what drove violent crime down so dramatically over the last two decades in the U.S. and what could be ahead.
Six People Murdered On Chicago's South Side As City's Homicides Rise

Guests

  • Khalil Muhammad director, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture  New York Public Library
  • Paul Butler professor, Georgetown Law School
  • Barry Latzer emeritus professor of criminal justice,  John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY  most recent book: “The Rise and Fall of Violent Crime in America”

The foregoing AUDIO Podcast relates the experience of the Black and Brown populations in the American criminal-justice system. There is no doubt, there is a “divide in America’s execution of their justice mandates”. But, the scope of the Go Lean/CU roadmap is to reform and transform the Caribbean, not America. We need to do better here, in our homeland. America’s success and failure does relate to us, as many of our Diaspora lives there, but frankly, the Go Lean book asserts that it is easier to fix the Caribbean, than to fix America. We simply need to keep our people at home. We need to minimize the “push and pull” reasons that drive them away. Curbing crime here – a “push” factor – helps this cause; messaging the real experiences of our Black and Brown Diaspora as they engage the criminal justice system in the US should also help our cause, in lowering the “pull” factors.

So let’s fix the Caribbean!

The quest of the Go Lean movement is to elevate Caribbean society above our dysfunctional past. We can improve upon public safety! The goal of the roadmap is to optimize society through economic empowerment, security & justice optimization, and also governing efficiencies in the region, since these are inextricably linked to this same elevation endeavor.

The cause-and-effect of failing economics leads to increasing criminality, the “need” factor. So the cause-and-effect of improving economics should therefore lead to lesser criminal activities. Improved security facilitation (i.e. intelligence gathering and analysis) should reduce the opportunities for crimes of convenience, thus mitigating the “greed” factor. Funding grants to improve Justice institutions (Police, Courts, Prison Industrial Complex), their transparency and accountability, should lower the outcries for justice. Thus the Go Lean/CU has devised a tactic of publishing rankings-and-ratings (i.e. Best Places in the Caribbean To Live …); this should exacerbate failings and failures more prominently to the monitoring public, at home and abroad.

The motivation of this Go Lean/CU roadmap is the basic principle, described in the book (Page 21), that “Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices and Incentives”.

This roadmap fully envisions the integration of shepherding – leadership – for the Caribbean region’s economic, security and governing initiatives under the same organization: the Caribbean Union Trade Federation. These points are pronounced early in the Go Lean book (Page 12) with these opening Declaration of Interdependence statements:

x.   Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices … to assuage continuous threats against public safety.

xi.   Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii.  Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state …

xiii. Whereas the legacy of dissensions in many member-states …  will require a concerted effort to integrate the exile community’s repatriation, the Federation must arrange for Reconciliation Commissions to satiate a demand for justice.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

The Caribbean appointing “new guards”, or a security pact to ensure justice and public safety will include many strategies, tactics and implementations deemed “best-practice”, including an advanced Intelligence Gathering and Analysis effort to mitigate and remediate street crime in the region, and also to optimize the “art and science” of crime, including prison reform; (see Page 211 of the Go Lean book for a discussion on criminology and penology). The Go Lean book details the series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to optimize justice institution and provide increased public safety – “top-down” and “bottoms up”  – in the Caribbean region:

Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Security Principles Page 22
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Tactical – Vision – Forge a Single Market economy Page 45
Tactical – Confederating a non-sovereign union Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Homeland Security Page 75
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Justice Department Page 77
Tactical – Separation of Powers – CariPol: Marshals &   Investigations Page 77
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Witness Protection Page 77
Implementation – Start-up Security Initiatives Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid – Security   Assistance Page 115
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate – Security Optimization Page 118
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Mitigate Organized Crime & Gangs Page 134
Planning – Lessons from the American West – Law & Order Lessons Page 142
Planning – Lessons from Egypt – Lackluster Law & Order affects Economy Page 143
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Reduce Crime Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Gun Control Page 179
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism – Mitigate Bullying and Gangs early Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering and Analysis Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Prison Industrial Complex Page 211
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights Page 220

Other  subjects related to crime, justice and security empowerments for the region have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentary, as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7179 SME Declaration: ‘Change Leaders in Crime Fight’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6385 Wi-Fi Hot Spots Run By Hackers Are Targeting Tourists
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5307 8th Violent Crime Warning to Bahamas Tourists
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5304 Mitigating the Eventual ‘Abuse of Power’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5238 #ManifestJustice – Lessons for the Prison Eco-System
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4863 A Picture is worth a thousand words; video, a million to expose corruption
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4447 Probe of Ferguson-Missouri finds bias from cops, courts
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4360 Dreading the ‘Caribbean Basin Security Initiative’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4308 911 – Emergency Response: System in Crisis
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3881 Intelligence Agencies to Up Cyber Security Cooperation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2994 Justice Strategy: Special Prosecutors and Commissions of Inquiry
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2684 Role Model for Justice, Anti-Crime & Security: The Pinkertons
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1554 Status of Forces Agreement = Security Pact
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1143 American White Collar fraud; criminals take $272 billion/year in healthcare
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=392 Jamaica to receive World Bank funds to help in crime fight
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273 10 Things We Don’t Want from the US – #4: Gun Rights/2nd Amendment

The vision of the Go Lean roadmap is to make the Caribbean homeland, a better place to live, work and play. This means measurable reduction (mitigating and remediation) of interpersonal violence in the region. The Go Lean book presents a regional solution – CariPol et al – to remediate and mitigate street crime in the Caribbean, featuring details of strategies, tactics and implementations designed from world class best-practices to reduce street violence in the region.

The premise in the Go Lean book is that “bad actors” will always emerge, from internal and external origins. We must be prepared and on-guard to defend our homeland against all threats, foreign and domestic, including street crime and interpersonal violence. Plus, we must accomplish this goal with maximum transparency, accountability, and commitment to due-process and the rule-of-law. Thusly, there is a place for closed-circuit TV (CCTV), dashboard and body cameras. If there is the community “will”, the CU will ensure the “way”!

An additional mission is to lower the “push” factors (from “push-and-pull” reference) so that our citizens are not led to flee their homeland for foreign (North American and European) shores. Where we have failed in the past, we now want to reform and transform our communities, so that we can re-invite our Diaspora to return; this time, offering security assurances. Among the many reasons people emigrate or refuse to repatriate, is victimization of interpersonal violence or fear of crime.

There is “good, bad and ugly” in every society. We must therefore mitigate the “need, greed and justice” reasons for interpersonal violence in our society.

So all stakeholders in the Caribbean – people and institutions – are urged to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap for the elevation of the Caribbean’s societal engine: economy, security and governance. The roadmap calls for the CU to do the heavy-lifting, so as to impact the Greater Good for justice, peace and security. This is conceivable, believable and achievable.  🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

Share this post:
, ,
[Top]

Repairing the Breach: ‘Hurt People Hurt People’

Posted on March 3, 2018 in Ethos, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

“Black men and boys” …

… this is a special group in the population of the New World, the Americas. This group has been victims and villains. To the point that academicians and clinicians alike can conclude that “hurt people hurt people”.

Societal defects within this group are higher than normal, compared to other populations groups. This includes violence, delinquencies, incarceration, repression and hopelessness.

It is hard to be a “Black man or boy” … in the Americas.

This statement could have been echoed from the 1600’s all the way up to today.

One of the greatest advocates for Black causes, abolitionist Frederick Douglass (1818 – 1895), was right when he said:

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”

However, we say:

“For there to be victory, there must be a struggle; for there to be victory, there must be losers.”

The New World experience for people of African descent is one of struggle; but our people have made a lot of progress over the last 2 centuries especially; that means we have “ruffled a lot of feathers” along the way. Caribbean music icon Bob Marley worded it perfectly in a song that was released posthumously: “Buffalo Soldier”. The lyrics say:

Fighting on arrival; fighting for survival.

That fight though, was not always successful.

The experience of the Black men and boys in the New World is that these ones have often been hurt. Consider just the US experience with Lynchings in the Appendix A and Appendix VIDEO below, where “a total of 4,733 persons had died by lynching since 1882”; (Black men and boys were almost always the victims, with a few sprinkling of women here and there).

There is no excusing, rationalizing or minimizing this injustice. This “hurt” was state-action, state-sponsored and extra-judicial via mob-violence. (Other countries in the Americas also had lynchings, not just the Southern States of the US).

With this above introduction, is there any wonder that the crime rate is higher for Black men and boys than any other sub-group in the population? This is the accepted premise that “hurt people hurt people” – see Appendix C below.

This fact causes  breach in society. How do “we” repair this breach in societal dynamics?

This question was posed by an academician, Dr. Donald McCartney of the Bahamas. He composed a White Paper to address this question of “How to repair this breach?” and identified some viable solutions, not just for the Bahamas, but for all the Caribbean. Considering that 29 of the 30 countries that caucus with the political Caribbean possess a majority Black (or non-White) population, this is an apropos discussion for this movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. See that full White Paper here, and an Excerpt as follows:

White Paper Title: Repairing the Breach in the Caribbean – EXCERPT
By: Dr. Donald McCartney

…

As we approach the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, the same questions, regarding Black men and boys, are being raised again.

These questions are being revived because many, too many Black men and boys are not a part of the economic structure or the body politic. Upon close examination, it becomes clear that many of them are not in community with their ethnic group.

For the most part, Black men and boys live in isolation, better yet, they are marginalized. They find it difficult to connect with society in general and the significant persons in their lives in particular.

The spiraling  murder rate and other acts of violence (particularly against young men and the elderly), makes it clear, that many Black men and boys in the Caribbean, pose a serious and critical problem of interpersonal violence in every corridor and thoroughfare that Caribbean peoples and residents must cross. Consequently, Black men and boys in the Caribbean are feared, demonized and vilified.

…

See the full White Paper here: https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14392

The Caribbean has some work to do. The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for effecting change in the Caribbean; it introduces the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) as a vehicle to bring about the desired change in the region’s societal engines (economics, security and governing).

Our situation is bad, a crisis even! Some of our communities can even be categorized as Failed-States. But the Go Lean book asserts that a “crisis is a terrible thing to waste”. Thusly, this movement has formulated a roadmap to elevate the societal engines in the Caribbean. The book confesses that “this” is a Big Deal – heavy-lifting – but lays out the Way Forward with best-practices, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies, so as to conclude:

Yes, we can!

The first step in Repairing the Breach must be the recognition that “hurt people hurt people”. Rather than throwing these people away, we need to work to reconcile them into Caribbean society. This is the modus operandi of the foregoing White Paper by Dr, McCartney.

But throw away, run away, flee away and outright abandonment is exactly what has been happening; this is the current disposition of Caribbean youth. Too many people leave, and their absence damages the fabric of Caribbean society. The region is suffering a debilitating brain-drain rate estimated at 70% with some countries reporting up to 81%. This alarming abandonment rate is due to “push-and-pull” factors.

  • “Push” refers to the overbearing deficiencies in the homeland that forces people to seek refuge.
  • “Pull” refers to the lure that the “grass is greener on the other side” in foreign lands like the US, Canada and EU countries.

The next step to Repair the Breach therefore is to work to keep our people here at home. The quest of the Go Lean roadmap in lowering these “push-and-pull” factors is therefore paramount.

This Go Lean/CU roadmap is designed to provide better stewardship (governance), to ensure that the failures of the past, in the Caribbean and other regions – like the US – do not re-occur here in the Caribbean homeland. The book posits that the United States should not be the model for us to follow in the Caribbean – consider the atrocities in Appendix A; that country has racism embedded in its DNA and it still re-surfaces. No, we must NOT fashion ourselves as parasites of the US, but rather pursue a status as a protégé, benefiting from their lessons-learned but molding our own better society.

It is what it is! We cannot go backwards and change the past; no, all we can do is change-improve the future.

Therefore, the Go Lean movement advocates for Black Caribbean people to stay in the Caribbean, positing that it is easier – after the required reformation and transformation – to “prosper where planted here” than to emigrate to foreign shores.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean posits that America is plagued with institutional racism and Crony-Capitalism. It is therefore not the eco-system for the Caribbean to model. Rather the roadmap designs more empowerments for all of Caribbean society.

In general, the CU will employ better strategies, tactics and implementations to impact its prime directives; identified with the following 3 statements:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and mitigate internal and external threats.
  • Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

Early in the Go Lean book, this need for careful technocratic stewardship of the regional Caribbean economy was pronounced (Declaration of Interdependence – Page 12 – 13) with these acknowledgements and statements:

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii.   Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

The Go Lean book presents 370 pages of instructions for how to reform and transform the Caribbean member-states. It stresses the key community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies necessary to shepherd a better society.

This commentary commences a 4-part series on Repairing the Breach; using the foregoing White Paper by Dr. McCartney as the premise. This entry is 1 of 4 in this series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of solutions to assuage the plight of Black men and boys. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1.  Repairing the Breach: ‘Hurt People Hurt People’
  2.  Repairing the Breach: Crime – Need, Greed, Justice & Honor
  3.  Repairing the Breach: One Option – National Youth Service
  4.  Repairing the Breach: Image Impacts Economics

All of these commentaries relate to “how” the stewards for a new Caribbean can assuage the Caribbean failing dispositions among our Black Men and boys. We recognize that something is wrong … today, as has been the case ever since Black men and boys were first brought to the New World. Yes, this problem dates back to slavery and the original Slave Trade.

The Go Lean roadmap declares that “enough is enough” with the Failed-State statuses and societal abandonment in the Caribbean region. Why should our people leave for an uncertain future, when it could be easier for the average person to remediate and mitigate defects in the Caribbean homeland? This is better than submitting to institutional racism of a foreign land, i.e. USA. That is equivalent to “jumping from the frying pan to the fire”.

It is time for the proper empowerments in the Caribbean! It is time to build a better society. The strategies, tactics and implementations proposed in the book Go Lean…Caribbean are conceivable, believable and achievable. We can do these! We can be better.

Everyone in the Caribbean are hereby urged to lean-in for this Go Lean roadmap. 🙂

Download the free e-book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation. 

———–

Appendix A: Lynchings in the US

Statistics for lynchings have traditionally come from three sources primarily, none of which covered the entire historical time period of lynching in the United States. Before 1882, no reliable statistics are assembled on a national level. In 1882, the Chicago Tribune began to systematically tabulate lynchings. In 1908, the Tuskegee Institute began a systematic collection of lynching reports under the direction of Monroe Work at its Department of Records, drawn primarily from newspaper reports. Monroe Work published his first independent tabulations in 1910, although his report also went back to the starting year 1882.[109] Finally, in 1912, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People started an independent record of lynchings. The numbers of lynchings from each source vary slightly, with the Tuskegee Institute’s figures being considered “conservative” by some historians.[57]

Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University, defined conditions that constituted a recognized lynching, a definition which became generally accepted by other compilers of the era:

“There must be legal evidence that a person was killed. That person must have met death illegally. A group of three or more persons must have participated in the killing. The group must have acted under the pretext of service to Justice, Race, or Tradition.”

The records of Tuskegee Institute remain the single most complete source of statistics and records on this crime since 1882 for all states, although modern research has illuminated new incidents in studies focused on specific states in isolation.[110] As of 1959, which was the last time that Tuskegee Institute’s annual report was published, a total of 4,733 persons had died by lynching since 1882. To quote the report,

“Except for 1955, when three lynchings were reported in Mississippi, none has been recorded at Tuskegee since 1951. In 1945, 1947, and 1951, only one case per year was reported. The most recent case reported by the institute as a lynching was that of Emmett Till, 14, a Negro who was beaten, shot to death, and thrown into a river at Greenwood, Mississippi on August 28, 1955…For a period of 65 years ending in 1947, at least one lynching was reported each year. The most for any year was 231 in 1892. From 1882 to 1901, lynchings averaged more than 150 a year. Since 1924, lynchings have been in a marked decline, never more than 30 cases, which occurred in 1926…”[111]

…

The Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama reported 3,959 American victims of “racial terror lynchings” in 12 Southern states from 1877 to 1950.

…

Most, but not all lynchings ceased during the 1960s.[21][31] The murder of Michael Donald in Alabama in 1981 was the last recorded lynching in the United States. [Though many Hate Crimes have been recorder and/or prosecuted since then].

…

Source: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia – retrieved March 1, 2018 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States#Statistics

 

———–

Appendix B VIDEO – The Origins of Lynching Culture in the United States – https://youtu.be/hPdh46k7b38

Published on Apr 7, 2015 – How did the practice of lynching begin and evolve in American history? How did Ida B. Wells, a black female investigative journalist, start to challenge some of the entrenched practices of the South? Watch Paula Giddings, professor of Afro-American Studies at Smith College, explore one of the most challenging topics in U.S. history: the history and origins of lynching. Find out more: https://www.facinghistory.org/mocking…

———–

Appendix C – Book: Hurt People Hurt People: Hope and Healing for Yourself and Your Relationships

By: Dr. Sandra D. Wilson (Author)

Summary:

“Hurt people hurt people” is more than a clever phrase. Hurt people hurt others because they themselves have been hurt. And each one of us has been hurt to one degree or another. As that damage causes us to become defensive and self-protective, we may lash out at others. Hurting becomes a vicious cycle.

Review:

“Dr. Sandy Wilson knows why people hurt, where they hurt, and how to heal those hurts. She gets right to the heart of these matters in her very insightful and provocative book. It is a must read for anyone who wants to break free from the bondage of unhealed personal hurts.”     -Dr. Chris Thurman, author of The Lies We Believe

Source: Posted September 21, 2015; retrieved March 2, 2018 from: https://www.amazon.com/Hurt-People-Healing-Yourself-Relationships/dp/1627074848

Share this post:
, , , ,
[Top]

White Paper: Repairing the Breach in the Caribbean

Posted on February 28, 2018 in Ethos, Government, Social

Repairing the Breach in the Caribbean

By: Donald M. McCartney, D.M., MPA, MSc.Ed. (Hons.), B.A., T.C.

On 16 April 1889, while speaking on the occasion of the 27th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, Frederick Douglass attempted to harness and clarify the defining questions that were of importance, at the time, with respect to Black men and boys.

“….Mark, if you please, the fact, for it is a fact, an ominous fact, that at no time in the history of conflict between slavery and freedom in this country has the character of the negro as a man been made the subject of a fiercer and more serious discussion in all the avenues of debate than during the past and present year. Against him have been marshaled the whole artillery of science, philosophy, and history; we are not controlled by open foes, but we are assailed in the guise of sympathy and friendship and presented as objects of pity.” – Frederick Douglass

As we approach the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire, the same questions, regarding Black men and boys, are being raised again.

These questions are being revived because many, too many Black men and boys are not a part of the economic structure or the body politic. Upon close examination, it becomes clear that many of them are not in community with their ethnic group.

For the most part, Black men and boys live in isolation, better yet, they are marginalized. They find it difficult to connect with society in general and the significant persons in their lives in particular.

The spiraling  murder rate and other acts of violence (particularly against young men and the elderly), makes it clear, that many Black men and boys in the Caribbean, pose a serious and critical problem of interpersonal violence in every corridor and thoroughfare that Caribbean peoples and residents must cross. Consequently, Black men and boys in the Caribbean are feared, demonized and vilified.

When Frederick Douglass spoke in the late 19th Century, he raised the following crucial and defining questions:

  1. How does one protect a group from public dissection as if it existed as a mere aberration in the society?
  2. How does one create for that group a group concept so that it is able to sustain itself as a self-respecting group within (the Caribbean) a society, which views it as an aberration?

The answers to these questions must be sought as we search for a way out of the morass in which we, as a people, find ourselves.

The answers to these questions must be found; so that we can save our Black men and boys.

The answers to these questions must be found; so that we can free those Black men and boys who have become slaves to violence and crime. We must come to the realization that, that which impacts Black men and boys impacts all Caribbean people and those who reside among us.

The answers to these questions must be found as we continue to approach the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery.

Unless and until the answers to these questions are found, we will continue to be a people in a quandary.

There is a breach within the fabric of Caribbean society, which has led to a breach in the lives of Black Caribbean males. A serious attempt must be made to repair this breach at all cost.

All Caribbean people, who are concerned about the state of the Caribbean in general and the fate of the Black Caribbean male in particular, need to ponder, take to heart, and act upon Isaiah, chapter 58:9-12.

“Then you shall call and the Lord shall answer; you shall cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am.’ If you take away from the midst of you the yoke, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness, If you pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then shall your light rise in darkness, and your gloom shall be as noon day. The Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire with good things. You shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water whose waters fail not, and your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt. You shall raise up the foundations of many generations and you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in.”

The message from Isaiah is powerful. It tells us that the only way to create a genuine community is to become repairers of the breach, restorers of safe streets in which to dwell.

Becoming repairers of the breach and restorers of the streets are the foundations for assisting Black men and boys who are in trouble to move from trouble, to engage their families and ultimately build solid citizens.

In this regard, all Caribbean people must become repairers of the breach and restorers of the streets. Our future depends upon it! It is the imperative of now!

There must be a regional response with respect to the issues confronting Black men and boys in the Caribbean. This is no time for throwing up our hands as a gesture of capitulation, (posing the useless question: “What is wrong with these young men?) and rolling our eyes. It is time for action…serious sustained, positive action!

Those who become engaged in this regional response must be individuals who are prepared to make a difference in the issues of Black men and boys in their communities. To this end, the Caribbean must move towards the establishment of a Regional Task Force on the State of Black Men and Boys in the Caribbean. This is the advocacy here-in. This Task Force is hereby branded the Thurston Foundation in honor of Charles Thurston (1910-1980), an influential community figure in the Bahamas and in the life of the author. He demonstrated the most effective and efficient training for “raising a boy in the way he must go” (Proverbs 22:6). According to scripture, “give men of that sort, double honor” – 1 Timothy 5:17

The work of the Thurston Foundation, as an NGO (Non-Government Organization), should and must be a joint venture between governments of Caribbean member-states and Corporate Caribbean.

The Thurston Foundation must be appointed post haste and without reference to political affiliation.

The Thurston Foundation must come from a broad spectrum of concerned citizens and residents from the public and private sectors.

While these persons should be qualified for the task at hand, the Thurston Foundation must be comprised of men, women and young persons who are committed to the task of repairing the breach and restoring the streets.

The purpose of the Thurston Foundation will be to provide ideas that Government, organizations and individuals in the Caribbean can use to change the lives of Black men and boys, change communities, and by extension change their nations.

The primary aim will be to create a long-term structure of sustained intervention for Black men and boys who find themselves in trouble. The emphasis of the Thurston Foundation will be on systemic change that will bring together a multiplicity of ideas in an effort to reduce violence and crime, thus making the Caribbean’ social life whole again.

The Thurston Foundation must not shape itself around the issue of violence. Violence, in the Caribbean, has been painted with a broad brush because Black men and boys are looked upon as the face of the violence.  This violence appears to have immobilized law abiding citizens into a state of panic and fear.

It must be understood by the Thurston Foundation that simplistic approaches and stereotypes are not the way forward in rendering assistance to men in general and boys in particular.

The Thurston Foundation must be mindful that there are other forms of violence that are the precursors of the violence that is perpetrated by some Black men and boys.  Among these forms of violence are violence of the heart, violence of the tongue, political violence, religious violence and racial violence. These forms of violence have created in some of our Black men and boys the culture of violence that the Caribbean is experiencing today.

The Thurston Foundation must understand that violence is a symptom of a deeper and pervasive problem. The members of the Thurston Foundation must understand that finding a cure or attempting to cure violence does not of itself cure anything.

Even though the question goes far beyond Black men and boys, it is directly related to our young men in particular and their inability to participate and develop within the body politic and the economic structure of the Caribbean.

Mindful of these broad concerns, the Thurston Foundation must seek answers to the following questions.

  • First: How do we bring relief and assistance to communities and families that are experiencing the great hurt and harm of violent behaviour?
  • Secondly: How do we find a way to reestablish community and make inroads into violent behaviour, the major social problem of the day? 
  • Thirdly: How do we expect to engage Black men and boys in constructive dialogue and participation within Caribbean society while, at the same time, refurbishing the image that has now been unfairly placed upon the entire population of Black men and boys?

These men and boys suffer as a consequence of media and political short-sightedness, stereotyping and the actions of those who commit violent acts without regard for society.  

The Thurston Foundation must endeavour to frame a public response to the Caribbean’s difficult policy issues regarding Black men and boys, while at the same time laying the groundwork for sustained approaches to put these issues to rest.

This could be accomplished by repairing the many breached relationships in our nation, communities and families. Members of the Thurston Foundation must acknowledge the fact that all of us have a role to play in the process of repairing the breach and restoring the streets.  By this inclusiveness, Black men and boys will be restored to their rightful places in the Caribbean.

The Thurston Foundation must give consideration to three broad areas, which can assist in the transformation of the Caribbean, and by extension Black men and boys.

  • The first of these is the human condition and human development. Consideration of the human condition and human development will give clarity to the common good as a working principle and establish a connection with one human to another.
    The idea of the human condition and human development embrace the concept of fair play, expanded opportunities and the necessity for each person to be able to contribute to development of the Caribbean.
  • Secondly, the ancient concept of polis states that members of a society have to honour their rights and responsibilities. One cannot have rights without responsibilities.
  • Thirdly, the concept of public works or the important contribution everyday people can make to the commonwealth, which is best exemplified (illustrated) by telling stories of common work, and celebrating our common life and heritage and our efforts in creating citizenship.

The concepts of the human condition and human development, polis and public works will provide the basic framework for the report of the Thurston Foundation.

The human condition and human development, polis and public work are the keys to strengthening families, restoring our streets to safety, and rebuilding civil societies in our communities.  These concepts must be embraced by communities, expanded upon, and put into practice in order to create safe havens for our children, the elderly, Caribbean people and residents generally.

The themes that should be detailed in the report of the Thurston Foundation should include polis, the common good, civic storytelling, grassroots civic leadership and restoring community institutions.

The concepts of the human condition and human development, polis and public work can be accomplished if civic, social, religious and professional organizations, as well as business, government and the philanthropic sector work together.

The Thurston Foundation should appeal to individuals and organizations to join in the effort to rescue the Caribbean and preserve it for all of its citizens and generations yet unborn.

The Thurston Foundation must see the need for wide ranging Regional Conversation and Dialogue if solutions are to be found.

As a part of this exercise, a Regional Conversation and Dialogue on Race, Ethnicity and Nationality must be a central part of the agenda. This is a major tool for assisting Black men and boys since public opinion is most vital when advocating change. Caribbean people can engage each other by learning to talk to each other and finding common cause.

This Conversation and Dialogue should take place over a period of several years. These facilitated discussions will begin with the Thurston Foundation members talking to neighbours, friends, peers and others in their homes, town halls, schools, churches and workplaces.

Boys and men in trouble or headed toward trouble have to decide for themselves that they wish to change. After all you can take a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.

Men and boys must assume personal responsibility and be held accountable for their actions. Parents must be prepared to parent so as to give young men a chance to succeed.

This is the light in which the Thurston Foundation ought to frame its recommendations and responses. It is anticipated that this new way of looking at how to bring violence under control, to be repairers of the breach and restorers of the streets, brings with it a spiritual, a practical, a pragmatic and political element. All of these elements must work together if we are to create a better society for these men and boys and their families as well as for all Caribbean people.

In order to accomplish the goal of creating a better society for all stakeholders, there must be an integrated plan of action. For example, the loss of a social centre in some neighbourhoods, settlements and cities requires that all civic, social, religious and cultural organizations act with a sense of urgency to plan from the local to the regional levels, to study their individual areas jointly, to combine their efforts in programming, and to cooperate in long-range planning; so that damaged or lost infrastructure can be repaired or replaced. A coordinated approach to these activities will develop a sense of organized companionship toward the goal of restoring our social and economic future.

A general discussion of the goals, missions and aspirations of those affected will determine agenda building and planning. Our civic, social, religious, and cultural organizations must develop themselves into a working network. This would give impetus to a new Regional Dialogue, thus adding voices to existing organizations.  This new dialogue will focus on the bridges that must be built based on study and a sense of community mission.

The Thurston Foundation will have a life of eighteen (18) to twenty-four (24) months after which it will be expected to make its final report. There will be interim reports every six months.

The Thurston Foundation will be expected to make a number of recommendations in its interim and final reports.  These reports will be designed to keep the Government and people of the Caribbean abreast of its findings.

The information gathering meetings, of the Thurston Foundation, will be open to the general public, while its deliberative meeting will be held in private.

The recommendations of the Thurston Foundation will form the core of a ten (10) to twenty (20) year plan which will enable the Government and Corporate Caribbean to begin to assess and ameliorate the problems faced by Black men and boys in the Caribbean.

Discussion, of the issues laid out in this presentation, will go a long way in introducing the concept of polis, a comprehensive idea with respect to values, manners, morals, and etiquette that are required for structuring public life on both the social and political levels.

These areas present a broader and tougher vision of community.  The term community, as it is presently used, is indeed overused and has little meaning. It does not have the kind of force of intent that is now needed to rectify and restore our homes, communities and nation.

This concept, of repairing the breach and restoring the street, will give Black men and boys much more room to determine how they will participate actively in the social and political life of the Caribbean. They must not be alienated from a society that their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents helped to build and develop.

There is allowance made for a discussion about how one becomes a whole individual and citizen participating in Caribbean society under the rubric of both polis and community, and the dependent social contract that polis implies.

In order to commence addressing the many issues facing and surrounding Black men and boys in the Caribbean in the 21st Century and beyond, public policy and activity must become aligned with the work of the repairers of the breach and restorers of the streets.

🙂

———-
About the Author
Dr. Donald M. McCartney is a life-long educator and specialist in “Management and Organizational Leadership”. Though he is well-respected in his home country of The Bahamas – with success track records at every level of the education spectrum: K-12, Post-Secondary, Graduate and Post-Graduate – he has executed his professional vision throughout the Americas. He currently serves as an Adjunct Professor at Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida and Jose Maria Vargas University in Pembroke Pines, Florida.

Share this post:
, , ,
[Top]

Legislating Morality – Yes, We Can

Posted on February 27, 2018 in Ethos, Government, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

We have always heard: “No one can legislate morality”.

But truth be told, that is a fallacy. With the proper application of best-practices, we can legislate – pass laws – and change people’s attitudes and actions about habits and practices. Follow-up, messaging and enforcement is key! In modern society, we have seen this repeatedly in one community after another. Let’s examine … with the experiences with some common vices.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – present numerous examples of advocates and their advocacies where they have labored to change their community (or nation) attitude and actions towards certain causes. The book addresses this whole subject under the topic of “community ethos”. This is defined as the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of society; dominant assumptions of a people or period. Think of the derivative term: “work ethic”.

Can we change community ethos?

Yes, indeed …

… but it is not easy; in fact the Go Lean book identifies the effort as heavy-lifting, but the movement behind the book volunteers for the task of executing change for the Caribbean.

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

We have seen changes to public morality: from bad to good; and from good to bad. We have seen the bad community ethos of “drunk driving” and “white supremacy” relegated to an “unbecoming” status in good citizenship. But we have also seen the good ethos of recreational drugs prohibition become accepted and demand for decriminalization and legalization. (In the US, Marijuana legalization is now the norm for 40 percent of the American population).

Change continues …

These changes have been duly documented by the movement behind the Go Lean book in these previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13882 Managing ‘Change’ in California
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12703 Lessons from Colorado: Legalized Marijuana – Heavy-lifting!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9646 ‘Time to Go’ – American Vices, i.e. Marijuana. Don’t Follow!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1386 Puff Peace – The Debate  for Marijuana in Jamaica

This is not just a phenomenon in the Americas; success in legislating morality have also been experienced in the Old Country; consider this European example in France.

Imagine the French and their affinity for Red Wine (Bordeaux), and Champagne and Cognac and Sherry … (There is also the traditions of the French Caribbean islands and their mastery of the rum eco-system). See Appendix VIDEO below.

These are export products for the Republic of France and indicative of the complex French culture. Yet, this country has legislated morality and reduce their alcohol consumption, by means of Evin Loi or Evan’s Law; see summary here from Wikipedia:

The loi Évin is the French alcohol and tobacco policy law passed in 1991. It takes its name from Claude Évin, then Minister of Health, who proposed it to Parliament. …

Before the law, French advertising laws discriminated against non-French producers. However, Scotch whisky producers challenged France in the European Court of Justice and won. France was condemned and required to change the law in 1980 but did not produce satisfactory legislation until 1991, with the enactment of Loi Evin, which affected both alcohol and tobacco policies. …

The provisions of the law reinforce the restrictions placed on tobacco and alcohol and their advertising by its predecessor Loi Veil (1976), legalising abortion. …

Alcohol advertisements are prohibited on television or in cinemas. The law requires strict control over messages and images and the inclusion in all advertisements of a message to the effect that alcohol abuse is dangerous to one’s health.

So this French law regulated alcohol advertising; advertising affected alcohol demand; so the end result on alcohol consumption are as reported in the following article:

“It has had a huge impact on the consumption of alcohol in France,” says Dr Mick Loftus, the anti-drinks campaigner and a former president of the GAA. “In 1960, the average adult in France consumed 30 litres of alcohol. Today, that figure is down to 13.5 litres and it’s mainly thanks to Loi Evin.

See full article in Appendix below.

Related Article:
Alcohol policy in France – Between traditions and paradoxes
https://intra.tai.ee/images/eventlist/events/27-11-15-alkokonverents_4_Craplet.pdf

The movement behind the Go Lean book asserts that Caribbean community ethos can be changed; even further, that Caribbean societal defects can be assuaged. But before the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies of a roadmap to elevate a society can be deployed, the affected society must first embrace a progressive community ethos. This is where legislating morality becomes so important. Yes, we can effect change in our region.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to transform the societal engines of Caribbean society, regarding a lot of matters of morality. The Go Lean book cites (Page 122) one particular example of an advocate campaigning to legislate America’s morality. See this quotation here:

Candice Lightner
Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)
Ms. Lightner forged change in her country (United States) values and attitudes with her founding of this organization. She advocated change in attitudes, acceptance, laws and enforcement so that families would be spared the heartache she personally experienced with the tragic lost of her daughter to a drunk driver in the 1970’s. One woman made a difference!

The Go Lean book asserts that every community has bad actors – stemming from bad community ethos. There must be “new guards” to assuage any risks and threats in society. This point is pronounced early in the book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13) that claims:

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices of criminology and penology to assuage continuous threats against public safety. The Federation must allow for facilitations of detention for [domestic and foreign] convicted felons of federal crimes, and should over-build prisons to house trustees from other jurisdictions.

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

Societies change …

We have all seen it; think seat belts, smoking, high fat diets. Leaders can legislate change and morality. It works … eventually. There are heavy-lifting involved, like messaging and enforcement. But if the effort persists, the values, priorities and motivations of people in communities can transform, for the better or the worse. Let’s work for better!

The Caribbean wants (or should want) to be an elevated society; to be a better homeland and a better place to live, work and play. So we urged everyone in the region to lean-in to this roadmap for change, and to pay more than the usual attention to other communities and their developments and manifestations for change. Let’s study their successes and failures. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

———

Appendix: Alcohol Action – Advocating to reduce alcohol harm in Ireland

Title: How To Tackle The Drink Link To Sport? Just Ask The French

We know it as the Heineken Cup, but in France they call European rugby’s leading club competition the H Cup.

And when Liverpool FC played there in the Europa Cup some years ago, they had to wear shirts free of their then sponsor Carlsberg.

These are just two examples of the very strict anti-alcohol policies that have been in place in France for more than two decades.

From Indpendent.ie

While Irish people are used to drinks companies sponsoring a diverse range of sports, music festivals and arts events, as well as extensive alcohol-related advertising across the media, a whole new generation in France has grown up never seeing a single drinks ad or attending an event sponsored by a drinks company.

It’s thanks to Loi Evin (Evin’s Law – named after the then health minister Claude Evin) and it has been a feature of life in France since 1991. Advocates keen to curb binge-drinking in this country believe it is a model that we should adopt.

“It has had a huge impact on the consumption of alcohol in France,” says Dr Mick Loftus, the anti-drinks campaigner and a former president of the GAA. “In 1960, the average adult in France consumed 30 litres of alcohol. Today, that figure is down to 13.5 litres and it’s mainly thanks to Loi Evin.

“If you go to France now, you’ll rarely see the sort of drink-to-get-drunk culture that’s so prevalent here. There, there isn’t the same emphasis on consuming alcohol in order to have a good time that’s long been the case in Ireland. The fact that alcohol is not associated with fun events like music festivals and sport has helped shift the perception French people have with alcohol. Generally speaking, drinking alcohol is seen as something to do with food.”

The origins of the law are rooted in old French protectionist polices of curbing the promotion of “foreign” goods in order to give their indigenous products an advantage.

UK drinks firms took the fight to European courts in the 1970s and ’80s, and French lawmakers were eventually forced to level the playing field by also banning the promotion of home-grown alcohol companies.

The ruling continues to outrage the country’s wine industry. “They treat us as if we were making a dangerous product,” Burgundy winemaker Pascale Chicotot told The New York Times. “We are not terrorists. Wine is not a dangerous product. Wine is a noble thing.”

Yet, anti-alcoholism advocates in France believe it is this very restriction that is helping to reduce consumption across the board. Leading campaigner Dr Alain Rigaud says Loi Evin has had a significant positive impact: “The law has been efficient in correcting excesses in the form and the content of advertising messages and it is essential for the implementation of an overall and coherent preventative effort.”

Yet, he contends that it is still too soon to gauge its full consequences.

“The effectiveness of the law on younger generations will not be felt for several decades,” he says.

Despite the restrictions, there is evidence of growing alcohol misuse among teenagers in France since Evin Law was introduced. A recent survey there shows a rise of 17pc in this age group who said they had consumed five or more drinks in one session in the previous 30 days.

It’s a problem that is causing French authorities considerable disquiet, especially as the 2009 ruling that raised the legal purchase age from 16 to 18 does not appear to have had an impact.

Meanwhile, some lobbyists who favour the retention of alcohol’s relationship with sport, argue that sponsorship simply gives one brand a competitive advantage over another but does not influence consumption trends.

“We analysed consumption, sponsorship spend and disposable income per head in all the major markets,” said the authors of a report on behalf of the Sponsorship Today consultancy.

“There was a very clear correlation between consumption and disposable income, but no clear pattern regarding sponsorship spend and consumption.

“In Germany, for example, beer consumption per capita is among the highest in the world, but sports sponsorship spending is comparatively low, whereas in Portugal sponsorship spend is high, but consumption is low. The findings are not definitive proof of no impact, but they add to the body of research that suggests that sponsorship is not a major contributory factor in increasing alcohol consumption.”

Mick Loftus does not agree.

“If we want to protect the health of our young people, we need to have a blanket ban on all promotion of alcohol, including the sponsorship of sports event and we should look to France for a model. We simply won’t be serious as a nation about coming to terms with our alcohol problem until we do that.”

Source: Alcohol Ireland – Posted June 2013; retrieved February 27, 2018 from: http://alcoholireland.ie/how-to-tackle-the-drink-link-to-sport-just-ask-the-french/

———

Appendix VIDEO – Is French Wine the Best in the World? | #WineWars | French Guy Cooking – https://youtu.be/4u_PRozZsWw 

Jamie Oliver – Drinks

Published on Jan 26, 2015 – Alex – AKA Food Tuber French Guy Cooking – enters the #WineWars ring to fight the corner for French wine. Alex thinks French wine is the best in the world – but is he right? In this video he shows us three of his favourite French wines – a red (J. Boutin Saint-Joseph), a white (Alsace Gewurztraminer) and a rosé (Coteaux du Cap Corse: Domaine Pieretti Rosé).

Which country do YOU think produces the best wine in the world?

Leave a comment and get involved on social media using the hashtag #WineWars.

Share this post:
, ,
[Top]

Wakanda Forever – Conceive, Believe and Achieve

Posted on February 26, 2018 in Economics, Ethos, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Movies matter …

Though its fantasy, art and make-believe, they still have an image impact on modern life. This is the reality of all movies; even comic book hero movies.

After 10 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) – and 18 movies – it was time for the impact from/for people of African descent. It was time for the Black Panther movie…

… and the summary declaration from the movie’s critics and box office performance is a line from the movie:

Wakanda forever!

See the full story here:

Title: ‘Black Panther’ Tops $700M With Record-Breaking 2nd Weekend
By: Scott Mendelson , Contributor and Film Industry Analyst

Black Panther earned $108 million on its second Fri-Sun frame, a drop of just 46% from last weekend’s record-crushing $202m Fri-Sun opening. In terms of raw dollars, it is the second-biggest second weekend gross of all time between Universal/Comast Corp.’s Jurassic World ($106.5m) and Lucasfilm’s The Force Awakens ($149m). It has now earned $400m in ten days of release, which makes it the second-fastest grosser of all time (for now) behind only Jurassic World ($404m) and The Force Awakens ($540m). Even if you adjust for inflation, it’s still only behind Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc.’s The Dark Knight, Marvel’s The Avengers, Jurassic World and The Force Awakens among ten-day domestic totals.

It also joins fellow Walt Disney release The Force Awakens as the only other $200 million+ opener to avoid the “$100m-losers club,” as it fell only $94m between weekends. That 46% second-weekend drop is a record for an MCU flick, holding even better than Paramount/Viacom Inc.’s Iron Man (-49%), Paramount’s Thor (-47%), Walt Disney’s The Avengers (-50%) and Disney’s  Doctor Strange (-49%). Its $47 million Saturday (+66% from Friday) is the second-biggest “day 9” Friday ever behind The Force Awakens. Sure, it dropped more in weekend two than Wonder Woman (-43%) and Spider-Man (-38%), but the Disney tentpole is earning so much so quickly that it’ll be past Sony’s Spider-Man ($403m in 2002, sans 3D or IMAX) and WB’s Wonder Woman ($413m last year) in a matter of days.

Once that happens, then Black Panther will be the third-biggest grossing solo superhero movie ever.  Once it gets past $413 million domestic, it’ll be behind only The Dark Knight Rises ($448m), Avengers: Age of Ultron ($458m), The Dark Knight ($534m) and The Avengers ($623m) among all superhero movies. Once it passes The Dark Knight (sans inflation), Black Panther will be the second-biggest superhero movie and the biggest solo superhero grosser ever in North America. Barring an unlikely comedown, Black Panther will end next weekend just past the $486m domestic total of Finding Dory to be the tenth-biggest North American earner ever and among the top 100 when adjusted for inflation.

Oh, and it may not stay ahead of The Last Jedi for very long. It had a (much) better hold and a larger overall second weekend, but Black Panther won’t have the advantage of Last Jedi’s post-Christmas weekdays. The Star Wars sequel made more on its second Mon-Thurs frame than its first. That’s somewhat normal for a big pre-Christmas release, which is why I wasn’t sounding the alarm bells after The Last Jedi dropped 67% in its second weekend. Now Black Panther may catch up yet again after next weekend, but we should note that The Last Jedi’s $620m domestic total isn’t remotely the bar for Black Panther’s success.

The only thing stopping Black Panther’s momentum is the sheer amount of “big” movies opening next month. And we’ll see just how big Red Sparrow, Walt Disney’s own A Wrinkle in Time (directed by Ava DuVernay and starring Storm Reid, natch), Tomb Raider, Pacific Rim: Uprising (starring John Boyega) and Ready Player One turn out to be. Assuming Red Sparrow (which is pretty good but very much for adults and not remotely like Atomic Blonde or Mission: Impossible) doesn’t go crazy, then Black Panther will have at least the three weeks that The Avengers had to run the tables after Battleship and Dark Shadows bombed.

Age of Ultron had to deal with Mad Max: Fury Road and Pitch Perfect 2 in its third weekend, followed by Disney’s Tomorrowland over Memorial Day. Jurassic World ran into Inside Out on its second weekend and faced Minions in weekend four and Ant-Man in weekend five. Even Spider-Man had to contend with Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones over its third frame. We know both that big movies can thrive alongside each other, and that a big and buzzy hit can hurt the competition. But there is something to be said for Black Panther getting relatively clear sailing for nearly a month.

That’s assuming A Wrinkle in Time breaks out, although I shouldn’t have to explain why many who worked on Black Panther will be rooting for A Wrinkle in Time even if it causes the MCU flick to take a big fourth-weekend drop. Heck, we could very well see a late March weekend where the top movies are (in random order) John Boyega’s Pacific Rim: Uprising, Alicia Vikander’s Tomb Raider, Storm Reid’s Wrinkle in Time, Chadwick Boseman’s Black Panther and Jennifer Lawrence’s Red Sparrow. It may be up to Ready Player One to prove that big-budget franchise flicks starring white male leads aren’t box office poison. But that’s a highly ironic conversation for another day.

With Japan and China still on tap, Ryan Coogler’s MCU action drama has already topped $300m overseas for a $704m global total. It should be just over/under $900m worldwide by the end of next weekend, and it has already topped the likes of Man of Steel, Logan and Justice League, with Captain Aor merica: The Winter Soldier ($714m) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ($709m) next in its sights. So, as noted above, Black Panther is well on its way to being the biggest solo superhero origin story/non-sequel ever. We’ll see if it can get past The Dark Knight ($1 billion), TheDark Knight Rises ($1.1b) and Iron Man 3 ($1.2b) to become Earth’s mightiest hero.

If you like what you’re reading, follow @ScottMendelson on Twitter, and “like” The Ticket Booth on Facebook. Also, check out my archives for older work HERE.

Source: Posted and retrieved February 25, 2018 from: https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2018/02/25/box-office-black-panther-tops-700m-with-record-breaking-2nd-weekend/#683907bb213f

For many people of color – the African Diaspora, Caribbean included – this movie is more than just a film, “it is an opportunity to reclaim a history that they have never seen”. These are the words of a Caribbean actor in the film, Winston Duke of Trinidad & Tobago; see his interview in the Appendix VIDEO below.

Caribbean actors?

Indeed there are nine of them (actors, actresses, stunts and visual artists), as the story in the Appendix reports.

History not seen?

People of color in the New World have the same origin story…the African Slave Trade. Before this travesty, African society existed with proud culture and traditions among its many tribes. This movie assumes: what if a subset of the African people persisted undisturbed by European colonizers and fostered an advanced technological society. So cool!

That is Wakanda! This is a vision that all people of color can 1. conceive, 2. believe and 3. achieve. This is relevant for a Caribbean consideration as 29 of the 30 countries that caucus as the political Caribbean have a majority Black population. It is what it is! (The only exception is the French Caribbean territory of St. Bartholomew). This vision corresponds with the book Go Lean … Caribbean, which presents a roadmap to reform and transform the Caribbean member-states from our dysfunctional past so as to finally have a prosperous future.

Let’s consider these 3 verbs (conceive, believe and achieve) in relation to the Black Panther movie:

Conceive

This refers to the vision that was developed into comic books and now adapted into this record-breaking movie. Like other cultures around the world, African people also dream dreams, and envision heroes and saviors. In a prior blog-commentary, the Norwegian culture – Norse mythology – was examined in terms of hero story-telling with the movie Thor: Ragnarok.

(Recently, the much aligned president of the United States compared Norway to Africa; he inferred that Norwegian people and immigrants would be preferred to people from Africa – and Haiti – calling them “Shithole” countries).

So Marvel producing a Black-themed movie, with a Black Director and mostly Black cast members, set in Africa sends the message that “Africa and Africans” can produce heroes too. It is legitimate to conceive this vision.

This is the power of movies! They can impact the world by molding an image: positive or negative. This was highlighted in a previous blog/commentary regarding Caribbean Diaspora member and Hollywood great, Sidney Poitier, it stated:

“Movies are an amazing business model. People give money to spend a couple of hours watching someone else’s creation and then leave the theater with nothing to show for the investment; except perhaps a different perspective”.

This Black Panther movie does present some different perspectives. It highlight that the African Diaspora has been repressed worldwide, but it is possible to be heroic and overcome the obstacles facing our society. There is some “art imitating life” in these perspectives; the “art” of this movie does imitate the real life of African-descended people. This includes the Caribbean experience as well. Our history has clearly shown a repression in the societal engines, since the days of slavery right through colonialism. The “shackles” still remain, even today; there are many orthodoxy, and stupidity even, that persist in our Caribbean society and it will take heroic efforts to unseat. As portrayed in the Black Panther movie, there are different kinds of people who can all contribute heroically – in different kinds of ways – to help us reform and transform our society.

Believe

People are consuming this movie. People believe in the high principles of honor and pride that Wakanda stands for.

It had a record Box Office in Week 1. Plus, a record Box Office in Week 2. People believe! They have manifested this belief by their attendance and dollars.

See this portrayed in the VIDEO here.

VIDEO – DL Hughley Talks Black Panther Movie –  https://youtu.be/aQG7uNLp3Qs

DL Hughley

Published on Feb 19, 2018 – DL Hughley talks Black Panter Movie and its affect on our community. Family be sure to SUBSCRIBE LIKE AND FOLLOW me on all my social media. Thanks.

  • Category: Comedy
  • License: Standard YouTube License

In addition to believing that heroes can emerge from Africa, the Go Lean movement also believes that heroes can come from the Caribbean. The book asserts that one person can be a hero and impact their community, their country, the region and the whole world with their advocacy. The book details examples, samples and role models (Page 122), i.e. Frederick Douglass, Mohandas Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Cesar Chavez.

Achieve

The movie Black Panther, is still just a movie. There is no expectation for a real Warrior-King to emerge from Wakanda.

But heroes can emerge from Black communities around the world and from Caribbean communities. Yes, we can achieve a hero’s journey for many of our citizen’s – residents and Diaspora.

This is the quest of the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean, to achieve …

… to reform and transform the Caribbean member-states from our dysfunctional past so as to finally have a prosperous future. There are lots of lessons for us to consider; some from unusual places; consider the art world / comics book / film world.

As related previously, the edict of “life imitating art and art imitating life” provides a lot of teaching moments for the world in general and the Caribbean in particular. There is a lot we can learn from the art form of film and this newest blockbuster movie Black Panther. (The film has grossed over $700 million in US box office receipts after these first 2 weekends).

For Caribbean life to imitate this art – the Black Panther movie is a product of Caribbean art and artists too (Appendix) – our quest must be to elevate the societal engines so that Caribbean people can prosper where planted here in our region. How?

The Go Lean movement seeks to engage Caribbean heroes; the book serves as a roadmap to introduce the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate the region’s societal engines – economics, security and governance – of the 30 Caribbean member-states. In fact, the prime directives of the roadmap includes the following 3 statements:

  • Optimize the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establish a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

Early in the Go Lean book, in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12), the point is made for the need for Caribbean heroes and heroics; it claims:

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices … to assuage continuous threats against public safety.

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. …

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxxiii. Whereas lessons can be learned and applied from the study of the recent history of other societies, the Federation must formalize statutes and organizational dimensions to avoid the pitfalls of communities [and] … implement the good examples learned from developments [and] communities …

The Go Lean book describes the need for the Caribbean to appoint “new guards” to effect the necessary empowerments in the Caribbean. We need these “new guards” for our economic, homeland security and governing engines to better prepare our systems of commerce and to protect our homeland from threats and risks, foreign and domestic. The book therefore provides 370-pages of detail instructions of strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to achieve the needed societal elevation.

Only then, can we prosper where we are planted.

So we have conceived.

We believe …

Now, let’s achieve our objectives, according to this Go Lean roadmap. The urging here is not fantasy, not just “life imitating art”, but rather a visual demonstration of how our heroism can manifest; how we can make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in for the empowerments described here in the book Go Lean…Caribbean.

Wakanda forever! 🙂

Download the free e-book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for the roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

———

Appendix VIDEO – ‘Black Panther’ Star Winston Duke on Wakanda’s Warriors – http://www.imdb.com/list/ls025849840/videoplayer/vi1664202777

Winston Duke reveals the tradition behind his devastating fighting style in ‘Black Panther,’ and reflects on Ryan Coogler’s unique directing style.

———

Appendix – Caribbean Well Represented In Marvel’s Black Panther Movie

By: Karibbeankollective

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you would know that the most anticipated movie of the year made it’s US premiere last night to the delight of comic book fans everywhere. Black Panther, heralded as a game changer for Africans in film has a pretty impressive lineup of Hollywood favorites including Chadwick Boseman, Michael, B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Forest Whitaker , Andy Serkis and Angela Bassett. Holly-wood big names aside, do you know who was all up and through that film? Caribbean people. From the Bahamas all the way down to Guyana and we are here for every bit of it.  Here’s the cast that’s about to fill you with so much Caribbean Pride:

Source: Posted February 17, 2018; retrieved February 25, 2018 from: https://www.thekaribbeankollective.com/caribbean-actors-black-panther-winston-duke-trinidad-tobago/

Share this post:
, , ,
[Top]

Leading with Money Matters – Lottery Hopes and Dreams

Posted on February 20, 2018 in Economics, Ethos, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

There is no doubt that gambling is a bad vice, but can a little gaming be tolerated in society?

There are parallels:

  • There is no doubt that alcoholism is vice-full,  but can social consumption be tolerated in society?
  • There is no doubt tobacco smoking is a dangerous habit, but can some cigarette or the world’s best cigars be good for Caribbean society?

Gambling, mildly permitted can be tolerated and even beneficial for society. Think State Lotteries …

When the jackpot gets huge – millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions – a lottery can inspire Hope and Dreams. It can even lead people, influence them, steer them to do and act accordingly. Yes, the Hope and Dreams of a Lottery Jackpot, like all other Money Matters, can lead people to a new destination.

Let’s use this power to inspire good, as in Hope and Dreams for our society. Consider this American model; see article here:

Title: Powerball and Mega Millions: What you need to know

By: Chris Sims and Channing King, IndyStar

The Mega Millions and Powerball jackpots now total more than $950 million combined after Wednesday’s drawing failed to produce a winner.

And this stretch is the first time that both multi-state lottery grand prizes have been at more than $400 million each. That makes Saturday’s Powerball $550 million jackpot potentially the eighth largest lottery prize ever and Friday’s Mega Millions $418 million pot potentially the 16th largest lottery prize.

The winning numbers for Wednesday night’s Powerball drawing were 2, 18, 37, 39, 42 and the Powerball was 12. The Power Play number was 3.

Wednesday’s Powerball jackpot worth $460 million was the game’s seventh largest and 10th largest for all lottery games in the United States, according to Dennis Rosebrough, public relations director for the Hoosier Lottery.

► Jan. 3: No one wins Powerball, Mega Millions drawings
► Jan. 2: Happier new year: $800 million in jackpots await lucky winners
► Dec. 31: Will you hit it rich in 2018 with soaring lottery jackpots?

Tuesday’s Mega Millions drawing would have netted a winner $361 million jackpot.

Here’s what you need to know if you play Powerball or Mega Millions:

What is a winning ticket worth?

The Powerball jackpot now stands at $550 million for Saturday’s drawing, payable in 30 annual installments, with a one-time cash option of $347.9 million before taxes.

The Mega Millions grand prize is $418 million for Friday night’s drawing with a cash value of $261 million before taxes.

► Dec. 30: What to do if you win the lottery in 2018
► Nov. 16: North Carolina woman wins lottery twice in one day

No matter how a winner chooses to go, lottery prizes that hefty are taxed as ordinary income and put a winner in the highest tax bracket. So that’s $128.7 million for the feds right off the top of that Powerball lump sum, not counting state and local taxes.

One benefit of winning now vs. last year: The new federal tax cut will allow the winner of Saturday’s Powerball jackpot who chooses the one-time cash option to keep about $9 million more for himself.

When are the drawings? 

Powerball numbers are drawn at 10:59 p.m. ET every Wednesday and Saturday. Mega Millions numbers are drawn at 11 p.m. every Tuesday and Friday.

Find out where to watch the drawings on your local TV station by heading to your state lottery’s webpage. (Sorry, Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada and Utah; you can’t play unless you cross state lines.)

If you’d rather look online, Powerball’s drawing is streamed here; some websites offer live streaming video of Mega Millions drawings, and Mega Millions’ official YouTubechannel posts its video soon after the live event.

Odds of winning

The odds of buying a winning Powerball ticket are 1 in 25. The odds of hitting the jackpot are 1 in more than 292 million. The odds of becoming a millionaire by matching five numbers is 1 in more than 11.5 million.

Mega Millions’ odds of winning overall are a little better at 1 in 24. However, the odds of winning the grand prize are 1 in more than 302.5 million. A shot at matching five numbers for a $1 million is 1 in more than 12.5.

You have a better chance of achieving sainthood than winning either grand prize, 1 in 20 million, according to Gregory Baer, author of Life: The Odds.

How much does it cost to play?

Powerball and Mega Millions tickets sell for $2 each.

Powerball players can add Power Play for an extra $1 per ticket for a chance to multiply a non-jackpot prize up to five times.

Mega Millions players can purchase the Megaplier for an extra $1 a ticket for a chance to multiply a non-jackpot prize up to five times.

If you win …

Rosebrough recommends that players sign and secure their ticket. Winners should call the number on the back of their ticket when they are ready to claim their prize.

“First, you should pause and take a deep breath,” Rosebrough said. “Then, our experience with past winners says you should consult with some experts whether they be accounting, legal or whatever if you have a major prize.”

Rosenbrough has been impressed with most Indiana winners. Most have had a plan in place before they attempt to receive the money.

How long before you get paid?

Both Powerball and Mega Millions officials transfer the money from a central depository of all districts selling tickets — that includes 44 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands for Powerball; Mega Millions sells in all of those places except Puerto Rico — to respective state lotteries within 24 to 48 hours, Rosenbrough said.

However, the transfer sometimes can take longer because of things such as long holiday weekends.

Follow Chris Sims and Channing King on Twitter: @ChrisFSims and @ChanningKing

Source: USA Today Newspaper Website – Published, Jan. 4, 2018; retrieved February 20, 2018 from: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2018/01/04/powerball-mega-millions-need-know/1002979001/

As related in the foregoing, this discussion does have a Caribbean footprint, as Powerball is featured in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands; though ‘Mega Millions’ sells only in the Virgin Island. So our Caribbean people can have lottery hopes and dreams.

Here’s to the losers , bless them all – Song by legendary crooner Frank Sinatra

Everybody will lose at these games, except one of two persons … maybe.

VIDEO – Why you wouldn’t win the lottery – https://www.usatoday.com/videos/money/2018/01/03/why-you-wont-win-lottery/109119580/

Posted January 3, 2018 – The odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are 1 in more than 302 million. You have a better chance at all these other extraordinary things. USA TODAY

Add among the list of losers: existing gaming establishments – Atlantic City, New Jersey is now a failing business model – horse racing and dog racing tracks, Jai Lai frontons and other pari-mutuels. There are only limited casino models that now work, mostly regional establishments – think Las Vegas, Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, etc. – with abundant entertainment options. Even in the Caribbean, more and more casino resort amenities are failing to lure guests and gamers.

Yes, the lottery eco-system spins many losers, but there are winners too: the State Governments and their designated beneficiaries. In some states, like Florida, the State Legislature guaranteed in statues that all monies – after prizes and overhead expenses – will go to education. Other states supplement education with other causes, like Elder-Care in Pennsylvania.

The foregoing news article and VIDEO aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean, which calls for the elevation of Caribbean economics. The book clearly states that gambling is a losing proposition, but concedes to the economic realities: if people will spend their money on gambling, then the structures should be put in place to limit and regulate these activities – see the Appendix below – this will minimize the vice-full effects on society and maximize the returns to the Greater Good. (This Greater Good was defined by Philosopher Jeremy Bentham – lived from 1748 to 1832 – as the “greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong”.

This commentary is the final part, 5 of 5 in a series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of Money Matters for leading the Caribbean down a different path from their status quo. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. Leading with Money Matters: Follow the Jobs
  2. Leading with Money Matters: Competing for New Industries
  3. Leading with Money Matters: Almighty Dollar
  4. Leading with Money Matters: As Goes Housing, Goes the Market
  5. Leading with Money Matters: Lottery Hopes and Dreams

All of these commentaries relate to “how” the stewards for a new Caribbean can persuade the region stakeholders to follow this empowerment roadmap for the region. The series has already establish that if we “dangle money in front of our subjects”, they will respond and react. Now, imagine dangling a big Lottery Jackpot – millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions.

The book Go Lean… Caribbean, serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) with the charter to effectuate change in the region with these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and marshal against economic crimes.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

Early in the book, the responsibility to monitor, manage, and mitigate the risks and threats on Caribbean societal engines were identified as an important function for the CU. The plan therefore includes provisions for a regional lottery, even declaring the possibility of 2,500 direct new jobs from the ventures (installing, maintaining merchant network & administrative staff). The opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 13) stressed this model:

xxvi.  Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries… In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism, fisheries and lotteries – impacting the region with more jobs.

This commentary have previously looked at the vices of society – marijuana, cigars and rum – and prepared sober plans for managing change, risks and threats to Caribbean society. Consider this sample of earlier Go Lean blogs:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13882 Lessons Learned from Managing Marijuana Laws in California
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12703 Lessons from Colorado: Legalized Marijuana – Heavy-lifting!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9646 ‘Time to Go’ – American Vices. Don’t Follow!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6680 Vegas Casinos Place Bets on Video Games
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2887 Caribbean community must work together to address rum subsidies
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1847 Caribbean Cigars – Declared “Among the best in the world”
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1386 Marijuana in Jamaica – Puff Peace

The Go Lean book provides 370 pages of detailed instructions regarding the community ethos needed to effect change and empowerment in the societal engines. Lotteries will create a stark contrast for member-states to reconcile. In the past,they told their citizens to work hard, live a clean life and they will prosper where planted in the Caribbean region. Now the message changes to “Buy a Ticket; Get Rich Quick”. This transformation requires the right messaging, plus the executions of the required strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to shepherd these societal engines. One particular advocacy in the book relates directly to a regional lottery (Page 213); consider some of the specific plans, excerpts and headlines from that advocacy in the book:

10 Ways to Impact the Lottery

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market
This treaty allows for the unification of the region into one market, thereby expanding to an economy of 26 countries, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion (per 2010). The Trade Federation will function as a government “proxy”, a multi-national corporation to deliver the services for an integrated administration. The CU will generate revenues from its own sources, like a lottery, by developing and harvesting regional eco-systems for efforts too big for just one state. The CU is also the sole authority for Self Governing Entities, bordered sites, where lottery tickets can be sold & cashed.
2 Caribbean Dollars Only

The CU Lottery will transact in Caribbean Dollars, not US dollars, UK pounds nor Euros. This way the financial benefit and economic multiplier remains in the region. Consider this UK model: 12% of revenue proceeds go to the State Government, 5% goes to lottery retailers, 4% to Lottery operations, and the remainder (over 50%) paid out in winnings.
3 Powerball / Mega-Millions Models – where even the Retailers share in the Winnings

The CU will model the Caribbean Regional Lottery after the American examples of Powerball and Mega-Millions. These multi-state systems have melded ideally with state counterparts, by incentivizing more gaming due to extra large jackpots tied to more players. Most people, gamblers or not, have no qualms wagering $1-to-$2 on “surreal” jackpots.
4 Education as a Beneficiary

A lottery will be a “tough sell”, unless it’s for the greater good. Education as the beneficiary is the “winning” argument that has worked in some jurisdiction. In fact, in Florida, the Lottery Referendum failed to win majority support many times, until it was aligned with the state’s educational initiatives. Then it passed…overwhelmingly.
5 Elder-Care as a Beneficiary

Not everyone in a jurisdiction, (childless/empty-nesters), care about educational benefits. Pennsylvania-USA aligned their lottery operations to benefit Elder-Care. This too, is a winning inducement, as everyone hopes to be old someday.
6 Cooperation with National Lotteries

The CU’s Lottery will co-exist with State Lotteries, by not deploying CU scratchcard games. Jamaica, Trinidad, Aruba and St. Lucia have successful programs; the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico have US Dollar lotteries plus Powerball / Mega-Millions. The USVI Lottery is also a member of an existing small Caribbean Lottery with other islands, such as Sint Maarten, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Barbados. The CU Lottery will assimilate this current regional effort.
7 Hurricane Risk Reinsurance Fund Merchant Network and Online Presence
8 Diaspora Purchasing
9 Prize: Annuity Pay-outs

Like most lotteries, the CU’s option will award large prizes as 20-year annuities, with no inheritance benefits. This approach allows more funds to be immediately applied to lotteries beneficiaries and promotes the CU’s capital markets.
10 Prize: Lump-Sum Pay-outs
Like most lotteries, the CU will also allow prize winners to take an immediate pay-out rather than elect the 20-year annuity. The rules of NPV (Net Present Value) apply, so the lump-sum payout averages 45 – 60% of the jackpot.

This Go Lean/CU roadmap is not advocating the abandonment of wholesome industrial values. No, in fact the regional government will actually message against gambling, even lotteries. But if people will still consume – and they do – then i is pragmatic to facilitate the consumption of lotteries and tax the revenues… and benefit the people (education, Elder-Care, etc.).

The Caribbean can be a better place to live, work and play; play will include lotteries. Our goal remains: to be the best address on the planet. This is not a lottery fantasy with long odds. No, while effectively leading with Money Matters, change can be fostered in the Caribbean homeland. This roadmap is conceivable, believable and achievable. 🙂

We urge everyone to lean-in to this vision.

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

————

Appendix – The Bottom Line on Gambling

Gambling is a major international commercial activity, with the legal gambling market totaling an estimated US$335 billion in 2009. Religious perspectives on gambling have been mixed. The Catholic Church holds the position that there is no moral impediment to gambling, so long as it is fair, all bettors have a reasonable chance of winning, there is no fraud involved, and the parties involved do not have actual knowledge of the outcome of the bet. [Catholic Churches are notorious for BINGO fundraisers].

Gambling has often been seen as having social consequences. For these social and religious reasons, most legal jurisdictions limit [and regulate] gambling. Such regulation generally leads to gambling tourism and illegal gambling in areas where it is not allowed. The involvement of governments, through regulation and taxation, has led to close connections between many governments and gaming firms, where legal gambling provides significant government revenues.

Studies show that though many people participate in gambling as a form of recreation or even as a means to gain an income, gambling, like any behavior which involves variation in brain chemistry, can become harmful, psychologically addictive.

Online gambling, also known as Internet gambling, is a general term for gambling using the Internet. In 1994 the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda passed the Free Trade & Processing act, allowing licenses to be granted to organizations applying to open online casinos. [The practice continues, even fighting and winning legal bouts at the WTO against the US].

Many of the companies operating out of Antigua are publicly traded on various stock exchanges, specifically the London Stock Exchange. Antigua has met British regulatory standards and has been added to the UK’s “white list”, which allows licensed Antiguan companies to advertise in the UK. By 2001, the estimated number of people who had participated in online gambling rose to 8 million and the growth continued, despite legislation and lawsuit challenges to online gambling. By 2008, estimates for worldwide online gambling revenue were at $21 billion. Most lotteries are run by governments and are heavily protected from competition due to their ability to generate large taxable cash flows. The first online lotteries were run by private companies but these stop trading as governments passed new laws giving themselves and their own lotteries greater protection. Government controlled lotteries now offer their games online, as with the UK National Lottery.

References:

Source: Book Go Lean…Caribbean Page 213

 

 

Share this post:
, ,
[Top]

Carter Woodson – One Man Made a Difference … for Black History

Posted on February 1, 2018 in Ethos, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Its February 1st – Black History Month commences…

Believe it or not, this was not always recognized or considered important. It was at the urging of one man that this cultural phenomenon came about. That one man is:

        Carter G. Woodson 

Yes, one man can make a difference. His research and archive accomplishments are fully recognized and celebrated, as is his subject – the contributions of the African-American people in the development of the United States. This high regard for Woodson is not just our opinion alone; today, Google has awarded Woodson with a Google Doodle – see above photo.

Also, see the full Wikipedia reference article on Carter Woodson in the Appendix below.

Though Woodson died in 1950 and the monthly observance started in 1970, he is still credited for the creation and fostering of this cultural phenomenon of Black History Month.

The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – tracks and monitors the developments of the African-American community. Since the majority population of 28 of the 30 Caribbean member-states is Black, we share the same ancestral heritage (Africa), same colonial origins (slave trade), and same history of societal oppression as American Blacks. Plus the vast majority of our Caribbean Diaspora who fled their homeland lives in the US – one estimate is 22 million.

The Go Lean book posits that one person – an advocate like Woodson – can make a difference (Page 122). It relates:

An advocacy is an act of pleading for, supporting, or recommending a cause or subject. For this book, it’s a situational analysis, strategy or tactic for dealing with a narrowly defined subject.

Advocacies are not uncommon in modern history. There are many that have defined generations and personalities. Consider these notable examples from the last two centuries in different locales around the world:

  • Frederick Douglas
  • Mohandas Gandhi
  • Martin Luther King
  • Nelson Mandela
  • Cesar Chavez
  • Candice Lightner

We must now consider Carter G. Woodson in this ilk; he is deserving of double honor:

Let the elders who preside in a fine way be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard in speaking and teaching. – The Bible 1 Timothy 5:17

The Go Lean book seeks to advocate and teach the Caribbean – and the people who love it; it strives to learn lessons from history and direct regional stakeholders to a Way Forward from the dysfunctional past to a brighter future. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The book stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit – we must unite all of the Caribbean: Black, White, Red and Yellow – that the problems are too big for any one Caribbean member-state alone. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xix. Whereas our legacy in recent times is one of societal abandonment, it is imperative that incentives and encouragement be put in place to first dissuade the human flight, and then entice and welcome the return of our Diaspora …

xxxii. Whereas the cultural arts … of the region are germane to the quality of Caribbean life, and the international appreciation of Caribbean life, the Federation must implement the support systems to teach, encourage, incentivize, monetize and promote the related industries for arts … in domestic and foreign markets. These endeavors will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

xxxiii. Whereas lessons can be learned and applied from the study of the recent history of other societies, the Federation must formalize statutes and organizational dimensions to avoid the pitfalls of communities like East Germany, Detroit, Indian (Native American) Reservations, Egypt and the previous West Indies Federation. On the other hand, the Federation must also implement the good examples learned from developments/ communities …

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

The Go Lean movement calls on every man, woman and child in the Caribbean to be an advocate, and/or appreciate the efforts of previous advocates. Their examples can truly help us today with our passions and purpose. Consider this sample of prior blog/commentaries where advocates and role models have been elaborated upon:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12542 Dr. Thomas W. Mason – FAMU Professor & STEM Influencer
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11963 Oscar López Rivera – The ‘Nelson Mandela’ of the Caribbean?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11442 Caribbean Roots: Al Roker – ‘Climate Change’ Defender
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10801 Caribbean Roots: John Carlos – The Man. The Moment. The Movement
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10114 Caribbean Roots: Esther Rolle of ‘Good Times’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9948 Caribbean Roots: Sammy Davis, Jr.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9300 Edward Snowden – One Person Making a Difference
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8724 Remembering Marcus Garvey: Still Relevant Today
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8495 The NBA’s Tim Duncan – Champion On and Off the Court
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8328 YouTube Millionaire: ‘Tipsy Bartender’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8165 Role Model Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7682 Frederick Douglass: Role Model for Single Cause – Death or Diaspora
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=866 Bob Marley: The legend lives on!

In summary, we conclude about Carter Woodson as we do about our own Caribbean historians and advocates; we say (Go Lean book conclusion Page 252):

Thank you for your service, love and commitment to all Caribbean people. We will take it from here.

The movement behind the Go Lean book, the planners of a new Caribbean stresses that a ‘change is going to come’, one way or another. We have endured failure for far too long; we have seen what works and what does not. We want to learn from history – the good, bad and ugly lessons. We have looked, listened, learned and lend-a-hand since then. We are now ready to lead our region to a better destination, to being a homeland that is better to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

———-

Appendix Reference Title: Carter G. Woodson 

Carter Godwin Woodson (December 19, 1875 – April 3, 1950)[1] was an American historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. He was one of the first scholars to study African-American history. A founder of The Journal of Negro History in 1916, Woodson has been cited as the “father of black history“.[2] In February 1926 he launched the celebration of “Negro History Week”, the precursor of Black History Month.[3]

[He] was born in Buckingham County, Virginia[4] on December 19, 1875, the son of former slaves, James and Eliza Riddle Woodson.[5] His father helped Union soldiers during the Civil War and moved his family to West Virginia when he heard that Huntington was building a high school for blacks.

Coming from a large, poor family, Carter Woodson could not regularly attend school. Through self-instruction, he mastered the fundamentals of common school subjects by the age of 17. Wanting more education, he went to Fayette County to earn a living as a miner in the coal fields, and was able to devote only a few months each year to his schooling.

In 1895, at the age of 20, Woodson entered Douglass High School, where he received his diploma in less than two years.[6] From 1897 to 1900, Woodson taught at Winona in Fayette County. In 1900 he was selected as the principal of Douglass High School. He earned his Bachelor of Literature degree from Berea College in Kentucky in 1903 by taking classes part-time between 1901 and 1903. From 1903 to 1907, Woodson was a school supervisor in the Philippines.

Woodson later attended the University of Chicago, where he was awarded an A.B. and A.M. in 1908. He was a member of the first black professional fraternity Sigma Pi Phi[7] and a member of Omega Psi Phi. He completed his PhD in history at Harvard University in 1912, where he was the second African American (after W. E. B. Du Bois) to earn a doctorate.[8] His doctoral dissertation, The Disruption of Virginia, was based on research he did at the Library of Congress while teaching high school in Washington, D.C. After earning the doctoral degree, he continued teaching in public schools, later joining the faculty at Howard University as a professor, and served there as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

Career
Convinced that the role of his own people in American history and in the history of other cultures was being ignored or misrepresented among scholars, Woodson realized the need for research into the neglected past of African Americans. Along with Alexander L. Jackson and three associates, he founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History on September 9, 1915, in Chicago.[9][10] That was the year Woodson published The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861. His other books followed: A Century of Negro Migration (1918) and The History of the Negro Church (1927). His work The Negro in Our History has been reprinted in numerous editions and was revised by Charles H. Wesley after Woodson’s death in 1950.

In January 1916, Woodson began publication of the scholarly Journal of Negro History. It has never missed an issue, despite the Great Depression, loss of support from foundations, and two World Wars. In 2002, it was renamed the Journal of African American History and continues to be published by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH).

…

Woodson believed that education and increasing social and professional contacts among blacks and whites could reduce racism and he promoted the organized study of African-American history partly for that purpose. He would later promote the first Negro History Week in Washington, D.C., in 1926, forerunner of Black History Month.[13] The Bronzeville neighborhood declined during the late 1960s and 1970s like many other inner-city neighborhoods across the country, and the Wabash Avenue YMCA was forced to close during the 1970s, until being restored in 1992 by The Renaissance Collaborative.[14]

He served as Academic Dean of the West Virginia Collegiate Institute, now West Virginia State University, from 1920 to 1922.[15]

He studied many aspects of African-American history. For instance, in 1924, he published the first survey of free black slaveowners in the United States in 1830.[16]

He once wrote: “If you can control a man’s thinking, you don’t have to worry about his actions. If you can determine what a man thinks you do not have to worry about what he will do. If you can make a man believe that he is inferior, you don’t have to compel him to seek an inferior status, he will do so without being told and if you can make a man believe that he is justly an outcast, you don’t have to order him to the back door, he will go to the back door on his own and if there is no back door, the very nature of the man will demand that you build one.”

NAACP
Woodson became affiliated with the Washington, D.C. branch of the NAACP, and its chairman Archibald Grimké. On January 28, 1915, Woodson wrote a letter to Grimké expressing his dissatisfaction with activities and making two proposals:

  1. That the branch secure an office for a center to which persons may report whatever concerns the black race may have, and from which the Association may extend its operations into every part of the city; and
  2. That a canvasser be appointed to enlist members and obtain subscriptions for The Crisis, the NAACP magazine edited by W. E. B. Du Bois.

Du Bois added the proposal to divert “patronage from business establishments which do not treat races alike,” that is, boycott businesses. Woodson wrote that he would cooperate as one of the twenty-five effective canvassers, adding that he would pay the office rent for one month. [But] Grimké did not welcome Woodson’s ideas. …

[Woodson’s] difference of opinion with Grimké, who wanted a more conservative course, contributed to Woodson’s ending his affiliation with the NAACP.

Black History Month
Woodson devoted the rest of his life to historical research. He worked to preserve the history of African Americans and accumulated a collection of thousands of artifacts and publications. He noted that African-American contributions “were overlooked, ignored, and even suppressed by the writers of history textbooks and the teachers who use them.”[18] Race prejudice, he concluded, “is merely the logical result of tradition, the inevitable outcome of thorough instruction to the effect that the Negro has never contributed anything to the progress of mankind.”[18]

In 1926, Woodson pioneered the celebration of “Negro History Week”,[19] designated for the second week in February, to coincide with marking the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.[20] However, it was the Black United Students and Black educators at Kent State University that founded Black History Month, on February 1, 1970.[21] Six years later Black History Month was being celebrated all across the country in educational institutions, centers of Black culture and community centers, both great and small, when President Gerald Ford recognized Black History Month, during the celebration of the United States Bicentennial. He urged Americans to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.”[22]

Colleagues 
Woodson believed in self-reliance and racial respect, values he shared with Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican activist who worked in New York. Woodson became a regular columnist for Garvey’s weekly Negro World.

…

Death and legacy
Woodson died … within his home in … Washington, D.C., on April 3, 1950, at the age of 74.

The time that schools have set aside each year to focus on African-American history is Woodson’s most visible legacy. His determination to further the recognition of the Negro in American and world history, however, inspired countless other scholars. Woodson remained focused on his work throughout his life. Many see him as a man of vision and understanding. Although Woodson was among the ranks of the educated few, he did not feel particularly sentimental about elite educational institutions. The Association and journal that he started are still operating, and both have earned intellectual respect.

Source: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia – retrieved February 1, 2018 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_G._Woodson

 

Share this post:
,
[Top]

School Shootings ‘R’ Us – 11 in 23 Days

Posted on January 30, 2018 in Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Which is worse: the Frying Pan or the Fire?

This is the decision-making that Caribbean people seem to be doing. Which residential option is worse for them: remain in the Failing–States of their Caribbean homeland or emigrate to the United States of America where societal defects like mass shootings / school shootings persist?

The optics are that bad!

The American gun culture cannot be excused, rationalized or minimized. As of January 23rd, there were already 11 school shootings in the country.

Just think how our Caribbean people have fled their homelands – “Frying Pan” – to seek refuge in this society – “the Fire”.

See how the actuality of this American “fire” is conveyed in this New York Times news story here:

Title – School Shooting in Kentucky Was Nation’s 11th of Year. It Was Jan. 23

By: Alan Blinder and Daniel Victor

ATLANTA — On Tuesday, it was a high school in small-town Kentucky. On Monday, a school cafeteria outside Dallas and a charter school parking lot in New Orleans. And before that, a school bus in Iowa, a college campus in Southern California, a high school in Seattle.

Gunfire ringing out in American schools used to be rare, and shocking. Now it seems to happen all the time.

The scene in Benton, Ky., on Tuesday was the worst so far in 2018: Two 15-year-old students were killed and 18 more people were injured. But it was one of at least 11 shootings on school property recorded since Jan. 1, and roughly the 50th of the academic year.

Researchers and gun control advocates say that since 2013, they have logged school shootings at a rate of about one a week.

“We have absolutely become numb to these kinds of shootings, and I think that will continue,” said Katherine W. Schweit, a former senior F.B.I. official and the co-author of a study of 160 active shooting incidents in the United States.

Some of the shootings at schools this year were suicides that injured no one else; some did not result in any injuries at all. But in the years since the massacres at Columbine High School in Colorado, Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., gun safety advocates say, all school shootings seem to have lost some of their capacity to shock.

Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, a gun safety group, said that’s because in 2012 in Newtown, “20 first graders and six educators were slaughtered in an elementary school.”

“The news cycles are so short right now in America, and there’s a lot going on,” she said. “But you would think that shootings in American schools would be able to clear away some of that clutter.”

Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky said the gunman who opened fire Tuesday morning at Marshall County High School in Benton, near the western tip of the state was a 15-year-old student. The authorities said the student entered the school just before 8 a.m., fired shots that struck 14 people, and set off a panicked flight in which five more were hurt.

One girl who was shot, Bailey Nicole Holt, died at the scene; a boy, Preston Ryan Cope, died of his injuries at a hospital.

Bryson Conkwright, a junior at the school, said he was talking with a friend on Tuesday morning when he spotted the gunman walking up near him. “It took me a second to process it,” Mr. Conkwright, 17, said in an interview. “One of my best friends got shot in the face, and then another one of my best friends was shot in the shoulder.”

He said he was part of a group of students who fled, kicked down a door to get outside and ran.

The suspect, who was not immediately identified, was taken into custody in “a nonviolent apprehension,” Mr. Bevin said, and officials said he would be charged with two counts of murder and several counts of attempted murder. But the authorities had not yet decided whether to charge the suspect, who was armed with a pistol, as a juvenile or as an adult.

Of the 18 people injured, five remained in critical condition, law enforcement officials said on Tuesday night.

“This is something that has struck in the heart of Kentucky,” Lt. Michael B. Webb of Kentucky State Police said at a news conference. “It’s not far away, it’s here.”

Not for the first time. The region was scarred about two decades ago by a deadly school shooting in West Paducah, about a 40-minute drive away. Three people were killed when a student opened fire into a prayer circle, and five more were injured.

Benton is a small town about 200 miles southwest of Louisville, and its high school serves students from all over Marshall County, which has a population of about 31,000.

John Parks, who owns the Fisherman’s Headquarters store about a mile from the school, described the area as a “very close-knit community” where just about everyone would have known a student at the school. “It’s personal when it’s a small town like this,” he said.

About a mile from the high school, a large American flag flew at half-staff over a Ponderosa Steakhouse on Tuesday night. Taylor McCuiston, 21, a manager at the restaurant who graduated from Marshall County High School two years ago, was working when the shooting occurred down the road.

“It was very scary because, like, 90 percent of the staff that works here goes to that school,” she said. “So for the first hour we were just scrambling trying to make sure they were all O.K. and accounted for.”

The town of Italy, Tex., is not any bigger than Benton. On Monday, a 15-year-old girl there was hospitalized after she was shot by a 16-year-old classmate, according to local news reports. That suspect, a boy, was taken into custody by the Ellis County Sheriff’s Department. The authorities said on Tuesday that the victim was recovering.

The F.B.I. study that Ms. Schweit helped write examined active shooter episodes in the United States between 2000 and 2013. It found that nearly one-quarter of them occurred in educational environments, and they were on the rise.

In the first half of the study period, federal officials counted 16 active shooter incidents in educational settings, meaning instances of a person “actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area.” In the second half, the number rose to 23. (Many, but not all, of the school shootings tallied by advocates so far this year meet that definition.)

“Any time there’s a school shooting, it’s more gut-wrenching, and I think we have a tendency to react in a more visceral way,” Ms. Schweit said in an interview on Tuesday. “But I really don’t think as a whole, in society, we’re taking shootings more seriously than we were before — and that’s wrong.”

Even so, jarred and fearful school administrators across the country have been placing greater emphasis on preparing for the possibility of an active shooter. According to a report issued by the Government Accountability Office in March 2016, 19 states were requiring individual schools to have plans for how to deal with an active shooter. Only 12 states required schools to conduct drills, but two-thirds of school districts reported that they had staged active shooter exercises.

School safety experts say steps like the drills are crucial, if imperfect, safeguards.

“I think we’ve become somewhat desensitized to the fact that these things happened, and it takes a thing like Sandy Hook to bring us back to our senses,” said William Modzeleski, a consultant who formerly led the Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools.

“My fear is that if you don’t hear about a school shooting for a while, educators move on to other things,” he said. “Principals are busy. Teachers are busy. Superintendents are busy.”

In Kentucky, lawmakers have grappled with how to address the risk of school shootings. Last year, state legislators considered, but did not pass, a bill that would have allowed people with concealed-carry permits to bring weapons on to public school campuses, where proponents argue they could be used to respond to active shooters. A similar bill, limited to college campuses and certain other government buildings, has been introduced this year. It was not immediately clear how the shooting in Benton might affect the debate in Frankfort, the Kentucky capital.

But in Benton, “this is a wound that is going to take a long time to heal,” said Mr. Bevin, the governor, “ and for some in this community, will never fully heal.”

———-

Alan Blinder reported from Atlanta and Daniel Victor from New York. Steven Hale contributed reporting from Benton, Ky., and Timothy Williams and Matthew Haag from New York.

Source: New York Times – posted January 23, 2017; retrieved January 30, 2017: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/us/kentucky-school-shooting.html

RELATED COVERAGE:

Life in American schools is risky. Life in the US in general, may experience a shorter mortality due to the risky gun culture.

This is not an unfamiliar theme for this movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean; on October 11, 2017 a blog-commentary entitled: “Pulled” – Despite American Guns was published. That entry lamented how the US continues to draw the human capital out of the Caribbean, despite the unconscionable gun-death rate in the country. That commentary related:

… the US has far more gun deaths than most other advanced economy countries.

Reference: Visualizing gun deaths: Comparing the U.S. to rest of the world
Whenever a mass shooting occurs, a debate about gun violence ensues. An often-cited counter to the point about the United States’ high rates of gun homicides is that people in other countries kill one another at the same rate using different types of weapons. It’s not true.

Compared to other countries with similar levels of development or socioeconomic status, the United States has exceptional homicide rates, and it’s driven by gun violence.

Life in the US may be more prosperous, but it is “fast & furious” compared to the Caribbean homeland. If only, we can assuage our societal defects – Frying Pan – and foster more economic opportunities, then our people will be able to prosper where planted in the Caribbean homeland. They would not have to “jump into the Fire” as they do now – one report estimates 70 percent of the professional classes have fled to foreign destinations like the United States. To be clear, there are two reasons why are they leaving:

  • “Push” refers to people who feel compelled to leave, to seek refuge in a foreign land. “Refuge” is an appropriate word; because of societal defects, many from the Caribbean must leave as refugees – think LGBT, Disability, Domestic-abuse, Medically-challenged– for their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
  • “Pull”, on the other hand refers to the lure of a more prosperous life abroad; many times our people are emigrating for economics solely.

It is the quest of this Go Lean movement that we reform and transform our societal engines so as to lower the “Push” factors. As for the “Pull” factors, this is all about messaging, knowledge-sharing and declaring the truth. Take a moment and acknowledge this truth:

Before this article, did you really know that there were 11 school-shootings in the US between January 1st and 23rd, 2018?

For most, that answer is no!

This is the truism that we must contend with in our region: The “grass is not necessarily greener” on the American side.

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate the societal engines – economics, homeland security and governance – for all 30 Caribbean member-states in the region. In fact, the prime directives of the roadmap includes the following 3 statements:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines with proactive and reactive measures.
  • Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean quest is to minimize any paradox of future-planning/decision-making for Caribbean citizens. We want to make the Caribbean region better places to live, work and play; this way our citizens would not have to “jump in to the Fire” by relocating to American shores.

How would you live with yourself if your children or grandchildren die in a school shooting in some US location?!

This is not to say that there will never be any violence in the Caribbean. No, the Go Lean book contends that bad actors will always emerge just as a result of economic successes in society. Once the prospects of guns are factored it, the inevitable “bad guy with a gun” can do more damage than ordinary. The Way Forward from the book is real remediation and mitigation for minimizing incidents of gun violence.

Many times in the US, the post mass-shooting platitudes from Pro-Gun Advocacy groups – i.e. the NRA – is that the best way to stop a “bad guy with a gun” is with a “good guy with a gun”.

Platitudes – flat, dull, or trite remark –  indeed …

Remember the April 1999 Columbine High massacre – school shooting – in Colorado – Greater Denver Metropolitan area:

In addition to the shootings, the complex and highly planned attack involved a fire bomb to divert firefighters, propane tanks converted to bombs placed in the cafeteria, 99 explosive devices, and car bombs. The perpetrators, senior students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered 12 students and one teacher. They injured 21 additional people, and three more were injured while attempting to escape the school. After exchanging fire with responding police officers, the pair subsequently committed suicide.[5][6] – Wikipedia

See this dramatic portrayal for the documentary-movie Bowling for Columbine here with this Trailer and critical review:

VIDEO – Bowling for Columbine – Official Trailer – Michael Moore Movie (2002) – https://youtu.be/hH0mSAjp_Jw

Movieclips Trailer Vault
Published on Nov 15, 2011 – Bowling for Columbine Trailer – Michael Moore (Michael Moore) takes an inside-look at America’s fascination with firearms. MGM – 2002

  • Category: Film & Animation
  • License: Standard YouTube License

———–

Movie Review: Bowling for Columbine

By: Roger Eber

Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine,” a documentary that is both hilarious and sorrowful, is like a two-hour version of that anecdote. We live in a nation of millions of handguns, but that isn’t really what bothers Moore. What bothers him is that we so frequently shoot them at one another. Canada has a similar ratio of guns to citizens, but a 10th of the shooting deaths. What makes us kill so many times more fellow citizens than is the case in other developed nations? Moore, the jolly populist rabble-rouser, explains that he’s a former sharpshooting instructor and a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association. No doubt this is true, but Moore has moved on from his early fondness for guns. In “Bowling for Columbine,” however, he is not so sure of the answers …
…
Moore’s thoughtfulness doesn’t inhibit the sensational set-pieces he devises to illustrate his concern. He returns several times to Columbine High School, at one point showing horrifying security-camera footage of the massacre. And Columbine inspires one of the great confrontations in a career devoted to radical grandstanding. Moore introduces us to two of the students wounded at Columbine, both still with bullets in their bodies. He explains that all of the Columbine bullets were freely sold to the teenage killers by Kmart, at 17 cents apiece. And then he takes the two victims to Kmart headquarters to return the bullets for a refund.

This is brilliant theater and would seem to be unanswerable for the hapless Kmart public relations spokespeople, who fidget and evade in front of Moore’s merciless camera. But then, on Moore’s third visit to headquarters, he is told that Kmart will agree to completely phase out the sale of ammunition. “We’ve won,” says Moore, not believing it. “This has never happened before.” For once, he’s at a loss for words.

The movie is a mosaic of Moore confrontations and supplementary footage. One moment that cuts to the core is from a standup routine by Chris Rock, who suggests that our problem could be solved by simply increasing the price of bullets–taxing them like cigarettes. Instead of 17 cents apiece, why not $5,000? “At that price,” he speculates, “you’d have a lot fewer innocent bystanders being shot.”
…

Source: RogerEbert.com E-Zine/Website – Posted October 18, 2002; retrieved January 30, 2018 from: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/bowling-for-columbine-2002

We can do better in the Caribbean!

We do not have the same gun culture, nor legal entanglements. The 2nd Amendment – gun rights guaranteed by the US Constitution – does not apply for most of the Caribbean and can even be curtailed more in the US Territories (Puerto Rico & US Virgin Islands) as opposed to the US mainland.

Doing better and being better than the US – a protégé , not a parasite – is a need pronounced early in the Go Lean book with the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13) that claims:

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices … to assuage continuous threats against public safety.

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

The Go Lean book provides 370 pages of turn-by-turn directions on how to adopt a more productive Public Safety ethos, plus the executions of strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to better secure the Caribbean homeland, school campus protections and gun control. The book details (Page 181) this sample mitigation for school bullying:

Consider Bullying as Junior Terrorism
The CU wants to “leave no child behind”. So bullying will be managed under a domestic terrorism and Juvenile Justice jurisdiction. The CU will conduct media campaigns for anti-bullying, life-coaching, and school-mentoring programs. The problem with teen distress is that violence can ensue from bullying perpetrators or in response to bullying.

In addition, there have been a number of previous blog-commentaries by the Go Lean movement that highlighted the eco-system of crime-domestic terrorism and homeland security initiatives. See this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14087 Opioids – Another Example of America’s Deadly Culture
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13999 First Steps – Deputize the CU to Monitor-Mitigate-Manage Threats
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13126 “Must Love Dogs”  – Providing K9 Solutions for Better Security
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12400 Accede the Caribbean Arrest Treaty
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11332 Boston Bombing Anniversary – Learning Lessons
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11244 Live Fast; Die Young – The Fast & Furious Life in the US
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11048 Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ Series – Mitigating Bullies
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9072 Model: Shots-Fired Monitoring – Securing the Homeland on the Ground
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7485 Mitigating Interpersonal Violence Series – Street Crimes

In summary, fleeing to a life of refuge in the US may be likened to “jumping from the Frying Pan to the Fire”. It seems so basic to protect our children so that they can study safely in school, and yet, there had been 11 gun attacks already in the US this month by the 23rd of the month. The repeated occurrences reflect a failure in American society and American stewardship. This view considers the premise of the implied Social Contract:

Citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights. – Go Lean book Page 170.

Yes, it is only natural, logical, and mature that any stewards of society would remediate any known risks and threats; yet this is not the case for guns in America. (The 2nd Amendment is a societal defect!)

In that previous blog-commentary, this was the simple conclusion:

… surely we can convince our Caribbean people to Stay Home and not be lured to this [dysfunctional-gun] madness in the first place; and for those of the Diaspora in the US: you are in harm’s way, just living an ordinary life. It is Time to Go … back home!

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean – in and out of schools – to lean-in for the empowerments of the Go Lean roadmap. It is conceivable, believable and achievable to prosper where planted here in the region; to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for the roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

Share this post:
, , ,
[Top]