Ethos – Page 34 – Go Lean…Caribbean

Category: Ethos

ENCORE: Obama is the 3rd ‘Reconstruction’; Trump is the resulting ‘Redemption’

Posted on January 16, 2017 in Ethos, Social, Strategy

Reconstruction and Redemption?!?!

This deliberative analysis was carefully laid-out in this previous blog-commentary from June 15, 2016, where it presented the following periods of Reconstruction and Redemption for race relations in the United States of America:

First Reconstruction: 1865 – 1877
First Redemption: 1890 – 1968
Second Reconstruction: 1954 – 1972
Second Redemption: 1964 – 1994 (i.e. Covenant with America)

Now, with the drawing close (January 20, 2017) of the federal administration of the nation’s first Black President, Barack Obama, it seems logical to conclude that the surprising election of Donald Trump with a mandate to usurp many of the Obama Executive initiatives may be a Third Redemption (2017 – ) to the Obama years (2009 – 2017) being the Third Reconstruction. This is supported by the fact that during the Obama years, 1,030 elected seats (State & Federal Legislators plus governors) were lost to his opposition party.

See the full details of this developed thesis on the “2nd Redemption and 2nd Reconstruction” in the ENCORE below…

… and consider the consistent point of so many blog-commentaries from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean, that America, with its lack of respect for minority rights, should not be the Land of Refuge for the Black-and-Black people of the Caribbean.

🙁

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Go Lean Commentary – Title: Respect for Minorities: Reconstruction then Redemption – A Lesson in History

This subject of “Respect for Minorities” is dominant in the news right now. This commentary is 3 of 3 in this series on lamentations for defective social values. The complete series is as follows:

Respect for Minorities: ‘All For One’
Respect for Minorities: Climate of Hate – ‘It Gets Worse Before It Gets Worse’
Respect for Minorities: Reconstruction then Redemption – A Lesson in History

There are these familiar proverbs:

1. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. – The Bible; Ecclesiastes 1: 9

2. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

There is a lot of history in the United States regarding “Respect for Minorities”; and the lessons from that history apply for the Caribbean. In this case, there is the history of the 2nd Reconstruction and 2nd Redemption that applies directly to Caribbean people living in the US. Life in the US for our Diaspora has been a familiar theme for the publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean; this theme has been exhausted in the book (Page 118 – Reasons to Repatriate to the Caribbean) and in countless blog/commentaries (see list below), within the quest to dissuade Caribbean people from emigrating to the US and to encourage many of the existing Diaspora to return to their homelands, to repatriate.

Why is this so important? The Go Lean movement (book and blogs) have been consistent: it is easier for the people of the Caribbean – a majority Black and Brown demographic – to prosper where planted in their homelands than to endure as alien residents in foreign countries. This commentary asserts the key ingredient for reforming and transforming societies with diverse demographics: “Respect for Minorities”. This commentary seeks to learn this lesson based on life (and history) in the US; though the principles here can easily apply to Canada and the many western European countries that receive our citizens. Consider this analogy:

Do you want to go a party – that you hear is a lot of fun – uninvited? What if you hear the host really wants you at the party, and then when you get there you discovered that they want you to serve and work and cater to the other preferred guests; you are just there as support staff?
Want to go home yet?

This is the experience for so many Caribbean Diaspora when they ‘come to America’. Just take a quick tour at so many tourist/travel facilities at America’s principal cities. So many of the “serving” staff are of Caribbean heritage. One would talk to taxi drivers, hotel maids, waiters and retail store clerks and you discover that these ones descend from the Caribbean.

You think: They came here for “this”? They are minorities among a majority that has little respect for them.

There is this above scenario, and then … there is “prosper where you’re planted”:

Just like a tree planted by the rivers of water
That bring forth fruit in due season
Source: The Bible – Psalms Chapter 1 verse 3 – King James Bible

This was the strong point made by one of the key figures in African-American history, Booker T Washington. He asserted that the African-American community must work to prosper in its own hometown, that they must seek reconciliation with their White neighbors and find a way to co-exist. This was a good plan for Black America, the minorities; but White America, the majority population didn’t always cooperate. The effort to reconcile was attempted before, immediately following the Civil War, during the period of Reconstruction; 1865 – 1877. This period of time actually featured some real progress in liberating and promoting the previous enslaved minority population – an enfranchisement of all freedmen. But then, at the end of the formal Reconstruction period, there was redemption…

… redemption: a return to American original values, that is “White supremacy” and the repression of the African-American race.

During this Redemption period: Jim Crow laws – segregation in public places – were implemented, as the follow details depict:

The end of Reconstruction … was followed by a period that White Southerners labeled Redemption, during which White-dominated state legislatures enacted Jim Crow laws and, beginning in 1890, disenfranchised most Blacks and many poor Whites through a combination of constitutional amendments and electoral laws. The White Democrat Southerners’ memory of Reconstruction played a major role in imposing the system of white supremacy and second-class citizenship for Blacks. – Sourced from Wikipedia.

That was then, 130 years ago; how about now? The notion of an Encore/”Second Take” seems unthinkable; and yet this is the historicity of events and experiences after this 2nd Reconstruction – the Civil Rights movement of the 20th Century: think Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Affirmative Action, Minority Set-Asides, etc.. See the encyclopedic reference here:

Reference Title: Second Reconstruction
Second Reconstruction is a term that refers to the American Civil Rights Movement. In many respects, the mass movement against segregation and discrimination that erupted following World War II, shared many similarities with the period of Reconstruction which followed the American Civil War. The period of Second Reconstruction featured active participation on the part of African-Americans to regain their rights that they had lost during the period of Redemption and Jim Crow segregation in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

During Second Reconstruction, African-Americans once again began holding various political offices, and reasserting and reclaiming their civil and political rights as American citizens. Unlike Reconstruction, however, most African-Americans abandoned the Republican Party for the Democratic Party. A noteworthy feature of Second Reconstruction was the political realignment that occurred in 1965, which transformed the nature and composition of both the Republican and Democratic Party’s, eroding the Democratic Solid South.

In the same way, however, that Reconstruction was followed by Redemption, some have also claimed that period following Second Reconstruction could be termed a Second Redemption characterized by more conservatism on the part of the federal government, and several Supreme Court decisions that weakened the scope of civil rights reforms, especially in the Northern States

The years between 1954-1972 have often been called the Second Reconstruction, since it has noteworthy similarities with the First Black Reconstruction (1865-1877), which began with the abolition of slavery by the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment. Both periods saw African Americans making tremendous gains in the fields of politics and civil rights. Three major Supreme Court decisions (the Brown decision on school desegregation (1954), desegregation of public transportation (1956); bussing to achieve school desegregation (April 1971), two legislative enactments (the Civil Rights Act, 1964, and the Voting Rights Act, 1965) and the March on Washington, D.C. (April 28, 1963), many demonstrations and riots, resulted in major alterations in race relations. There was “change within change,” and America would never be the same.

While the Second Reconstruction destroyed the legal foundations of the segregationist system, it also highlighted the further and more difficult challenge of translating legal victories into real change. Moreover, the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., removed a key symbol and source of unity in the nonviolent freedom struggle. According to one activist, King was “the one man of our race that this country’s older generations, the militants, and the revolutionaries and the masses of black people would still listen to.” As the limitations of the Civil Rights movement became more apparent, growing numbers of young African Americans advocated Black Power as an alternative to nonviolent direct-action strategies. Partly because revolutionary black organizations like the Black Panther party (formed in 1966) emphasized the mass mobilization of poor and working-class blacks, armed struggle, and opposition to the Vietnam War, they came under the combined assault of federal, state, and local authorities. Under the weight of official and unofficial white resistance, the Black Power movement fragmented and gradually dissipated by the early 1970s.

Late Twentieth Century Developments. As the civil rights and Black Power movements weakened, white resistance to the gains of the Second Reconstruction intensified. Opposition to affirmative-action policies in employment and education were closely related to the deindustrialization of the nation’s economy. The loss of jobs to mechanization and low-wage overseas factories affected all industrial workers, black and white, but the persistence of overt and covert discriminatory employment practices rooted in white kin and friendship networks made black workers and their communities especially vulnerable to economic down swings. African-American unemployment rates persisted at well over the white rate, especially among young black males. At the same time, the beneficiaries of existing affirmative-action programs–the middle class and better-educated members of the black working class–experienced a degree of upward mobility and moved into outlying urban and suburban neighborhoods. They left working-class and poor blacks, disproportionately single women with children, concentrated in the central cities, where violence, drug addiction, and class-stratified social spaces intensified, causing acute tensions in day-to-day intraracial as well as interracial relations.

Perhaps even more than in the industrial era, the post- industrial age challenged African Americans to develop new strategies for coping with social change and the persistence of inequality. Some of their emerging responses built upon earlier struggles. Institution-building, marches, participation in electoral politics, and migration in search of better opportunities all continued to express black activism and resistance to social injustice. Yet, much had changed in the nation and in African American life, and such time-tested strategies took on different meanings in the 1980s and 1990s. Rising numbers of southern- born blacks returned to the South during the 1970s. After declining for more than a century, the proportion of blacks living in the South increased by 1980. Other African Americans rallied behind the Rainbow Coalition and supported the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s bid for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988. Still others endorsed Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March (MMM) in 1994. Calling the march a “day of atonement” for black men, leaders of the MMM encouraged black men to earn and reclaim a position of authority in their families and communities. Four years later, many black women responded to the MMM’s gender bias with their own Million Woman March, which emphasized the centrality of women in the ongoing black freedom struggle. Through these various actions and many more, African Americans continued to resist shifting forms of inequality and gave direction to their own lives as a new century began.

These same years saw the emergence of a new generation of African-American academics, musicians, performers, sports figures, and writers. Such diverse men and women as the scholars and public intellectuals Henry Louis Gates, Cornel West, and Stephen L. Carter; basketball superstar Michael Jordan and track-and-field athlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee; film actors Eddie Murphy and Denzel Washington; jazz musicians Joshua Redman, Herbie Hancock, and Wynton and Bradford Marsalis; television celebrity Oprah Winfrey; and an array of novelists and writers including Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison enriched American life and gave voice to the black experience.

By the 1990s, the nation’s more than 30 million African Americans, representing about 12 percent of the total population, had transformed themselves from a predominantly rural people into an overwhelmingly urban people; from a southern regional group to a national population living in every part of the nation; and, perhaps most importantly, from a group confined to southern agriculture, domestic service, and general labor to a work force with representation in every sector of the nation’s economy.
Source: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia – Retrieved May 26, 2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Reconstruction

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VIDEO 1 – Henry Louis Gates assesses the black community today – https://youtu.be/g8XcWodA47g

Uploaded on Oct 28, 2011 – www.twaintrip.com

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VIDEO 2 – Powell Comments On Gates Arrest, Admits Being Profiled “Many Times” – https://youtu.be/sVelDpz5ZT0

Uploaded on Jul 28, 2009 – Gen. Colin Powell talks about the Henry Louis Gates arrest with Larry King. He said the story “went viral” when President Obama commented on the story. Also, Powell thinks that America “isn’t quite post-racial” at this time. “These problems still exist in post-racial America.” However, he suggested that Gates should not have argued with the policeman arresting him. “You don’t argue with a police officer,” he says.

Powell also called the arresting cop, Sergeant James Crowley, “an outstanding police officer.”

Also, at 5:10, Powell admits he’s been profiled “many times” [even] as the National Security Advisor.

This conclusion of a 2nd Redemption is not so far-fetched!

Just consider the current campaign of Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump: “Make America Great Again“. It bears to mind the question: “just when was America great before”? Answer: After the first Redemption.

It should be hard to justify migrating to this American climate/eco-system, rather than the quest to prosper where planted in the homeland. The societal defects in the Caribbean – that “pushes” many to flee – must be that acute!

The book Go Lean…Caribbean declares that the “Caribbean is in crisis”; but asserts that this crisis is a terrible thing to waste. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU); an initiative to bring change, empowerment, to the Caribbean region; to make the region a better place to live, work and play. This Go Lean 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 to support these engines.

The book describes the CU as a technocratic administration with 144 different missions to elevate the Caribbean homeland. This underlying goal is stated early in the book with this pronouncement in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12):

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…

Change has come to the Caribbean. The Go Lean book declares that for permanent change to take place, there must first be an adoption of new community ethos of the Greater Good; this term community ethos refers to the national spirit that drives the character and identity of its people. This Greater Good ethos, with genuine concern and respect for minority groups, is what was missing in previous American generations … and current Caribbean population. This point of “Respect for Minorities” is therefore our biggest lesson from this consideration in history – the foregoing encyclopedic reference.

The Go Lean roadmap was constructed with this and other community ethos in mind, plus the execution of strategies, tactics, implementation and advocacies to forge the identified permanent change in the region. The following is a sample of these specific details from the book:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification – Historic Motivation of Black America	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Choose	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – All Choices Involve Costs	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation	Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Minority Equalization	Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development	Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations	Page 34
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
Anecdote – LCD versus an Entrepreneurial Ethos	Page 39
Strategy – Vision – Confederation of the 30 Caribbean Member-States into a Single Market	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Celebrate the Music, Sports, Art, People and Culture of the Caribbean	Page 46
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union	Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers: Federal Administration versus Member-States Governance	Page 71
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Foreign Policy Initiatives at Start-up	Page 102
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate to the Caribbean	Page 118
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Planning – Ways to Better Manage Image	Page 133
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance in the Caribbean Region	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism – Anti-Bullying Mitigations	Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Communications	Page 186
Advocacy – Ways Impact the Diaspora	Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts	Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music	Page 231

Previous Go Lean blog/commentaries stressed issues relating to respect for minority rights and full societal inclusion. The following sample applies:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8099	Caribbean Image: ‘Less Than’?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7221	Street naming for Martin Luther King unveils the real America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7204	‘The Covenant with Black America’ – Ten Years Later
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6722	A Lesson in History – After the Civil War: Birthright Mandates
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6434	‘Good Hair’ and the Strong Black Woman
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5784	Buggery in Jamaica – ‘Say It Ain’t So’!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5733	Better than America? Yes, We Can!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5527	American Defects: Racism – Is It Over?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5333	Racial Legacies: Cause and Effect
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4935	A Lesson in History – the ‘Grand Old Party’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2222	Sports Role Model – Playing For Pride … And More
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1918	Philadelphia Freedom – Some Restrictions Apply
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1896	The Crisis in Black Homeownership
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1596	Book Review: ‘Prosper Where You Are Planted’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1020	Lack of Respect in European Sports – A Lesson; A Role Model
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=789	America’s War on the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=546	Book Review: ‘The Divide in American Injustice’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=341	Hypocritical US slams Caribbean human rights practices

The purpose of the Go Lean movement (book and blogs) is not to fix America; it is to fix the Caribbean. We want to learn important lessons from this advanced democracy who have endured a bitter history but has now emerged as the richest, strongest and most-prosperous nation in world history. The US is now a “frienemy” of the Caribbean. As we lose so many of our Caribbean citizens to life in the Diaspora in the US.

Some reports are that the Diaspora and their heirs amount to over 20 million American residents. America’s population and economy grows while our region is in crisis.

Our people leave our homelands due to “push and pull” reasons; “push” as in societal defects that cause many to seek refuge abroad, and “pull” in the presumption that American life is now optimized for the Black-and-Brown people. But a consideration of this commentary helps us to understand the “DNA” of American society, that while “Respect for Minorities” is improved, it is far from optimized.

The recommendation from this commentary and the Go Lean book in general is:

“stay home” in the Caribbean and work toward improving the Caribbean homeland.
And for those who have left, please consider repatriating home and bring us your “time, talent and treasuries”; help us reform and transform our society.

The US should not be considered the “panacea of Caribbean hopes and dreams”. With the adoption of the appropriate community ethos, strategies, tactics and implementations of the Go Lean roadmap, we can make all Caribbean member-states better places to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Civil Rights, History, Model, Transform

Lessons Learned: Detroit demolishes thousands of structures

Posted on January 6, 2017 in Ethos, Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Lights, camera, action …

That expression is used to initiate a filming session on a movie set. It is symbolic of manifestation; “coming to a head” after a long series of planning steps.

“You have planned the work; now its time to work the plan”.

Engage!

This book Go Lean…Caribbean – published in November 2013 – analyzed the once-great-but-now-distressed City of Detroit (Michigan, USA); it embedded the lessons learned from Detroit in a page entitled:

10 Lessons Learned from Detroit (Page 140)

Afterwards, the book’s publishers went to Detroit (for almost 1 & 1/2 years) to “observe and report” on the turn-around and rebirth of the city. The motivation was that the Caribbean region could learn a lot from the strategies, tactics and implementations to mitigate this community’s “Failed-State/Failed-City” status. The recommendation of the book and countless blogs – 34 not including this submission – was always the same that Detroit can benefit by engaging in a demolition of so many of its blighted buildings. This is described as exercising the mastery of destruction arts and sciences – salvage, removal, recycle, redevelopment, rebirth, reboot and “right-sizing”.

Those pleas have been heard: Detroit has now commenced the recommended action of demolishing structures. See a full news article relating this here:

Title: Detroit demolishes thousands of structures; many more to go
By: Corey Williams

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DETROIT (AP) — Remnants of the roof and walls creaked, groaned and then crumpled to the ground Wednesday from what once was an industrial building that covered an entire city block, likely the last structure demolished this year under Detroit’s massive blight elimination program.

Blows from an excavator methodically destroyed a portion of what had been a 60,000-square-foot building on Cloverdale Avenue in a west side neighborhood of homes, auto repair shops and other light industrial buildings.

When leveled, the structure that a local resident said had once housed an industrial laundry or dry cleaners, will mark about 3,130 structures cleared in 2016 and about 10,700 — mostly houses — razed since 2014. The vast majority are owned by the city’s Land Bank Authority.

But the city has a long way to go. A blight task force in 2014 said 40,000 needed to be torn down and 38,000 others were falling apart in one of the nation’s poorest major cities that emerged in December 2014 from the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Many blocks have more abandoned houses and empty lots than lived-in homes, a result of the exodus of whites and much of the black middle class from the city. About 1.8 million people lived in Detroit in the 1950s. Fewer than 700,000 currently call Detroit home, according to the U.S. Census.

Mayor Mike Duggan has said the mass demolitions are necessary for Detroit to attract families to city neighborhoods and stop decades of population loss.

“I’m so excited about this,” said an almost gleeful Sandra Pickens as the excavator clawed at brick and wood.

Pickens is president of the Littlefield Community Association. The neighborhood group met over the summer with Duggan about the empty building and other concerns.

“This was an eyesore for us,” she told The Associated Press Wednesday. “I’ve seen people come and dump things here; come in at night and steal the beams. We shouldn’t have anything looking like this.”

Mike Douglas works in a muffler shop on Cloverdale. He remembers the neighborhood and small businesses in the area as “thriving” 20 or so years ago. He believes the building across the street has been empty a dozen or so years.

The area had “deteriorated to the point that we were having a tough time actually keeping our business here,” said Douglas, 55.

By removing dangerous buildings and empty houses, safety and quality of life in Detroit is improved, according to Fire Investigations Division Capt. Winston Farrow.

“It eliminates the opportunities for criminals to set fires in vacant houses,” Farrow said. “The problem was more just the sheer numbers of dwellings that we had.”

The average sale prices of over 100 houses sold in the city also has increased over the past three years, according to the Land Bank.

The problems haven’t been resolved completely, “but it’s much better,” said Linda Smith, a blight task force co-chair and executive director of a nonprofit that builds homes in Detroit and provides resources to city residents.

“Maintaining and securing all of the homes that need some work done to them is the next step,” Smith said.

Not everyone is as optimistic.

“You can tear down a house on one block and go back several months later and where houses were occupied (they) are now abandoned and need to be demolished,” said Sheila Dapremont, owner of Detroit demolition company 3D Wrecking.

“It just seems like it never ends,” she said.

On average, it costs Detroit $12,616 to knock down a house. More than $128 million in federal funds over the past three years have helped pay for the work. Another $130 million was approved this year.

About $40 million in the city’s general fund has been set aside for demolitions.

Federal funding was temporarily halted earlier this year and resumed after an audit determined demolition costs above a federal cap of $25,000 per house were redistributed to 350 other properties to have those houses appear to meet the cap. Amounts over the cap should have been billed to the city. The city says controls have since been tightened.

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Detroit Demolition Tracker: http://www.detroitmi.gov/demolition

Despite these events being in Detroit and not the Caribbean, the foregoing can still impact the Greater Good for the Caribbean. It provides us an exact role model of what to do … and not do. Lessons learned …

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate Caribbean society. Detroit is not in scope for this effort, but as detailed in a previous blog-commentary, an examination of the details of Detroit can be productive for the Caribbean effort. The Go Lean roadmap therefore has these 3 prime directives:

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

Early in the Go Lean book, the point of lessons from Detroit was pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 14), with this opening statement:

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 … Detroit…

As a “failed-city”, Detroit has suffered abandonment; first “white flight”, then eventually everyone else; (the population peak was 1,849,568 in 1950, but only 713,777 in 2010). The need for demolition is tied to the fact that many of the buildings from that population peak were still standing in the city, though now blighted.

According to the foregoing article, the city has more to do to right-size to an optimized city. The city’s disposition is still dire (brain drain, unemployment, urban blight and acute hopelessness); but there is hope for a better future. This is very familiar for Caribbean communities. This is why the study of Detroit is such an ideal model for the Caribbean.

Previous Go Lean blogs highlighted some specific lessons from Detroit and other nearby Michigan cities, as sampled in this detailed list here:

Detroit makes Community College free

An Ode to Detroit – Good Luck on Trade!

Beware of Vulture Capitalists

Detroit giving schools their ‘Worst Shot’

Flint, Michigan – A Cautionary Tale

Secrecy, corruption and conflicts in State governance

Before and After Photos of Detroit’s Transformation

Education & Economics: Welcoming Obama to Detroit

Ann Arbor: Model for ‘Start-up’ Cities

Big Salt: Short-term Benefit; Long-term Damage

NEXUS: Facilitating Detroit-Windsor Commerce

M-1 Rail: Alternative Motion in the Motor City

JP Morgan Chase $100 million Detroit investment

The foregoing news article (and VIDEO in the Appendix below) relates more to the art and science of destruction-recycling than it does to Detroit. This has also been a consistent theme for the Go Lean movement. Consider these previous blog-commentaries that advocated developing business models around destruction/recycling/turn-around:

A Lesson in ‘Garbage’

Where the Jobs Are – Entrepreneurism in Junk

Where the Jobs Are – One Scenario: Ship-breaking

‘Only at the precipice, do they change’

The CU/Go Lean effort is focused on forging change in the region; this does not start with the demolition process, rather it starts with attitudes and motivations to reject the status quo. This positive attitude is defined in the Go Lean book as the community ethos for “turn-around”. Here is a sample of the text relating to turn-around practice (Page 33):

… dispositions of abandoned buildings in the member-states still relate to CU missions, as in the protection of image (“psychological trauma” is inflicted daily on neighbors of abandoned structures) and the quest for beauty. While beauty, aesthetics and preservation may be paramount for communities, these should only be a concern after basic needs are satisfied – housing is a basic need. The economics of housing can be impacted with the over-supply of abandoned buildings, as it brings the value down for other properties, and sends out the false vision, like Detroit’s abandoned structures, that just a “little rehab” and their new manifestations will be readily available. Learning from Detroit, it is more beneficial to raze abandoned buildings and build anew turn-around, rather than considering restoration or preservation.

Accordingly, demolition of blighted buildings can reinvigorate a community. The building materials can be re-purposed. Bricks can simply be re-used; scrap metal can be recycled; the wood can grind down to chip/saw-dust; concrete can grind down to sand-fill; and on and on.

Imagine the jobs.
Image the restoration, the renewal, the refresh … in the community.
Even the newly-razed land-lots can be put into service as community gardens; or just left as vacant land-lots, therefore posing no risk or dangers to the community – see VIDEO below.

The book details other ethos to adopt, plus the executions of the following strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the reboot and turn-around of Caribbean communities:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Light Up the Dark Places	Page 23
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens	Page 23
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments (ROI)	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact a Turn-Around	Page 33
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Customers – Foreign Direct Investors	Page 48
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Modeling Post WW II Germany – Reboot with Marshall Plan	Page 68
Tactical – Modeling Post WW II Japan – Reboot with no Marshall Plan	Page 69
Separation of Powers – Public Works & Infrastructure	Page 82
Separation of Powers – Housing and Urban Authority	Page 83
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Re-boot Freeport – Sample Failed City	Page 112
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices	Page 132
Planning – Lessons Learned from 2008	Page 136
Planning – Lessons from Detroit	Page 140
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Local Government	Page 169
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Reboot Cuba	Page 226
Advocacy – Ways to Reboot Haiti	Page 238
Advocacy – Ways to Reboot Jamaica	Page 239

The foregoing news article aligns with the publishers of the Go Lean book for the purpose of empowering and rebooting economic engines. The roadmap calls for the heavy-lifting of working with individuals, families, communities and nation-states to turn-around and reboot the region’s future prospect. There is the need for this re-boot so as to make the Caribbean better.

The Caribbean is arguably the best address on the planet, but there is a lot missing; like Detroit we have blight and urban decay (with dangerous buildings). So the example from Detroit is a good model to reboot the societal engines in our region. There are benefits to demolition, but there is also the need for caution. Crony-Capitalism can easily seep in to exploit public funds for private gain. So there are security and governing concerns as well. See the photos here of the Detroit Demolition Tracker, attempting to provide transparency for better governance.

The Go Lean roadmap provides a complete plan to reboot Caribbean economic-security-governing engines. The region is hereby urged to lean-in to this roadmap, to make the homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

————

Appendix VIDEO – Watch Detroit Demolish 2 Houses in 2 Minutes – https://youtu.be/ML5l8GrJEe0

Published on Jul 6, 2016 – Watch the time lapse video of two demolitions in Detroit. For more information, visit detroitmi.gov/demolition.

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ENCORE: The Movie ‘Hidden Figures’ – Art Imitating Life

Posted on December 31, 2016 in Ethos, Social

Go Lean Commentary

The movie is now released … to ‘select’ theaters in the USA; (the wide release date is January 6, 2017).

Go see this movie! It is a work of art that depicts the life that 3 Black American women lived while impacting the American community – in the arena of rocket science and space exploration:

Katherine Johnson
Dorothy Vaughn
Mary Jackson

They fully defined “role models”, as depicted in this original blog-commentary on August 16, 2016:

=================

** August 26, 2016 **

This day is the 98th birthday for “Katherine Johnson”.

Who is Katherine Johnson? And why is she important in the discussion of Caribbean empowerment?

Katherine Johnson (1918 – ) was a rocket scientist, physicist, and mathematician before there were rocket scientists. Why is this important? It is as 19th century Essayist Oscar Wilde dubbed it:

“Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life”.

The focus here is on the “Art imitating Life”; no, even further than “art” is the “science”. The “art” in this case is the movie “Hidden Figures”. The “science” is the mathematics associated with rockets and trajectory: Rocket Science.

The movie HIDDEN FIGURES is the incredible untold story of Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughn (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe)—brilliant African-American women working at NASA, who served as the brains behind one of the greatest operations in history: the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, a stunning achievement that restored the nation’s confidence, turned around the Space Race, and galvanized the world. The visionary trio crossed all gender and race lines to inspire generations to dream big. – 20 Century Fox Studio

This is the power associated with film. It’s an art that can promote a science. This is in harmony with a previous blog/commentary – by the Go Lean … Caribbean movement – regarding Caribbean Diaspora member and Hollywood great, Sidney Poitier, it was declared that …

… “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”.

The untold story of Katherine Johnson is not so “unfamiliar” to the African-American experience. There has been millions of similar tales, where those with genius-qualifying abilities had to languish in a world where they were considered “less than“. (See the Appendix VIDEO below).

Oh, how wrong that world was!

Today, we tell the tale of Katherine Johnson. We celebrate her for her accomplishments and inspiration she provides to future generations of scientists, mathematicians, African-descendents and women. She is the definition of “Shero”; she is all of that! See how this is portrayed in the new film here, opening in January 2017:

VIDEO: Movie Trailer ‘Hidden Figures’ – https://youtu.be/RK8xHq6dfAo

Published on August 14, 2016 – Watch the new trailer for [the movie] #HiddenFigures, based on the incredible untold true story. Starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer & Janelle Monáe. In theaters this January [2017].

Why is this discussion of Katherine Johnson important in the discussion of Caribbean empowerment?

This is a story of one person making a difference! Her accomplishments required a resolve, determination and conviction to not buckle under the acute pressure to maintain the status quo. Her efforts and life’s pursuits helped to forge change in her homeland for her and all others that followed. The book Go Lean … Caribbean identified subjects like this as advocates; relating that their successful completion of their advocacy tend to benefit more than just them but the whole world (Page 122).

The story of Katherine Johnson is now being told as a movie. Movies can be effective for the goal of displaying a better view of people … and the community failings they have had to overcome. Previous Go Lean commentaries presented details of other movies that had the potential of reflecting and effecting change in society. See this sample here:

‘Concussion’ – The Movie; The Cause

Lesson from ‘Star Wars’ – ‘Heroes can return’

The Movie ‘Good Hair’ and the Strong Black Woman

Movie ‘Tomorrowland’ – Feed the Right Wolf

Documentary Movie: ‘Merchants of Doubt’ – Scary Proposition

Movie Lesson: ‘Only at the precipice, do they change’

The heroism of Katherine Johnson is against the backdrop of America’s segregation past. There is no way to justify America’s days of racial separation and oppression. Good riddance!

Surely, today our communities reflect a more inclusive environment. Surely?

Unfortunately, no!

America, still, and the Caribbean more, is plagued with a “climate of hate” in too many places. Far too often, in our own backyards, a class of people is oppressed, repressed and suppressed just because …

… the reasons do not even matter. It is just plain wrong and unwise and unproductive for our mission to retain our local geniuses.

Our community needs all hands on deck, with everybody contributing: all races, all genders, all ages, all classes of people. This point has also been conveyed in previous Go Lean commentaries; consider this sample here:

Respect for Minorities: Climate of Hate

Gender Equality Referendum Outcome: Impact on the ‘Brain Drain’

The Plea for Women in Politics

A Lesson in Civil War History – Compromising Human Rights

Socio-Economic Change: The Demographic Theory of Elderly Suicide

LGBT & Buggery in Jamaica – ‘Say It Ain’t So’!

The ‘Luck of the Irish’ – Past, Present and Future Lessons

10 Things We Don’t Want from the US: #7 Discrimination of Immigrants

The book Go Lean…Caribbean (and subsequent blog/commentaries) relates that we must do better than the American history. We have a problem now with societal abandonment for “push and pull” reasons. In order to encourage people to stay home and impact their homeland, we need to protect and promote those with genius qualifiers. There is a lot at stake.

This Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). Fostering genius is very important to this movement. The book states (Page 27):

The CU assumes a mission of working with educational and youth agencies to identify and foster “genius” in our society, as early as possible. Geniuses are different from everyone else, although they maybe fairly easy to spot, defining exactly what makes one person a genius is a little trickier. Some researchers & theorists argue that the concept of genius is too limiting and doesn’t really give a full view of intelligence; they feel that intelligence is a combination of many factors; thereby concluding that genius can be found in many different abilities and endeavors. The CU posits that any one person can make a difference and positively impact their society; so the community ethos of investment in this specially identified group, geniuses, would always be a worthwhile endeavor.

Fostering STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) careers is integral to the Go Lean/CU roadmap. The goal is to identify students early with high aptitude in STEM areas, then develop them through academies and science fairs. The CU will even fund free tuition for these ones at local colleges/universities or forgive-able loans for those wishing to matriculate abroad. This is a matter of community ethos, defined as in the book as the fundamental spirit of a culture that drives the beliefs, customs and practices of a society. The book refers to this spirit motivating our Focus on the Future. This spirit would be embedded in every aspect of the Go Lean/CU roadmap. See here how the prime directives reflects this:

Optimization the economic engines of the Caribbean to elevate the regional economy to grow to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new (direct & indirect) jobs, including STEM-related industries with a projection of 40,000 Research & Development direct jobs and 20,000 Technology direct jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the people and economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these economic and security engines.

The Go Lean roadmap provides turn-by-turn directions on how to reform Caribbean STEM education initiatives – also the economic and governance aspects as a whole. The roadmap opens with a Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing the approach of regional integration (Page 13 & 14) as a viable solution to elevate the region’s educational opportunities:

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 back to our shores …

xxi. 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.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

The Go Lean book envisions the CU – a confederation of the 30 member-states of the Caribbean chartered to do the heavy-lifting of empowering and elevating the Caribbean economy. The mission is to mitigate further brain drain of Caribbean citizens with STEM abilities. The book details the economic principles and community ethos to adopt, plus the executions of strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to optimize STEM initiatives in the Caribbean region:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier – Indirect Jobs from Direct Ones	Page 22
Community Ethos – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation	Page 23
Community Ethos – Minority Equalization	Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future – Foster a Future Focus	Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius – For STEM & other fields	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development	Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Close the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Anecdote – Valedictorian and Caribbean Diaspora Member	Page 38
Strategy – Customers – Citizens, Business Community & Diaspora	Page 47
Strategy – Meeting Region’s Needs Today, Preparing For Future	Page 58
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Patent, Standards, & Copyrights	Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Education Department	Page 85
Implementation – Assemble all Super-Regional Governing Entities	Page 96
Implementation – Trends in Implementing Data Centers	Page 106
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Better Manage Debt – Better Student Loans Dynamics	Page 114
Planning – Ways to Improve Trade	Page 128
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Education	Page 159
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Student Loans – Forgivable Provisions	Page 160
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Empowering Immigration – STEM Professionals	Page 174
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora	Page 217

The Go Lean movement celebrates Katherine Johnson today as a role model in STEM. (Though she is an African-American with no Caribbean connection). She is recognized worldwide – just wait until the movie is released – as a woman of accomplishment – in 2015 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom:

“So if you think your job is pressure-packed, hers meant that forgetting to carry the one might send somebody floating off into the solar system.” – US President Barack Obama said in honoring Katherine Johnson on November 24, 2015.

This day – August 26 – is also Women’s Equality Day – commemorating women being granted the right to vote in the US on August 26, 1920.

So we celebrate all women that strive to achieve; there are those that do a lot; there are also women that choose to do little, or nothing. We celebrate them too. That is their equal right!

Yes, we can all do better than the past experiences from our communities. The Caribbean can be better!

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, women and men, to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This roadmap will result in more positive socio-economic changes throughout the region; it will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

——-

Appendix VIDEO: Celebrating Katherine Johnson’s Great Mind – Human Computer – https://youtu.be/Bdr9QBRcPEk

Published on Sep 1, 2015 – In the early days of spaceflight, if NASA needed to plot a rocket’s path or confirm a computer’s calculations, they knew who to ask: Katherine Johnson.

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Caribbean Roots: Esther Rolle of ‘Good Times’

Posted on December 30, 2016 in Ethos, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean recognizes the significance of the TV Show “Good Times”, 1974 – 1979.

The show – the first episode titled Too Old Blues aired on February 8, 1974 – was a situation comedy about the African-American Evans Family; led by father James, mother Florida or “Flo”, sons J.J. and Michael and daughter Thelma. There were other supporting characters as well, like Willona Woods and her adopted daughter Penny. (Penny was the first acting role for music superstar Janet Jackson, the youngest sister of Michael Jackson of the Jackson 5 fame).

The show was produced by legendary TV producer Norman Lear and recorded on a “sound stage” in Hollywood, California. (There was no “live studio audience”).

What made “Good Times” notable was the ensemble cast of African American actors. But what kept viewers tuning in was the recognition of themselves in the faces on the screen. During the tough economic struggles of the seventies, many families struggled like the Evans family to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. While the subject matter was often bleak, the family had a way of making viewers forget their own troubles for at least 30 minutes. …

Despite the canned laugh tracks, we fell in love with the characters. More importantly, we fell in love with the actors and actresses who brought the show to life. Forty years after the show ended, we are just as interested in the actors as we were when the show was on the air. Chances are good that another 40 years can pass and the show will still hold interest. The actors who brought the show to life may leave this world but their characters will live in our memories and on our television screens for decades to come. It is rare for a show to last longer than a few seasons; [this show lasted 6 seasons]. It is rarer still for a show to generate new fans decades after it went off the air. For whatever reason, “Good Times” accomplished that rare feat, and the actors who starred in the show will always have us wondering -where are they now? – Depost.com Ad-supported Website

The focus of this show for the Go Lean movement is the composition of its cast, and the Caribbean roots of one of the main characters, Esther Rolle. The full cast is as follows:

BernNadette Stanis	Thelma Evans / … (133 episodes, 1974-1979)
Jimmie Walker	James ‘J.J.’ Evans, Jr. (133 episodes, 1974-1979)
Ralph Carter	Michael Evans (132 episodes, 1974-1979)
Ja’net DuBois	Willona Woods (124 episodes, 1974-1979)
Esther Rolle	Florida Evans (108 episodes, 1974-1979)
John Amos	James Evans, Sr. (59 episodes, 1974-1976)
Johnny Brown	Nathan Bookman (57 episodes, 1975-1979)

The Go Lean book identifies that film, television, theater and the arts can greatly impact society; in addition to the entertainment value, there is also image and impression. People can override many false precepts with excellent deliveries and contributions of great role models. This show, “Good Times”, was frequently recognized for a positive Black image.

So this great American TV show also had a great Caribbean contributor, Bahamas-bred Esther Rolle. Wow!

Esther Rolle became the first woman to receive the NAACP Chairman’s Civil Rights Leadership Award.

See the encyclopedic details here:

Title: Esther Rolle as Florida Evans in “Good Times”

You may remember Esther Rolle for her portrayal as the loving but strict mother of three children in the hit television show “Good Times.” Rolle was born 10th in a family of 18 children whom all dreamed of becoming actors and actresses. She began her career as a dancer and played many of her earliest roles on stage. Fans of the hit television show “Maude” may remember her introduction as Findlay’s housekeeper, which is how the popular spin-off show “Good Times” was introduced.

As the show progressed, Rolle became unhappy with the writer’s creative direction and felt that Jimmie Walker’s character was frivolous. Fans of the show might remember her heartbreaking performance as Florida Evans when she received news that her husband had died in a tragic car accident. The series went on with Rolle as a single mother struggling to make ends meet without his income, insurance, or support.
…
After her contract had ended, Rolle quit the show, and moved on to win an Emmy for her performance as a maid in the 1979 television movie “Summer of My German Soldier.” Her successful return to the stage also included a role in “A Raisin in the Sun,” and “Down in the Delta,” which was directed by Maya Angelou. She gained notoriety once again for another Maya Angelou classic, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.”

Esther Rolle’s later works included film work in “Driving Miss Daisy,” in 1990, and “Rosewood” in 1997. She was recognized as the first woman to receive the NAACP Civil Rights Leadership Award for raising the image of African Americans through her work on stage, television, and film. The same year, Rolle fell ill and was placed on kidney dialysis. She passed away, on November 17, 1998, shortly after her 78th birthday, from complications of diabetes. Rolle was married once but had no children.
Source: Retrieved December 30, 2016 from: http://deposts.com/cast-good-times-now/3/

———–

Early Life Biography:
Esther Rolle was born in Pompano Beach, Florida, to Bahamian immigrants Jonathan Rolle (1883–1953),^[2] a farmer, and Elizabeth Iris Rolle (née Dames; 1893–1981).^[3] Her parents were both born and raised in Nassau, New Providence, The Bahamas^[4][5][6] and moved to Florida some time after their marriage. She was the tenth of 18 children (children who included siblings and fellow actresses Estelle Evans and Rosanna Carter).^[7] Rolle graduated from Blanche Ely High School in Pompano Beach, Florida.^[8] She initially studied at Spelman College in Atlanta, but she moved to New York City.^[8] While in New York, she attended Hunter College. Rolle transferred to The New School and, finally, Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.”^[9] For many years, Rolle worked in a traditional day job in New York City’s garment district.^[10]Source: Retrieved December 30, 2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Rolle#Early_life

Though she died over 18 years ago, on November 17, 1998, we still feel her impact. She proved to be an iconic TV character for 20th Century America; she fomented and fostered a great image not just for Americans or Bahamians or Caribbean people, but for the entire African-descended race, for their entertainers. For this reason, she received the first ever NAACP Civil Rights Leadership Award given to a woman.

Caribbean Girls rock!

As specified in a recent blog-commentary and in the Go Lean book, the American Civil Rights agency, the National Association for the Advancement for Colored People (NAACP), was established in 1915 and immediately campaigned to elevate the status and image of Black people in America and beyond. This “image” precept is also an important factor in the roadmap to elevate Caribbean society. So the Go Lean book details a plan to monitor defamations against the Caribbean image; this includes recognition and appreciation for Caribbean achievement as well. As follows, this excerpt (Page 133) from Go Lean book highlights this “Image Quest”:

The majority of the Caribbean population descends from an African ancestry – a legacy of slavery from previous centuries. Despite the differences in nationality, culture and language, the image of the African Diaspora is all linked hand-in-hand. And thus, when Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali and Bob Marley impacted the world with their contributions, the reverberations were felt globally, not just in their homelands. It is hard for one segment of the black world to advance when other segments have a negative global image. This is exemplified with the election of Barack Obama as US President; his election was viewed as an ascent for the entire Black race.

Over 100 years ago, the NAACP came to understand the power and influence of the then new medium of film and added the mandate to their charter to confront the misuse of media to influence negative public attitudes toward race. … Today, the NAACP Hollywood Bureau continues to monitor the industry for offensive and defamatory images in film and television. It also sponsors the Image Awards Show to honor outstanding people of color in film, television, music, and literature, as well as those individuals or groups who promote social justice through their creative endeavors.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This CU strives to advance Caribbean image and culture with these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance.

This roadmap recognizes that a prerequisite for advancing society is a change in the Caribbean community ethos. Early in the book, the contributions that culture (music, film, theater, dance and artistic expressions) can make is pronounced as an ethos for the entire region to embrace, (opening Declaration of Interdependence – DOI – Pages 15) with these statements:

xxxii. Whereas the cultural arts and music 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 and music in domestic and foreign markets. These endeavors will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

Esther Rolle – an American of Caribbean descent – was the embodiment of all of these above values. She impacted the image and culture of African Americans in her country, and thusly impacted the Black image to the rest of the world. Like another Caribbean musical icon, Bob Marley, Esther Rolle set a pathway for success for other generations of talented, inspirational and influential artists to follow. Other artists of Caribbean heritage are sure to emerge and “impact the world”. We are preparing for it, as specified in the same DOI – Page 13:

xxi. 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.

The CU represents the change that has come to the Caribbean. The people, institutions and governance of the region are all urged to “lean-in” to this roadmap for change. We know it is important to highlight the positive contributions of Caribbean people, even their descendants and legacies.

We salute those ones from our past, people like Esther Rolle whose parents left their Bahamas home for job opportunities in the agricultural fields of Florida. We know there are “new” Esther Rolle-types throughout Caribbean member-states, waiting to be fostered. We salute them as our future and pledge to create the local-domestic opportunities … without leaving home.

The following list details the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster future entertainers in the Caribbean:

Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Caribbean Vision	Page 45
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Patents & Copyrights	Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Culture Administration	Page 81
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media	Page 111
Advocacy – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Hollywood	Page 203
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts	Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music	Page 231

Esther Rolle also impacted the world as a role model for Senior Citizens. In her last movie, Down in the Delta, she played the role of an aging wife-mother who suffered from Alzheimer’s Dementia. She played that role with dignity; she showcased to the world the challenge and honor associated with families fulfilling their obligations to their aging parents and spouses. This movie was written and directed by famed African-American poet Maya Angelou; (also a familiar role model for the Caribbean). See the highlights of the movie here:

VIDEO – Down in the Delta TRAILER – https://youtu.be/IOij6VZrBWE

Published on Jul 19, 2013 – Sometimes The Best Place To Be…Is The Place You Least Expected. Down In The Delta brings together an outstanding cast of stars in an uplifting story of family, community and friendship! In a desperate attempt to change her life, Loretta a troubled single mother from a tough Chicago neighborhood – is sent to spend a summer at her family’s ancestral home in rural Mississippi. In The Delta, with the support and wisdom of her hardworking uncle Earl, Loretta finally begins to see a way to provide for her young children and reverse the downward slide of her life!

Esther Rolle also provided a fine example of retirement and estate planning:

When she died in 1998 – at age 78 – she left an estate valued in excess of $1.7 million including $200,000 in cash a $400,000 home, $1,072,000 in treasuries. In addition, she owned 1,000 shares of Bethdames Corporation, several Mutual Funds, and 2% interest in El Toro (Restaurants), Ltd.. – Source: IMDB.com.

Esther Rolle came, saw and conquered! The same was said of Sammy Davis Jr. in the previous blog. See an interview in the Appendix below between Davis and Rolle. They both fit the definition of role models – as defined here by Booker T Washington – where they overcame obstacles and made an impact to benefit more than just themselves.

“I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.”^[B].

Previously, this blog-commentary identified other role models in these obituary submissions:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10015	E. R. Braithwaite, Author of ‘To Sir, With Love’ – RIP
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9948	Role Model and Caribbean Roots of Sammy Davis, Jr.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8724	Remembering Marcus Garvey: A Role Model; Still Relevant Today
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7682	Frederick Douglass: Role Model for a Single Cause
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6593	Dr. Mobley – Role Model as a BusinessSchool Dean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2726	Caribbean Role Model – Oscar De La Renta – RIP
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2297	Role Models in Contrast: Booker T Washington -vs- W.E.B. Du Bois
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1037	Role Model and Humanities Advocate – Maya Angelou – R.I.P.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=866	Caribbean Musical Icon and Role Model: Bob Marley

The world is a better place because of Esther Rolle. Her contribution were on the stage and the screen; as an actress she was known for her dramatic roles and stage presence; but she had great “comedic chops” as well. Her days were truly “Good Times”, as her TV show portrayed.

She died 18 years ago; that’s a long time as celebrities die every year – 2016 has been an especially bad year; see list here – and yet we are remembering this one from 1998; this is because of her Caribbean roots. She helped to elevate the Caribbean image; to reinforce the message that we are just as good as anyone else; or maybe even better with our diverse passions. We carry on without her but we are better off for her role model; and forever impacted by her legacy. We urged all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to the Go Lean … Caribbean roadmap and the fine role model-example of Esther Rolle. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———-

Appendix VIDEO – Sammy Davis Jr. Interviews Esther Rolle – https://youtu.be/npHzc6CBGp8

Uploaded November 4, 2010 – Clip from the 1970’s Variety-Talk Show: “Sammy & Company”

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Fake News? Welcome to America

Posted on December 19, 2016 in Ethos, Government, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

American media lives in a land of fantasy.

Consider these Fake News instances:

This is probably true of their news output because so many of the corporate structures that own non-fiction news operations also own fiction-based media operations. Consider these examples of same ownership:

Fox News	21st Century Fox Movie Studio
NBC News / CNBC / MSNBC	Universal Pictures
CBS News	Simon-Shuster Book Publishing
ABC News	Disney Studios; Pixar; Marvel Studios; LucasFilms; Touchstone Pictures
Cable News Network (CNN)	Warner Brothers Movie Studio

No doubt, this fact – knowing where the bread is buttered – contributes to the duality and duplicity of these corporate citizens.

Now there is a new phenomenon in the world of media duality and duplicity: Fake News.

This is more malicious than initial appearances. See/hear the full story here in this Podcast and the subsequent VIDEO:

Title: How Fake News Spreads & Why People Believe It

Published December 14, 2016 – Buzzfeed News’ media editor, Craig Silverman, dissects how false stories during the presidential campaign were spread on Facebook and monetized by Google Ad Sense. Also, critic at-large John Powers shares six things he loved this year that he didn’t get around to reviewing.

—————

VIDEO – The onslaught of fake news – http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/the-onslaught-of-fake-news/

Posted December 18, 2016 (9:53 minutes) – In these partisan, high-tech times, are the news stories we Americans read, see, and hear fact or fiction? Senior correspondent Ted Koppel examines the landscape of lies and slander disguised as news stories, spread via social media, that bear little relation to facts. (VIDEO plays best in Internet Explorer).

Fake News appear to just be another example of American Crony-Capitalism where they exploit the public good for private gain. Media has frequently been used to exploit the people. This commentary previously detailed the focus on fantasy as opposed to the vital facts of weather reporting.

Weather information is vital in different situations; think hurricanes. But news and information is vital everyday, rain or shine. So a situation where Fake News may thrive would be counterproductive to society. Many Americans — 62 percent to be exact — get some news from social media, according to the Pew Research Center. Of that group, 18 percent say they do so “often”.

This consideration aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean; this book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This empowerment effort represents a change for the region, calling on all 30 member-states in the region to confederate and provide their own solutions in the areas of economics, security and governance. News and information relates to all three areas. The CU/Go Lean roadmap has these prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion GDP and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to enhance public safety and protect the resultant economic engines against “bad actors”.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The new emergence of Fake News seems apropos for the American eco-system, where fame seems more important than facts and style more important than substance:

Fame or infamy, either one is preferable to being forgotten – Hollywood Actress Lauren Bacall – Go Lean book Page 194.

This is a time when the American eco-system appears to be dysfunctional and filled with bad intent. No wonder the American eco-system is transforming from industrial to consumer, with trade deficits with all the industrial giants in the world; think Germany, Japan, South Korea and China.

The Caribbean is looking, listening and learning from the American model. We do NOT want to follow suit!

Yes, we want to develop our own social media – site: www.myCaribbean.gov – but with better rules for minimizing Fake News compared to the current American examples. Notice the mitigation now been deployed by Facebook & Google in the link here:

http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-google-crack-down-fake-news-advertising-n684101

The book Go Lean…Caribbean asserts that the Caribbean region must not allow the US to take the lead for our own nation-building, that American capitalistic interest tends to highjack policies intended for the Greater Good. This assessment is logical considering that the 2016 Presidential Election may have been a victim of this systemic disinformation. This is an issue of security.

This broken system in America does not have to be modeled in the Caribbean. Change has now come. The driver of this change is technology and globalization. The Go Lean roadmap provides turn-by-turn directions on how to forge this change in the region for a reboot of these Caribbean societal systems, including media institutions. This roadmap is thusly viewed as more than just a planning tool, pronouncing this point early in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13) with this statement:

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…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 purports that the Caribbean can – and must – do better. The vision of the CU is a confederation of the 30 member-states of the Caribbean to do the heavy-lifting of optimizing economic-security-governing engines. The Go Lean book details the policies and other community ethos to adopt, plus the executions of the following strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to elevate Caribbean society, and mandate a society based on truth:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Privacy versus Public Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Whistleblower Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Light Up the Dark Places	Page 23
Community Ethos – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation	Page 23
Community Ethos – Intelligence Gathering	Page 23
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Agents of Change – Technology	Page 57
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization	Page 57
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Emergency Management – Notifications	Page 75
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Communications and Media Authority	Page 79
Implementation – Security Initiatives at Start-up	Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media	Page 111
Implementation – Ways to Impact Elections	Page 116
Implementation – Ways to Benefit from Globalization	Page 119
Planning – Lessons Learned from 2008 – Lax Regulations	Page 136
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 169
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 171
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice	Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security	Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering & Analysis	Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Communications	Page 186
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street	Page 201
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Hollywood – Media Industrial Complex	Page 220

The foregoing Audio-Podcast and VIDEO relate the serious concern for Caribbean planners. While the US is the world’s largest Single Market economy, we want to only model some of the American example. We would rather foster a business climate to benefit the Greater Good, not just some special interest group.

There are many Go Lean blog commentaries that have echoed this point, addressing the subject of the Caribbean avoiding American consequences. See sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9648	Bad American Model – Public Schools for Black-and-Brown
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9646	Bad American Model – American Vices. Don’t Follow!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9626	Bad American Model – Marginalizing Our Vote
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9038	Charity Management: The Need for Self-Rule
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6893	American Meteorologists Views On Climate Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5482	American For-Profit Education: Plenty of Profit; Little Education
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4076	American Media Fantasies -vs- Weather Realities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2338	How Caribbean can Mitigate the Dreaded ‘Plutocracy’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2259	The Criminalization of American Business
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1143	Health-care fraud in America; Criminals take $272 billion a year
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273	10 Things We *Don’t* Want from the US – American Self-Interest Policies

The book Go Lean…Caribbean posits that many problems of the region are too big for any one member-state to solve alone, but that we do not need American leadership, rather instead, we need the technocracy of the CU Trade Federation. The purpose this roadmap is to make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work, and play. Fake News does not fit into that vision, though it is inevitable if we allow online media to be molded by the American example. We do not want to be America; we want to be better.

We also do not want China’s internet policing models; this is too restrictive and too little regard for the freedom of the press. We want the provisions and benefits as described in the Go Lean book. This posits that to succeed as a society, and to succeed in our regional deployment of social media, the Caribbean must not only consume, but must also create, produce, and distribute intellectual property products and services. We need to be motivated for the Greater Good.

We do need regional oversight and regulation … for our airwaves and broadband networks, but not too heavy and not too light.

May this bad history of Fake News in America in 2016 be a cautionary tale for the Caribbean. A tale of how not to proceed.

Lesson learned! 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Crony-Capitalism, Model, New Media, Power, Transform

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E. R. Braithwaite, Author of ‘To Sir, With Love’ – RIP

Posted on December 16, 2016 in Ethos, Social

Go Lean Commentary

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that one person can make a difference in society; that one can engage a hero’s journey and overcome obstacles to impact society to benefit themselves and others. The book posits that such a hero can function in a lot of different areas of specialty; in fact the book identifies 144 different advocacies, therefore portraying that there a lot of ways to help our Caribbean society. This aligns with this principle:

“ordinary people who choose to do extraordinary things, and in doing so, become part of something greater than themselves”.

We come to this reckoning today … as the Caribbean mourns the passing of Guyana-born author Edward Ricardo Braithwaite; (June 27, 1912 – December 12, 2016); he published under the name E. R. Braithwaite. In his long and accomplished lifetime he excelled as a novelist, writer, teacher, and diplomat, best known for his stories of social conditions and racial discrimination against Black people. He was the author of the 1959 book To Sir, With Love, which was made into the highly acclaimed 1967 British drama film of the same title, starring Sidney Poitier and budding musical artist Lulu. May he “Rest In Peace”.

See the New York Times story here and an excerpt VIDEO from movie below:

Title: E. R. Braithwaite, Author of ‘To Sir, With Love,’ Dies at 104
E. R. Braithwaite, a Guyanese author, diplomat and former Royal Air Force pilot whose book “To Sir, With Love,” a memoir of teaching in London’s deprived East End, was adapted into a hit 1967 film starring Sidney Poitier, died on Monday in Rockville, Md. He was 104.

Mr. Braithwaite’s companion, Genevieve Ast, confirmed his death to The Associated Press. He had taught English at HowardUniversity, in Washington, and lived in the area for many years.

Mr. Braithwaite, who became a diplomat and represented Guyana at the United Nations and in Venezuela, wrote several books, many about racism in countries like South Africa and the United States, where he lived much of his life. But he is best known for “To Sir, With Love” (1959).

The book chronicled his efforts — as a courtly, Cambridge-educated military veteran who had been denied employment as an engineer because he was black — to motivate a group of unruly adolescents raised in a slum in early-1950s Britain, which was still slowly recovering from the austerity of the war years.

The students’ antisocial behavior, casual racism, penchant for violence and, worst of all, self-hatred horrify the new teacher, whose colleagues expect little of the pupils.

He takes them to museums and tells them about his childhood. Slowly, he gains their trust by showing respect and affection, which, for most of the students, have been in short supply. (The title of the book comes from an inscription his appreciative students wrote on a pack of cigarettes they gave him.) He also develops romantic feelings for another teacher, who, like the students, is white.

The memoir was praised for offering a sympathetic account of race and class without naïveté or excessive sentimentality.
Source: New York Times – Daily Newspaper; Posted 12-13-2016; retrieved 12-15-2016 from: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/books/e-r-braithwaite-author-of-to-sir-with-love-dies-at-104.html?_r=1

VIDEO – Excerpt: ‘To Sir With Love’ (1967) – The Ending – https://youtu.be/nXaEf4ktpPA

Published on Apr 2, 2014 – The rather mawkish, sentimental ending of ‘To Sir, with love’ – Thackeray (Sidney Poitier) tears up his letter of acceptance for an engineering job, and decides to stay at the school.

See the link for the Full Movie in the Appendix below.

That book – To Sir With Love – in 1959 and the subsequent movie in 1967 was a great depiction of the struggles of Black people that migrated to America and the UK; (all of Western Europe for that matter). This was autobiographical. Despite the colonial heritage and the “One Empire” precept, Black immigrants were not treated kindly – “K.B.W.” was a popular phrase at that time: Keep Britain White – they were rejected and resisted in all corners of society of their new homes. These media works helped to convey that pain and suffering for the ordinary (Black) man who tried to move there.

These works were acclaimed and recognized with many awards:

Awards and honors

Laurel Awards

Sleeper of the Year: 1968^[10]

Female New Face – 2nd place: Judy Geeson – 1968^[11]

Nominations

Directors Guild of America

Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures: James Clavell – 1967^[12]

Laurel Awards

Male New Face: Christian Roberts – 1968^[13]

10th Annual Grammy Awards

Best Original Score from a Motion Picture or Television Show: 1968^[14]

Other honors

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

2004: AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs:

“To Sir With Love” – Nominated^[15]

Source: Retrieved December 13, 2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Sir,_with_Love

That world of 1959 (or 1967) was a hard existence for a Black man … of Caribbean heritage in America or in the UK. For E.R. Braithwaite to be so accomplished, despite the overbearing racism of the day, is a testament to his devotion to excellence and accomplishment.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean defines that the struggle and effort of this great media work – To Sir With Love – and its Author, a Guyana Diaspora-member, aligns with our movement. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This CU strives to advance Caribbean image and culture with these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance.

A celebration of life for E.R. Braithwaite is also a celebration of Sidney Poitier (age 89), the starring actor of the movie ‘To Sir With Love‘. As Braithwaite was a Caribbean Diaspora-member – from Guyana – so too is Poitier, who is from the Bahamas. Poitier is equally accomplished; as reported in a previous Go Lean commentary, in 1964, Poitier won an Oscar for his performance in the movie ‘Lillies of the Field‘. Hollywood Star and Actress Ann Bancroft, presenting him the award during the telecast and gave him a peck on the cheek. Racial conservatives were outraged. Interracial marriage was still widely outlawed in different communities (think Southern US) and civil rights workers were being killed. Poitier’s Oscar was a symbol that things were changing.

This Go Lean roadmap seeks to change … the Caribbean (not the UK or the rest of the world), so that men (and women) of accomplishment do not have to leave their Caribbean homes to work their craft; they should be able to “work” at home. Our region has to be reformed and transformed to provide such advanced opportunities. The roadmap recognizes that a prerequisite for advancing society is a change in the Caribbean community ethos. Early in the book, the contributions of the arts and artists (music, film, theater and artistic expressions) are pronounced as an ethos for the entire region to embrace; this is identified in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 15) with this statement:

xxxii. Whereas the cultural arts and music 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 and music in domestic and foreign markets. These endeavors will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

E.R. Braithwaite elevated the culture and image of African Caribbean people in refuge countries (UK and US), and thusly elevated the Black image to the rest of the world. Perhaps this is his greatest legacy, presenting the viability that anyone, from anywhere, can impact his home and the rest of the world. Other Caribbean artists have thusly followed – think musical icon Bob Marley – and more will follow suit going forward. The Go Lean book has prepared a pathway for success for future generations of talented, inspirational and influential Caribbean artists. These ones are sure to emerge, and we want them to have the greatest impact on the world and on the Caribbean image further. We are thusly preparing for this, as specified in the same Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13) with this statement:

xxi. 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.

The CU represents the change that must be made in and to the Caribbean. The people, institutions and governance of the region are all urged to “lean-in” to this roadmap for change. We know it is important to highlight the positive contributions of Caribbean people, even their Diaspora.

The following list details the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster future artists in the Caribbean:

Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Caribbean Vision	Page 45
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Patents & Copyrights	Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Culture Administration	Page 81
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media	Page 111
Advocacy – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Hollywood	Page 203
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora	Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts	Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music	Page 231

Previously, this blog-commentary composed other obituaries of role models whose life and legacy made an impact on Caribbean life. These are the previous submissions:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9948	Caribbean Roots: Sammy Davis, Jr. – RIP
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9813	Fidel Castro – RIP – Is Dead. Now What?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8165	Role Model Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight – RIP
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6593	Dr. Mobley – Role Model as a BusinessSchool Dean – RIP
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2726	Caribbean Role Model – Oscar De La Renta – RIP
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1037	Role Model and Humanities Advocate – Maya Angelou – R.I.P.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=866	Caribbean Musical Icon and Role Model: Bob Marley – RIP

E.R. Braithwaite impacted the world of popular culture … and then some. There was the book, movie and song all entitled To Sir With Love. We felt his impact on the world and we will all miss his presence; RIP. The world is a better place because he was here. He came; he saw; he conquered.

We must now carry on without him, but we are empowered by his role model. We now know that any Caribbean stakeholder, resident or Diaspora, can impact the world and their homeland to make it a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———-

Appendix VIDEO – ‘To Sir With Love’ (1967) – Watch the Full Movie – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89yJ6rIdibs

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Arts, Diaspora, Obituary, UK

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Lessons Learned from Pearl Harbor

Posted on December 12, 2016 in Ethos, Government, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

What would you do if backed into a corner and there’s a threat on your life?

For many people their natural impulse is to come out fighting. They say that this is not aggression, rather just a survival instinct.

Believe it or not, this depiction describes one of the biggest attacks in American history: the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor. See VIDEO here:

VIDEO – World War II History: Attack on Pearl Harbor – http://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/world-war-ii-history/videos/attack-pearl-harbor

Retrieved December 7, 2016 from History.com – On December 7, 1941, Japan launches a surprise attack on American soil at Pearl Harbor.

This is the 75th Anniversary of that attack – a few days ago: December 7. That’s a lot of years and a lot of lessons. Still, 75 is a pretty round number, like 25, 50 and 100. This commentary has been reserved for now, a few days late on purpose because of the best-practice to “not speak ill of the dead” at a funeral or memorial service. But a “lessons learned analysis” is still an important exercise for benefiting from catastrophic efforts. After 75 years since the Pearl Harbor Attack on December 7, 1941, this post-mortem analysis is just as shocking as it was on this “day of infamy”.

Consider the details of this maligning article here (and the Appendices below); notice that it assumes a conspiracy:

Title: How U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan’s Attack on Pearl Harbor
By: Robert Higgs

Ask a typical American how the United States got into World War II, and he will almost certainly tell you that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the Americans fought back. Ask him why the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and he will probably need some time to gather his thoughts. He might say that the Japanese were aggressive militarists who wanted to take over the world, or at least the Asia-Pacific part of it. Ask him what the United States did to provoke the Japanese, and he will probably say that the Americans did nothing: we were just minding our own business when the crazy Japanese, completely without justification, mounted a sneak attack on us, catching us totally by surprise in Hawaii on December 7, 1941.

You can’t blame him much. For more than 60 years such beliefs have constituted the generally accepted view among Americans, the one taught in schools and depicted in movies—what “every schoolboy knows.” Unfortunately, this orthodox view is a tissue of misconceptions. Don’t bother to ask the typical American what U.S. economic warfare had to do with provoking the Japanese to mount their attack, because he won’t know. Indeed, he will have no idea what you are talking about.

In the late nineteenth century, Japan’s economy began to grow and to industrialize rapidly. Because Japan has few natural resources, many of the burgeoning industries had to rely on imported raw materials, such as coal, iron ore or steel scrap, tin, copper, bauxite, rubber, and petroleum. Without access to such imports, many of which came from the United States or from European colonies in southeast Asia, Japan’s industrial economy would have ground to a halt. By engaging in international trade, however, the Japanese had built a moderately advanced industrial economy by 1941.

At the same time, they also built a military-industrial complex to support an increasingly powerful army and navy. These armed forces allowed Japan to project its power into various places in the Pacific and east Asia, including Korea and northern China, much as the United States used its growing industrial might to equip armed forces that projected U.S. power into the Caribbean and Latin America, and even as far away as the Philippine Islands.

When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president in 1933, the U.S. government fell under the control of a man who disliked the Japanese and harbored a romantic affection for the Chinese because, some writers have speculated, Roosevelt’s ancestors had made money in the China trade.^[1] Roosevelt also disliked the Germans (and of course Adolf Hitler), and he tended to favor the British in his personal relations and in world affairs. He did not pay much attention to foreign policy, however, until his New Deal began to peter out in 1937. Afterward, he relied heavily on foreign policy to fulfill his political ambitions, including his desire for reelection to an unprecedented third term.

When Germany began to rearm and to seek Lebensraum aggressively in the late 1930s, the Roosevelt administration cooperated closely with the British and the French in measures to oppose German expansion. After World War II commenced in 1939, this U.S. assistance grew ever greater and included such measures as the so-called destroyer deal and the deceptively named Lend-Lease program. In anticipation of U.S. entry into the war, British and U.S. military staffs secretly formulated plans for joint operations. U.S. forces sought to create a war-justifying incident by cooperating with the British navy in attacks on German U-boats in the north Atlantic, but Hitler refused to take the bait, thus denying Roosevelt the pretext he craved for making the United States a full-fledged, declared belligerent—an end that the great majority of Americans opposed.

In June 1940, Henry L. Stimson, who had been secretary of war under Taft and secretary of state under Hoover, became secretary of war again. Stimson was a lion of the Anglophile, northeastern upper crust and no friend of the Japanese. In support of the so-called Open Door Policy for China, Stimson favored the use of economic sanctions to obstruct Japan’s advance in Asia. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes vigorously endorsed this policy. Roosevelt hoped that such sanctions would goad the Japanese into making a rash mistake by launching a war against the United States, which would bring in Germany because Japan and Germany were allied.

Accordingly, the Roosevelt administration, while curtly dismissing Japanese diplomatic overtures to harmonize relations, imposed a series of increasingly stringent economic sanctions on Japan. In 1939 the United States terminated the 1911 commercial treaty with Japan. “On July 2, 1940, Roosevelt signed the Export Control Act, authorizing the President to license or prohibit the export of essential defense materials.” Under this authority, “[o]n July 31, exports of aviation motor fuels and lubricants and No. 1 heavy melting iron and steel scrap were restricted.” Next, in a move aimed at Japan, Roosevelt slapped an embargo, effective October 16, “on all exports of scrap iron and steel to destinations other than Britain and the nations of the Western Hemisphere.” Finally, on July 26, 1941, Roosevelt “froze Japanese assets in the United States, thus bringing commercial relations between the nations to an effective end. One week later Roosevelt embargoed the export of such grades of oil as still were in commercial flow to Japan.”^[2] The British and the Dutch followed suit, embargoing exports to Japan from their colonies in southeast Asia.

An Untenable Position
Roosevelt and his subordinates knew they were putting Japan in an untenable position and that the Japanese government might well try to escape the stranglehold by going to war. Having broken the Japanese diplomatic code, the Americans knew, among many other things, what Foreign Minister Teijiro Toyoda had communicated to Ambassador Kichisaburo Nomura on July 31: “Commercial and economic relations between Japan and third countries, led by England and the United States, are gradually becoming so horribly strained that we cannot endure it much longer. Consequently, our Empire, to save its very life, must take measures to secure the raw materials of the South Seas.”^[3]

Because American cryptographers had also broken the Japanese naval code, the leaders in Washington knew as well that Japan’s “measures” would include an attack on Pearl Harbor.^[4] Yet they withheld this critical information from the commanders in Hawaii, who might have headed off the attack or prepared themselves to defend against it. That Roosevelt and his chieftains did not ring the tocsin makes perfect sense: after all, the impending attack constituted precisely what they had been seeking for a long time. As Stimson confided to his diary after a meeting of the war cabinet on November 25, “The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”^[5] After the attack, Stimson confessed that “my first feeling was of relief … that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people.^[6]

Source: The Independent Institute – Online Community – Posted: May 1, 2006; retrieved December 7, 2016 from: http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1930
——–
See Appendices below for cited references and profiles of the Author and the Organization.

So this establishes why the Japanese may have been motivated to attack Pearl Harbor in the first place. The motivation seems more complicated than initially reported.

The Bible declares that:

“For there is nothing hidden that will not become manifest” – Luke 8:17

After 75 years, the before-during-after facts associated with the Pearl Harbor Attack should be available for full disclosure. What are the lessons here for the Caribbean and today’s effort to secure the Caribbean homeland while expanding the regional economy? We truly want to consider these main points, these lessons; (the hyperlinks refer to previous Go Lean commentaries):

Lessons

Territories have a status of disregard	Hawaii (Pearl Harbor) and Philippines were attacked by the Japanese. These were both US Territories at the same. The levels of protection and preparedness for territories are sub-standard compared to the American mainland. As a result there was no meaningful plan for the air defense of Hawaii.
Colonialism is/was really bad	Japan protested the sub-standard reality of the native Asians under the European colonial schemes. A people oppressed, suppressed and repressed would not remain docile forever; “that a downtrodden people would not stay down, that they would rise and revolt, that they would risk their lives and that of their children to pursue freedom.” – Go Lean book Page 251.
White Supremacy is/was a really bad construct	The US Territories (Hawaii and Philippines) were not the first targets for Japan. They targeted all European colonies (British, French and Dutch) territories. Their campaign was to rail against White Supremacy.
Bullies only respond to a superior force	Japan avail themselves of expansion opportunities in Far-East Asia as the European powers became distracted in the time period during and after World War I. (Manchuria in China was occupied by Japan starting in 1931). Only a superior force, the US, was able to assuage their aggression.
Economic Warfare can back a Government into a corner	When the supply of basic needs (food, clothing, shelter and energy) are curtailed, a crisis ensues. When people are in crisis, they consider “fight or flight” options. Japan chose to fight; Caribbean people choose flight.
Societies can double-down on a bad Community Ethos	Japan’s aggression was a direct result of their community ethos that honored Samurai warrior and battle culture. Men would walk the streets with their swords, ready for a challenge. On the other hand, the US (and Western Europe) community ethos of racism was so ingrained that the natural response in the US, post-Pearl Harbor, was to intern Japanese Americans in camps. All of these bad community ethos were weeded out with post-WWII Human Rights reconciliations. – Go Lean book Page 220.
Double Standards are hard to ignore	Japan felt justified in their Pacific aggression because of the US’s regional aggression in the Americas. Before Pearl Harbor, they withdrew from the League of Nations in protest of double standards. Even after WWII, this double standard continues with countries with Veto power on the UN Security Council.
People have short memories	There are movements to re-ignite many of the same developments that led to the devastation of WWII: right wing initiatives in Japan and Germany; Human Rights disregard for large minority groups (Muslims, etc.). The more things change, the more they remain the same.

This discussion is analyzing the concept of “fight or flight”. According to Anthropologists, individuals and societies facing a crisis have to contend with these two options for survival. The very concept of refugees indicate that most people choose to flee; they choose internal displacement or refuge status in foreign countries. This point is consistent with the theme in the book Go Lean … Caribbean that this region is in crisis and as a result people have fled from their beloved homelands to foreign destinations in North America and Europe. How bad? According to one report, we have lost 70 percent of our tertiary-educated population.

Enough said! Our indictment is valid. Rather than flee, we now want the region to fight. This is not advocating a change to a militaristic state, but rather this commentary, and the underlying Go Lean book, advocates devoting “blood, sweat and tears” to empowering change in the Caribbean region. The book states this in its introduction (Page 3):

We cannot ignore the past, as it defines who we are, but we do not wish to be shackled to the past either, for then, we miss the future. So we must learn from the past, our experiences and that of other states in similar situations, mount our feet solidly to the ground and then lean-in, to reach for new heights; forward, upward and onward. This is what is advocated in this book: to Go Lean … Caribbean!

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). One mission of this roadmap is to reduce the “push and pull” factors that contributes to the high emigration rates. For the most part the “push and pull” factors relate to the societal defects among the economic, security and governing engines. Another mission is to incentivize the far-flung Diaspora to consider a return to the region. Overall, the Go Lean roadmap asserts that the economy of the Caribbean is inextricably linked to the security of the Caribbean. The roadmap therefore proposes an accompanying Security Pact to accompany the CU treaty’s economic empowerment efforts. The plan is to cooperate, collaborate and confer with all regional counterparts so as to provide an optimized Caribbean defense, against all threats, foreign and domestic. This includes the American Caribbean territories (just like Pearl Harbor was on the American territory of Hawaii) of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. These American protectorates are included in this CU regional plan.

This CU/Go Lean regional plan strives to advance all of Caribbean society with these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to a $800 Billion Single Market by creating 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance in support of these endeavors.

The Go Lean book stresses the effectiveness and efficiency of protecting life and property of all Caribbean stakeholders: residents, trading partners, visitors, etc.. This is why the book posits that some deployments are too big for any one member-state to manage alone – especially with such close proximities of one island nation to another – there are times when there must be a cross-border multi-lateral coordination – a regional partnership. This is the vision that is defined in the book (Pages 12 – 14), starting with these statements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence:

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. …

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.

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. …

The Go Lean roadmap is not a call for a revolt against the governments, agencies or institutions of the Caribbean region, but rather a petition for a peaceful transition and optimization of the economic, security and governing engines in the region. To establish the security optimization, the Go Lean book presents a series of community ethos that must be adapted to forge this change. In addition, there are these specific strategies, tactics, implementation and advocacies to apply:

Community Ethos – new Economic Principles	Page 21
Community Ethos – new Security Principles	Page 22
Community Ethos – Minority Equalization	Page 24
Community Ethos – Impacting the Greater Good	Page 34
Strategy – Mission – Enact a Defense Pact to defend the homeland	Page 45
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Homeland Security – Naval Operations	Page 75
Tactical – Homeland Security – Militias	Page 75
Implementation – Assemble – US Overseas Territory into CU	Page 96
Implementation – Foreign Policy Initiatives at Start-up	Page 102
Implementation – Security Initiatives at Start-up	Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Promote Independence	Page 120
Planning – Ways to Model the EU – Constructs after WW II	Page 130
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security	Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism	Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering	Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Enhance Tourism – Mitigate Risky Image	Page 190
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Emergency Management	Page 196
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Impact US Territories	Page 244

Now is the time to lean-in to this roadmap and “fight” for Caribbean change, as depicted in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. At this time, there are no State Actor adversaries – like Imperial Japan – seeking to cause harm to our homeland, but that status quo can change very quickly. Some Caribbean member-states are still de facto “colonies”, so enemies of our colonial masters – France, Netherlands, US, UK – can quickly “pop up”. We must be ready and on guard to any possible threats and security risks.

The movement behind the Go Lean … Caribbean book seeks to make this homeland a better place to live, work and play. Since the Caribbean is arguably the best address of the planet, tourism is a primary concern. So security here in our homeland must take on a different priority. Tourists do not visit war zones – civil wars, genocides, active terrorism, Failed-States and rampant crime. Already our societal defects (economics) have created such crises that our people have chosen to flee as opposed to “fight”. We do not need security threats as well; we do not need Failed-States. We are now preparing to “fight” (exert great efforts), not flee, to wage economic war to elevate our communities.

This will not be easy; this is heavy-lifting, but success is possible. The strategies, tactics and implementations in the Go Lean roadmap are conceivable, believable and achievable. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———–

Appendix A – Reference Notes:
1. Harry Elmer Barnes, “Summary and Conclusions,” in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace:A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Its Aftermath (Caldwell, Id.: Caxton Printers, 1953), pp. 682–83.
2. All quotations in this paragraph from George Morgenstern, “The Actual Road to Pearl Harbor,” in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, pp. 322–23, 327–28.
3. Quoted ibid., p. 329.
4. Robert B. Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor (NewYork: Free Press, 2000).
5. Stimson quoted in Morgenstern, p. 343.
6. Stimson quoted ibid., p. 384.

——-

Appendix B – About the Author:

Robert Higgs is a Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute and Editor at Large of the Institute’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from JohnsHopkinsUniversity, and he has taught at the University of Washington, LafayetteCollege, SeattleUniversity, the University of Economics, Prague, and GeorgeMasonUniversity.

——-

Appendix C – About the Independent Institute:

The Independent Institute is a non-profit, non-partisan, scholarly research and educational organization that sponsors in-depth studies of critical social and economic issues.

The mission of the Independent Institute is to boldly advance peaceful, prosperous, and free societies grounded in a commitment to human worth and dignity.

Today, the influence of partisan interests is so pervasive that public-policy debate has become too politicized and is largely confined to a narrow reconsideration of existing policies. In order to fully understand the nature of public issues and possible solutions, the Institute’s program adheres to the highest standards of independent scholarly inquiry.
Source: http://www.independent.org/aboutus/

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Civil Rights, Disaster, History, Power, Security

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Caribbean Roots: Sammy Davis, Jr.

Posted on December 8, 2016 in Ethos, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean recognizes the significance of this day, December 8th as the 91st birthday of the late great American entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr..

The Go Lean book identifies that music and the arts can greatly impact society; in addition to the entertainment value, there is also image, impression and advocacy – music can move people to change. People can override many false precepts with excellent deliveries and contributions of great role models, despite any handicaps.

“Talk about handicap. I’m a one-eyed Negro Jew.” – Sammy Davis Jr. Quote

Here’s a little known Black History fact:

The mother of Sammy Davis Jr., Elvera Sanchez, was an Afro-Cuban tap dancer.^[A]

So this great American entertainer actually had Caribbean roots. Wow! See the encyclopedic details here:

Title: Elvera Sanchez
Elvera Sanchez (September 1, 1905 – September 2, 2000) was an American dancer and the mother of Sammy Davis Jr..

During his lifetime, Davis Jr. stated that his mother was Puerto Rican and born in San Juan; however, in the 2003 biography In Black and White, author Wil Haygood wrote that Davis’ mother was born in New York City, of Afro-Cuban descent, and that Davis claimed she was Puerto Rican because he feared anti-Cuban backlash would hurt his record sales.
———-
Title: Sammy Davis Jr.
Samuel George “Sammy” Davis Jr. (December 8, 1925 – May 16, 1990) was an American entertainer. Primarily a dancer and singer, he was also an actor of stage and screen, comedian, musician, and impressionist, noted for his impersonations of actors, musicians and other celebrities. At the age of 3, Davis began his career in vaudeville with his father and Will Mastin as the Will Mastin Trio, which toured nationally. After military service, Davis returned to the trio. Davis became an overnight sensation following a nightclub performance at Ciro’s (in West Hollywood) after the 1951 Academy Awards. With the trio, he became a recording artist. In 1954, he lost his left eye in a car accident, and several years later, he converted to Judaism.

Davis’s film career began as a child in 1933. In 1960, he appeared in the Rat Pack film Ocean’s 11. After a starring role on Broadway in 1956’s Mr Wonderful, he returned to the stage in 1964’s Golden Boy. In 1966 he had his own TV variety show, titled The Sammy Davis Jr. Show. Davis’s career slowed in the late 1960s, but he had a hit record with “The Candy Man” in 1972 and became a star in Las Vegas, earning him the nickname “Mister Show Business”.

Davis was a victim of racism throughout his life, particularly during the pre-Civil Rights era, and was a large financial supporter of the Civil Rights movement. Davis had a complex relationship with the black community, and drew criticism after physically embracing President Richard Nixon in 1972. One day on a golf course with Jack Benny, he was asked what his handicap was. “Handicap?” he asked. “Talk about handicap. I’m a one-eyed Negro Jew.” This was to become a signature comment, recounted in his autobiography, and in countless articles.

After reuniting with Sinatra and Dean Martin in 1987, Davis toured with them and Liza Minnelli internationally, before he died of throat cancer in 1990. He died in debt to the Internal Revenue Service,[9] and his estate was the subject of legal battles.

Davis was awarded the Spingarn Medal by the NAACP and was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy Award for his television performances. He was the recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors in 1987, and in 2001, he was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Source: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia – Retrieved December 6, 2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Davis_Jr.

Though he died over 26 years ago, we still feel his impact. Sammy Davis Jr. was one of the most iconic characters in the American 20th Century. But his shadow spread across the entire African-descended world, not just America. He fomented and fostered a great image for African-descended entertainers. For this reason, the annual Soul Train Award for Best Entertainer of the Year has been renamed the Sammy Davis Jr. Award. (Soul Train refers to the weekly 1-hour TV program showcasing African-American Musicians and Dancers).

Since its inception in 1915, the American Civil Rights agency, the National Association for the Advancement for Colored People (NAACP), campaigned to elevate the status and image of Black people in America and beyond. This “image” precept is also an important factor in the roadmap to elevate Caribbean society. So the Go Lean book details a plan to monitor for defamations against the Caribbean image; this includes recognition and appreciation for Caribbean achievement as well. As follows, this excerpt (Page 133) from Go Lean book highlights this “Image Quest”:

The majority of the Caribbean population descends from an African ancestry – a legacy of slavery from previous centuries. Despite the differences in nationality, culture and language, the image of the African Diaspora is all linked hand-in-hand. And thus, when Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali and Bob Marley impacted the world with their contributions, the reverberations were felt globally, not just in their homelands. It is hard for one segment of the black world to advance when other segments have a negative global image. This is exemplified with the election of Barack Obama as US President; his election was viewed as an ascent for the entire Black race.

Over 100 years ago, the NAACP came to understand the power and influence of the then new medium of film and added the mandate to their charter to confront the misuse of media to influence negative public attitudes toward race. … Today, the NAACP Hollywood Bureau continues to monitor the industry for offensive and defamatory images in film and television. It also sponsors the Image Awards Show to honor outstanding people of color in film, television, music, and literature, as well as those individuals or groups who promote social justice through their creative endeavors.

Sammy Davis, Jr. was awarded the NAACP Image Award in 1989.

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance.

xxxii. Whereas the cultural arts and music 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 and music in domestic and foreign markets. These endeavors will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

Sammy Davis Jr. – an American of Caribbean descent – was the embodiment of all of these above values. He impacted the music, culture and image of African American in his country, and thusly impacted the Black image for the rest of the world. Like Caribbean musical icon, Bob Marley, Sammy Davis Jr. set a pathway for success for other generations of talented, inspirational and influential artists to follow. Other artists of Caribbean heritage are sure to emerge and “impact the world”. We are preparing for it, as specified in the same DOI – Page 13:

xxi. 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.

The CU represents the change that has come to the Caribbean. The people, institutions and governance of region are all urged to “lean-in” to this roadmap for change. We know it is important to highlight the positive contributions of Caribbean people, even their descendants and legacies.

We salute those ones from our past, people like Elvera Sanchez who left Cuba as a youth for opportunities in the world of entertainment. We know there are “new” Elvera Sanchez-types and “new” Sammy Davis-types throughout Caribbean member-states, waiting to be fostered. We salute them as our future.

The following list details the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster future entertainers in the Caribbean:

Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Caribbean Vision	Page 45
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Patents & Copyrights	Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Culture Administration	Page 81
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media	Page 111
Advocacy – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage Image	Page 133
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Hollywood	Page 203
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts	Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music	Page 231

Sammy Davis, Jr. also impacted the world of politics and civil rights. See here:

Davis was a registered Democrat – [as most African Americans] – and supported John F. Kennedy’s 1960 election campaign as well as Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 campaign.^[43]

However, he became a close friend to President Richard Nixon and publicly endorsed him at the 1972 Republican National Convention.^[43]Davis also made a USO tour to South Vietnam – during the Vietnam War – at Nixon’s request. Previously, Davis had won Nixon’s respect with his participation in the Civil Rights Movement. Nixon invited Davis and his wife, Altovise, to sleep in the White House in 1973, the first time African Americans were invited to do so. The Davises spent the night in the Queens’ Bedroom.^[44]

Davis was a long-time donor to the Reverend Jesse Jackson‘s Operation PUSH organization. Jackson also performed Davis’s wedding.^[45]

Sammy Davis Jr. came, saw and conquered! He fit the definition of a role model, where he overcame obstacles and made an impact to benefit more than just himself.

“I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.”^[B] – Booker T Washington.

Previously, this blog-commentary identified other role models in these submissions:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8724	Remembering Marcus Garvey: A Role Model; Still Relevant Today
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8495	NBA Greatness and Caribbean Roots: Tim Duncan Retires
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8328	YouTube Role Model with Caribbean Roots: ‘Tipsy Bartender’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7682	Frederick Douglass: Role Model for a Single Cause
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6593	Dr. Mobley – Role Model as a Business School Dean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2726	Caribbean Role Model – Oscar De La Renta – RIP
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2297	Role Models in Contrast: Booker T Washington versus W.E.B. Du Bois
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1037	Role Model and Humanities Advocate – Maya Angelou – R.I.P.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=866	Caribbean Musical Icon and Role Model: Bob Marley

The world is a better place because of Sammy Davis Jr. being born on this day in 1925. Thank you “Candy Man” for all the love you showed for your craft, your country and your people. See the VIDEO here of his 1987 Kennedy Center Induction:

VIDEO – Sammy Davis, JR. “Honoree” – 10th Kennedy Center Honors, 1987 – https://youtu.be/ii3XpjCOlXo

Published on Jan 20, 2015 – LUCILLE BALL introduces honoree SAMMY DAVIS, JR. Excellent performances for Sammy by RAY CHARLES “Birth Of The Blues” & tap dancers, in order of appearance onto stage: 1 & 2) The NICOLAS BROTHERS (HAROLD & FAYARD), 3) CHUCK GREEN, 4) JIMMY SLYDE, and 5) ‘SANDMAN’ SIMS.

We carry on without Sammy Davis Jr., but we are better off for his role model and forever impacted by his legacy. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

————-

Appendix Reference A

“Elvera Sanchez Davis, obituary, September 8, 2000”. The New York Times. September 8, 2000. Retrieved September 18, 2009.

————-

Appendix Reference B

Harlan, Louis R (1972), Booker T. Washington: volume 1: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901. The major scholarly biography.

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Arts, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Model, Music, Obituary

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ENCORE: Art Basel 2016 – A Testament to the Business of the Arts

Posted on December 2, 2016 in Economics, Ethos, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Dateline: Miami Beach – Its Art Basel time again. The events for 2016 are being conducted during the dates of December 1 – 4. This is the biggest event on the calendar for Miami’s art scene and it demonstrates the power of the arts and its ability to transform societies. So this commentary from December 9, 2014 is being encored here, but with these new photos:

This Encore is Part 2 of 3 in a series on the ‘power of the visual arts’. The series depicts how the arts can forge change in a community, where it can be an effective messaging tool to convey many important points. The full entries in the series are as follows:

Forging Change: Arts & Artists
ENCORE: Art Basel 2016 – A Testament to the Business of the Arts
Art Walk – Its a Real Thing in Wynwood

This original commentary is as follows:

———

Art Basel Miami – A Testament to the Spread of Culture

There’s no business like ‘show business’. – Age Old Adage.

There is money in the ‘Arts’. – Go Lean…Caribbean precept.

And now, the subsequent news article posits: “the community rallies around art creating a unique energy. And art ‘dynamises’ the community, in a very unique way”.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean has a simple purpose: enable the Caribbean to be a better place to live, work and play. The book recognizes that the ‘genius qualifier’ is shown in different fields of endeavor, including the arts (fine, visual, performing, music, etc.). While the Go Lean roadmap has a focus on STEM^[1] fields, it is accepted that not everyone possesses STEM skills, and yet many others can still contribute to society. Then when these other skills/talents are “gifted” beyond the extraordinary, they can truly impact their community, and maybe even the world.

The book relates that the arts can have a positive influence on the Caribbean. And that one man, or woman, can make a difference in this quest. We want to foster the next generation of “stars” in the arts and other fields of endeavor.

According to the following news article, the arts can truly ‘dynamise’ the community. The article relates to Art Basel, the movement to stage art shows for Modern and Contemporary works, sited annually in Basel (Switzerland), Hong Kong and Miami Beach. The focus of this article is Miami Beach:

Title: 13th Art Basel Miami Beach (December 4 – 7, 2014), a testament to the spread of culture
By: Jane Wooldridge, and contributed Ricardo Mor

If “more” equals better, the 13th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach and the surrounding art week events may go down as the best ever. More new art fairs and just-to-see shows. More record-breaking sales at Art Basel Miami Beach. More CEOs — from watchmakers Hublot and Omega, luggage brand Rimowa, hotel companies Starwood and Marriott — opening luxury properties. And if not more — who can keep track? — then certainly plenty of celebrities, including actors Leonardo DiCaprio, James Marden and Owen Wilson; musicians Usher, Miley Cyrus, Russell Simmons and Joe Jonas; supermodel Heidi Klum and the world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt.

There was another kind of “more” as well — more spillovers, touch points and art for all manner of South Floridians, from entrepreneurs to pre-teen fashion designers, stretching from Pinecrest to Coconut Grove, Overtown to Fort Lauderdale.

If the aim is “to make art general,” as Knight Foundation President Alberto Ibargüen told attendees Monday at the foundation’s annual announcement of Knight Art Challenge awards, this year’s art week put South Florida well on its way. Proclaimed National Endowment for the Arts chairman Jane Chu on a whiplash art tour to downtown, Miami Beach and Opa-locka, “Art is entwined in Miami’s DNA.”

Even as the Pérez Art Museum Miami celebrated its first year anniversary, a new permanent museum building for the Institute for Contemporary Art Miami was announced for the Design District.

Overtown [historical Black neighborhood] hosted its first Art Africa fair of works created by artists from the African Diaspora. Joining it on the list of first-year events are an impressive exhibition of monumental works in the vast Mana-Miami Wynwood space on NW 23rd Street and Pinta, a fair focusing on Latin American art that moved from New York to Midtown.

The festivities reach far, far beyond the traditional art crowd. On the Mana campus, the Savannah College of Art and Design is presenting “i feel ya,” an exhibition that includes jumpsuits designed by André 3000 for Outkast’s reunion tour. The nearby ArtHaus tent is surrounded by food trucks and a sound program where Beethoven is definitely not on the playlist.

This year, more than a half-dozen student exhibits are on the art agenda. At FusionMIA, student photographs hang near works by masters Rashid Johnson and Al Loving; all were curated by Miami’s N’Namdi Contemporary gallery. A few blocks north, at Wynwood’s House of Art, a dozen students ages 5 to 15 from the DesignLab program showed off their creations at a Friday night “vernissage.”

Among them was 13-year-old Yael Bloom, wearing a flounced party dress she made from shrink wrap. No matter that the first-time event was a little-known spinoff. “Art Basel is pretty hard for adults to get into,” Bloom said. “For kids to get into it is very cool.”

As in years past, free events abound, from performances by Chinese artist Shen Wei at Miami-Dade College and artist Theo Jansen’s Strandbeest demonstrations on the sand to official Art Basel events, including films on the New World Center Wallcast and the Art Public sculptures in Collins Park. New is free Art Week shuttle service between Midtown and Miami Beach — a government cooperative effort — that dovetails with trolley service to art venues on both sides of Biscayne Bay.

In institutional quarters, Art Basel Miami Beach global sponsor UBS announced the creation of a $5 million loan fund for existing Florida small business owners. Sponsor BMW USA announced it would fund an “art journey” open to emerging artists exhibiting at Art Basel Miami Beach. And the City of Miami Beach and Miami-Dade County put out a call to artists, encouraging them to propose projects for the $4.33 million public art program associated with the Miami Beach Convention Center renovation. South Floridians are eligible to apply for all three initiatives.

Clearly, art week isn’t just about aesthetics, personal enrichment and community building. It is also about enterprise — which explains all those luxury CEOs, the ground-breaking of the Zaha Hadid-designed One Thousand Museum, and the announcement at Miami Ironside that designer Ron Arad will create the interiors for the revamped Watergate Hotel in Washington. (And no, there’s no real connection to Miami.)

Said Michael Spring, Miami-Dade’s cultural affairs director, “There’s a certain deepening, a realization not just that the Art Basel event but arts in general have a phenomenal effect on the image and economy of our entire region. We’ve talked about it before, but there seems to be more focus this year. It’s not an interesting footnote anymore; it’s the theme.”

That, says Miami Commissioner Keon Hardemon, was the thinking behind the city’s $50,000 grant supporting the Art Africa fair. “We need to encourage people to come now to Overtown. The cultural aspect helps them realize they can safely come here now. And then maybe they’ll come back later and spend money in the community, in our restaurants and stores,” he said.

In Miami, with commerce inevitably comes glamor, which is proving as glossy as ever. Hennessey V.S.O.P., Dom Perignon, Paper Magazine, Interview and B.E.T. have staged events all around town, at private “locations,” hotels, restaurants, the 1111 Lincoln Road garage and the ICA temporary space in the Moore Building. Developer Alan Faena threw a breezy beachside asado. Jeffrey Deitch, Tommy Hilfiger and V Magazine hosted a glitzy bash at the Raleigh featuring a performance by Miley Cyrus.

In the Design District, developer Craig Robins hosted a dinner honoring architect Peter Marino at a single, 142-yard candlelit table for 380 guests on a closed-off street amid the district’s luxury brand storefronts. Sculptor Jaume Plensa was the guest of honor at another long candlelit table — this one for 60 — in the Coconut Grove sales offices of Park Grove, which recently installed a series of his works along South Bayshore Drive.

Alas, once again, manners were not de rigueur among the glossy set. At some parties, guests of guests turned up with entirely uninvited guests. For other tony soirees, publicists emailed out “disinvitations” to previously invited guests, obliquely sending the message that someone more glamorous would be taking those seats.

Decorous or not, during art week, the energy all emanates from the week’s namesake fair, said Dennis Scholl, VP/Arts at the Knight Foundation. “The most important thing to remember is why this week exists, and that’s Art Basel in the Convention Center. If that wasn’t the core of what’s going on — if it weren’t a world-class event — nobody else would be interested in being involved. It continues to be the raison d’être of this week.”

In the Convention Center, at what Scholl called “the core of the nuclear reactor,” many gallerists were quite happy, thank you very much.

Veteran Art Basel Miami Beach gallerist Sean Kelly said Wednesday was his best first day ever at the fair. Newcomer Michael Jon Gallery also sold almost all of its available work — by rising stars like Sayre Gomez and JPW3 — on the first day.

For most dealers, sales remained lively, day after day. At Galerie Gmurzynska, co-CEO Mathias Rastorfer proclaimed it “successful indeed … . In terms of reception, it was an overwhelmingly enthusiastic response from collectors and colleagues alike. In terms of sales, we did several over $1 million sales and many within the $100,000 to $500,000 range, with a Picasso’s Venus and Love selling at near the asking price of $1.2 million.

Said Art Basel Director Marc Spiegler on Saturday, “I’ve gotten nothing but positive response from galleries,” not only because of strong sales, but also because new hours for VIPs gave gallerists more time to meet new collectors. “A lot of people were here and buying for the first time. Many galleries said they had their best fair ever.”

But like this week’s weather, the upbeat atmosphere suffered from uncharacteristic clouds. In Wynwood, a police car hit and critically injured a street artist. An $87,000 silver plate crafted by Pablo Picasso was reported stolen from the Art Miami satellite fair in Midtown. A partygoer at PAMM’s first anniversary fête on Thursday accidentally damaged an artwork installed on the floor. And Friday night, would-be art goers were stymied by traffic shutdowns into art-centric areas of Wynwood, Midtown and Miami Beach by protests against nationwide police-involved killings.

Though unfortunate and sometimes tragic, Spring said, the unrelated events were “a product of the incredible level of activity.” At Saturday’s annual brunch at the art-rich Sagamore Hotel in Miami Beach, the theft and damaged artwork uniformly were brushed off as inconsequential. Said one art insider, “s–t happens.”

Miami Art Week’s merry-go-round nature is surely born from Miami’s appreciation of a good time. And increasingly, perhaps from something deeper.

Said Miami gallerist Jumaane N’Namdi, “Art Basel has put art on everyone’s mind. Everyone wants to be involved somehow.”

And that’s not just about the parties, said N’Namdi, who had galleries in Chicago, New York and Detroit before opening in Miami. “I don’t think you could find a city that enjoys really looking at the art the way this city does. I came through the airport, and even the TSA guys were talking about it, asking each other if they got their Art Basel posters. Every level of art you want is here.”

Outsiders agree. “Miami is very special for its link between art and the community,” said Axelle de Buffévent, style director at champagne house Martell Mumm Perrier-Jouët. “It goes both ways. The community rallies around art creating a unique energy. And art dynamises the community, in a very unique way.”
Miami Herald – Daily Newspaper – (Posted December 6, 2014) –
http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/visual-arts/art-basel/article4313255.html

VIDEO: Art Basel Miami Beach 2014 – http://youtu.be/StkzLiBtDis

Published on Dec 4, 2014
The international art fair Art Basel returns to Miami Beach for its 13th edition, taking place at the Miami Beach Convention Center from December 4 to December 7, 2014. Art Basel Miami Beach 2014 features 267 leading international galleries from 31 countries across North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa, which present artworks ranging from Modern masters to the latest contemporary art pieces. With this edition, the fair debuts Survey, a new sector dedicated to art-historical projects. In this video, we attend the Private View of Art Basel Miami Beach 2014 at the Miami Beach Convention Center on December 3.

This story aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean in stressing the economic impact of artistic endeavors. The book pledges that Caribbean society will be elevated by improving the eco-system to live, work and play; and that “play” covers vast areas of culture.

“Culture” has emerged as a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of human phenomena that cannot be directly attributed to genetic inheritance. Specifically, the term “culture” in North American anthropology has two meanings:

the evolved human capacity to classify and represent experiences with symbols, and to act imaginatively and creatively; and
the distinct ways that people, who live differently, classified and represented their experiences, and acted creatively.^[2]

Anthropologist Adamson Hoebel best describes culture as an integrated system of learned behavior patterns which are characteristic of the members of a society and which are not a result of biological inheritance.^[3]

The Go Lean book stresses economic benefits from classic cultural expressions and popular cultural productions, including Caribbean music, paintings/art, sketches, sculptures, books, fashion and food. All the “skilled phenomena” that makes Caribbean life unique and appealing.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). There is a lot involved in this vision; the prime directives are stated as follows:

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 to support these engines.

The foregoing article relates the economic impact that the Greater Miami area is enjoying for hosting the Art Basel event, for the 13^th year now. At this point the benefits have spread throughout the community, (Art Fairs, museums, scholarships, foundations, etc.) not just one venue on Miami Beach. The spin-off benefit of art is a strong point of the Go Lean book, highlighting benefits as long as we keep the talent at home working in/for the community. This point is pronounced early in the following statements in the book’s opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 14):

xxi. 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.

xxxii. Whereas the cultural arts and music 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 and music in domestic and foreign markets. These endeavors will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

The economic, cultural and image considerations for “show business” on a society have been well-detailed in these previous Go Lean blogs:

Caribbean Role Model – Oscar De La Renta – RIP

How ‘The Lion King’ roared into history

Forging Change – The Fun Theory

Role Model Berry Gordy – No Town Like Motown

Book Review: ‘Chasing Youth Culture and Getting It Right’

The Music, Art, Culture and Legend of Bob Marley lives on!

The Go Lean roadmap posits that change will come to the Caribbean “show business” (Visual and Performing Arts, Music, Film). This is due mostly to the convergence of a Single Market for the Caribbean region. If “size matters”, then the integration of 42 million people (plus the 10 million Diaspora and 80 million visitors) for the 30 member-states will create the consumer markets to promote and foster Caribbean artistic creations for their full appreciation. The first requirement in this goal is the community ethos of valuing intellectual property; to recognize that other people’s creations are valuable. (Then we can enforce on others to value and appreciate our creations).

This would truly be new for the Caribbean.

The CU is designed to do the heavy-lifting of organizing Caribbean society for the new world of art appreciation and “consumerization”. The following list details the ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster regional artists and showcase their wares to the world stage:

Community Ethos – Forging Change	Page 20
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Community Ethos – Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Strategy – Caribbean Vision: Single Market	Page 45
Separation of Powers – Central Bank – Electronic Payment Deployments	Page 73
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Patents – Copyrights	Page 78
Separation of Powers – Culture Administration	Page 81
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Planning – Lessons Learned from New York City	Page 137
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Education – Performing Arts Schools	Page 159
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Hollywood	Page 203
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts	Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music	Page 231
Advocacy – Impact Urban Living – Art & Theaters	Page 234
Appendix – New York / Arts / Theater Jobs	Page 277
Appendix – Taos New Mexico Art Colony	Page 291
Appendix – Caribbean Music Genres	Page 347
Appendix – Protecting Music Copyrights	Page 351

There is BIG money in show business and in the world of the Arts. For the 10^th edition of Art Basel in Miami in 2011, there was a record number of fifty thousand collectors, artists, dealers, curators, critics and art enthusiasts – including 150 museum and institutions from across the globe – participating in the show.^[4]

This event requires a lot of community investments. Every year, Miami’s leading private collections – among them the Rubell Family Collection, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, the De la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space, World Class Boxing, the Margulies Collection and the Dacra Collection – open their homes and warehouses to guests of Art Basel. Additionally, the museums of South Florida organize exhibitions including shows at the Miami Art Museum, Bass Museum of Art, Norton Museum, Wolfsonian-FIU and MOCA North Miami.

The community investment has been there for Miami, and so has the returns ^[5].For 2014, the attendance figures were 75,000, with an increase in hotel occupancy of 30,000 rooms on the days the Art Fair is in progress. The conservative estimates are that the Art Fair brings close to $13 million a year in economic impact to the region. (This figure does not include the purchases of artworks, some of which fetch millions of dollars).

The subject of the Miami Metropolitan area is very relevant for a Caribbean empowerment discussion. A previous blog asserted that Miami’s success, in many regards, is attributable to Caribbean’s failures. Many of our populations (including artists) have fled their homelands and have taken refuge in the Miami area. Where at first this disposition was begrudged, eventually it transformed to tolerance, but now it is even celebrated.

Miami has been greatly impacted by both the Caribbean Diaspora and its assimilation of the “Arts”. Whole neighborhoods have been elevated due to this strategy of catering to the arts; (see photo here). This is a great role model for the Caribbean to emulate; our whole society can be elevated.

The Go Lean/CU roadmap represents the empowerment for the Caribbean communities to elevate – we now want to keep our artists at home. The people, institutions and governance of the region are therefore urged to “lean-in” to this roadmap for change. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

——-

Appendix – Source References:

1. STEM = Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

2. “What is culture?”. Bodylanguagecards.com. Retreived 2013-03-29.

3. Hoebel, Adamson (1966). Anthropology: Study of Man. McGraw-Hill.

4. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/arts/design/art-basel-miami-beach-review.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

5. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/arts/international/art-fair-energizes-economy-of-region.html?_r=0

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Fidel Castro Is Dead; Now What? – ENCORE

Posted on November 27, 2016 in Ethos, Government, Locations

The news is out; Fidel Castro died on Friday November 25, 2016 at age 90. This former Revolutionary Leader and President of Cuba was monumental and impactful. He made friends and enemies at home, in the region and around the world.

He accomplished some good; guaranteeing education – one of the highest literacy rates in the world – and advanced healthcare to all of his people.

He made many enemies; persecuting and executing his political enemies…

… the United States imposed a Trade Embargo for his entire reign, up until now.

Now that he is dead, what future holds for his beloved country?

First, Fidel Castro turned over the presidency to his younger brother Raul in 2008; so oversight of the country’s affairs has been the direct concern of President Raul Castro. That is expected to continue. So the answer is more of the same.

Same?

This “same” was defined in an earlier blog-commentary on February 4, 2016. It is being encored here on the occasion of Fidel’s passing.

==============

Go Lean Commentary – The Road to Restoring Cuba

In a visit to Jamaica and CariCom leaders in April 2015, US President Barack Obama concluded that 55 years of indifference towards Cuba was long-enough and that as of December 17, 2014 he had “set the machinery in motion” to normalize relations with Cuba. This descriptor paints the picture of a journey, a marathon and not just a “100-yard dash”.

What is the status of that journey now?

Where are we in the process? How are the issues being addressed?

It turns out this is a weighty task (heavy-lifting), and while many of the issues are minor (i.e. Postal Mail), some are life-and-death (i.e. Human Trafficking).

Firstly, the current restoration of Cuban and American relations is strictly an act of Executive Orders – directives by the US President (currently of the Democratic Party) and not supported by his Republican legislature, the Congress. There is a definitive divide among these Democrats and Republicans in this regard. Here are some updates of those Executive Orders, since the December 2014 baseline:

Relaxation of travel restrictions for Americans to Cuba – January 16, 2015
Cuba removed from the United States “Terrorist Sponsor” list. – April 14, 2015
Cuba and the United States restored diplomatic relations on July 20, 2015 with subsequent re-opening of Embassies.
Cuba started the expansion of Internet Access – October 12, 2015
Restoration of Mail Service – December 12, 2015 – See Appendix A VIDEO
Proposed Executive Action to Mitigate Human Trafficking – December 23, 2015 – See Appendix B

Cuba needs to have the American Trade Embargo officially lifted! This is a Congressional action and cannot be accomplished by Executive Orders alone.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean was designed with the intent of the eventual integration of Cuba in a Caribbean Single Market. This would allow for technocratic stewardship and oversight of the region’s economic, security and governing engines for all 30 Caribbean member-states. The book therefore serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).

There is no minimizing of the risks and responsibility of Cuba in the Go Lean book. It is clearly recognized that integrating and restoring Cuba is a BIG deal; with heavy-lifting; and other reconciliation descriptors used to depict this monumental effort. See the relevant statement here from the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12):

xiii. Whereas the legacy of dissensions in many member-states (for example: Haiti and Cuba) 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.

Though World War II was not directly waged in the Caribbean, the Go Lean/CU roadmap still prescribes a Marshall Plan strategy – a reference to the post-WWII European Rebuilding Plan – for re-building Cuba (and Haiti).

In truth, Cuba is the biggest market in the Caribbean. This one island has the largest landmass among the islands; (notwithstanding the landmasses of South America-situated CU member-states of Guyana and Suriname). They also have the largest population of 11,236,444 people (circa 2010) and the most agricultural output. Cuba needs the Caribbean; and the Caribbean needs Cuba. The entire region needs to act in unison as the challenges the region face are too big for any one country to tackle alone.

All in all, the book and accompanying blogs declare despite an absence of trade embargo in the other Caribbean member-states, that these countries have still failed to deliver to their citizens the standards assumed in any Social Contract. Some member-states are even flirting with Failed-State statuses. People in each Caribbean country are prone to flee the region, at every opportunity. The people of the region deserve better!

There is the need to re-boot … the entire region. This re-boot roadmap commences with the recognition that all the Caribbean is in crisis, and in the “same boat” despite the colonial heritage or language. All 30 geographical member-states need to confederate, collaborate, and convene for solutions. This is the purpose of the Go Lean/CU roadmap, as featured in this declaration of the Go Lean/CU 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 to support these engines.

Consider the start of the ill-fated Cuban-Communism Revolution in 1959, Cuba has lost 57 years in its maturation process. The Go Lean book’s opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 11) also included this pronouncement that it is beyond time now for Caribbean success stories, rather than the continued Caribbean Failed-State stories:

While our rights to exercise good governance and promote a more perfect society are the natural assumptions among the powers of the earth, no one other than ourselves can be held accountable for our failure to succeed if we do not try to promote the opportunities that a democratic society fosters.

The Go Lean book therefore details the series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to facilitate a re-boot in the region and to final manifest a quality delivery of a regional Social Contract:

Anecdote – Caribbean Single Market & Economy	Page 15
Community Ethos – new Economic Principles	Page 21
Community Ethos – new Security Principles	Page 22
Community Ethos – new Governing Principles	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations – TRC Cuba	Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategic – Vision – Integrated Region in a Single Market	Page 45
Strategic – Vision – Core Competence – Specialty Agriculture	Page 58
Tactical – Confederating a Non-sovereign Union	Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – CU Member-States Facts & Figures	Page 66
Tactical – Growing to $800 Billion Regional Economy – Marshall Plan Models	Page 67
Tactical – Separation of Powers	Page 71
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Foreign Policy Initiatives at Start-up	Page 102
Implementation – Security Initiatives at Start-up	Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate	Page 118
Planning – Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region – Marshall Plan for Cuba	Page 127
Planning – Reasons Why the CU Will Succeed – Lessons from Unifying Germany	Page 132
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices	Page 134
Planning – Lessons from East Germany – Post-Communism Integration	Page 139
Planning – Ways to Model the EU – Immediate Integration after WWII Crisis	Page 130
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Cuba	Page 236

The issue of Cuba’s eventual integration into the Caribbean brotherhood has previously been addressed in the following Go Lean commentary-blog entries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6664	Cuba to Expand Internet Access
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4506	Colorism in Cuba … and Beyond
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3455	Restoration of Diplomatic Relations with Cuba
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3354	CariCom Chairman calls for an end to US Embargo on Cuba
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2330	‘Raul Castro reforms not enough’, Cuba’s bishops say
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1609	Cuba mulls economy in Parliament session
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=554	Cuban cancer medication registered in 28 countries
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=436	Cuba Approves New “Law on Foreign Investment”

For a long time people have hoped for a restored Cuba. This hope was shared by Cuban people on the island and in the Diaspora abroad. The hope is also shared by neighbors, tourists, trading-partners, and international stakeholders, alike. Maybe, just maybe with President Barack Obama’s Executive Orders, the journey down this road to restoration will be irreversible. (A new President of the US will be sworn-in on January 20, 2017; this one can reverse Obama’s Executive Orders).

The Go Lean roadmap for the CU strives to put the Command-and-Control of Caribbean affairs in the hands of Caribbean people. The book and accompanying blogs declare the desire for the Caribbean to no longer be a parasite of the US, but rather a protégé. This parasite status stems all the way back to the year 1898 – to the start of the Spanish – American War for Cuban Independence.

Enough already! Surely we have grown since 1898 or even since 1959.

The Go Lean…Caribbean movement turns the corner, and instead of an American dependence, or a nationalistic independence, it leads the region in a new direction: neighborly interdependence. The Go Lean…Caribbean book is a turn-by-turn guide (370 pages) for the region to dive deeper in an integrated Single Market.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people – residents and Diaspora – and governing institutions, to lean-in for this Caribbean and Cuban re-boot. Now is the time to make this region – all 30 countries – a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

————

Appendix A VIDEO – US-Cuba direct mail services to resume – http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-cuba-direct-mail-services-155808360.html

Posted Dec 12, 2015 – Cuba and the United States are to resume direct postal services after half a century of having to send mail via a third country. Paul Chapman reports.

————

Appendix B – News Article: As MLB seeks legal entry to Cuba, Obama considers playing ball

By: Daniel Trotta, Reuters

HAVANA (Reuters) – Major League Baseball is asking the U.S. government for special permission to sign players in Cuba, handing the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama the opportunity to try some baseball diplomacy while dealing a setback to human traffickers.

The U.S. trade embargo generally bars MLB from any agreement directing money to the Cuban government, but the White House says baseball is one area where it can advance U.S. goals and the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has authority to allow a deal.

MLB and Cuba are closer than at any time since the 1959 revolution, as evidenced by a goodwill tour last week in which big leaguers, including Cuban defectors, gave clinics to Cuban youth.

“Indeed, baseball has a unique cultural significance to both the United States and Cuba. It is therefore an area where we can further our goals of charting a new course in our relations with Cuba and further engaging and empowering the Cuban people,” a senior administration official told Reuters.

Since Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro broke with Cold War history and announced detente a year ago, Obama has asked Congress to repeal the embargo, but the Republican majority has resisted. Instead the administration has used other means to promote exchanges.

If MLB were able to sign players in Cuba, where baseball is the most popular sport, it could end a wave of defections in which Cuban ballplayers put themselves in the hands of human traffickers and risk their lives on illegal journeys at sea.

Some 130 ballplayers have defected this past year, according to Cuban journalists.

But the best players on the island remain off limits, and the Cuban government stops them from leaving without permission, leading those with big-league dreams to turn to smugglers. In some cases, organized crime rackets force players to sign over huge cuts of future earnings, threatening players and their families.

“It’s not an uncommon story,” said Paul Minoff, a lawyer who represents Leonys Martin, an outfielder now with the Seattle Mariners who earned $15.5 million over the past five seasons with the Texas Rangers.

After defecting, Martin was held by armed men in Mexico for months, and under duress agreed to pay his captors 35 percent of his salary, Minoff said. When Martin reached America, he fought back. The smugglers sued Martin but the suit was dismissed after U.S. prosecutors brought criminal charges against them.

Cuban players have mostly stuck to a code of silence about their defections, but some details emerge through court cases.

When Yasiel Puig of the Los Angeles Dodgers left Cuba in 2012, he soon found himself entangled with Mexico’s notorious Zetas crime organization, which threatened to chop off his arm if it failed to receive a promised $250,000 fee.

While Puig signed a $42 million contract, others are abandoned in foreign countries, never to hit paydirt.

SOLUTION SOUGHT

To normalize the transfer of players, Major League Baseball has asked the Treasury’s OFAC for a specific license. The office has wide latitude to grant such licenses and can issue regulations to approve activity otherwise proscribed by the embargo.

OFAC Acting Director John E. Smith said he could not comment on the baseball case, but in general his office “acts in consultation with the State Department and other relevant U.S. government agencies in determining whether (authorizing transactions) would be consistent with current policy.”

MLB applied for its OFAC license in early June, MLB Chief Legal Officer Dan Halem told Reuters. Halem declined to detail the request except to say it included signing players in Cuba, stressing that baseball’s priority was to provide a safe and legal path for Cuban players.

“There’s a willingness on the part of our government to end the trafficking. The White House has been very sympathetic to helping us end some of the abusive practices,” Halem said.

Legally, experts say, there is no impediment to granting MLB’s request. Politically, it may be tricky to explain a deal that provides revenue for the Cuban government while favoring MLB, a $10 billion industry. The administration’s stated preference is to support Cuba’s private sector.

RETURN OF THE DEFECTORS

Cuba made a significant gesture when it permitted once-shunned defectors to return for the goodwill tour, including Puig and Jose Abreu, who has a $68 million contract with the Chicago White Sox.

When they left Cuba, Puig and Abreu had little hope of returning soon. The trip allowed Abreu to reunite with his 5-year-old son and Puig with a half-brother.

“This demonstrates that Cuba is open to the world, that we are not closed, not even with our players who are playing in MLB,” Higinio Velez, president of the Cuban Baseball Federation, told Reuters.

Attempting to slow the defections, Cuba has increased pay and allowed more players to sign in Japan, Mexico and elsewhere. Those leagues pay Cuba a fee equivalent to 10 percent of the player’s salary, but Cuba is believed to want more from MLB.

“This is a vulnerable time. It’s a reality that the exodus has harmed the level of our baseball,” Heriberto Suarez, Cuba’s National Baseball Commissioner, told Reuters.

With an MLB deal, Cuba could regulate the egress of players and protect its professional league, the country’s greatest sporting attraction. Sixteen teams are the pride of each province, the games infused with a conga beat celebration.

Should legally emigrated stars begin playing in the United States, they would pay taxes to Cuba, which is also likely to seek compensation for player rights. Both measures would require OFAC permission and help preserve the Cuban league.

(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mlb-seeks-legal-entry-cuba-obama-considers-playing-191751615–mlb.html; posted December 23, 2015; retrieved February 4, 2016.

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