Category: Social

Refuse to Lose – Introducing Formal Reconciliations

Posted on October 15, 2019 in Ethos, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

So far this series on Refuse to Lose have established – (according to the previous blog-commentary):

“The practice of U.S. cities eschewing Columbus Day – because of the bad history associated with the Spanish Explorer’s atrocities – to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day began in 1992 …”

See what we did there?

We warmed you up to the idea that “All Lives Matter, Yes, but oppressed groups need to be recognized and commiserated for the hurt that they have endured”.

And you bought it – “hook, line and sinker”.

We just accomplished an informal reconciliation. Now, it is time to pursue a formal reconciliation. (We have Indigenous People and oppressed people in the Caribbean too).

This is a mission of the roadmap embedded in the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book introduces the strategy of impaneling Truth and Reconciliation Commissions (TRC) to address age-old (and modern) grievances.

This is part of the new attitude – community ethos – about winning-and-losing . The historicity of the Caribbean is that some demographics won – European Imperialists and loyalists – while others lost.

The human psyche is consistent; when we have been victimized, we want everyone to remember. But, when we have been the perpetrator – the bully – then we want everyone to forget. This applies to individuals and nations alike. – previous Go Lean commentary. 

To make progress in society, there must be a new attitude now. one is for the Greater Good; we want most people to win and few to lose. We want a …

Refusal to lose

That previous blog-commentary defined this community ethos as a commitment by a group or society to the values of quality, success and winning.

This commentary is a continuation of this series on the Refuse to Lose ethos; this is Part 3-of-6. The full series is cataloged as follows:

  1. Refuse to Lose: Lesson from Sports
  2. Refuse to Lose: Remediating ‘Columbus Day’
  3. Refuse to Lose: Introducing Formal Reconciliations
  4. Refuse to Lose: Despite American Expansionism
  5. Refuse to Lose: Canada’s Model of Ascent
  6. Refuse to Lose: Direct Foreign Investors Wind-Downs

This is not the first time this commentary have addressed ‘reconciliations’. These points have been detailed in many previous  Go Lean commentaries; see here:

European Reckoning – Christianity’s Indictment
The Church failed in its job to be the moral compass for the many European empires that have wielded absolute power on the planet. The bad result has been Slave Trade & Slavery, Colonialism and World Wars. These atrocities yielded millions and maybe even billions of victims. ‘White’ is NOT right. There is the need to reconcile that.
A Lesson in History: Jonestown, Guyana
40 years ago – 1978 – a religious atrocity transpired on Caribbean soil; this was the mass-murder/suicides in Jonestown, Guyana of almost 1000 people. Where were the societal stakeholders in this crisis, those charged with the duty to serve and protect. What have we learned? What reforms, if any, have we enacted?
Colonialism’s Bloody History Revisited
There has been a bloody history, tied to European and American colonialism. We must learn from this history; there must be a strenuous effort to dissuade societal defects and orthodoxy. Truth of the matter, colonialism is not dead with 18 Overseas Territories in Caribbean.
‘Loose Lips Sink Ships’ – Leaders Undermine Tourism
Political and religious leaders in Caribbean communities are projecting “a Climate of Hate” towards certain minority groups. This is so bad that it undermines the tourism products and community economics. Reconciling the pasts allows for better economics in the future.
Waging a Successful War on Orthodoxy
It takes a real battle to undo the standards and orthodoxy – many of them religious and colonial – introduced and implemented in society. Some good have come from these practices … and some bad. There needs to be a formal reconciliation of the Good, Bad and the Ugly.
Rwanda’s Catholic bishops apologize for genocide
The Church was not a force for moral good in modern society … in Africa or the Caribbean. The Bishops in Rwanda owned up and apologized for their complicity in their 1990’s genocide. This is an attempt to reconcile the failings of the past.
Repenting, Forgiving and Reconciling the Past
Christendom has a sullied past! For example, the historicity of the Spanish Inquisition is inexcusable. Yet there was a town in Spain that continued with the name “Castrillo Matajudios” — which means “Camp Kill Jews”, which they did. How was this community repent, forgive and reconcile from such a bad legacy? For one, change the name. The town has reverted back to its original name “Castrillo Mota de Judios” (“Jews’ Hill Camp”). This proves that reconciliation is more than just mental acknowledgement; many times heavy-lifting ust also be expended.
In Search Of The Red Cross’ $500 Million In Haiti Relief
The Red Cross is a Disaster Management organization; they abused their power by collecting $500 Million for Haiti’s Earthquake Relief/Recovery and misappropriating the funds. Where did the money go? Can we finally get an answer?

The Caribbean member-states need societal progress; so we must adopt new attitudes that shows that we recognize that old attitudes were bad. This is how we pursue the Greater Good. We want a Refusal to Lose, a Win-Win; we want most people to win and few to lose.

Whew! This is heavy, just thinking about it. How do we get started?

This Go Lean roadmap describes the Way Forward, the heavy-lifting for elevating Caribbean society in the future and to reconcile their past failings. Among the 370-pages of the Go Lean book are the turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt the new community ethos of reconciliation. Consider the headlines, summaries and excerpts here on how the region can better Manage Reconciliations in the Caribbean eco-system, in the domestic homeland and in the Diaspora (Page 34):

10 Ways to Manage Reconciliations

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU)
This treaty allows for the unification of the region into one market, expanding to an economy of 30 member-states of 42 million people. This accedence creates a “new” land of opportunity, so after so many decades of abandonment, the CU will “flash the signs” of “Welcome Home” to its far-flung Diaspora. But “old parties” returning can also open “old wounds” therefore it is a mission of the CU to facilitate reconciliations, much like the model in South Africa, so as to assuage these Failed-State indicators/threats: a). “Revenge seeking” groups and b). Group Grievances
2 TRC – Cuba
Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean, had an armed revolution, conducted by leader Fidel Castro, that started in July 1953 and finally ended with the ouster of dictator Fulgencio Batista on 1 January 1959. Castro revolutionary government later reformed along communist lines, leading to a vast exodus in the subsequent years since. The Cuban Diaspora is estimated to amount to over 1.5 million people and $1.5 Billion in annual remittances to the island.

A goal of the CU is to invite many of the Cuban Diaspora and exiles back to the island. (Many of whom settled nearby in Miami and want to return). After the Castro Brothers, there will be the expectation of reparation and reconciliation. So the CU will convene a Truth & Reconciliation Commission to bring resolution to many issues from the revolution, socialist nationalization, previous coup attempts and the Batista dictatorship. There may be the expectation of reparations.
3 TRC Haiti and Neighbors
Haiti has the unique history of declaring independence since the 1790’s and ever since has had to contend with foreign invaders, internal dissension, domestic terrorism and conflict with its neighbor, the Dominican Republic ([see Page 306 for] Appendix TD). The memory and victimization of these contentions are long and has the potential for spontaneous conflict. Haiti has the highest indicators (#7 [see Page 271 for Appendix F]) on the Failed-State Index of any state in the entire region. In addition to the CU providing special status and protections for repatriates, the CU must convene a TRC to bring resolution to the grievances of the past.
4 International Tribunals – War Crimes – Human Rights Watchers
5 Caribbean Court of Justice
6 Government Debt Buybacks
The CU seeks to buyback (pay-off) many of the international debts incurred by the member states. This process, part of a financial reconciliation, will require a detailed forensic audit of the disbursements and accountabilities of monies.
7 International Grants / Loan Forgiveness
8 CU Foreign Policy/Trade Missions
9 International Court Judgments
Some foreign courts have ruled on cases involving Caribbean states, assessing judgments accordingly, (ie Cuba – $6 Billion in US courts). The CU will pursue negotiations for compromised settlements to clear the docket of these cases.
10 Repatriation After Abandonment

These aspirations are not just “pie in the sky”. This was done, successfully in South Africa. We have that model by which to follow. See the Appendix VIDEO below.

So it is conceivable, believable and achievable to think that we can reconcile our bad Caribbean historicity. Yes, while we cannot change the past, we can apply lessons-learned and change the future. We can move forward, upward, onward together …

… and we have some heavy-lifting to do; consider these examples (click on the links for the Way Forward for these issues):

So ‘Yes We Can’ …

Refusing to Lose is a necessary ethos for the Caribbean Way Forward to start winning, after so many centuries of losing. Let’s put the past behind and move forward.

Let’s all lean-in and foster reconciliations, so that we can all Refuse to Lose; this is the right community ethos to elevate our society to be a better homeland to live, work and play.  🙂

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

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

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

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

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

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.

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.

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

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

—————–

Appendix VIDEO – Truth Justice Memory: South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Process [Introduction] – https://youtu.be/W3taLI3moaM

Justice Reconciliation
Posted Apr 4, 2014 – The TRC provided an opportunity for ordinary South Africans to take the centre stage, to share their stories of suffering and sacrifice. How can we, years later, use this legacy in the building of a generation of reconciling South Africans? This “first-of-its-kind” course aims to expose learners to the TRC event in a sensitive but forthright manner. Twelve DVD clips, each about 20 minutes in length, cover a series of important aspects of the TRC’s work. The accompanying teacher’s guide contains twelve corresponding chapters, complete with content summary, key questions, tasks for learners and teachers as well as additional sources.

 

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Refuse to Lose – Remediating ‘Columbus Day’

Posted on October 14, 2019 in Ethos, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Today is the Monday closest to October 12 – Day of Discovery by Christopher Columbus – so it is a day set aside as a Holiday in many places. But alas, there have been many communities that have remediated their historical appreciation for Christopher Columbus.

His impact was not all good!

This is part of the new attitude – community ethos – about losing. The actuality of Columbus is that while some people won – European Imperialists – many others lost. Those that lost, are stakeholders too in today’s Caribbean. The new attitude about winning-losing is actually a …

Refusal to lose

This community ethos is defined as a commitment by a group or society to the values of quality, success and winning. This corresponds to this formal definition of “community ethos” in the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean (Page 20):

… the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period.

Celebrating Columbus Day is choosing the victories of some people over the losses of others. This is not winning; not win-win. Adapting the ethos to Refuse to Lose is supposed to be different, better; we want the Greater Good to win, not just a fraction of the population.

See, here, the encyclopedic reference on Columbus Day and the efforts to remediate its celebrations:

Reference: Columbus Day
Columbus Day is a national holiday in many countries of the Americas and elsewhere which officially celebrates the anniversary of Christopher Columbus‘s arrival in the Americas on October 12, 1492. Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer who set sail across the Atlantic Ocean in search of a faster route to the Far East only to land at the New World. His first voyage to the New World on the Spanish ships Santa María, Niña, and La Pinta took approximately three months. Columbus and his crew’s arrival to the New World initiated the Columbian Exchange which introduced the transfer of plants, animals, culture, human populations, and technology (but also invasive species, including communicable diseases) between the new world and the old.

The landing is celebrated as “Columbus Day” in the United States but the name varies on the international spectrum. In some Latin American countries, October 12 is known as “Día de la Raza” or (Day of the Race). This is the case for Mexico, which inspired Jose Vasconcelos’s book celebrating the Day of the Iberoamerican Race. Some countries such as Spain refer the holiday as “Día de la Hispanidad” and “Fiesta Nacional de España” where it is also the religious festivity of la Virgen del Pilar. Peru celebrates since 2009 the “Day of the original peoples and intercultural dialogue”. Belize and Uruguay celebrate it as Día de las Américas (Day of the Americas). Since Argentina’s former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner officially adopted “Día del Respeto a la Diversidad Cultural” (Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity) November 3, 2010. “Giornata Nazionale di Cristoforo Colombo or Festa Nazionale di Cristoforo Colombo” is the formal name of Italy‘s celebration as well as in Little Italys around the world.[1][2]
…

Non-observance
The celebration of Columbus Day in the United States began to decline at the end of the 20th century, although many Italian-Americans, and others, continue to champion it.[31][32] The states of Florida,[33] Hawaii,[34][35] Alaska,[36][37] Vermont,[38] South Dakota,[39] New Mexico,[40] Maine,[41], Wisconsin, [42] and parts of California including, for example, Los Angeles County[43] do not recognize it and have each replaced it with celebrations of Indigenous People’s Day (in Hawaii, “Discoverers’ Day”, in South Dakota, “Native American Day”[32]). A lack of recognition or a reduced level of observance for Columbus Day is not always due to concerns about honoring Native Americans. For example, a community of predominantly Scandinavian descent may observe Leif Erikson Day instead.[44] In the state of Oregon, Columbus Day is not an official holiday.[45] Columbus Day is not an official holiday in the state of Washington [46]

Iowa and Nevada do not celebrate Columbus Day as an official holiday, but the states’ respective governors are “authorized and requested” by statute to proclaim the day each year.[47] Several states have removed the day as a paid holiday for state government workers, while still maintaining it—either as a day of recognition, or as a legal holiday for other purposes, including California and Texas.[48][49][50][51][52]

The practice of U.S. cities eschewing Columbus Day to celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day began in 1992 with Berkeley, California. The list of cities which have followed suit as of 2018 includes Austin, Boise, Cincinnati, Denver, Los Angeles, Mankato, Minnesota, Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Seattle, St. Paul, Minnesota, Phoenix, Tacoma, and “dozens of others.”[31][53][54][55][49][56][57][58][59][60][61] Columbus, Ohio has chosen to honor veterans instead of Christopher Columbus, and removed Columbus Day as a city holiday. Various tribal governments in Oklahoma designate the day as Native American Day, or name it after their own tribe.[62]
…
Source: Retrieved October 12, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Day

This commentary is a continuation of this series on the Refuse to Lose ethos; this is Part 2-of-6. The full series is cataloged as follows:

  1. Refuse to Lose: Lesson from Sports
  2. Refuse to Lose: Remediating ‘Columbus Day’
  3. Refuse to Lose: Introducing Formal Reconciliations
  4. Refuse to Lose: Despite American Expansionism
  5. Refuse to Lose: Canada’s Model of Ascent
  6. Refuse to Lose: Direct Foreign Investors Wind-Downs

This is not the first time this commentary have addressed ‘Columbus Day’. As related in a previous Go Lean commentary, the orthodoxy of the ‘Columbus Day’ celebration is now frown on in many communities. See this quotation:

The human psyche is consistent; when we have been victimized, we want everyone to remember. But, when we have been the perpetrator – the bully – then we want everyone to forget. This applies to individuals and nations alike.

This experience relates to the history of the New World. Upon the discovery of the Americas by the European powers – Christopher Columbus et al – the focus had always been on pursuing economic interests, many times at the expense of innocent victims. (This is why the celebration of Columbus Day is now out of favor). First, there was the pursuit of gold, other precious metals (silver, copper, etc.) and precious stones (emeralds, turquoise, etc.).  Later came the exploitation of profitable agricultural opportunities (cotton, tobacco, sugar cane, etc.), though these business models required extensive labor. So the experience in the New World (the Caribbean and North, South & Central America) saw the exploitation of the native indigenous people, and then as many of them died off, their replacements came from the African Slave Trade.

See this comedic VIDEO here that portrays this history and the trending to remediate the holiday – “How is it still a thing?”:

VIDEO – Columbus Day – How Is This Still A Thing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) – https://youtu.be/eKEwL-10s7E

LastWeekTonight
Posted October 13, 2014 – Christopher Columbus did a lot of stuff that was way more terrible than “sailing the ocean blue,” but we don’t learn about that.

Columbus Day: How is it still a thing?

Connect with Last Week Tonight online…
Subscribe to the Last Week Tonight YouTube channel for more almost news as it almost happens: http://www.youtube.com/user/LastWeekTonight

Find Last Week Tonight on Facebook like your mom would: http://Facebook.com/LastWeekTonight

Follow us on Twitter for news about jokes and jokes about news: http://Twitter.com/LastWeekTonight

Visit our official site for all that other stuff at once: http://www.hbo.com/lastweektonight

This foregoing VIDEO uses humor and punditry to convey a valid point:

Christopher Columbus should not be viewed as a hero of all the people. His legacy has blood stains on the annals of history.

The United States of America had been a majority White (European) country for its entire history. The minority populations finally won its battle for Civil Rights and equal treatment, appealing to the “Better Nature” of its founding principle:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – Declaration of Independence for the United States of America, July 4, 1776.

The end product of the Civil Rights movement is the equal protection under the law for all ethnic groups – majority or minority. After nearly 400 years of European-dominated power-brokers in the US, finally in 2008, the first person of minority heritage was elected to the American presidency – Barack Obama.

Remediating ‘Columbus Day’ is an accomplishment and achievement for the Civil Rights struggle of minority ethnic groups in America. Now the Refuse to Lose mantra must include everyone and not exclude anyone.

The subject of the American Civil Rights movement and momentum – leveling out the inequities – over the history of the New World have been addressed in many previous commentaries; consider this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18321 Unequal Justice of American Sheriffs and How to Remediate
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18100 Nature or Nurture – Cop-on-Black Shootings in America’s DNA
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17820 ‘Pride’ Movement – “Can we all just get along”
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16944 Women Empowerment – Accepting Black Women ‘As Is’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16534 European Reckoning – Leveling Christianity’s Bad Influence
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15123 Blacks get longer sentences from ‘Republican’ Judges
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14633 Nature or Nurture: Women Have Nurtured Change to Level Society
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14541 One Woman – Viola Desmond – Making a Difference for Canada
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13063 Achieving Gender & Other Equity without the ‘Battle’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12722 How the West Was Won? Thru Pluralism and Ethnic Normalization
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11870 The Journey From ‘Indian Termination Policy’ to Modern Pluralism
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9974 Lessons Learned from Pearl Harbor and Civil Rights Remediated
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8038 Transformations: Civil Disobedience … Very Effective
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1020 The Advocacy to Rid Sports of Blatant Racism
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=546 ‘The Divide’ Book Review describing the unequal justice practice
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=209 The Case of Muhammad Ali – Equal Protection Under the Law

The Refuse to Lose mantra now includes everyone in America and should not exclude anyone. This is why ‘Columbus Day’ is “no longer a thing”.

(Most communities do not want to lose the paid-holiday on the books, so they have substituted ‘Columbus Day’ for some other worthy cause).

This is a good model …

May we apply this lesson throughout the Caribbean – this means you Puerto Rico; (they have 2 holidays: October 12 & November 19).

Using Puerto Rico as a microcosm of the rest of the New World, the demographic on that island is a vast majority of Black-and-Brown people. The Taino people and culture that Columbus discovered and encountered on the island is now gone and extinct. Columbus should not be viewed as a hero due to the course of events he set in motion.

The European people – remnant on the island – would elevate Columbus as a winner, while the indigenous people would have to be deemed the losers. This is not Win-Win!

We now need to Refuse to Lose – for every demographic in our society – not just one group at the expense of another.

This is the lesson learned from ‘Columbus Day’.

Let’s all lean-in and foster this Refuse to Lose attitude; this is the right community ethos to elevate our society to be a better homeland to live, work and play.  🙂

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

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

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

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14):

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

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.

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

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 [negative] communities … . On the other hand, the Federation must also implement the good examples learned from [positive] developments/communities… .

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

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Unequal Justice: Envy and the Seven Deadly Sins

Posted on September 29, 2019 in Economics, Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Unequal = Inequality; Inequality = Unequal …

All the talk of economic inequality – the rich getting richer; the poor getting poorer; the middle-class shrinking – is really a discussion on justice & injustice.

After thousands of years of human history, we have come to an indisputable conclusion:

Inequality is never tolerated for long. Eventually the “Have-Nots” demand what the “Have’s” have!

People do protest; revolutions do happen. People do get fed-up and demand change. Here in the Caribbean region, we have the well documented case of our American neighbors and their Revolutionary War Against the British (1776). These demands were embedded in their Declaration of Independence over Just Causes:

… when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

The Catholic Church warned about the long toleration of inequality as well. It described Envy – a feeling of discontent or resentful longing aroused by someone else’s possessions, qualities, or luck – as one of the 7 Deadly (Cardinal) Sins and prepared its followers that these practices will only lead to discord, disagreement and death. Here is one religious reference:

The Bible’s answer
The Bible does not specifically describe a set of “seven deadly sins.” However, it does teach that practicing serious sins will prevent a person from gaining salvation. For example, the Bible refers to such serious sins as sexual immorality, idolatry, spiritism, fits of anger, and drunkenness as “the works of the flesh.” It then states: “Those who practice such things will not inherit God’s Kingdom.”​—Galatians 5:​19-​21. *

Where did the list of seven deadly sins come from?
The “seven deadly sins” were originally based on a list of eight principal vices. The list was developed in the fourth century C.E. by the mystic Evagrius Ponticus, whose work inspired the writings of monk and ascetic John Cassian. In the sixth century, Pope Gregory I changed Cassian’s list of eight vices into the list of seven deadly, or cardinal, sins of Roman Catholic theology: envy, pride, greed, lust, gluttony, anger, and sloth.

Source: Retrieved September 29, 2019 from: https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/seven-deadly-sins/

See-listen to the thesis – that Envy is unavoidable as an enemy of inequality – in the embedded AUDIO-Podcast and VIDEO here:

AUDIO-PODCast – The Seven Deadly Sins: Envy – https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1420205

Heard on Talk of the Nation
Posted September 4, 2003 – Joseph Epstein *Author, Envy, the first in a series of The Seven Deadly Sins (Oxford University Press) *Author, Snobbery: The American Version
———-
VIDEO – Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming | Nick Hanauer – https://youtu.be/q2gO4DKVpa8

TED
Nick Hanauer is a rich guy, an unrepentant capitalist — and he has something to say to his fellow plutocrats: Wake up! Growing inequality is about to push our societies into conditions resembling pre-revolutionary France. Hear his argument about why a dramatic increase in minimum wage could grow the middle class, deliver economic prosperity … and prevent a revolution.

Watch more TED Talks on inequality: http://www.ted.com/topics/inequality

TED Talks is a daily podcast of talks and performances from TED events, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.

Find closed captions and translated subtitles in many languages at http://www.ted.com/translate

Follow TED Talks on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/tedtalks Like TED on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TED

So the Cardinal Sin of Envy forces the hand of the stakeholders in society to conform with programs that abate and mitigate income inequality.

The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean have addressed Income Inequality on many occasions; the book introduced the roadmap for the implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This CU strives to reboot the economic engines in the region so as to create more opportunities (job-and-entrepreneurial) for everybody in the Caribbean region – men, woman, Black-Brown-and-White in all 30 member-states. This quest is designed to grow the Middle Class.

The Go Lean roadmap recognizes that a prerequisite for advancing society is a change in the Caribbean community ethos – “underlying sentiment that informed the beliefs, customs, or practices” – from Bad to Good. All of the 7 Deadly Sins actually reflect a “Bad Ethos”. Getting the Caribbean region to adopt Good Community Ethos is actually the practice that will promote justice and equality. Consider here, some of the Good Community Ethos that are promoted in the Go Lean book:

  • Deferred Gratification
  • Anti-Bullying and Mitigation
  • Minority Equalization
  • Return on Investment
  • Divergent Genius Designation
  • Research & Development
  • Negotiation … as Partners
  • Reconciliation
  • Sharing
  • Greater Good

This is entry 3-of-4 in this series on Unequal Justice. The previous submissions traced bad history of tyrants here in our New World and how that tyranny imperiled whole populations of people. The previous 2 submissions address matters of Public Safety, while this one focuses on economics. The full series on Unequal Justice is cataloged here as follows:

  1. Unequal Justice: Soft Tyrannicide to Eliminate Bottlenecks
  2. Unequal Justice: Economic Crimes Against Tourists and Bullying
  3. Unequal Justice: Envy and the Seven Deadly Sins
  4. Unequal Justice: Student Loans Could Dictate Justice

In this series, reference is made to the fact that the “arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice“.  There have been times in the past where income inequality have been acute in society; almost always, the end result is revolution and/or violent upheavals – think France in the 1700’s. Inequality indices are among the metrics and drivers for Failed-States.

  • DP – Mounting Demographic Pressures
  • REF – Massive Movement of Refugees or IDPs
  • GG – Legacy of Vengeance-Seeking Group Grievance or Paranoia
  • HF – Chronic and Sustained Human Flight and Brain Drain
  • UED – Uneven Economic Development Along Group Lines

So there is always the need to ensure justice institutions are optimized in society and that the “game is not rigged” so that income opportunities do not only go to a top-select few. The opposite of unequal economic structure would be a thriving Middle Class. So the need for justice in the Caribbean transcends borders, politics, class and race.

The subject of Income Inequality has been addressed in many previous Go Lean commentaries; see this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13826 Taking from the Poor to Give to the Rich
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11057 Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Book Review: Sold-Out!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6399 Book Review on ‘Mitigating Income Inequality’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6089 Where the Jobs Are – Futility of Minimum Wage
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5597 Economic Principle: Market Forces -vs- Collective Bargaining
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2338 Welcoming the Dreaded ‘Plutocracy’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=242 The Erosion of the Middle Class

Overall, now is the time for all stakeholders – citizens, governments, businesses, employers and employees, etc. – in the Caribbean to lean-in for the empowerments described here-in and in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. Income Inequality is the Number One challenge for many societies; especially in the Western World. We must be technocratic in our mitigations and work to help those in our communities explore greater opportunities to make our homelands better places to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

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

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … 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.

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

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

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Chef Jose Andres – Role Model for Hurricane Relief – “One Meal at a Time”

Posted on September 4, 2019 in Ethos, Implementation, Social

Go Lean Commentary

We gotta eat!

Even when a devastating Category 5 Hurricane impacts your homeland, that natural law applies: We gotta eat!

Thank you Chef José Andrés for pulling out all the stops to feed the people of the Bahamas during this, their most desperate hour.

Why does he help? Why does he do “this”? Just because: People gotta eat!

Even though he has help – he brings a team – it is with the full might of his will, reputation and connections that he is able to have this impact. He is proof-positive that one man – or woman – can make a difference in society. See this VIDEO news story here-now:

VIDEO – Chef José Andrés in the Bahamas, helping save lives “one meal at a time” –  https://youtu.be/woeweQTXZRg

Posted September 4, 2019 – The renowned chef’s non-profit World Central Kitchen is one of the aid groups spearheading relief efforts in the stricken island nation. CBS Reports.

Chef José Andrés did the same thing in Puerto Rico, after Hurricane Maria; and in Haiti after the 2010 Earthquake. He has been a great benefactor for all of the Caribbean – and he does not even have a Caribbean heritage.

He is from Spain; see his profile in the Appendix below.

Yes, one man can make a difference! The 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean posits that one person – an advocate – can change the world (Page 122). It relates:

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

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

  • Frederick Douglas
  • Mohandas Gandhi
  • Martin Luther King
  • Nelson Mandela
  • Cesar Chavez
  • Candice Lightner – (Mothers Against Drunk Driving)

This is a consistent theme from the movement behind the Go Lean book– available to download for free. We have repeatedly presented profiles of “1” persons who have made lasting impacts on their community and the whole world. Consider this sample list, of previous blog-commentaries where advocates and role models have been elaborated upon:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17871 ‘Ross Perot’, Political Role Model – He was right on Trade – RIP
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16942 Sallie Krawcheck – Role Model for Women Economic Empowerment
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16926 Viola Desmond – Canadian Role Model for Blacks and Women
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16702 W.E.B. Du Bois – Role Model in Pan-Africana
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16696 Marcus Garvey – An Ancient Role Model Still Relevant Today
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14558 Being the Change in ‘Brown vs Board of Education’ – Role Model Linda Brown, RIP
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14556 “March for Our Lives” Kids – Observing the Change … with Guns
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14139 Carter Woodson – One Man Made a Difference … for Black History
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8165 Role Models Muhammad Ali and Kevin Connolly – Their Greatest Fight
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7682 Frederick Douglass: Role Model for Single Cause – Death or Diaspora
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=866 Bob Marley: The legend of this Role Model lives on!

The Go Lean roadmap seeks to reform and transform Caribbean life and culture. But first we have to make sure our people’s basic needs are covered.

We gotta eat!

So thank you Chef José Andrés for pitching in and feeding our Bahamian and Caribbean people.

The Go Lean roadmap calls on every man, woman and child in the Caribbean to be an advocate, and/or appreciate the efforts of other advocates. Their examples can truly help us today with our passions and purpose.

In summary, we conclude about Chef José Andrés the same as we do about all the other Caribbean advocates; we say (Go Lean book conclusion Page 252):

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

The movement behind Go Lean book – the planners of a new Caribbean – stresses that a ‘change is going to come’, one way or another. As depicted in the foregoing VIDEO, Chef José Andrés facilitated all the logistics himself for our post-Hurricane Dorian Rescue/Relief – i.e. boats, helicopters and the food – but the new Caribbean should really be matured enough to handle our own Hurricane Response:

  • Rescue 
  • Relief
  • Recovery
  • Rebuild

We must Grow Up, Already!

Haiti, Puerto Rico and now the Bahamas – these were the natural disasters of the past; but there will be more … in the future.

Climate Change guarantees it.

We must copy the patterns and good examples of our role models; Chef José Andrés has provided us a perfect example of how to make the Caribbean a better homeland to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14):

i. Whereas the earth’s climate has undeniably changed resulting in more severe tropical weather storms, it is necessary to prepare to insure the safety and security of life, property and systems of commerce in our geographical region. As nature recognizes no borders in the target of its destruction, we also must set aside border considerations in the preparation and response to these weather challenges.

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

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

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.

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

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 …. On the other hand, the Federation must also implement the good examples learned from [successful] developments/communities.

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

—————

Appendix Reference Title: José Andrés
José Ramón Andrés Puerta (born 13 July 1969) is a Spanish-American[1] chef often credited with bringing the small plates dining concept to America.[2] He owns restaurants in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Las Vegas, South Beach, Florida, Orlando, New York City, and Frisco, Texas. Andrés is the founder of World Central Kitchen, a non-profit devoted to providing meals in the wake of natural disasters.[3] He was awarded a 2015 National Humanities Medal at a 2016 White House ceremony.[4]

…

Trump Hotel restaurant and lawsuit
Andrés planned to open a restaurant in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, in 2016. After Donald Trump made disparaging comments about Mexicans in June 2015, Andrés withdrew from the contract with the Trump Organization, which then sued him.[13] Andrés counter-sued, and the parties reached a settlement in April 2017.[14] Andrés remains an outspoken critic of Trump.[15][16]

World Central Kitchen
In response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Andrés formed World Central Kitchen which provides healthy food to families and individuals touched by disasters.[17] Since its founding, the NGO has organized meals in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Zambia, Peru, Cuba, Uganda, and in Cambodia.[3]

In January 2019 Andrés opened a World Central Kitchen on Pennsylvania Ave, Washington DC to feed federal workers that were furloughed during the government shutdown.[18]

Puerto Rico Hurricane Maria response
Andrés emerged as a leader of the disaster relief efforts in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2017. His efforts to provide assistance encountered obstacles from FEMAand government bureaucrats, so instead, “we just started cooking.”[19] He organized a grass-roots movement of chefs and volunteers to establish communications, food supplies, and other resources and started serving meals. Andrés and his organization World Central Kitchen (WCK)[20] served more than two million meals in the first month after the hurricane.[21][22][23] WCK received two short term FEMA contracts and served more meals than the Salvation Army or the Red Cross, but its application for longer term support was denied.[24][25]

For his efforts in Puerto Rico, Andrés was named the 2018 Humanitarian of the Year by the James Beard Foundation.[26] He wrote a book about the experience called We Fed an Island: The True Story of Rebuilding Puerto Rico, One Meal at a Time.[27]

Source: Retrieved September 4, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Andr%C3%A9s

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400 Years of Slavery – Sequel: Greatest Story Never Told

Posted on August 31, 2019 in Ethos, Social

Go Lean Commentary

We just completed a special series of blog-commentaries for the month of August 2019, commemorating and commiserating the “400 Years of African Slavery” on the American mainland. Yes, slavery started in America in August 1619, and we are now at a pivotal anniversary; but this is not an occasion to be proud. This was NOT America’s finest moment.

For the New World – discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 – African Slavery was not exclusive to the United States of America (then British North America). No, there was a race to the bottom and every European power wanted to get in on it:

  • British – North America (today’s USA & Canada), Central America (today’s Belize), South America (today’s Guyana) and many Caribbean islands
  • Denmark-Norway – today’s US Virgin Islands
  • Dutch/Netherlands –  Caribbean islands,
  • Sweden – Caribbean Island of St. Bartholomew
  • French – North America (think: Louisiana Purchase)
  • Portugal – Brazil
  • Spanish – Latin America

They all explored and settled colonies in the New World, instituting slavery in its wake.

Wait, wait?! No Germany, Italy or Belgium? These nations also engaged the race to exploit Africa and African people, but limited their involvement to the continent, rather than the New World. (The 1885 Berlin Conference gathered all these European powers to “divvy up” the continent for their own self-interest).

In between the initial New World exploration and the Berlin Conference, the Enlightenment Movement – “Age of Enlightenment” between 1650 to 1700 – took hold. It brought a new definition of Freedom, Egalitarianism and Liberalism. The orthodoxy of enslaving indigenous people (in the Americas or in Africa) came to be viewed as barbaric and uncivilized – thanks to a lot of Women in the Abolition Movement. By the 1770’s, there was momentum in the British Parliament to disenfranchise Slavery and the Slave Trade.

This history set the stage for the Greatest Story Never Told …

The 13 original colonies that rebelled and Declared their Independence from Great Britain, were not inclined to abandon slavery – not just yet. The official tagline of the Revolutionary War or America’s War for Independence (1776) was “a conflict of the American Patriots versus the British Loyalists”. But in actuality, the War could have been considered a Slavery Rebellion-in-Reverse; a revolt to maintain the orthodoxy of slavery.

Through out the New World, Slave Rebellions abounded – see Appendix below. But the enslaved African people were always a minority in America, while in the Caribbean territories, they were the majority population, on average 4:1, but in some cases, 7-to-1 … Africans versus European. This reality, and the accompanying injustice of slavery, was a “powder keg waiting to explode”. No one group had a greater incentive to fight than the slaves themselves. Many such slaves – 20,000 actually; see VIDEO below – joined in formal conflicts during the American Revolutionary War, fighting on the side of the British. See the full story here:

Title: The Ex-Slaves Who Fought with the British
Subtitle: While the patriots battled for freedom from Great Britain, upwards of 20,000 runaway slaves declared their own personal independence and fought on the side of the British.
By: Christopher Klein

When American colonists took up arms in a battle for independence starting in 1775, that fight for freedom excluded an entire race of people—African-Americans. On November 12, 1775, General George Washington decreed in his orders that “neither negroes, boys unable to bear arms, nor old men” could enlist in the Continental Army.

Two days after the patriots’ military leader banned African-Americans from joining his ranks, however, black soldiers proved their mettle at the Battle of Kemp’s Landing along the Virginia coast. They captured an enemy commanding officer and proved pivotal in securing the victory—for the British.

After the battle, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia who had been forced to flee the capital of Williamsburg and form a government in exile aboard the warship HMS Fowey, ordered the British standard raised before making a startling announcement. For the first time in public he formally read a proclamation that he had issued the previous week granting freedom to the slaves of rebels who escaped to British custody.

Dunmore’s Proclamation was “more an announcement of military strategy than a pronouncement of abolitionist principles,” according to author Gary B. Nash in “The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America.” The document not only provided the British with an immediate source of manpower, it weakened Virginia’s patriots by depriving them of their main source of labor.

Much like Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, however, Dunmore’s Proclamation was limited in scope. Careful not to alienate Britain’s white Loyalist allies, the measure applied only to slaves whose masters were in rebellion against the Crown. The British regularly returned slaves who fled from Loyalist masters.

Dunmore’s Proclamation inspired thousands of slaves to risk their lives in search of freedom. They swam, dog-paddled and rowed to Dunmore’s floating government-in-exile on Chesapeake Bay in order to find protection with the British forces. “By mid-1776, what had been a small stream of escaping slaves now turned into a torrent,” wrote Nash. “Over the next seven years, enslaved Africans mounted the greatest slave rebellion in American history.”

Among those slaves making a break for freedom were eight belonging to Peyton Randolph, speaker of the Virginia House of Burgesses, and several belonging to patriot orator Patrick Henry who apparently took his famous words—“Give me liberty, or give me death!”—to heart and fled to British custody. Another runaway who found sanctuary with Dunmore was Harry Washington, who escaped from Mount Vernon while his famous master led the Continental Army.

Dunmore placed these “Black Loyalists” in the newly formed Ethiopian Regiment and had the words “Liberty to Slaves” embroidered on their uniform sashes. Since the idea of escaped slaves armed with guns stirred terror even among white Loyalists, Dunmore placated the slaveholders by primarily using the runaways as laborers building forts, bridges and trenches and engaging in trades such as shoemaking, blacksmithing and carpentry. Women worked as nurses, cooks and seamstresses.

As manpower issues grew more dire as the war progressed, however, the British army became more amenable to arming runaway slaves and sending them into battle. General Henry Clinton organized an all-black regiment, the “Black Pioneers.” Among the hundreds of runaway slaves in its ranks was Harry Washington, who rose to the rank of corporal and participated in the siege of Charleston.

On June 30, 1779, Clinton expanded on Dunmore’s actions and issued the Philipsburg Proclamation, which promised protection and freedom to all slaves in the colonies who escaped from their patriot masters. Blacks captured fighting for the enemy, however, would be sold into bondage.

According to Maya Jasanoff in her book “Liberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World,” approximately 20,000 black slaves joined the British during the American Revolution. In contrast, historians estimate that only about 5,000 black men served in the Continental Army.

As the American Revolution came to close with the British defeat at Yorktown in 1781, white Loyalists and thousands of their slaves evacuated Savannah and Charleston and resettled in Florida and on plantations in the Bahamas, Jamaica and other British territories throughout the Caribbean. The subsequent peace negotiations called for all slaves who escaped behind British lines before November 30, 1782, to be freed with restitution given to their owners. In order to determine which African-Americans were eligible for freedom and which weren’t, the British verified the names, ages and dates of escape for every runaway slave in their custody and recorded the information in what was called the “Book of Negroes.”

With their certificates of freedom in hand, 3,000 black men, women and children joined the Loyalist exodus from New York to Nova Scotia in 1783. There the Black Loyalists found freedom, but little else. After years of economic hardship and denial of the land and provisions they had been promised, nearly half of the Black Loyalists abandoned the Canadian province. Approximately 400 sailed to London, while in 1792 more than 1,200 brought their stories full circle and returned to Africa in a new settlement in [Freetown,] Sierra Leone. Among the newly relocated was the former slave of the newly elected president of the United States — Harry Washington — who returned to the land of his birth.

Source: Posted August 22, 2018; retrieved August 29, 2019 from: https://www.history.com/news/the-ex-slaves-who-fought-with-the-british

—————

VIDEO – History Stories – Slavery – https://www.history.com/news/the-ex-slaves-who-fought-with-the-british

The Greatest Story Never Told led to the origins of the City of Freetown, Sierra Leone in Africa. This tale features the full circle of those stakeholders, the Black Loyalists: enslaved in America; fought for the Royal Army; sought refuge in Canada, London and then repatriated to Africa.

Wow!

Among the nameless masses of 20,000 people, was the 1 named-hero: Harry Washington, the ex-slave of the First American President George Washington. See his story here:

Harry Washington (c. 1740–1800) was known as a slave of Virginia planter George Washington, later the first President of the United States. He served as a Black Loyalist in the American Revolutionary War and was granted his freedom by the British and evacuated to Nova Scotia. In 1792 he joined nearly 1200 freedmen for resettlement in Sierra Leone, where they set up a colony of free people of color.

Harry had been born in Gambia and sold into slavery as a war captive. He was purchased by George Washington, who had plantations in Virginia. During the American Revolutionary War, Harry Washington escaped from slavery in Virginia and served as a corporal in the Black Pioneers attached to a British artillery unit. After the war he was among Black Loyalists resettled by the British in Nova Scotia, where they were granted land. There Washington married Jenny, another freed American slave.

In 1792 the couple were among more than 1,000 freedmen chosen to migrate to Sierra Leone, West Africa, where the British had established a new colony of people of African descent.
…
Source: Retrieved August 29, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Washington

“This” is the personification of the Greatest Story Never Told!

This is a sequel, a supplemental blog-commentary to the recently completed 5-part series from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean for August 2019. This series was composed to remember, reflect and reconcile the 400 Years of Slavery history in the American experience – 1619 until … today. The full series of these blogs-commentaries this month were cataloged as follows:

  1. 400 Years of Slavery: America, Not the first
  2. 400 Years of Slavery: International Day of Remembrance
  3. 400 Years of Slavery: Emancipation Day – Hardly ‘Free At Last’
  4. 400 Years of Slavery: Where is home?
  5. 400 Years of Slavery: Cop-on-Black Shootings in America’s DNA

This theme, discrediting the Moral High Ground in the history of American Patriotism, has been previously analyzed in numerous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12380 ‘4th of July’ and Slavery – Should ‘We’ Be Celebrating?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11870 America’s First Official Victims: Indian Termination Policy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11048 The Missing Model of Hammurabi: No one is Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4971 A Lesson in History – Truth & Consequence of Royal Charters: Slavery

The Greatest Story Never Told is not very flattening of the United States of America. Nor does it extol honor on the British hierarchy – in the Peace Treaty to end the Revolutionary War, the British returned many runaway slaves to their previous masters. No, the heroes are the slaves who bravely fought for their chance of freedom for themselves and their children. The actuality of racial oppression, suppression and repression of being a Black Man in America was tragic. The biggest learned-lesson was:

Do not count on the White Man to bring you salvation.

This thought was embedded in the Go Lean book (Page 21), with this quotation:

The African Diaspora experience in the New World is one of “future” gratification, as the generations that sought freedom from slavery knew that their children, not them, would be the beneficiaries of that liberty. This ethos continued with subsequent generations expecting that their “children” would be more successful in the future than the parents may have been.

Reflecting on the history of 400 Years of Slavery in America, reminds us that we must do the heavy-lifting ourselves to reform and transform our society. We cannot count on the Americans nor the British, or any Europeans for that matter, to save us. We must save ourselves!

How?

This is the purpose of the Go Lean roadmap; it features the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies for us to make the Caribbean member-states a better place to live, work and play … on our own. We urge every Caribbean stakeholder to lean-in to this roadmap. Yes we can!  🙂

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

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

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

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

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

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … 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.

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

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

————–

Appendix – Revolts of the Caribbean Islands
Vincent Brown, a professor of History and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard, has made a study of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. In 2013, Brown teamed up with Axis Maps to create an interactive map of Jamaican slave uprisings in the 18th century called, “Slave Revolt in Jamaica, 1760-1761, A Cartographic Narrative.”[14] Brown’s efforts have shown that the slave insurrection in Jamaica in 1760-61 was a carefully planned affair and not a spontaneous, chaotic eruption, as was often argued (due in large part to the lack of written records produced by the insurgents).[15]

Later, in 1795, several slave rebellions broke out across the Caribbean, influenced by the Haitian Revolution:

Source: Retrieved August 29, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demerara_rebellion_of_1823

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400 Years of Slavery – Cop-on-Black Shootings in America’s DNA – Encore

Posted on August 30, 2019 in Ethos, Social

Slavery was clearly an oppression, suppression and repression of the African race on American soil. This was true in the Year 1619 … and unfortunately; there is still some truth to this assessment in 2019, 400 years later. See this case-in-point:

Title: What New Research Says About Race and Police Shootings
By: Brentin Mock

In the U.S., African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white people. For black women, the rate is 1.4 times more likely.

That’s according to a new study conducted by Frank Edwards, of Rutgers University’s School of Criminal Justice, Hedwig Lee, of Washington University in St. Louis’s Department of Sociology, and Michael Esposito, of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. The researchers used verified data on police killings from 2013 to 2018 compiled by the website Fatal Encounters, created by Nevada-based journalist D. Brian Burghart. Under their models, they found that roughly 1-in-1,000 black boys and men will be killed by police in their lifetime. For white boys and men, the rate is 39 out of 100,000.

In fact, people of color in general were found more likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts. …

Source: Posted August 6, 2019; retrieved August 29, 2019 from: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/08/police-officer-shootings-gun-violence-racial-bias-crime-data/595528/

This is the final submission in this series of blog-commentaries from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean for August 2019. This final entry, 5-of-5 in this series, focuses on the lingering effects of racial oppression-suppression-repression of the African race in America. Clearly, the American scales of justice are not balanced. This acknowledgement aligns and complements the entire series as it was composed to remember, reflect and reconcile the history of 400 Years of Slavery in the American experience – 1619 until … today. The full series of these blogs-commentaries this month is cataloged as follows:

  1. 400 Years of Slavery: America, Not the first
  2. 400 Years of Slavery: International Day of Remembrance
  3. 400 Years of Slavery: Emancipation Day – Hardly ‘Free At Last’
  4. 400 Years of Slavery: Where is home?
  5. 400 Years of Slavery: Cop-on-Black Shootings in America’s DNA

Assuredly, there is no slavery in America today; yet there is still some racial oppression-suppression-and-repression, especially evident in the dynamic of Cop-on-Black Shootings. This sober subject matter had been thoroughly dissected in a previous Go Lean commentary from April 9, 2018.

It is only apropos to Encore that previous blog-commentary here-now:

———————-

Go Lean Commentary – Nature or Nurture: Cop-on-Black Shootings – Embedded in America’s DNA

It happens so often, it rarely gets attention anymore; Police-on-Black shootings that is!

It seems to be a constant feature of American life. See the latest high profile one – Stephon Clark – in the Appendix below.

What’s worse, when it happens, the White people in America, just yawns. Sad, but true!

Is this phenomenon the Nature of the United States of America, or is it Nurture?

The answer is complicated; the answer is both!

This commentary continues the 4-part series on Nature or Nurture for community ethos. This entry is 2 of 4 in this series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of root causes of some societal defects – specific examples in the US and UK – and how to overcome them. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. Nature or Nurture: Black Marchers see gun violence differently
  2. Nature or Nurture: Cop-on-Black Shootings – Embedded in America’s DNA; Whites Yawn
  3. Nature or Nurture: UK City of Bristol still paying off Slavery Debt
  4. Nature or Nurture: Nurturing comes from women; “they” impacted the Abolition of Slavery

In the first submission to this series, the history of Psychology was introduced, which quoted:

One of the oldest arguments in the history of psychology is the Nature vs Nurture debate. Each of these sides have good points that it’s really hard to decide whether a person’s development is predisposed in his DNA, or a majority of it is influenced by this life experiences and his environment. – https://explorable.com/nature-vs-nurture-debate

All of these commentaries relate to “why” the New World – including the US and the Caribbean – has the societal defects that are so prominent – and so illogical – and  “how” the stewards for a new Caribbean can assuage these defects and the resultant failing dispositions among Caribbean society. Though the traits may be consistent in the hemisphere, our efforts to reform and transform is limited to the Caribbean.

The subject of Police-On-Black shootings is a familiar theme for this commentary, from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free. The book asserts that there is a consistent lack of respect for those in America fitting a “Poor Black” attribute. In fact these prior blog-commentaries doubled-down on this assertion:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13081 America’s Race Relations – Spot-on for Protest
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8202 Lessons Learned from American Dysfunctional Minority Relations
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8200 Climate of Hate for American Minorities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7221 Street naming for Martin Luther King unveils the real America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5527 American Defects: Racism – Is It Over?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4863 Video of Police Shooting: Worth a Million Words
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=546 Book Review – ‘The Divide’ – Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=341 Hypocritical US slams Caribbean human rights practices

Say it ain’t so … it is a dangerous proposition to be Black in America. In fact one Caribbean member-states – The Bahamas, a majority Black population – had urged their young men traveling to the US to exercise extreme caution when dealing with police authorities. This advice is Spot-on!

The Nature of the US is that Black people – especially men and boys – have always had to contend with an unjust society in terms of justice and the security apparatus. Since the subject of Nature assumes that racism is predisposed in a society’s DNA, despite the fact that formal slavery ended 150 years ago, it is no surprise that Blacks in America have seen a continuous suppression, repression and oppression of any justice requirements.

After all, this is the population that suffered so much of the indignity of lynching.

Yes, we are going there …

Despite the fact that African slaves were taken to all New World territories, the country with this acute practice was only the United States of America. Surely, this had a lingering effect on the culture and society. This effect was not only on the victims, but on society in general, and the law enforcement establishment.

Imagine people gathering in their Sunday Best Clothes to watch the lynching (murder) of a Black man with no trial or due process. Imagine the effect that would instill on that community? Would that forge concern and consideration for the targeted population?

Now imagine that drama repeated again and again … 4733 times.

According to a previous Go Lean commentary, 4,733 people were documented as being lynched. That’s a huge number. To think there would be no impact on the Nature of a society is inconceivable. This theme was also conveyed in the TV news magazine 60 Minutes. See the full story here:

VIDEO – Inside the memorial to victims of lynching – https://www.cbsnews.com/video/inside-the-memorial-to-victims-of-lynching/

Posted April 8, 2018 – Oprah Winfrey reports on the Alabama memorial dedicated to thousands of African-American men, women and children lynched over a 70-year period following the Civil War.

Surely this country – the America of Old – would have been no place for Caribbean people to seek refuge. The Nuturing of American society continued to develop a nonchalance to injustice for the Black people of the US. This is where the Nature has been supplanted by the Nurture. This is why stories like Stephon Clark continue to emerge and why White America “continue to yawn”. Surely this society – modern America – is no place for Black-and-Brown Caribbean people to seek refuge.

Yet, the region – all 30 member-states – continue to suffer from an abominable brain drain rate in which so many Caribbean citizens have emigrated to the US, and other countries. (One reported has rated the brain drain rate of 70 percent).

The book Go Lean…Caribbean asserts that it is easier for the Black-and-Brown populations in the Caribbean to prosper where planted in the Caribbean, rather than emigrating to foreign countries, like the United States. If only we can reform and transform our own society so as to dissuade our people from leaving to seek refuge in the US. This is the quest of the Go Lean book, to serve as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The book presents 370 pages of instructions for how to reform and transform our Caribbean member-states. It stresses the key community ethos that needs to be adopted, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies necessary to optimize the societal engines in a community.

The CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives for optimizing our societal engines:

As related in this blog series on Nature or Nurture, the Caribbean has the same Nature as our American counterparts, but not the same Nurture. Our majority Black-and-Brown populations have forged different societies than the baseline US. And we are not wanting to be like America …

… we want to be better.

This is not just a dream; this is a roadmap that is conceivable, believable and achievable. Yes, we can … reform and transform our society. We can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

————

Appendix – Shooting of Stephon Clark

Stephon Clark was shot and killed on the evening of March 18, 2018, by two officers of the Sacramento Police Department in Sacramento, California, United States. The officers were looking for a suspect who was breaking windows in the Meadowview neighborhood, and confronted Clark, an unarmed 22-year-old African-American man whom they found in the yard of his grandmother’s house, where he resided. Clark ran from the police in an encounter that was filmed by police video cameras. The officers stated that they shot Clark, firing 20 rounds, believing that he had pointed a gun at them. After the shooting, police reported that he was carrying only a cell phone. According to an independent autopsy, Clark was shot eight times including six times in the back.

The shooting caused large protests in Sacramento, and Clark’s family members have rejected the initial police description of the events leading to Clark’s death. The Sacramento Police Department placed the officers on paid administrative leave and opened a use of force investigation. Police have stated they are confident that Clark was the person responsible for breaking windows in the area prior to the encounter.

…

Shooting

The Sacramento Police Department stated that on Sunday, March 18 at 9:18 p.m., two officers were responding to a call that someone was breaking car windows.[3] In a media release after the shooting, police stated that they had been looking for a suspect hiding in a backyard. They said the suspect was a thin black man, 6 feet 1 inch (185 cm) in height, wearing darkly colored pants and a black hooded sweatshirt.[3] A sheriff’s helicopter spotted a man at 9:25 p.m. in a nearby backyard and told officers on the ground that he had shattered a window using a tool bar, run to the front of that house, and then looked in an adjacent car.[3]

Officers on the ground entered the front yard of Clark’s grandmother’s home, and saw Clark next to the home.[10][3] Vance Chandler, the Sacramento Police Department spokesman, said that Clark was the same man who had been breaking windows, and was tracked by police in helicopters.[3] Chandler said that when Clark was confronted and ordered to stop and show his hands, Clark fled to the back of the property.[3]

Police body camera footage from both of the officers who shot Clark recorded the incident, though the footage is dark and shaky.[10][11] In the videos, officers spot Clark in his grandmother’s driveway and shout “Hey, show me your hands. Stop. Stop.”[10] The video shows that the officers chased Clark into the backyard and an officer yells, “Show me your hands! Gun!” About three seconds elapse and then the officer yells, “Show me your hands! Gun, gun, gun”, before shooting Clark.[10][11]

According to the police, before being shot Clark turned and held an object that he “extended in front of him” while he moved towards the officers.[3] The officers said they believed that Clark was pointing a gun at them.[6] The police stated that the officers feared for their safety, and at 9:26 p.m., fired 20 rounds, hitting Clark multiple times.[6][3] According to an independent autopsy, Clark was shot eight times, including six times in the back.[1] The report found that one of the bullets to strike Clark from the front was likely fired while he was already on the ground.[1]

Body-cam footage shows that after shooting him, the officers continued to yell at him as one shined a flashlight at him and they kept their guns aimed at him. One officer stated in one of the body-cam videos, “He had something in hands, looked like a gun from our perspective.” Three minutes after the shooting, a female officer called to him and said “We need to know if you’re OK. We need to get you medics, so we can’t go over and get you help until we know you don’t have a weapon.”[12] They waited five minutes after shooting Clark before approaching and then handcuffing him.[13] Clark was found to have a white iPhone, and was unarmed.[6][4] Clark’s girlfriend later said the phone belonged to her.[14]

After more officers arrived, one officer said “Hey, mute”, and audio recording from the body camera was turned off.[10]

The Police Department stated on March 19, one day after the shooting, that Clark had been seen with a “tool bar”. On the evening of that day, police revised their statement to say that Clark was carrying a cell phone, and not a tool bar, when he was shot.[3] Police added that Clark might have used either a concrete block or an aluminum gutter railing to break a sliding glass door at the house next door to where he was shot, and that they believed Clark had broken windows from at least three vehicles in the area.[3]

…

Responses

Elected officials and political activists

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, initially said he would not second-guess decisions made by officers on the ground. After a backlash, he said the videos of Clark’s shooting made him feel “really sick” and that the shooting was “wrong” but declined to comment whether the officers should be charged.[30] House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi stated that Clark “should be alive today”.[31] [Civil Rights Activist] Reverend Al Sharpton stated that he was alarmed by the story, which he said had not received enough media attention.[32]

On March 26, White House spokesman Raj Shah stated that he was unaware of any comments from President Donald Trump regarding the incident.[31] Two days later, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stated that Trump is “very supportive of law enforcement” and that the incident was a “local matter” that should be dealt with by the local authorities.[33]

Clark family

Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who represents the Clark family, stated that the autopsy finding was inconsistent with the official narrative that Clark was charging toward the police officers when they fired.[1] Clark’s family expressed skepticism of the police version of events. Clark’s brother, Stevante Clark, said of police statements: “They said he had a gun. Then they said he had a crowbar. Then they said he had a toolbar … If you lie to me once, I know you’ll lie to me again.”[10] Clark’s aunt Saquoia Durham said that police gave Clark no time to respond to their commands before shooting him.[34] According to Crump the officers did not identify themselves as police when they encountered Clark.[22] The police have stated that the officers who confronted Clark were wearing their uniforms at that time.[35]

Policing experts

University of South Carolina criminology professor Geoffrey Alpert stated that it might be hard for officers to justify their conclusion that Clark was armed, since they had been told he was carrying a toolbar.[36] Peter Moskos, assistant professor of Law and Police Science at John Jay College, said that the officers appeared to think they had been fired upon following the shooting.[37] Alpert, Clark’s family, and protesters questioned officers’ decisions to mute their microphones.[10][38] Police Chief Daniel Hahn said he was unable to explain the muting. Cedric Alexander, former police chief in Rochester, New York, and former president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, said that the muting did not appear to violate any policy, but looks bad. He also stated that it is not unusual for police to mute their body cams and that attorneys advise the police to mute conversations to prevent recording any comments that could be used in administrative or criminal proceedings. Many body cams are made with a mute button on them.[38]

Source: Wikipedia; retrieved April 9, 2018 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Stephon_Clark

 

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400 Years of Slavery – Where is ‘Home’?

Posted on August 29, 2019 in Ethos, Social

Go Lean Commentary

“Go back to Africa”

According to the Urban Dictionary, this phrase is just simply an insult:

  1. Phrase used when a black person is living in a white country; i.e. Here is England, here is not your land! Go back to Africa!
  2. An insult used against blacks living in a non-African country.
    What people forget when they use it, however, is that in order to “go back” to somewhere, you have to have been born in that place. Most likely, the black who you tried to insult was born in a Western country, and no Western country is located in the continent of Africa.

All in all, this insult is cruel, unkind and unwelcoming. But, for 1 minute, let’s look at this whole issue from an American perspective – African-American more specifically – see how/if/when an American Black person can truly … go “home” to Africa.

One man’s trash is another’s treasure.

The African country of Ghana is rolling out the Welcome Mat for African-Americans. They know that the ancestors of many of these African-Americans may have actually come through the doors of African Slave Trading posts located in today’s Ghana; see the details on Elmira Castle below.

This Welcome Mat is presented by the highest elected official in that land – the President. See the full story here:

Title: 2019: Year of return for African Diaspora
Subtitle: Ghana rolls out the red carpet to encourage resettlement in the motherland
By: Benjamin Tetteh

In the heart of Accra, Ghana’s capital, just a few meters from the United States embassy, lie the tombs of W. E. B. Du Bois, a great African-American civil rights leader, and his wife, Shirley. The founder of the US-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People moved to Accra in 1961, settling in the city’s serene residential area of Labone and living there until his death in August 1963.

Mr. Du Bois’s journey to Ghana may have signaled the emergence of a profound desire among Africans in the diaspora to retrace their roots and return to the continent. Ghana was a major hub for the transatlantic slave trade from the 16th to the 19th centuries.

In Washington, D.C., in September 2018, Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo declared and formally launched the “Year of Return, Ghana 2019” for Africans in the Diaspora, giving fresh impetus to the quest to unite Africans on the continent with their brothers and sisters in the diaspora.

At that event, President Akufo-Addo said, “We know of the extraordinary achievements and contributions they [Africans in the diaspora] made to the lives of the Americans, and it is important that this symbolic year—400 years later—we commemorate their existence and their sacrifices.”

US Congress members Gwen Moore of Wisconsin and Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, diplomats and leading figures from the African-American community, attended the event. Representative Jackson Lee linked the Ghanaian government’s initiative with the passage in Congress in 2017 of the 400 Years of African-American History Commission Act. Provisions in the act include the setting up of a history commission to carry out and provide funding for activities marking the 400th anniversary of the “arrival of Africans in the English colonies at Point Comfort, Virginia, in 1619.”

Since independence in 1957, successive Ghanaian leaders have initiated policies to attract Africans abroad back to Ghana.

In his maiden independence address, then–Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah sought to frame Africa’s liberation around the concept of Africans all over the world coming back to Africa.

“Nkrumah saw the American Negro as the vanguard of the African people,” said Henry Louis Gates Jr., Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard, who first traveled to Ghana when he was 20 and fresh out of Harvard, afire with Nkrumah’s spirit. “He wanted to be able to utilize the services and skills of African-Americans as Ghana made the transition from colonialism to independence.”

Ghana’s parliament passed a Citizenship Act in 2000 to make provision for dual citizenship, meaning that people of Ghanaian origin who have acquired citizenships abroad can take up Ghanaian citizenship if they so desire.

That same year the country enacted the Immigration Act, which provides for a “Right of Abode” for any “Person of African descent in the Diaspora” to travel to and from the country “without hindrance.”

The Joseph Project
In 2007, in its 50th year of independence, the government initiated the Joseph Project to commemorate 200 years since the abolition of slavery and to encourage Africans abroad to return.

Similar to Israel’s policy of reaching out to Jews across Europe and beyond following the Holocaust, the Joseph Project is named for the Biblical Joseph who was sold into slavery in Egypt but would later reunite with his family and rule Egypt.

The African-American community is excited about President Akufo-Addo’s latest initiative. In social media posts, many expressed interest in visiting Africa for the first time. Among them is Amber Walker, a media practitioner who says that 2019 is the time to visit her ancestral home.

“It is definitely comforting because that kind of red carpet has not been rolled out by our oppressors in the Western world,” she added.

In making the announcement President Akufo-Addo said: Together on both sides of the Atlantic, we’ll work to make sure that never again will we allow a handful of people with superior technology to walk into Africa, seize their people and sell them into slavery. That must be our resolution, that never again, never again!”

But Ms. Walker took issue with Mr. Akufo-Addo for appearing to downplay the actions of some Africans in the slave trade. “In the president’s [Akufo-Addo’s] statement, he sounds like the entire blame is placed on white people coming in with weapons and taking black people away, but that’s not necessarily the history. So I think that needs to be acknowledged,” she said.

She suggested a form of reconciliation such as took place in post-apartheid South Africa—a truth and reconciliation process that will satisfy the millions of Africans whose forefathers were sold into slavery.

In 2013 the United Nations declared 2015–2024 the International Decade for People of African Descent to “promote respect, protection and fulfilment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms of people of African descent.”

The theme for the ten-year celebration is “People of African descent: recognition, justice and development.”

The “Year of Return, Ghana 2019” will coincide with the biennial Pan African Historical Theatre Festival (Panafest), which is held in Cape Coast, home of Cape Coast Castle and neighbouring Elmina Castle—two notable edifices recognized by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) as World Heritage Sites of the slave era.

[See VIDEO of Elmira Castle here:]

Source: Posted Africa Renewal: December 2018 – March 2019; retrieved August 27, 2019 from: https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2018-march-2019/2019-year-return-african-diaspora

———–

VIDEO – Elmina Castle shows horrors of slave trade – https://youtu.be/xWupcOOPUOE

Newsy
Published on Feb 8, 2017 – The horror stories from inside this Ghanaian slave castle easily rival the cruelty of the Middle Passage and life on an American plantation.
Learn more about this story at www.newsy.com/66923/
Find more videos like this at www.newsy.com
Follow Newsy on Facebook: www.facebook.com/newsyvideos
Follow Newsy on Twitter: www.twitter.com/newsyvideos

The truth of the matter, Black people are not all “homogenous” – the same. Many of them have ancestral homes that are actually outside of Africa. For many, that home is the Caribbean – accordingly, some studies project 10 to 25 million American residents may actually have Caribbean heritage. (Slave ships stopped in the Caribbean on the way to North America). The same as the President of Ghana has sent out the invitation, Caribbean stakeholders are making the same pledge; notice this featured in a previous commentary by the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean:

We Want you back
“We tend to think economic growth comes from working harder and smarter, but economists attribute up to a third of it [growth] to more people joining the workforce each year than leaving it. The result is more producing, earning and spending.”

Many Caribbean natives love their homeland, but live abroad in the Diaspora – estimated at 10 to 25 million. Over the past decades, they had moved away looking for better opportunities or safe haven. The stakeholders of the Caribbean now need to declare to these people: I Want You Back! 

Unlike the harsh treatment encountered in America – racism still proliferates – the Caribbean and African countries are more natural in their invitation. This may be due to the fact that 29 of the 30 Caribbean member-states feature a majority population of Black-and-Brown people. While our communities are not perfect, this commentary has repeatedly asserted that it is easier to reform and transform these member-states than to try and change America, with all its societal defects.

This is a logical conclusion, considering that it has been a history of 400 Years of Slavery in this American homeland and Black people are still not welcome; still being urged to:

Go back to Africa!

This is the focus of this series of blog-commentaries from the movement behind the Go Lean book for August 2019. This entry is 4-of-5 in this series; it is composed to remember, reflect and reconcile the history of 400 Years of Slavery in the American experience – 1619 until … today. The full series of these blogs-commentaries this month is cataloged as follows:

  1. 400 Years of Slavery: America, Not the first
  2. 400 Years of Slavery: International Day of Remembrance
  3. 400 Years of Slavery: Emancipation Day – Hardly ‘Free At Last’
  4. 400 Years of Slavery: Where is home?
  5. 400 Years of Slavery: Cop-on-Black Shootings in America’s DNA

The invitation to repatriate to the Caribbean has been detailed in previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15126 ‘Time to Go’ – Caribbean member-states must have ‘population increases’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14746 Calls for Repatriation Strategy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13604 Caribbean to the Diaspora: ‘I Want You Back’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10654 Stay Home! Immigration Realities in the US
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9219 ‘Time to Go’ – Logic of Senior Emigration
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7151 The Caribbean is Looking for Heroes … ‘to Return’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4222 Message to Caribbean Retirees – “Come in from the cold”

There are many lessons for stakeholders of Caribbean society to learn in considering the history of 400 Years of Slavery in America. Despite the reality of the racial oppression, suppression and repression, many Caribbean people still emigrated there, to partake in the American experience. This depicts the sad reality of Caribbean life – the “frying pan was better than the fire”. As a result, many lessons-learned have been derived from these historic details:

  • Caribbean Life was too hard for slaveholders and plantation-owners without slave labor. Once the abolition occurred, there was a first round of White Flight. Then once de-colonization took effect, more White Flight was experienced. So the European Imperial presence in the Caribbean has been supplanted with majority Black-and-Brown people in residence (29 of 30 member-states) and holding positions of power.
  • The economics of mercantilism continued in the Caribbean, despite the dissolution of the colonial system. This meant, no manufacturing footprint in the regional markets; raw materials were exported to come back as finished goods. The end result: all Caribbean member-states boast only a service economy with consumption dynamics only.
  • The Caribbean is arguably the greatest address on the planet, geography-wise. But the societal engines – economics, security & governance – are defective and inadequate for the majority of the population. As a result, the abandonment rate is very high, averaging 70 percent of tertiary-educated citizens in the independent member-states; plus 50 percent for the general population for the dependent territories (Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Netherland Antilles, French Islands, etc.). So we Lose our Best and have to nation-build with the Rest. 🙁
  • Many American frontier cities – i.e. Miami – were built with the blood, sweat and tears of Caribbean people. These Black-and-Brown people will not leave – and they should not have to – despite how many outcries from racist and narrow-minded White People to “Go back to Africa”.
  • Retirement life may be the best opportunity for the Caribbean to entice their Diaspora to return “home”. Home is NOT Africa. This is the reality of repatriation – if you have never lived there – it was never really home. For this reason, while we want to see prosperity in the African Motherland, we – the Caribbean – really do not need to compete with that continent.

Going back to Africa is not a new declaration for America towards Black people. First there was a voluntary movement in the late-1800’s. See the encyclopedia details here:

The Back-to-Africa movement, in the nineteenth century called the colonization movement, encouraged Americans of African ancestry to return to Africa — not to their original homelands, which in most cases were unknown, but to the continent. In general the movement was an overwhelming failure; very few Blacks wanted to move to Africa, and the small number that did — some under duress — initially faced brutal conditions. As the failure became known in the United States in the 1820s, it spawned the abolitionist movement. In the twentieth century Marcus Garvey, Rastafarians, and some other African Americans espoused the concept, but few actually left the United States.


Source: Retrieved August 27, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-to-Africa_movement

Reflecting on the History of 400 Years of Slavery in America, reminds us that this American mainland is not really our homeland. Though we helped to build this country to make America great; see Appendix VIDEO below, it was not intended for greatness for the Black-and-Brown populations- we can only ever be immigrants; we will never be considered among the settlers. It is our assertion that the Caribbean Diaspora can be more successful at home in the Caribbean. We can more easily elevate our standing in society and our standard of living.

Yes, we can!

This is the purpose of the Go Lean movement. We urge every Caribbean stakeholder to lean-in to our roadmap to bring change to this Caribbean region. Yes, we can make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play.  🙂

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

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

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

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

Who We Are 
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

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

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … 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.

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

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

—————

Appendix VIDEO – “We Built This Country. Do Not Tell Us To Go Back Where We Came From.” – https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4814023/we-built-country-back-from

Posted August 24, 2019 – Virginia Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax at 400-Year Commemoration of 1619 Landing of Enslaved Africans in English North America.

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400 Years of Slavery – Emancipation Day: Hardly ‘Free At Last’

Posted on August 27, 2019 in Ethos, Social

Go Lean Commentary

“Free At Last, Free At Last; Thank God Almighty, We Are Free At Last”
– Dr. Martin Luther King; “I Have a Dream” Speech; March on Washington, 1963

Considering that the Emancipation Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863, it would have been expected that those powerful words from Dr. King may have been a reality long before 1963.

Regrettably, No!

This was the point of Dr. King’s theme:

…
Five score years ago, a great American [President Abraham Lincoln], in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. …

See the Appendix VIDEO below of the actual speech in 1963.

America was forged on the blatant hypocrisy of a legal premise that “All men are created equal”, and yet the African-American population was never treated equally, fairly or justly. In fact, by some analysis, America is still not equal-fair-just for African-Americans. In fact, just naming a street after Martin Luther King creates friction in American communities even today, 56 years after that iconic speech.

How about other communities (nations in the New World)? Did they emancipate their slaves sooner or later? See the full list here of all the territories in the Caribbean region including the mainland coastal lands rimming the Caribbean Sea:

Chronology of the abolition of slavery in the Caribbean

First abolition Final abolition of slavery Date of independence
Haiti 1793 1804
Dominican Republic  1801 1822 1844
Costa Rica 1824 1821
El Salvador 1824 1821
Guatemala 1824 1821
Honduras 1824 1821
Mexico 1829 1810
British West Indies
Anguilla
Antigua and Barbuda
Bahamas
Barbados
Belize
Cayman Islands
Dominica
Grenada
Guyana
Virgin Islands
Jamaica
Montserrat
Turks and Caicos Islands
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
St. Vincent and Grenadines
Trinidad and Tobago		 1833-1838
1833-1834
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1838
1833-1834
1833-1838		 1981
1973
1966
19811978
1974
196619621983
1979
1979
1962
Nicaragua 1838 1821
Danish Virgin Islands
Saint John
Saint Thomas
Saint Croix		 1846-1848
1846-1848
1846-1848
Swedish Antilles
Saint Barthelemy		 1847
French Antilles
Guaealoupe
Guiana
Martinique
Saint Martín (French zone)		 1794 1848
1848
1848
1848
Colombia 1814 1851 1810
Panama 1851 1903
Venezuela 1816 1854 1811
Netherlands Antilles
Aruba
Curacao
Bonaire
Saba
Saint Eustatius
Suriname
St. Martin (Netherlands zone)		 1863
1863
1863
1863
1863
1863
1863		 1975
United States 1863-1865 1776
Puerto Rico 1873
Cuba 1880-1886 1898

Source: Retrieved August 28, 2019 from: http://atlas-caraibe.certic.unicaen.fr/en/page-117.html

———–

In summary, the dates of Final abolition of slavery in the New World territories started in 1801 and ended in 1886. (The difference between the First year and the Final year reflect the attempts of Empire stakeholders to re-introduce slavery – this is best exemplified by the experience in Haiti). The above chart reflect one issue, the abolition of slavery; what about full Civil Rights for these former enslaved populations? That’s another discussion of historic timelines.

(See the previous blog-commentary here from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean that details the American Civil Rights journey)

This is the focus of this series of blog-commentaries from the movement behind the Go Lean book for August 2019. This is the season to remember, reflect and reconcile the 400 Years of Slavery History in the American experience – 1619 until … today. It is also the time to review the Emancipation practices in the hemisphere and ascertain when the “Free At Last” declaration was sounded in the region – if it was ever sounded at all. The full series of these blogs-commentaries this month is cataloged as follows:

  1. 400 Years of Slavery: America, Not the first
  2. 400 Years of Slavery: International Day of Remembrance
  3. 400 Years of Slavery: Emancipation Day – Hardly ‘Free At Last’
  4. 400 Years of Slavery: Where is home?
  5. 400 Years of Slavery: Cop-on-Black Shootings in America’s DNA

Perhaps, “emancipation” is just a hollow word. It seems as if the people – African descended people there of – were never really free nor equal in American society. Finally in 2008, with the election of Barack Obama – the first African-American president, could the manifestation of freedom and equality “for all” finally be realized?

Not quite!

There are many examples of racial oppression, suppression and repression in the US. These experiences may be indicative that something deeper than equality is at stake; there is a Bad Community Ethos – fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society – tied to religious mis-information.

Yes, this commentary went there! This theme – reconciling the bad track record of the Moral Leaders: the Church – have been exhaustingly studied in many previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16944 Bad Messaging – Rejecting Black Women ‘As Is’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16534 European Reckoning – Christianity’s Indictment
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16512 On Martin Luther King’s 90th Birthday – America is still ‘Dreaming’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16477 Transforming Hindus versus Women – What it means for the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16172 A Lesson in History: Rev Jim Jones and Jonestown, Guyana
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15580 Caribbean Unity? Religion’s Role: False Friend
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10216 Waging a Successful War on Religious-based Orthodoxy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9766 Rwanda’s Catholic bishops apologize for genocide
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5695 Repenting, Forgiving and Reconciling the Past

There are many lessons for stakeholders of Caribbean society to learn in considering the history of 400 Years of Slavery in America. Considering that formal emancipation did not complete until the end of the 19th Century, we have a lot of derived lessons that we can further benefit from by considering these historic details:

  • The abolition of slavery was a long journey everywhere; slave-owners never wanted to give up their property – they wanted to continue to benefit from their previous investments. They were forced to give up the practice by a superior authority – The “State”.  This parallel’s the actuality of bullying … everywhere, everytime.
  • Underlying to slavery was the false precept of Natural Law. Adherents believed that they were somehow created better than other classes of people – think White Supremacy. While this is blatantly false, many people still hold on to these false precepts – religion and faith is involved. When religious dogma is involved, the appeal to logic rings hollow.
  • Admitting when you are wrong – don’t hold your breath – helps reconciliation. It is a human tendency to excuse, rationalize previous wrong courses of action of a people or society. Thusly, racism and anti-Semitism lingers to our day.
  • Religious institution did good! The Abolition and Civil Rights movements were energized by zealous religious groups; i.e. Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King was a Baptist Minister.
  • Religious institutions did bad! The teachings that Christian conversions – for Amerindians and imported slaves – were necessary for their Godly salvation was flawed, anti-Christian (Apostate) and imperiled society in the New World.

While we empathize, we are not America – Yippee!!!

… for our 30 Caribbean member-states, 29 of them feature a majority population of Black-and-Brown people. While this majority does not always equal political or economic power, universal suffrage (one man/woman, one vote) has been transformational in correcting social ills. Universal suffrage equals universal respect, so this should always be at the start of change in society. This teaches us that societal stewards should work to ensure voting rights and protections of the balloting process.

Reflecting on the 400 History of Slavery in America, reminds us that this bad institution affected the economic, security and governing engines of society. So too did emancipation! Changing the societal engines in any community requires brains (Art & Science) and brawn. So the study of Best Practices and the applications of Lessons Learned should always be prioritized for community leaders. This is the purpose of the Go Lean movement. We urge every Caribbean stakeholder to lean-in to our roadmap to bring change to this Caribbean region.

Free At Last? Hardly!

But, we can make our Caribbean homeland Free At Last and even a better place to live, work and play. Let’s get busy! 🙂

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

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

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

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

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

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … 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.

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

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

————–

Appendix VIDEO – I Have a Dream speech by Martin Luther King .Jr HD (subtitled) (Remastered) – https://youtu.be/vP4iY1TtS3s

 RARE FACTS 
Published on Nov 7, 2017 – I Have a Dream” is a public speech that was delivered by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 28, 1963, in which he called for civil and economic rights and an end to racism in the United States. Delivered to over 250,000 civil rights supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech was a defining moment of the civil rights movement and among the most iconic speeches in American history.

Under the applicable copyright laws, the speech will remain under copyright in the United States until 70 years after King’s death, through 2038.
  • Edited by: Binod Pandey
  • Caption author (Spanish): ALEJANDRA GONZALEZ
  • Caption author (Spanish (Latin America)): Adrian Roldan
  • Category: Nonprofits & Activism
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400 Years of Slavery – International Day of Rememberance – Encore

Posted on August 23, 2019 in Ethos, Social

There is the need to reconcile the UGLY history of Slavery and the Slave Trade.

Reconciliation and remembrance are the motives of this series of blog-commentaries from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. With a documented start date in America of August 23, 1619, today marks 400 years exactly. This August 2019 series focuses on this 400 Year History of Slavery – past, present and future. This is entry 2-of-5 for this series; the full catalog is listed as follows:

  1. 400 Years of Slavery: America, Not the first
  2. 400 Years of Slavery: International Day of Remembrance
  3. 400 Years of Slavery: Emancipation Day – Hardly ‘Free At Last’
  4. 400 Years of Slavery: Where is home?
  5. 400 Years of Slavery: Cop-on-Black Shootings in America’s DNA

In this series, reference is made to the fact that many American institutions have still not reconciled this ugly history – the assumption of White supremacy still persists. While African-Americans are a minority ethnic group in their country, 29 out of the 30 Caribbean member-states have majority Black populations – descendants of slaves. So there is is opportunity for a different – better – societal interaction. Or so we hope…

The subject of the August 23 International Day of Remembrance of Slavery and the Slave Trade has been detailed in previous blog-commentaries from August 23, 2017 and August 23, 2016. Underlying, was the historic events of the successful Slave Rebellion in Haiti in 1791. It is apropos to Encore that original 2016 entry – there are lots of lessons for today and the 400-year Look Back.

See that previous blog-commentary here-now:

——————————

Go Lean Commentary – A Lesson in History – Haiti 1804

There are important lessons to learn from history. This commentary considers one particular lesson: the repercussions and consequences from Slavery and the Slave Trade.

CU Blog - A Lesson in History - Haiti 1804 - Photo 3Today – August 23 – is the official commemoration of the Slave Trade, as declared by UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization). It measures the date that the 1791 Slave Rebellion in Haiti commenced.

“All of humanity is part of this story, in its transgressions and good deeds” – Irina Bokova, UNESCO Director-General

This is a very important lesson that we glean from this history, no matter our race or homeland. Let’s consider this lesson from the perspective of the Caribbean and for the benefit of Caribbean elevation.

In jurisprudence, there is the concept of felony murder.

… if a perpetrator robs a liquor store and the clerk has a heart-attack and dies, that perpetrator, once caught is tried for felony murder. The definition is the consequence of death in the act of committing a felony. What’s ironic is this charge would also apply if its a co-perpetrator that dies of the heart-attack rather than a victim-clerk.

This justice standard also applies with family discipline. If/when a child is being naughty and accordingly a sibling is unintentionally hurt, the naughty behavior will almost always be punished for the injury, because it was linked to the bad behavior.

A lesson learned from family discipline; and a lesson learned from criminal law. All of these scenarios present consequences to bad, abusive behavior. This sets the stage for better understanding of this important lesson from the international history of the year 1804. After 200 years of the Slave Trade, repercussions and consequences were bound to strike. This happened in the Caribbean country of Haiti. The following catastrophic events transpired in the decade leading up to 1804:

        • 1791 Slave Rebellion – See Appendix A below – A direct spinoff from the French Revolution’s demand for equality
        • Leadership of Louverture – As Governor-General, Toussaint Louverture sought to return Haiti to France without Slavery.
        • Resistance to Slavery – The French planned and attempted to re-instate Slavery
        • Free Republic – The first Black State in the New World
        • 1804 Massacre of the French – See Appendix B below – An illogical solution that killing Whites would prevent future enslavement. 

Make no mistake, the Massacre of 1804 – where 3,000 to 5,000 White men, women and children were killed – was a direct consequence of Slavery and the Slave Trade.

See VIDEO here of a comprehensive TED story:

VIDEO – The Atlantic Slave Trade: What too few textbooks told you – https://youtu.be/3NXC4Q_4JVg

Published on Dec 22, 2014 – Slavery has occurred in many forms throughout the world, but the Atlantic slave trade — which forcibly brought more than 10 million Africans to the Americas — stands out for both its global scale and its lasting legacy. Anthony Hazard discusses the historical, economic and personal impact of this massive historical injustice.
Lesson by Anthony Hazard, animation by NEIGHBOR.
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-atlanti…

  • Category – Education
  • License – Standard YouTube License

The review of the historic events is more than just an academic discussion, the book Go Lean…Caribbean aspires to economic principles that dictate that “consequences of choices lie in the future”. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). Haiti – the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere – is one of the 30 member-states for this Caribbean confederacy.

The people of the Caribbean need to understand the cause of this country’s decline and dysfunction; and by extension, the cause of dysfunction for the rest of the Caribbean. It is tied to the events of 1804. How will this lesson help us today?

        • Reality of the Legacy – The new Black State of Haiti was censored, sanctioned and scorned upon by all European powers (White people). According to a previous blog-commentary, to finally be recognized, France required the new country of Haiti to offset the income that would be lost by French settlers and slave owners; they demanded compensation amounting to 150 million gold francs. After a new deal was struck in 1838, Haiti agreed to pay France 90 million gold francs (the equivalent of €17 billion today). It was not until 1952 that Haiti made the final payment on what became known as its “Independence Debt”. Many analysts posit that the compensation Haiti paid to France throughout the 19th century “strangled development” and hindered the “evolution of the country”. The CU/Go Lean book assessed the near-Failed-State status of Haiti – “it is what it is”; Haiti is as bad as advertised – and then strategized solutions to reboot the economic-security-governing engines of this Republic.  
        • Security assurances must be enabled to complement economics objectives – Slavery was introduced to the New World as an economic empowerment strategy, though it was flawed in its premise of oppressing the human rights of a whole class of humans. The only way to succeed for the centuries that it survived was with a strong military backing – fear of immediate death and destruction. The CU/Go Lean premise is that economics engines and security apparatus must work hand-in-hand. This is weaved throughout the roadmap.
        • Minority Equalization – The lessons of slavery is that race divides societies; and when there is this division, there is always the tendency for one group to put themselves above other groups. Many times the divisions are for majority population groups versus minorities. If the planners of the new Caribbean want to apply lessons from Slavery’s history, we must allow for justice institutions to consider the realities of minorities. The CU security pact must defend against regional threats, including domestic terrorism. This includes gangs and their junior counterparts, bullies. The CU plans for community messaging in the campaign for anti-bullying and mitigations.
        • Reconciliation of issues are not optional, more conflict will emerge otherwise – The issues that caused division in Haiti where not dealt with between 1791 and 1803. A “Great Day of Reckoning” could not be avoided. The Natural Law instinct was to avenge for past atrocities – “an eye for an eye”. The CU/Go Lean roadmap accepts that an “eye for an eye” justice stance would result in a lot of “blindness”; so instead of revenge, the strategy is justice by means of Truth & Reconciliation Commissions – a lesson learned from South Africa – to deal with a lot of the  latent issues from the last Caribbean century (i.e. Cuba, Haiti, Dominican Republic, etc).

The purpose of the Go Lean roadmap is to turn-around the downward trends in the Caribbean today, to reverse course and elevate Caribbean society. The CU, applying lessons from best-practices, has prime directives proclaimed 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 Go Lean book details a series of assessments, community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to empower all the factions in the Caribbean region:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future Page 21
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens Page 23
Community Ethos – Minority Equalization Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future Page 26
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
Strategy – Vision –  Integrate region for Economics & Security Page 45
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization Page 57
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Department of Homeland Security Page 75
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Department of Justice Page 77
Implementation – Assemble Existing Super-national Institutions Page 96
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 – Ways to Promote Independence Page 120
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices Page 134
Planning – Lessons from the US Constitution Page 145
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights Page 220
Advocacy – Battles in the War on Poverty Page 222
Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Haiti Page 238

Why bother with all this dark talk about Slavery and the Slave Trade?

UNESCO has provided a clear answer for this question with this declarative statement:

Ignorance or concealment of major historical events constitutes an obstacle to mutual understanding, reconciliation and cooperation among peoples. UNESCO has thus decided to break the silence surrounding the Slave Trade and Slavery that have concerned all continents and caused the great upheavals that have shaped our modern societies.

The subject of Slavery and the Slave Trade relates to economic, security and governing functioning in a society. The repercussions and consequences of 1804 lingers down to this day. There have been a number of blog-commentaries by the Go Lean promoters that have developed related topics. See a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8724 Remembering African Nationalist Marcus Garvey: Still Relevant Today
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7682 Frederick Douglass – Pioneer & Role Model for Single Cause: Abolition
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7221 Street naming for Martin Luther King reveals continued racial animosity
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5695 Repenting, Forgiving and Reconciling the Past Bad Deeds
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5123 A Lesson in History – Royal Charters: Zimbabwe -vs- South Africa
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4971 A Lesson in History – Royal Charters: Truth & Consequence
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=451 CariCom position on Slavery/Colonization Reparations

This commentary purports that there have been watershed events in history since the emergence of the slave economy. They include:

  • 1804 – Haiti’s Massacre of White Slave Advocates
  • 1861 – US Civil War – A Demonstration of the Resolve of the “Pro” and “Anti” Slavery Camps
  • 1914 – World War I: “Line in the Sand”
  • 1948 – United Nations Declaration of Human Rights

No doubt the Massacre of 1804 was a crisis. It was not wasted; it was used in a good way to escalate the abolition of the Slave Trade in 1807. It was also used in a bad way to justify further oppression of the African Diaspora in the New World.

A pivotal year.

Let’s learn from this year of 1804; and from the repercussions and consequences from that year. In many ways, the world has not moved! Racism and the suppression of the African race lingers … even today … in Europe and in the Americas.

Our goal is to reform and transform the Caribbean, not Europe or America. We hereby urge everyone in the Caribbean – people, institutions and governments – to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap. It is time now to move. We must get the Caribbean region to a new destination, one where opportunity meets preparation. This is the destination where the Caribbean is a better homeland to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

—————

Appendix A Title: International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition 2016

— Message from Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO —

CU Blog - A Lesson in History - Haiti 1804 - Photo 1In the night of 22 to 23 August 1791, men and women, torn from Africa and sold into slavery, revolted against the slave system to obtain freedom and independence for Haiti, gained in 1804. The uprising was a turning point in human history, greatly impacting the establishment of universal human rights, for which we are all indebted.

The courage of these men and women has created obligations for us. UNESCO is marking International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition to pay tribute to all those who fought for freedom, and, in their name, to continue teaching about their story and the values therein. The success of this rebellion, led by the slaves themselves, is a deep source of inspiration today for the fight against all forms of servitude, racism, prejudice, racial discrimination and social injustice that are a legacy of slavery.

The history of the slave trade and slavery created a storm of rage, cruelty and bitterness that has not yet abated. It is also a story of courage, freedom and pride in newfound freedom. All of humanity is part of this story, in its transgressions and good deeds. It would be a mistake and a crime to cover it up and forget. Through its project The Slave Route, UNESCO intends to find in this collective memory the strength to build a better world and to show the historical and moral connections that unite different peoples.

In this same frame of mind, the United Nations proclaimed the International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024). UNESCO is contributing to it through its educational, cultural and scientific programmes so as to promote the contribution of people of African descent to building modern societies and ensuring dignity and equality for all human beings, without distinction.
Source: Retrieved August 23, 2016 from: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/events/prizes-and-celebrations/celebrations/international-days/slave-trade-and-its-abolition/

Slave Ship

—————

Appendix B Title: 1804 Haiti Massacre

The 1804 Haiti Massacre was a massacre carried out against the remaining white population of native Frenchmen and French Creoles (or Franco-Haitians) in Haiti by Haitian soldiers by the order of Jean-Jacques Dessalines who had decreed that all those suspected of conspiring in the acts of the expelled army should be put to death.[1] Throughout the nineteenth century, these events were well known in the United States where they were referred to as “the horrors of St. Domingo” and particularly polarized Southern public opinion on the question of the abolition of slavery.[2][3]

The massacre, which took place in the entire territory of Haiti, was carried out from early February 1804 until 22 April 1804, and resulted in the deaths of between 3,000 and 5,000 people of all ages and genders.[4]

Squads of soldiers moved from house to house, torturing and killing entire families.[5] Even whites who had been friendly and sympathetic to the black population were imprisoned and later killed.[6] A second wave of massacres targeted white women and children.[6]

Writers Dirk Moses and Dan Stone wrote that it served as a form of revenge by an oppressed group that exacted out against those who had previously dominated them.[7]

Aftermath
By the end of April 1804, some 3,000 to 5,000 people had been killed[23] and the white Haitians were practically eradicated. Only three categories of white people, except foreigners, were selected as exceptions and spared: the Polish soldiers who deserted from the French army; the little group of German colonists invited to Nord-Ouest (North-West), Haiti before the revolution; and a group of medical doctors and professionals.[14] Reportedly, also people with connections to officers in the Haitian army were spared, as well as the women who agreed to marry non-white men.[23]

Dessalines did not try to hide the massacre from the world. In an official proclamation of 8 April 1804, he stated, “We have given these true cannibals war for war, crime for crime, outrage for outrage. Yes, I have saved my country, I have avenged America”.[14] He referred to the massacre as an act of national authority. Dessalines regarded the elimination of the white Haitians an act of political necessity, as they were regarded as a threat to the peace between the black and the colored. It was also regarded as a necessary act of vengeance.[23]

Dessalines was eager to assure that Haiti was not a threat to other nations and that it sought to establish friendly relations also to nations where slavery was still allowed.[26]Dessalines’ secretary Boisrond-Tonnerre stated, “For our declaration of independence, we should have the skin of a white man for parchment, his skull for an inkwell, his blood for ink, and a bayonet for a pen!”[27]

In the 1805 constitution, all citizens were defined as “black”,[28] and white men were banned from owning land.[23][29]

The 1804 massacre had a long-lasting effect on the view of the Haitian Revolution and helped to create a legacy of racial hostility in Haitian society.[28]

At the time of the civil war, a major reason for southern whites, most of whom did not own slaves, to support slave-owners (and ultimately fight for the Confederacy) was fear of a genocide similar to the Haitian Massacre of 1804. This was explicitly referred to in Confederate discourse and propaganda.[30][31]

The torture and massacre of whites in Haiti, normally known at the time as “the horrors of St. Domingo“, was a constant and prominent theme in the discourse of southern political leaders and had influenced American public opinion since the events took place.
Source: Retrieved August 22, 2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1804_Haiti_massacre

CU Blog - A Lesson in History - Haiti 1804 - Photo 2

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400 Years of Slavery – Lessons Learned from America’s Start

Posted on August 23, 2019 in Ethos, Social

Go Lean Commentary

That’s America for you; they think they are the only one that has had this problem – slavery that it.

Today, is a Red Letter Day in the History of the American Experience; it is believed that on this day – August 23, 1619 – the first African slaves touched down on the American mainland – see Appendices A & B below. This is an important milestone to commemorate and commiserate, as the eco-system of slavery dictated every “ying-and-yang” of the American experience, from 1619 until … today.

(Don’t get it twisted – the reason for the American Revolution in 1776 was so that the 13 Colonies could maintain autonomy of the slavery eco-system, rather than submitting to the ever-increasing liberalism of the British Parliament).

Why should we bother to look back at this history?

The 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean answers this question. It looks at that hard-wrought history and declares that lessons can be learned today that will allow us to reform and transform our society tomorrow. The book states at Page 26:

Ways to Impact the Future – If Not Now, Then …
History is a Great Teacher. The African Diaspora experience in the New World is one of “future” gratification. The generations that sought freedom from slavery knew that their children, not them, would be the beneficiaries of liberty. The ethos or guiding beliefs is that “children should be more successful in the future than the parents maybe here and now”.

So America wants to take note of this day – August 23 – and remember, reconcile (and maybe even repent for) the stain of this bad history of this country’s record.

If so, have at it!

But let’s start with the truth! August 23, 1619 was not the start of slavery in the Americas. No, the practice had started earlier in the New World, including these same Caribbean islands. Consider the VIDEO in Appendix C below plus these documented examples here:

Slavery in the America’s – An Early Timeline

New Spain – In order to establish itself as an American empire, Spain had to fight against the relatively powerful civilizations of the New World. The Spanish conquest of the indigenous peoples in the Americas included using the Natives as forced labour. The Spanish colonies were the first Europeans to use African slaves in the New World on islands such as Cuba and Hispaniola.[156]

Hispaniola – The first African slaves arrived in Hispaniola [(today’s Haiti & Dominican Republic)] in 1501.[157]

Brazil – During the Atlantic slave trade era, Brazil imported more African slaves than any other country. Nearly 5 million slaves were brought from Africa to Brazil during the period from 1501 to 1866.[174] … Slave labor was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil, and sugar was the primary export of the colony from 1600 to 1650.

Jamaica – The Caribbean island of Jamaica was colonized by the Taino tribes prior to the arrival of Columbus in 1494. The Spanish enslaved many of the Taino; some escaped, but most died from European diseases and overwork. [The Spaniards treated the Tainos so harshly that in about fifty years all of them were dead. They had numbered fully sixty thousand. The Spaniards got slaves from Africa to take their place.] [190]

Mexico – In 1519, Hernán Cortés brought the first modern slave to the area.[194] In the mid-16th century, the second viceroy to Mexico, Luis de Velasco, prohibited slavery of the Aztecs. A labor shortage resulted as the Aztecs were either killed or died due to disease. This led to the African slaves being imported, as they were not susceptible to smallpox.

Puerto Rico – When Ponce de León and the Spaniards arrived on the island of Borikén (Puerto Rico), they Taíno tribes on the island, forcing them to work in the gold mines and in the construction of forts. Many Taíno died, particularly due to smallpox, of which they had no immunity. Other Taínos committed suicide or left the island after the failed Taíno revolt of 1511.[195] The Spanish colonists, fearing the loss of their labor force, complained the courts that they needed manpower to work in the mines, build forts, and work sugar cane plantations. As an alternative, Las Casas suggested the importation and use of African slaves. In 1517, the Spanish Crown permitted its subjects to import twelve slaves each, thereby beginning the slave trade on the colonies.[196]
Source: Retrieved August 22, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery#Modern_history

The foundation of slavery was embedded deep in the societal engines of the New World.

Can’t we all just get along … now?

Slavery was an ugly institution. No victim deserved such treatment; no perpetrator’s can be justified, rationalized or excused. Today, due to the analysis of the acts and events of slavery, we have the definition and classification of Human Rights violations. There is no normalizing this villainy; and this is an apropos and contemporary discussion as slavery is not just ancient history:

Saudi Arabia didn’t abolish slavery until 1962.[118]

But indeed we can still “get along“! But only after reconciliation, and that reconciliation must come with the desire to set things straight and correct the wrongs. In fact reconciliation is the motive of this August 2019 series of blog-commentaries from the movement behind the Go Lean book. Our focus is on all the dimensions of this 400 Year History of Slavery; the past, present and future.  The full series is cataloged as follows:

  1. 400 Years of Slavery: America, Not the first
  2. 400 Years of Slavery: International Day of Remembrance
  3. 400 Years of Slavery: Emancipation Day – Hardly ‘Free At Last’
  4. 400 Years of Slavery: Where is home?
  5. 400 Years of Slavery: Cop-on-Black Shootings in America’s DNA

In this series, reference is made to the need for a comprehensive roadmap for elevating the societal engines of the 30 Caribbean member-states. We are not trying to reform or transform America – that is outside our scope. But we want to learn from the American experience. Truth be told, there are many American institutions that have still not reconciled their ugly history; no reconciliation; no reform. The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the implementation for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). We want to do better here. Considering that 29 out of the 30 Caribbean states are majority Black – descendants of slaves – we must do better.

We can succeed too; we can be Better than America.

This theme – learning from the history of Bad Race Relations – have been exhaustingly studied in many previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16944 Women Empowerment – Accepting Black Women ‘As Is’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16926 Learning from Canada’s Viola Desmond: One Woman Made A Difference
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16512 On Martin Luther King’s 90th Birthday – America is still ‘Dreaming’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15123 Blacks get longer sentences from ‘Republican’ Judges
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15121 Racist History of Loitering
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15093 1948 “Windrush” Drama – Migration to the UK fraught with Racial Discord
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9626 The Black Vote – Continues to be Marginalized
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9214 Black Relations in America Today – Spot-on for Protest
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2297 History’s Lessons on Contrasting Strategies – Booker T versus Du Bois

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson was on a committee within the Continental Congress of the 13 British Colonies; he was appointed to write the Declaration of Independence. He penned:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

As this Declaration went back to England, the home country laughed and scoffed at the blatant hypocrisy of these words, as America was believed to be holding (a little less than) 694,200 African-descended-people in the bonds of slavery at that time – out of a full population of 3,893,635. In England, there was a movement towards liberalism and libertarianism at this time. One of the respondents to the US Declaration of Independence was the philosopher and statesman Jeremy Bentham.

Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was a British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer. He is regarded as the founder of modern utilitarianism. Bentham became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He advocated individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the right to divorce, and the decriminalizing of homosexual acts. He called for the abolition of slavery, the abolition of the death penalty, the abolition of physical punishment, including that of children, and animal rights. Though strongly in favor of the extension of individual legal rights, he opposed the idea of natural laws/natural rights [as flawed moral basis for slavery and oppression of women and minorities], calling them “nonsense upon stilts”. – Go Lean book Page 37.

Jeremy Bentham advocated for the Greater Good as the preferred community ethos; this is ‘the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong”. So he urged America to be better and do better towards its slave population. They did not! After winning the war for Independence against Britain, the new United States of America doubled-down in the practice and pursuit of slavery, especially in the southern States:

1790 Census Slave Population: 694,200 | Total Population: 3,893,635 | 17.8% | Slavery in 100% of Country

1860 Census Slave Population: 3,950,200 | Total Population: 31,443,321 | 12.6% | Slavery in only 25% of Country

So there are many lessons for the Caribbean to learn in considering the history of 400 Years of Slavery in America. We can take these lessons to heart in our region and be a better society as a result:

  • Where as, there was a Slave Trade then, we have human trafficking today. Have we learned to protect the Weak in our society from being abused by the Strong?
  • Where as, there was White Supremacy then – a byproduct of Natural Law, have we now corrected that defect in society and promulgate policies that project that All Men Are Created Equal?
  • Where as, the Slave Trade was urged-on as an economic solution for cheap labor, do we now ensure that all labor is conducted with dignity and due consideration for all stakeholders?

A consideration of 400 Years of Slavery in America does not have to be dead history, it energizes our current society to ensure liberty, fairness and egalitarianism. These are great ideals to pursue. America needs to do better in this pursuit; and so does the Caribbean.

Slavery affected economic, security and governing engines of Caribbean society. These same 3 societal engines are in focus to reboot so as to elevate the member-states today. So slavery is more than just academic; it is our foundation. We must not ignore it, nor forget; we must recognize the pain, sacrifice and purchase-price our ancestors paid for us to occupy these lands. As the old Calypso song says:

“Oh island in the sun, willed to me by my father’s hand“.

Let’s remember and reconcile. 🙂

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

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

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

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 14):

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

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.

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

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 … . On the other hand, the Federation must also implement the good examples learned from developments … like … the old American West and tenants of the US Constitution.

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

————–

Appendix A – History of Slavery in Virginia

Slavery in Virginia dates to 1619,[1] soon after the founding of Virginia as an English colony by the London Virginia Company. The company established a headright system to encourage colonists to transport indentured servants to the colony for labor; they received a certain amount of land for people whose passage they paid to Virginia.[2]

Africans first appeared in Virginia in 1619, brought by English privateers from a Spanish slave ship they had intercepted. …
Source: Retrieved August 22, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market

————–

Appendix B – Virginia’s First Africans
Contributed by Martha McCartney
Virginia’s first Africans arrived at Point Comfort, on the James River, late in August 1619. There, “20. and odd Negroes” from the English ship White Lion were sold in exchange for food and some were transported to Jamestown, where they were sold again, likely into slavery. Historians have long believed these Africans to have come to Virginia from the Caribbean, but Spanish records suggest they had been captured in a Spanish-controlled area of West Central Africa. They probably were Kimbundu-speaking people, and many of them may have had at least some knowledge of Catholicism. While aboard the São João Bautista bound for Mexico, they were stolen by the White Lion and another English ship, the Treasurer. Once in Virginia, they were dispersed throughout the colony. …
Source: “Virginia’s First Africans”. www.encyclopediavirginia.org. Retrieved 2015-11-04.

————–

Appendix C VIDEO –  ! Slave Ship… International Slavery Remembrance Day August 23,2018 – https://youtu.be/aCM4RoV5MSI

International Slavery Remembrance Day
Published on Apr 18, 2018 – An estimated 15 million Africans were transported to the Americas between 1540 and 1850. To maximize their profits slave merchants carried as many slaves as was physically possible on their ships. By the 17th century slaves could be purchased in Africa for about $25 and sold in the Americas for about $150. After the slave-trade was declared illegal, prices went much higher. Even with a death-rate of 50 per cent, merchants could expect to make tremendous profits from the trade. The journey from Africa to the West Indies or North America Usually took about two months. One study shows that the slave ship provided an average of about seven square feet per slave.
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  • Song: Slave Ship
  • Artist: Mighty Diamond
  • Album: Dancehall Attack & Fat Eyes Dee-Lite
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