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Caribbean Roots: Bruno Mars … and the Power of Endurance

Posted on May 15, 2017 in Ethos, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Islands are unique compared to the mainland.

Being cut-off, social development evolves and endures independent of the mainland’s influence. This is the case in the natural world – consider all the unique animals of Australia – and in the music world.

Most of the 30 member-states of the Caribbean are islands (notwithstanding Guyana, Suriname & Belize). As a result we have this amazing musical progeny that has developed … and endured: we have 169 different musical genres that have emerged.

So not only are islands distinct compared to the mainland, they are also distinct compared to each other.

This explains the historicity of the musical artist Bruno Mars.

He is of Caribbean roots…

… his father has Puerto Rican heritage. But Bruno or Peter Hernandez, his given name, was born and raised on the island of Hawaii. (See Biography in Appendix A below).

His music reflects the richness of his island roots. See, feel the Caribbean “soul” in the VIDEO of “Billionaire” in the Appendix C below. A Caribbean legacy – in this case Puerto Rico – has so much good to offer the world, as one of the best-selling artists of all time.

This is a message the Caribbean needs to hear – we are the greatest address on the planet, in terms of terrain (flora, fauna and beaches), hospitality and culture, but we are at near-Failed-State status. We must endure and fix our broken societal engines.

Challenge accepted!

See how this champion of Caribbean Roots battled misfortune and adversity to emerge as one of the biggest musical stars of the day. See this 60 Minutes interview from November 2016 here (or the transcript in Appendix B below):

VIDEO – Bruno Mars on his artistry: “I’m working hard for this” – http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/bruno-mars

Posted November 20, 2016 – He’s been broke, busted and nearly homeless. Now, as 60 Minutes’ Lara Logan reports, he’s on top of the music world. (May require CBS All-Access Subscription).

Bruno Mars has the talent; he even had it early as a youth. He has earned many awards and nominations, like the Grammys (5), BRIT Awards (3), MTV Europe Music Awards (3), and Billboard Songwriter Award. In 2014, he became the artist with the most top five entries on the Billboard Hot 100 since his first week on the chart.^[182] He is the first male artist to place two titles as a lead act in the Hot 100’s top 10 simultaneously.^[184] Mars was the most played artist on “pop radio” in 2013 ^[185] and became the first solo male artist whose first 13 Top 40 hits all reached the Top 10 on the American Top 40.^[186] In total, he has had six number-one singles on the Hot 100 chart.^[187]

We are so proud that this talented American entertainer actually has Caribbean roots; it accentuates our image and reflects the positive contributions of our culture. But as related in this foregoing VIDEO, it has taken more than just talent alone for him to advance to these heights in the music industry. (He kicks off a major US Tour this summer; see initial dates in the Photo here).

Success for Bruno Mars has been based on the full measure of his character, the talent and that something else, the “X-Factor” that the music industry likes to classify as to why some artists succeed and some artists do not.

There is the need for endurance, resilience, vision and preparation for whatever available opportunity emerges.

This is where the long experience of this short life of Bruno Mars – thus far – teaches the Caribbean region, what we need to do to be successful in our quest to elevate our homeland to be a better place to live, work and play. Yes, we have shown that we have talent; we have endurance and resilience, but now we must show the vision and prepare for opportunities to execute change at home.

This is the quest of the book Go Lean…Caribbean; it serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU is designed to advance the Caribbean eco-systems for economics, security and governance. Every step along the way, with all the bread-and-butter considerations, there is the opportunity for the arts and artists (including music) to impact this region and the rest of the world with their contributions. These 3 statements constitute the prime directives of this Go Lean/CU roadmap:

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

Endurance can be classified as a “community ethos” – the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a society (Go Lean book Page 20). This roadmap recognizes that a prerequisite for advancing society is a change in the Caribbean community ethos; or an adoption of different community ethos, i.e. Deferred Gratification, a derivative of “endurance” (Page 21). Early in the book, in the opening Declaration of Interdependence, the contributions that culture (music, dance and artistic expressions) can make is pronounced as an ethos for the entire region to embrace (Page 14), with these statements:

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

Bruno Mars is the embodiment of the necessary ingredients to forge success in the music industry. He has impacted the music, culture and image of Island Life (albeit Hawaii); he has depicted that “despite the upbringing on a small, limited island”, one can still “move” the whole world – move it to dance and move it to change. Like Caribbean musical icon, Bob Marley, Bruno Mars is setting a pathway for success for other generations of talented, inspirational and influential artists to follow. Many other artists – of Caribbean heritage – are sure to emerge and “impact the world”. We are thusly preparing for it, as specified in the same Declaration of Interdependence – Page 13:

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

Globally, the music industry is in shambles. This is true in the US and even more so in the Caribbean. It is difficult for musical artists to endure in professions tied to the music industry unless some fundamental changes are put in place…

… the Go Lean/CU roadmap represents the change that the Caribbean needs. The people, enterprises, institutions and governance of the region are all urged to “lean-in” to this roadmap for change. It is important to provide a structure for musicians and artists to get paid for their talents; otherwise they would abandon this industry. Alas, we need a striving music industry; it is important as these ones highlight positive contributions of Caribbean culture, life and people.

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

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

The changes being anticipated for the Caribbean music industry assumes an integration of the business eco-system. We must have a means by which the artists can get paid for their artistic expressions. The Go Lean book fully detailed this music business eco-system with this sample advocacy; see these headlines from Page 231:

10 Ways to Promote Music

1	Leverage the Single Market Allow for the unification of the region into one market of 42 million people. There are numerous [Afro-Caribbean] music genres that are unique to the region (Appendix ZS on Page 347): Calypso, Reggae, Salsa, Mambo, Merengue, Conga, Junkanoo and others. The integrated market size of the CU can support the deployment and regulation of a music eco-system where artists, writers, performers, promoters, broadcasters and retailers can be duly compensated for their efforts; thereby fostering an internal music industry and encouraging new generations to share their talents and dream of stardom.
2	Payment Eco-System Arrange for settlement of electronic payments transactions allowing e-commerce (downloads) to flourish.
3	*Level 1* – Music Fulfills Biological and Physiological needs Exposure to music and music education is one common denominator among successful, satisfied, articulate people and helps cement their basic education that guarantees them the ability to advance in society so as to secure their livelihoods. Moreover, an ongoing musical experience (ideally begun at a young age) provides the consumer demand base for peripheral industries (orchestras, operas, arts organizations, etc.). Although it may not sell tickets immediately, it is an investment in a future generation of musically-literate patrons and participants.
4	*Level 2* – Security/Safety needs The CU will facilitate job security for talented musicians/artists by fostering a marketplace (real & virtual) to transact their occupations. Previously, the Internet had undermined the business models for the music industry, but there are now new paid services (like iTunes, Rhapsody, Pandora, etc.). Safety needs refer to protecting the industry to allow continuity of musical output and preventing the nullification of national art forms. “Music soothes the savage beast”.
5	*Level 3* – Belongingness and Love needs
6	*Level 4* – Esteem needs
7	*Level 5* – Cognitive needs
8	*Level 6* – Aesthetic needs
9	*Level 7* – Self-Actualization needs
10	*Level 8* – Transcendence needs

The power of music has been a familiar topic for previous Go Lean blog-commentaries. Consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10983	Legacy of the ‘Buffalo Soldier’ Song
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10910	Day of Happiness – Music-style; Miami-style; JITG-style
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9948	Caribbean Roots: Sammy Davis, Jr.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9712	Forging Change: Panem et Circenses (Bread and Amusement)
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8619	A Lesson in History: Jamaican Innovation for Hip Hop
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5648	Taylor Swift withholds Album from Apple Music
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5423	Extracurricular Music Programs Boost Students
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5251	Post-Mortem of Inaugural Bahamas Junkanoo Carnival
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3641	‘Building a City’ on Rock-n-Roll and Music
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2415	How ‘The Lion King’ productions roared into history
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1909	Music Role Model Berry Gordy – Reflecting & Effecting Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=866	Bob Marley: The Legend Lives On!

We salute those like Peter Hernandez (Senior) who left the Puerto Rican Diaspora of Brooklyn as a youth, looking for opportunities in the world of music-entertainment. We salute him and other such ones, even their descendants and legacies. We know there are “new” Peter Hernandez -types and “new” Bruno Mars-types throughout Caribbean member-states, waiting to be fostered. We hail them as our future.

Now is the time for all stakeholders – musicians and music lovers alike – in the Caribbean to lean-in for the empowerments described here-in and in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. Our society is failing; we can turn-around and reboot. Music helps to forge that change!

We can and must be better and do better and help to make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. So we need a fully functional music industry because we need music, and the effects of music: the power to move people. 🙂

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

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

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Appendix A – Bruno Mars Biography
Peter Gene Hernandez (born October 8, 1985), known professionally as Bruno Mars, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and choreographer. Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, by a family of musicians, Mars began making music at a young age and performed in various musical venues in his hometown throughout his childhood. He graduated from high school and moved to Los Angeles to pursue a musical career. After being dropped by Motown Records, Mars signed a recording contract with Atlantic Records in 2009.

In 2009, he co-founded the production team “The Smeezingtons”, responsible for the singles “Nothin’ on You” by B.o.B and “Billionaire” by Travie McCoy. He featured on the hooks for both singles, becoming recognized as a solo artist. His debut studio album Doo-Wops & Hooligans (2010) included the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart-topping singles “Just the Way You Are” and “Grenade“, as well as the number-four single “The Lazy Song“. His second album, Unorthodox Jukebox (2012), peaked at number one in the United States. The album spawned the international singles “Locked Out of Heaven“, “When I Was Your Man” and “Treasure“. In 2014, Mars lent his vocals to Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk“. In 2016, he released his third studio album 24K Magic with the lead single of the same title released on October 7, 2016. To date, he has sold over 115 million singles and 9 million albums worldwide, making him one of the best-selling artists of all time. Mars has landed seven number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 since his career launched in 2010, attaining his first five faster than any male artist since Elvis Presley.

Mars has received many awards and nominations, including five Grammy Awards, and was named one of Time‘s 100 most influential people in the world in 2011. In December 2013, he ranked number one on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. Mars is known for his stage performances and retro showmanship. He is accompanied by his band, The Hooligans, who play a variety of instruments such as electric guitar, bass, piano, keyboards, drums and horns, and also serve as backup singers and dancers. Mars performs in a wide range of musical styles.

Early life and musical beginnings
Peter Gene Hernandez was born on October 8, 1985,^[1] in Honolulu, Hawaii to Peter Hernandez and Bernadette San Pedro Bayot, and was raised in the Waikiki neighborhood of Honolulu.^[2]

His father is of half Puerto Rican and half Ashkenazi Jewish descent (from Ukraine and Hungary), and is originally from Brooklyn, New York.^[3][4][5] His mother emigrated from the Philippines to Hawaii as a child, and was of Filipino, and some Spanish, ancestry.^[4][6] His parents met while performing in a show in which his mother was a hula dancer and his father played percussion.^[5] At the age of two, he was nicknamed “Bruno” by his father, because of his resemblance to professional wrestler Bruno Sammartino.^[7][8][9]

Mars is one of six children and came from a musical family which exposed him to a diverse mix of genres including: reggae, rock, hip hop, and R&B.^[10][11] His mother was both a singer and a dancer, and his father performed Little Richard rock and roll music.^[12] Mars’ uncle was an Elvis impersonator, and also encouraged three-year-old Mars to perform on stage. Mars performed songs by artists such as Michael Jackson, The Isley Brothers, and The Temptations.^[8] At age four, Mars began performing five days a week with his family’s band, The Love Notes, and became known on the island for his impersonation of Presley.^[13] In 1990, Mars was featured in MidWeek as “Little Elvis”, and later appeared in a cameo role in the film Honeymoon in Vegas (1992),^[8][14] and performed in the halftime show of the 1990 Aloha Bowl.^[15]

Source: Retrieved May 12, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Mars

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Appendix B – Transcript: Bruno Mars 60 Minutes Story Transcript

The following script is from “Bruno Mars,” which aired on Nov. 20, 2016. Lara Logan is the correspondent. John Hamlin, producer.

Bruno Mars is one of the world’s biggest music stars and he’s one of the most driven people we’ve ever seen. Just 31, he’s the product of what he calls a “school of rock” education — a working class life of experiences that have taught him the music business. None of it came easily. He’s been broke, busted and nearly homeless. But this week, following the release of his first album in four years, he’s on top of the music world.

To show us how he got there, Bruno Mars did something he’s never done: he shared with us some of the toughest moments of his Hawaiian upbringing, and gave us the opportunity to witness his extraordinary skills as a songwriter and producer.

We begin with Bruno Mars, the entertainer.

This show in Connecticut last month was his first public concert of the year, and he used it as a tune-up for the release of his new album and world tour to follow. On every song and every note, from arenas to halftime of the Super Bowl, he and his band, The Hooligans, perform full throttle.

His standards are high because the legends of music set them.

See the FULL Question – Answer Interaction Here:

Source: Retrieved 05-12-2017 from: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-bruno-mars-24k-magic-uptown-funk-success/?authenticated=1

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Appendix C VIDEO – Travie McCoy: Billionaire ft. Bruno Mars [OFFICIAL VIDEO] – https://youtu.be/8aRor905cCw

Uploaded on May 6, 2010 – Travie McCoy’s music video for ‘Billionaire’ featuring Bruno Mars from his album, Lazarus – available now on DCD2 Records / Fueled By Ramen. SORRY!!! This is the profanity-laced version!

Download it at http://smarturl.it/travie-lazarus

Go behind the scenes of this video at http://youtu.be/zssAEMcaZzI

Category: Music
License: Standard YouTube License

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Diaspora, Model, Music

State of the American Union – Housing Segregation – ENCORE

Posted on May 12, 2017 in Economics, Government, Social

There is income and then there is wealth.

Income refers to wages, salaries, interest, rent and dividends while wealth refers to equity in assets. Those assets relate to stocks, bonds and most notably real estate, as in home ownership.

The US has a long bad history of racial discrimination. This allowed many Whites to build wealth through home equity, while this privilege and trend was not available (or extended) to Black-and-Brown Americans.

For much of the past century, the differing privileges were tied to a de jure segregation, but surprisingly, the patterns, trending and habits continue to this day mostly because of a de facto segregation ― through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies.

This is the claim of the new book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America – by author Richard Rothstein. This is the America today. See the review of this book here:

Book Review: The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America – 1st Edition By Author: Richard Rothstein

“Rothstein has presented what I consider to be the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments gave rise to and reinforced neighborhood segregation.” ― William Julius Wilson

In this groundbreaking history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein, a leading authority on housing policy, explodes the myth that America’s cities came to be racially divided through de facto segregation―that is, through individual prejudices, income differences, or the actions of private institutions like banks and real estate agencies. Rather, The Color of Law incontrovertibly makes clear that it was de jure segregation―the laws and policy decisions passed by local, state, and federal governments―that actually promoted the discriminatory patterns that continue to this day.

Through extraordinary revelations and extensive research that Ta-Nehisi Coates has lauded as “brilliant” (The Atlantic), Rothstein comes to chronicle nothing less than an untold story that begins in the 1920s, showing how this process of de jure segregation began with explicit racial zoning, as millions of African Americans moved in a great historical migration from the south to the north.

As Jane Jacobs established in her classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities, it was the deeply flawed urban planning of the 1950s that created many of the impoverished neighborhoods we know. Now, Rothstein expands our understanding of this history, showing how government policies led to the creation of officially segregated public housing and the demolition of previously integrated neighborhoods. While urban areas rapidly deteriorated, the great American suburbanization of the post–World War II years was spurred on by federal subsidies for builders on the condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. Finally, Rothstein shows how police and prosecutors brutally upheld these standards by supporting violent resistance to black families in white neighborhoods.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 prohibited future discrimination but did nothing to reverse residential patterns that had become deeply embedded. Yet recent outbursts of violence in cities like Baltimore, Ferguson, and Minneapolis show us precisely how the legacy of these earlier eras contributes to persistent racial unrest. “The American landscape will never look the same to readers of this important book” (Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund), as Rothstein’s invaluable examination shows that only by relearning this history can we finally pave the way for the nation to remedy its unconstitutional past.

Source: Ret’d 05-11-2017 from: https://www.amazon.com/Color-Law-Forgotten-Government-Segregated/dp/1631492853

The author was a guest on a radio-talk show NPR’s 1A, where he articulated a lot of these fine points from his book; he was joined by other guests that are Subject Matter Experts in this American drama. See-listen to the PODCAST here:

AUDIO-PODCAST – The Long History And Lasting Legacy Of Housing Segregation – http://the1a.org/audio/#/shows/2017-05-10/the-long-history-and-lasting-legacy-of-housing-segregation/110861/@00:00

Posted May 10, 2017 – How more than a century of housing segregation has left the nation starkly divided by race.

This is the America that many Caribbean citizens – our Black-and-Brown – flee to looking for refuge from Caribbean life. The book Go Lean…Caribbean posits that these ones jump from the “frying-pan into the fire”.

What’s more the Go Lean book asserts – in the quest to lower the rate of societal abandonment – that it is easier to remediate social defects like these in the Caribbean homeland than to “Come to America” thinking that the “grass is greener”.

It is not!

This was the declaration from this previous blog-commentary from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. This quotation from that previous blog is spot on:

The Caribbean Diaspora have fled their Caribbean homelands over past decades in search of better economic opportunities. It is now the conclusion that many of these “lands of refuge” are rigged in favor of certain ethnic groups; those groups do not include the “Black-and-Brown” of the Caribbean. This commentary has relayed, repeatedly, that this Caribbean-bred demographic can do better at home … in the Caribbean.

Rather than just this excerpt, the entire blog-commentary from August 5, 2014 is encored here:

——————–

Go Lean Commentary – The Crisis in Black Homeownership

The United States of America has been the best economic manifestation in the history of mankind, (as declared in the book Go Lean…Caribbean Page 67), yet the experience has not been the same for all of its citizens. This definitely applies to the “black and brown” populations. The Caribbean Diaspora fits this classification and their experience fits 100% to the events related in the foregoing news article.

The US is the “land of the free and the home of the brave”, but some restrictions apply. This reality is not new, as racial disparities have long existed in the history of America. But after a major social revolution in the 1960’s, positive change came to American minorities, following by decades of progress.

Then 2008 happened …

That year saw the crisis of the Great Recession where American society lost $11 Trillion in net worth; then later regained $13.5 Trillion; (Go Lean book Page 69). According to the foregoing article, the Great Recession losses were not evenly distributed; nor was the subsequent recovery – those who lost the net worth (Middle Class) were not the ones who recovered (One Percent).

How the recession turned owners into renters and obliterated Black American wealth.

By: Jamelle Bouie

In 2005, three years before the Great Recession, the median black household had a net worth of $12,124. Yes, this was far behind the median white household—which had a net worth of $134,992—but it was a huge improvement from previous decades, in which housing discrimination made wealth accumulation difficult (if not impossible) for the large majority of African-American families.

By the official end of the recession in 2009, median household net worth for blacks had fallen to $5,677—a generation’s worth of hard work and progress wiped out. (The number for whites, by comparison, was $113,149.) Overall, from 2007 to 2010, wealth for blacks declined by an average of 31 percent, home equity by an average of 28 percent, and retirement savings by an average of 35 percent. By contrast, whites lost 11 percent in wealth, lost 24 percent in home equity, and gained 9 percent in retirement savings. According to a 2013 report^[a] by researchers at BrandeisUniversity, “half the collective wealth of African-American families was stripped away during the Great Recession.”

It was a startling retrenchment, creating the largest wealth, income, and employment gaps since the 1990s. And, if a new study^[b] from researchers at CornellUniversity and RiceUniversity is any indication, these gaps are deep, persistent, and difficult to eradicate.

In the study, called “Emerging Forms of Racial Inequality in Homeownership Exit, 1968–2009,” sociologist Gregory Sharp and demographer Matthew Hall examine the relationship between race and risk in homeownership. Simply put, African-Americans are much more likely than whites to switch from owning homes to renting them.

“The 1968 passage of the Fair Housing Act outlawed housing market discrimination based on race,” explained Sharp in a press release. “African-American homeowners who purchased their homes in the late 1960s or 1970s were no more or less likely to become renters than were white owners. However, emerging racial disparities over the next three decades resulted in black owners who bought their homes in the 2000s being 50 percent more likely to lose their homeowner status than similar white owners.”

This wasn’t a matter of personal irresponsibility. Even after adjusting for socio-economic characteristics, debt loads, education, and life-cycle traits like divorce or job loss, blacks were more likely to lose their homes than whites.

If you’re familiar with American history and housing policy, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. The explicit housing discrimination of the mid-20^th century has left a mark—arguably a scar—on the landscape of American homeownership. The combination of red-lining, block-busting, racial covenants, and other discriminatory measures means that, even now, a majority of blacks live in neighborhoods with relatively poor access to capital and mortgage loans. What’s more, this systematic discrimination has left many black households unable to afford down payments or other housing costs, even if loans are available.

And in the event that black households are able to save and afford a home, they aren’t as financially secure as their white counterparts. To wit, middle-class African-Americans are more likely to belong to the lower middle class of civil servants and government workers—professions that, in the last five years, have been slashed as a consequence of mass public-sector downsizing^[c]. All else being equal, a black schoolteacher who loses her job to budget cuts is less likely to have savings—and thus a safety net—than her white counterpart.

But this isn’t just a story of legacies and effects. In addition to showing the consequences of past discrimination, Sharp and Hall argue that African-Americans have been victimized by a new system of market exploitation. Banks like Wells Fargo steered^[d] blacks and other minorities into the worst subprime loans, giving them less favorable terms than whites and foreclosing on countless homes. In a 2012 lawsuit^[e], the ACLU and National Consumer Law Center alleged that the now-defunct New Century Financial, working with Morgan Stanley, pushed thousands of black borrowers into the riskiest loans, leaving many in financial ruin. As early as 2005, the Wall Street Journal reported^[f] that blacks were twice as likely to receive subprime loans. And in a New York University study published last year^[g], researchers found that black and Hispanic families making more than $200,000 a year were more likely to receive subprime loans than white families making less than $30,000.

Together, all of this means that—according to Sharp and Hall—African-Americans are 45 percent more likely than whites to lose their homes. That means they’re more likely to lose their accumulated wealth and to slide down the income ladder, and less likely to pass the advantages of status and mobility to their children.

Apropos of that observation, recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics^[h] shows an incredible level of youth unemployment for blacks and Latinos. More than 21 percent of African-Americans aged 16 to 24 are out of work, compared with a national average of 14.2 percent. For black teenagers in particular, joblessness soars to nearly 40 percent. It’s a catastrophe with serious economic consequences. The Center for American Progress estimates^[i] that the young adults who experienced long-term unemployment during the worst of the recession will lose more than $20 billion in earnings over the next 10 years. And given the slow recovery, odds are good they’ll never recover those lost earnings.

It’s tempting to treat these as subsets of broader problems: poor assistance to homeowners and too much austerity. But they’re not. Even during the boom economy of the 1990s, black employment lagged behind the national average. And the racial wealth gap is a persistent fact of American life.

Likewise, the challenges of black homeownership are a function of discriminatory housing policy^[j], as are a whole host of other problems, from mass incarceration and overly punitive policing to poor air quality^[k] and food access. These challenges are heavily location-dependent, which is another way to say they are heavily racialized and most prevalent in the segregated, working-class or low-income communities that characterize life for most African-Americans^[l], even those with middle-class incomes.

For reasons both political and ideological, it’s nearly verboten in mainstream conversation to argue that racialized problems require race-conscious solutions. Knowing what we know about the demographics of foreclosures, for example, we should ensure any program to help underwater homeowners includes a specific measure to assist black victims of predatory lending, who may need additional help to get on sure footing.

For more than anyone else, this is a message for liberals and progressives, who—for all of their racial sensitivity—are still reluctant to tackle the economic dimensions of racism, even as they represent the vast majority of nonwhite voters and draw critical support from African-American constituencies. It’s how Elizabeth Warren could give “11 Commandments for Progressives” ^[m] —and receive huge applause—without mentioning the deep problems of racial inequality. One of her commandments is “that no one should work full-time and still live in poverty, and that means raising the minimum wage.” But solving this problem for African-Americans and Latinos—who tend to live in areas that are segregated from job opportunities—is very different than solving it for whites.

While conservatives and Republicans can play a role here, it’s Democrats who are committed to reducing income inequality and bringing balance to our lopsided economic system. Success on those fronts requires a return to race-conscious policymaking, from programs to increase the geographic mobility of low-income workers—relocation grants for individuals or transportation grants for communities with a spatial mismatch between jobs and housing—to public works programs aimed at low-income minority communities, to race-based affirmative action as a way to boost a flagging black middle class.

There’s little in American life that escapes the still-powerful pull of past and present racism, and effective policymaking—to say nothing of effective problem-solving—requires a response to that racism. Otherwise, we entrench the same disparities for a new generation.

——–

Jamelle Bouie is a Slate staff writer covering politics, policy, and race.
The Slate – Daily Magazine for the Web – Posted 07-24-2014; retrieved 08-04-2014
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/07/black_homeownership_how_the_recession_turned_owners_into_renters_and_obliterated.html

The points of this foregoing article aligns with the Go Lean book and the collection of blogs-commentaries. The book posits that the crisis persists for the Caribbean and their Diaspora in North America and Europe. What’s more, this movement asserts that this crisis, any crisis, is a terrible thing to waste.

The Caribbean Diaspora have fled their Caribbean homelands over past decades in search of better economic opportunities. It is now the conclusion that many of these “lands of refuge” are rigged in favor of certain ethnic groups; those groups do not include the “Black-and-Brown” of the Caribbean. This commentary has relayed, repeatedly, that this Caribbean-bred demographic can do better at home … in the Caribbean. The following are related previous posts:

Unfortunately for the Caribbean, this societal abandonment has continued. Analysis by the Inter-American Development Bank asserts that the Caribbean continues to endure a brain drain of 70% among the college educated population; (https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1433).

This blog entry depicted how the Caribbean Diaspora that fled to Great Britain has not fared well; (https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1683)

In addition to economics, there is the concern for security and justice. This blog entry (https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=546) related the dual standards of justice in the US, where all men are treated as equals (wink-wink), just some are more equal than others.

Yes, as the old adage relates: “the grass is not greener on the other side”. See this VIDEO here (Part 1 of 2):

(Click on first continuation VIDEO for Part 2 of 2 or click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOS3BBmUxvs)

The assertion of the book Go Lean…Caribbean is that once the proposed empowerments are put in place, the Caribbean Diaspora should consider repatriating to their ancestral homelands.

Social Scientists maintain that when animals/mammals are confronted with threats, they have to choose between (stand and) fight or flight. For 50 years, the Caribbean citizens have defaulted to flight. Change has now come to the Caribbean. The book Go Lean…Caribbean serving as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), hereby presents “stand and fight” options. This roadmap will spearhead the elevation of Caribbean society. The prime directives of the CU are presented as the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy & create 2.2 million new jobs at home.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The book posits that the improved conditions projected over the 5 years of the roadmap will neutralize the impetus for Caribbean citizens to flee, identified as “push and pull” factors. This point is stressed early in the book (Page 13) in the following pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence:

xix. Whereas our legacy in recent times is one of societal abandonment, it is imperative that incentives and encouragement be put in place to first dissuade the human flight, and then entice and welcome the return of our Diaspora back to our shores. This repatriation should be effected with the appropriate guards so as not to imperil the lives and securities of the repatriated citizens or the communities they inhabit. The right of repatriation is to be extended to any natural born citizens despite any previous naturalization to foreign sovereignties.

xx. Whereas the results of our decades of migration created a vibrant Diaspora in foreign lands, the Federation must organize interactions with this population into structured markets. Thus allowing foreign consumption of domestic products, services and media, which is a positive trade impact. These economic activities must not be exploited by others’ profiteering but rather harnessed by Federation resources for efficient repatriations.

This foregoing article highlights the new realities ushered into the world as a result of the events of the Year 2008. The Go Lean book focuses heavy on this subject, even identifying this as a motivation in the same Declaration of Interdependence early in the book (Page 13):

xxv. Whereas the legacy of international democracies had been imperiled due to a global financial crisis, the structure of the Federation must allow for financial stability and assurance of the Federation’s institutions. To mandate the economic vibrancy of the region, monetary and fiscal controls and policies must be incorporated as proactive and reactive measures. These measures must address threats against the financial integrity of the Federation and of the member-states.

The Go Lean roadmap proposes a community ethos in which economic principles are recognized as playing a crucial role in the chain-of-events that led to fight-or-flight decisions for Caribbean Diaspora. (These principles were always the reality, just not professionally managed as such). These principles are identified and qualified (Page 21) as follows:

1. People Choose
2. All Choices Involve Costs
3. People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways
4. Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices and Incentives
5. Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth
6. The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future

These principles cannot be glossed over or handled lightly; this is why the Go Lean book contains 370 pages of finite details for managing economic change in the region. In addition to the assessments of the region’s standings, the book contains the following sample of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the Caribbean homeland:

Community Ethos – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Strategy – Competition – Remain Home –vs- Emigrate	Page 49
Strategy – Agents of Change – Aging Diaspora	Page 57
Tactical – Growing the Caribbean Economy to $800 Billion	Page 67
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Versus Member-States Governments	Page 71
Implementation – Year 1 / Assemble Phase	Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Better Manage Debt	Page 114
Implementation – Trade Mission Objectives	Page 116
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate	Page 118
Anecdote – Experiences of a Repatriated Resident	Page 126
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region	Page 127
Planning – Lessons Learned from 2008	Page 136
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Credit Ratings	Page 155
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Housing	Page 161
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Wall Street	Page 200
Anecdote – Experiences of Diaspora Member Living Abroad	Page 216
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora	Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Help the Middle Class	Page 223
Appendix – Caribbean Emigration Statistics	Page 269
Appendix – Credit Ratings Agencies Role in 2008	Page 276

The Go Lean roadmap has simple motives: fix the problems in the homeland to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. We want to keep Caribbean citizens in the Caribbean. There should be no need to go abroad and try to foster an existence in a foreign land. There is heavy-lifting wherever a person resides. Let’s do the “lifting” here, where at least we are at home and we are treated equitably.

Too many people left, yet have too little to show for it. Now is the time for all of the Diaspora (those in the US, and other countries) to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. We understand your pain, we have been impacted too. (The publishers of the book were entrenched in the Wall Street culture in 2008). This Big Idea now is to use the same energy and innovation to create solutions for Main Street – but not Main Street USA, rather Main Street Caribbean.

This is a dramatic change for the Caribbean, one that is overdue, an invitation to build an elevated society in the Caribbean that many had fled to find elsewhere, yet failed. We can make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. We can succeed here.

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

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

———————————————————————————————–

Appendices:

a. Retrieved from https://www.evernote.com/shard/s4/sh/2f378f98-d21b-4f5b-89d4-c3a47419b0ad/479f14e61917697b135246e01d20f85f

b. Retrieved from http://news.rice.edu/2014/07/22/african-american-homeownership-increasingly-less-stable-and-more-risky-2/

c. Retrieved from http://www.epi.org/publication/public-sector-job-losses-unprecedented-drag/

d. Retrieved from http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2012-07-12/news/bs-md-ci-wells-fargo-20120712_1_mike-heid-wells-fargo-home-mortgage-subprime-mortgages

e. Retrieved from http://www.citylab.com/housing/2012/10/did-big-banks-subprime-mortgage-crisis-violate-civil-rights-law/3598/

f. Retrieved from http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB111318092881303093

g. Retrieved from http://www.citylab.com/housing/2013/08/blacks-really-were-targeted-bogus-loans-during-housing-boom/6559/

h. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/07/21/329864863/the-youth-unemployment-crisis-hits-african-americans-hardest

i. Retrieved from http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/labor/report/2013/04/05/59428/the-high-cost-of-youth-unemployment/

j. Retrieved from http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/13/how-we-built-the-ghettos.html

k. Retrieved from http://grist.org/climate-energy/before-repairing-the-climate-well-have-to-repair-the-impacts-of-racism/

l. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/04/desean_jackson_richard_sherman_and_ black_american_economic_mobility_why.html

m. Retrieved from http://www.vox.com/2014/7/21/5918063/elizabeth-warrens-11-commandments-for-progressives-show-democrats

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UPDATE: Understand the Market, Plan the …

Posted on May 11, 2017 in Government, Locations, Planning, Social

Update – Go Lean Commentary

“The Prime Minister bet his administration on the prospect of Carnival and now, its election time.” – Previous Go Lean commentary.

It’s official, that bet has failed! The Prime Minister (PM) of the Bahamas and leader of the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) – Perry G. Christie – has been defeated. See full story here (posted 05/11/2017):

PLP Feel The Heat In FNM Landslide Win

New Prime Minister Dr. Hubert Minnis

Out with the old, in with the new!

This commentary has observed-and-reported on the Bahamas for the last 5 years and the “bet” that the PM made was related to more than just Carnival; he also bet on:

Music Festival-Event – The Fyre Festival event was a fiasco; it went up in flames on April 28, 2017 after getting government permissions and support beforehand. The mass population of Bahamian stakeholders – other than the government – knew nothing of this event until it was an international embarrassment – a “Black-eye”.
Value-Added Tax – New 7.5% Sales & Use tax implementation increased the tax burden on the poor more than the rich.
Baha Mar Resort & Casino – $2 Billion Resort & Casino stalled due to government meddling in the Developer-Banker conflict.
Grand Bahama (Freeport) – 2^nd City economic progress stalled; decisions on extending Investment Tax Credits were inexplicably stalled and extended for 6-month intervals, until it was finally granted for a reasonable period.

So when the outgoing PM dissolved Parliament on April 11, 2017 and called elections for May 10, it was the only chance for the people to vocalize their displeasure. They shouted an almost unanimous veto of Christie’s policies and administration, giving the Opposition Party (Free National Movement) 35 of the 39 seats in the House of Assembly – see Polling Results in Appendix B below. (We wish all success to the new government of Dr. Hubert Minnis, but our plan is different, better, as it relates to the full region of all 30 Caribbean member-states, not just the Bahamas alone.)

It is obvious that the outgoing PM also failed in the primary functionality of any Planning apparatus:

Understand the Market; Plan the … [Enterprise]

This point is detailed in the book Go Lean…Caribbean as a necessary responsibility for the new Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU is presented as a technocratic solution to the societal defects for the Bahamas and the rest of the Caribbean – 30 member-states in total. The book quotes (Page 57):

What are the Agents of Change that will affect our customers [citizens] and our competitors in the future?

Shakespeare described change as “an undiscovered country”. No one knows exactly what will happen next and when. The best practice is to monitor the developments in the marketplace, adapt and adjust as soon as possible. This description of a nimble response is the purpose behind “Agile” project management and other Lean management methodologies.

The CU will be lean.

Assuming a role to “understand the market and plan the business” requires looking at the business landscape today and planning the strategic, tactical, and operational changes to keep pace with the market and ahead of competitors. Strategic changes that must be accounted for now, includes: Technology, Aging Diaspora, Globalization and Climate Change.

Understanding the market means taking an accurate assessment of the status quo. What truly are the needs and wants of the community; and how much solution can we really provide, so as to balance our promises? This is Planning 101; understanding the market and planning the business, planning the security apparatus, planning the government, planning the Federation.

Federation?

This is the quest for the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This Federation is an initiative to bring change and empowerment to the Caribbean region; to make the region a better place to live, work and play. This Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety for all Caribbean stakeholders and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The book features 144 different missions; all centered on a technocracy to elevate the societal engines of economics, security and governance. This is not easy; in fact the book describes this quest – unifying of the region of 42 million people into one Single Market – as heavy-lifting; paralleling the CU effort as a Caribbean version of the American Moon Shot in the 1960’s (Page 127). See this quote here:

The Bottom Line on Kennedy’s Quest for the Moon
On 25 May 1961, US President John F. Kennedy announced his support for the American Space program’s “Apollo” missions and redefined the ultimate goal of the Space Race in an address to a special joint session of Congress: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth”. His justification for the Moon Race was both that it was vital to national security and that it would focus the nation’s energies in other scientific and social fields. ^[10] This quest was succeeded. At 10:56 pm EDT, on 20 July 1969, the first human (American Astronaut Neil Armstrong) ventured out of the Apollo 11 landing craft and set foot on the Moon declaring: “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind“. ^[11]

Other countries have had subsequent moon landings. See VIDEO here:

VIDEO – The History of: The Apollo Space Program – https://youtu.be/kAxWaqM5M80

Published on Apr 27, 2014 – The History Of series intends to inform and entertain viewers about recorded events in human history.

Support this channel: http://www.patreon.com/RobertDavis

For more information about the Apollo Space Program visit the Wikipedia page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_p…
Music: Hans Zimmer – What Are You Going To Do When You Are Not Saving The World (Man of Steel Soundtrack) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpBnx…

Thanks for watching.

Category: Education

License: Standard YouTube License

This commentary is all about the functionality of planning. Drawing reference to the Go Lean book’s treatment of planning, Page 125 listed this preface:

Planning
The Caribbean Union Trade Federation roadmap catalogs where we are as a region and where we plan to go. This section drills down on the advocacies important for planning the future of the Caribbean.

The issues identified in this section will be incorporated in the CU Treaty with member-states and then in the subsequent constitution, (after an organized Constitution Convention).

Scriptural Quotation – Proverbs 29:18 (King James Version):

Where there is no vision, the people perish …

The book then proceeds to list these chapters on planning for the Caribbean stakeholders to consider:

The topics in the photo depict a community ethos – the national spirit that drives the character and identity of its people – of learning from other societies who have succeeded and failed at the planning-governing process. This vision was anticipated from the beginning of the Go Lean book, opening with these pronouncements in the 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.

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.

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

There is planning first … and then there is delivery.

Planning and delivery are 2 separate and distinct functionalities, but one drives the other. The Go Lean movement, with the branding of Lean in the name is all about the art-and-science of project delivery. The book explains (Page 4) that the Caribbean Union Trade Federation considers the word lean to be a noun, a verb and an adjective. It considers lean as a “core idea to maximize value while minimizing waste. Simply [put], lean means creating more value for stakeholders with fewer resources. A lean organization understands value and focuses its key processes to continuously increase it. The ultimate goal is to provide perfect value to the customer/constituent/beneficiary through a perfect value creation process that has zero waste.”

With confidence we can declare that the CU will “understand the market and plan the delivery”. Truly, then …

… “a Change Is Gonna Come”!

The Go Lean book declares that for permanent change to take place there must first be an adoption of new community ethos. The roadmap was constructed with the new community ethos in mind (see Page 20), plus the execution of strategies, tactics, implementation and advocacies to deliver on the plans for an elevated Caribbean.

Yes, this plan, the Go Lean roadmap is conceivable, believable and achievable. We can make the Caribbean region – all 30 member-states – better homelands to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

————-

Appendix A – Cited Footnote References

10 – Kennedy, John F. (25 May 1961). “Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs”. Historical Resources. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. p. 4. Retrieved 16 August 2010.

11 – Murray, Charles; Catherine Bly Cox (1990). Apollo: The Race to the Moon. New York: Touchstone (Simon & Schuster). ISBN 0-671-70625-X.

————-

Appendix B – General Election 2017

Commonwealth of The Bahamas – *OFFICIAL RESULTS*

Note: Her Excellency Dame Marguerite Pindling, Governor-General of The Bahamas, has invited Prime Minister-elect Hubert Minnis to be sworn in at Government House at 5 pm [on May 11, 2017].

—–
Free National Movement (35 seats)
✔Hubert Minnis (Killarney)
✔K. Peter Turnquest (East Grand Bahama)
✔Adrian Gibson (Long Island)
✔Brensil Rolle (Garden Hills)
✔Brent Symonette (St. Anne’s)
✔Carlton Bowleg Jr. (North Andros & the Berry Islands)
✔Desmond Bannister (Carmichael)
✔D. Halson Moultrie (Nassau Village)
✔Darren Allan Henfield (North Abaco)
✔Dionisio D’Aguilar (Freetown)
✔Donald L. Saunders (Tall Pines)
✔Duane Sands (Elizabeth)
✔Elsworth Johnson (Yamacraw)
✔Frankie Campbell (Southern Shores)
✔Frederick McAlpine (Pineridge)
✔Hank Johnson (Central & South Eleuthera)
✔Iram Lewis (Central Grand Bahama)
✔James Albury (Central &a South Abaco)
✔Jeffrey Lloyd (South Beach)
✔Lanisha Tolle (Sea Breeze)
✔Mark Humes (Fort Charlotte)
✔Marvin Dames (Mount Moriah)
✔Michael Foulkes (Golden Gates)
✔Michael Pintard (Marco City)
✔Miriam Reckly-Emmanuel (MICAL)
✔Pakeisha Parker-Edgecombe (West Grand Bahama & Bimini)
✔Reece Chipman (Centreville)
✔Renward Wells (Bamboo Town)
✔Reuben Rahming (Pinewood)
✔Rickey Mackey (North Eleuthera)
✔Romauld “Romi” Ferreira (Marathon)
✔Shenendon Cartwright (St. Barnabas)
✔Shonel Ferguson (Fox Hill)
✔Travis Robinson (Bain’s & Grant’s Town)
✔Vaughn Miller (Golden Isles)

—–
Progressive Liberal Party (4 seats)
✔Phillip Davis (Cat Island, Rum Cay and San Salvador)
✔Picewell Forbes (Mangrove Cay & South Andros)
✔Glenys Hanna-Martin (Englerston)
✔Chester Cooper (Exumas & Ragged Island)

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ENCORE: It’s Cinco De Mayo … again

Posted on May 5, 2017 in Ethos, Social, Strategy

This Go Lean blog-commentary from May 5, 2015 is re-distributed on this occasion of Cinco De Mayo 2017. As always, this year’s commemoration is a celebration of Mexican culture, more so than Mexican history.

This is a great model for the Caribbean’s current effort to forge an international day of recognition: Caribbean Day for August 1 every year. Yes, we can … develop a similar occasion to commemorate, celebrate and accentuate our Caribbean identity and culture.

But for now …

… Bienvenido Amigos, as we encore this submission on Cinco De Mayo, as follows:

————–

Go Lean Commentary – A Lesson in History: Cinco De Mayo

Today (May 5) is Cinco De Mayo – celebrating this is a move of solidarity with Mexico; its people and culture – Enjoy the festivities!

Enjoy the Mexican food, spirits, music and culture. The country and people of Mexico have so much to offer the world – see VIDEO below – this includes the Caribbean.

One thing more that they can offer us in our region: A Lesson in History!

The summary of this celebration is simple on the surface: Mexican forces commanded by General Ignacio Zaragoza defeated the French army in the Battle of Puebla on 5 May 1862. 4 days later, on 9 May 1862, The then-President Benito Juárez declared that the anniversary of the Battle of Puebla would be a national holiday,^{[14][15][16][17][18]} regarded as “Battle of Puebla Day” or “Battle of Cinco de Mayo”. Although today it is recognized in some countries as a day of Mexican heritage celebration, it is not a federal holiday in Mexico.^[19]

Considering the real history of Cinco De Mayo is a really big deal. For starters, while Mexico was not the aggressor in this war, they were not exactly blameless.

The 1858 – 1860 Mexican civil war known as The Reform War had caused distress throughout Mexico’s economy. When taking office as the newly-elected president of the Republic in 1861, Juárez was forced to suspend payments of interest on foreign debts for a period of two years. At the end of October 1861 diplomats from Spain, France, and Britain met in London to form the Tripartite Alliance, with the main purpose of launching an allied invasion of Mexico, taking control of Veracruz, its major port, and forcing the Mexican government to negotiate terms for repaying its debts and for reparations for alleged harm to foreign citizens in Mexico. In December 1861, Spanish troops landed in Veracruz; British and French followed in early January. The allied forces occupied Veracruz and advanced to Orizaba. However, the Tripartite Alliance fell apart by early April 1862, when it became clear the French wanted to impose harsh demands on the Juarez government and provoke a war. The British and Spanish withdrew, leaving the French to march alone on Mexico City. French Emperor-President Napoleon III – the first democratically elected French President – wanted to set up a puppet regime, the Mexican Empire.

Thus started this French Intervention in Mexico. The effects of these 5 years were far-reaching, even to this day – consider the similarities in flags for these countries.

Title: French Intervention in Mexico 1862 – 1867
Emperor Napoleon III of France was the instigator, justifying military intervention by claiming a broad foreign policy of commitment to free trade. For him, a friendly government in Mexico would ensure European access to Latin American markets. Napoleon also wanted the silver that could be mined in Mexico to finance his empire. Napoleon built a coalition with Spain and Britain while the U.S. was deeply engaged in its own civil war from 1861 to 1865.

Here is the main timeline of this French Intervention period:

1. 1862: Arrival of the French
After the initial victory by the Mexicans at the Battle of Puebla, the war continued in a different direction. The pursuing Mexican army was contained by the French at Orizaba, Veracruz, on 14 June. More British troops arrived on 21 September, and General Bazaine arrived with French reinforcements on 16 October. The French occupied the port of Tamaulipas on 23 October, and unopposed by Mexican forces took control of Xalapa, Veracruz on 12 December.

2. 1863: The French take the capital
The French army of General François Achille Bazaine defeated the Mexican army led by General Comonfort in its campaign to relieve the siege of Puebla, at San Lorenzo, to the south of Puebla. Puebla surrendered to the French shortly afterward, on 17 May. On 31 May, President Juárez fled the capital city (Mexico City) with his cabinet, retreating northward to Paso del Norte and later to Chihuahua. Having taken the treasure of the state with them, the government-in-exile remained in Chihuahua until 1867.

French troops under Bazaine entered Mexico City on 7 June 1863. The main army entered the city three days later, led by General Forey. General Almonte was appointed the provisional President of Mexico on 16 June, by the Superior Junta (which had been appointed by Forey). The Superior Junta with its 35 members met on 21 June, and proclaimed a Catholic Empire on 10 July. The crown was offered to Austrian Prince Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, following pressures by Napoleon. Maximilian accepted the crown on 3 October.

3. 1864: Arrival of Maximilian
Further decisive French victories continued with the fall of Guadalajara, Zacatecas, Acapulco, Durango by 3 July, and the defeat of republicans in the states of Sinaloa and Jalisco in November.

Maximilian formally accepted the crown on 10 April, signing the Treaty of Miramar (between France and Mexico), and landed at Veracruz on 28 May. He was enthroned as Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico, [under French occupation].

4. 1865: Beginning of Republican victories
After many more French victories, finally on 11 April, republicans defeated Imperial forces at Tacámbaro in Michoacán. In April and May the republicans had many forces in the states of Sinaloa and Chihuahua. Most towns along the Rio Grande, [(the border with the US),] were also occupied by republicans.

The decree known as the “Black Decree” was issued by Maximilian on 3 October, which threatened any Mexican captured in the war with immediate execution.

5. 1859-1867: U.S. Diplomacy and Involvement
The United States did not condone the French occupation of Mexico but it had to use its resources for the American Civil War, which lasted 1861 to 1865. Then-President Abraham Lincoln expressed his sympathy to Latin American republics against any European attempt to establish a monarchy; and the Congress passed a resolution in disgust of these French actions. In 1865, The US supported the sale of Mexican bonds by Mexican agents in the US to fund the Juarez Administration, raising up to $18-million dollars for the purchase of American war material.^[16] By 1867, American policy shifted from thinly veiled sympathy to the republican government of Juarez to open threat of war to induce a French withdrawal, invoking the Monroe Doctrine, a policy to thwart any aggression by European powers in the Americas.

6. 1866: French withdrawal and Republican victories
Choosing Franco-American relations over his Mexican monarchy ambitions, Napoleon III announced the withdrawal of French forces beginning 31 May. Taking advantage of the end of French military support to the Imperial troops, the Republicans won a series of crippling victories in Chihuahua on 25 March, Guadalajara, Matamoros, Tampico and Acapulco in July. Napoleon III urged Maximilian to abandon Mexico and evacuate with the French troops; [but he persisted]. The French evacuated Monterrey on 26 July, Saltillo on 5 August, and the whole state of Sonora in September. Maximilian’s French cabinet members resigned on 18 September. The Republicans defeated imperial troops in Oaxaca in October, occupying the whole of Oaxaca in November, as well as parts of Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí and Guanajuato.

7. 1867: Republicans take the capital
The Republicans occupied the rest of the states of Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí and Guanajuato in January. The French evacuated the capital on 5 February.

On 13 February 1867, Maximilian withdrew to Querétaro. The Republicans began a siege of the city on 9 March, and Mexico City on 12 April. On 11 May, Maximilian finally resolved to try to escape through the enemy lines. He was intercepted on 15 May. Following a court-martial, he was sentenced to death and executed on 19 June.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French intervention_in_Mexico

This subject has relevance for the Caribbean. Mexico is a stakeholder in Caribbean affairs. They have a vast coastline (Yucatan Peninsula) on the Caribbean Sea, plus a few Caribbean islands (Cozumel, Isla Mujeres, Isla Contoy, and Isla Blanca). This country is also a member of the ACS – Association of Caribbean States – one of the relevant entities that must be assembled for this regional integration movement championed in the book Go Lean…Caribbean.

The underlying theme of this Lesson in Mexican History is the lack of effective security for the people and societal engines of Mexico. Now, after 150 years, this historic pattern has continued; Mexico proceeded to endure one revolution-rebellion-overthrow-coup d’etat after another until recent times.

The Caribbean cannot afford this same disposition: the dread and damage endured from decades of dysfunction.

Today, Mexico is known as a lawless society in many pockets, especially along the US border. Considering the art and science of security, it is sad that they never got it right! They resemble a Failed-State in so many perspectives. This is where their history, especially those 5 years of the Franco-Mexican War, provides lessons for the Caribbean people and institutions. But this Go Lean movement does not seek to remediate Mexico; this is out of scope. Rather the focus is strictly on the 30 Caribbean member-states: islands of the Caribbean plus the Central & South American states that caucus with the Caribbean Community (Belize, Guyana and Suriname).

This effort to elevate Caribbean society fully recognizes that security mitigations must be prioritized equally with economic and governing remediation. This is an underlying theme of the book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book declares that the region is in crisis, at the precipice of Failed-State status. This is the assertion of the Go Lean book, that the region must prepare its own security apparatus for its own security needs.

This book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). So while the CU is set to optimize Caribbean society through economic empowerment, the security dynamics will be inextricably linked to this same endeavor. Therefore the Go Lean roadmap has 3 prime directives:

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

The book contends, just as the French proved to be a “bad actor” to Mexico in 1862, that new “bad actors” will emerge for the Caribbean to contend with. This will be as a by-product of new economic successes in the region. This point is pronounced early in the book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12) that claims:

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

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

The need for the Caribbean to appoint “new guards” or a security pact to mitigate foreign and domestic threats in the region is the primary lesson to glean from the foregoing encyclopedic article – a consideration of the history of Cinco De Mayo. This security pact is to be legally constituted by a Status of Forces Agreement which would be enacted as a complement to the CU confederation treaty. The Go Lean roadmap provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn directions on how to deploy cutting-edge strategies, tactics and implementations to succeed in this goal.

In addition, there are other lessons – secondary – that we learn from this consideration of the history of Cinco De Mayo:

Bullies only acquiesced to a superior force – Only when the more powerful USA turned their attention to the Franco-Mexican War, was France willing to retreat. – There must always be monitoring, accountability and due-process to mitigate all level of bullies in society.
‘Other People’s Money’ is very important to ‘them’ – One of France’s motivation was the cancellation of expected interest payments – Debts to foreign parties should always be prioritized for repayment; it is better to use domestic sources.
Self-exploit natural resources – France saw value in Mexico’s untapped natural resources; they reasoned that they could be exploited to repay debts – Local economic engines should plan for responsible management of natural resources; avoid too-much or too-little development.
Neighbors have their own self-interest to prioritize – the US was occupied with its own domestic priorities, a Civil War – No expectation should be placed on any Super Power to come to our aid; we must be protégés not parasites.
Alliances with others make heavy-lifting easier – France originally formed an alliance with Spain and Britain to pursue the big goal of subduing Mexico – The CU is an alliance and confederation of 30 member-states.
There are consequences to abusing other peoples’ rights – France/Spain/Britain felt justified for their actions because of prior abuses to the rights of their citizens in Mexico – Human and Civil rights, including minorities, should always be a priority for Justice institutions.
Image and global impressions lend value to respect and recognition – The impression of Mexico was that they were dysfunctional and a “joke” to the European world – Caribbean brand and image must be feverishly protected and promoted.

The Go Lean book details a roadmap with turn-by-turn directions for transforming the Caribbean homeland. The following is a sample of the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the Caribbean region for this turnaround:

Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Economic Systems Influence Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation	Page 23
Community Ethos – Minority Equalization	Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
Strategy – Vision – Confederating a Non-Sovereign Union	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Protect Economic Engines from threats	Page 45
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers	Page 71
Implementation – Start-up Foreign Policy Initiatives	Page 102
Implementation – Security Initiatives at Start-up	Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Better Manage Debt	Page 118
Implementation – Ways to Promote Independence – Interdependence	Page 120
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Defense / Homeland Security Pact	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Planning – Ways to Better Manage Image	Page 133
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices	Page 134
Planning – Lessons from the American West	Page 142
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice	Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security	Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism	Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights	Page 220

Mexico is a beautiful country, with a beautifully diverse population plus a lot of natural resources. They experience a vibrant tourism product where millions visit annually for Mexican hospitality – they are a fit competitor of Caribbean tourism, even for cruises. See VIDEO here:

VIDEO: Mexico: Live It to Believe It – Cultural Diversity 2015 – https://youtu.be/jciVmLL_UgY

Published on Feb 27, 2014 – A production of the Mexico Department of Tourism; commissioned for the Central American and Caribbean Games in Veracruz from November 14 to 30, 2014.

Many people visit Mexico, but few would consider moving there permanently. In fact just the opposite occurs, the societal abandonment problem in Mexico is very pronounced. Their northern neighbor, the United States, has constant security issues of illegal Mexican migrants. Mexico has been dysfunctional for their entire history as a Republic. They must do better! While this quest is out-of-scope for the CU/Go Lean roadmap, we can learn lessons from their actions and inactions.

The Go Lean book posits (Page 3) that the Caribbean islands are among the greatest addresses in the world. But like Mexico, instead of the world “beating a path” to our doors, the people of the Caribbean have “beat down their doors” to get out; despite the absence of any war or revolution … like our Mexican neighbors. Our abandonment is inexcusable.

May we learn from this history of Mexico! Mexican culture is great! Enjoy the festivities: their people, food, drink, music and dance. But let’s do better … than they have done. Let’s make the Caribbean even better, where our citizens can prosper where they are planted; let’s make our homeland better places to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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‘May the 4th Be With You’ – an ENCORE Plea to our Heroes to Return

Posted on May 4, 2017 in Ethos, Planning, Social

It’s Life imitating Art; see this quotation:

Say “May the 4th Be With You” out loud …

… and you’ll hear the pun that Star Wars fans worldwide have turned into a rallying cry to proclaim their love of the saga. It’s the worldwide day to say “May the Force be with you” to all, and celebrate the beloved Star Wars story that binds our galaxy together.

One of the earliest known records of “May the 4th” used in popular culture is in 1979, as described here by author Alan Arnold while he was chronicling the making of The Empire Strikes Back for Lucasfilm:

Friday, May 4, 1979 – “Margaret Thatcher has won the election and become Britain’s first woman prime minister. To celebrate their victory her party took a half page of advertising space in the London Evening News. This message, referring to the day of victory, was ‘May the Fourth Be With You, Maggie. Congratulations,’ further proof of the extent to which ‘Star Wars’ has influenced us all.”

Once the Internet allowed Star Wars fans around the world to connect with one another, May the 4th soon became a grassroots tradition each year, with fans online and offline proclaiming it “Star Wars Day.”

While the idea of May the 4th did not start with Lucasfilm, the film company that created Star Wars has fully embraced the spirit of fandom that makes the day so special. StarWars.com as well as the official Star Wars social media channels (hashtag #StarWarsDay) help spread the word and showcase fan activity. More and more official partners have offered sales, giveaways and exclusives, and have hosted parties and other activities to mark the day.

The lure of Star Wars was also embraced by the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean. In a previous blog-commentary from December 22, 2015 when the movie Star Wars Episode 7 “The Force Awakens” was released, a parallel was shown between the standard Hero’s Journey dramatic path and what the Caribbean region needs:

Our heroes to return … to the homeland.

Here is an ENCORE of that previous blog-commentary on this occasion of ‘May the 4th’ 2017.

————-

Go Lean Commentary – The Caribbean is Looking For Heroes … to Return

In the Caribbean, we need a hero, we need lots of heroes …

… need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the end of the night
He’s gotta be strong
And he’s gotta be fast
And he’s gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero
I’m holding out for a hero ’til the morning light
He’s gotta be sure
And it’s gotta be soon
And he’s gotta be larger than life
(Song by Bonnie Tyler 1984; see VIDEO & Lyrics at https://youtu.be/OBwS66EBUcY; see Appendix)

We must reform and transform our Caribbean society. We know that one person – a hero – can make a difference, and we need to encourage those contributions.

Heroes are not born, they are forged. According to noted Mythologist Joseph Campbell, hero candidates go through a consistent pattern of a journey to become bona-fide heroes.

Who is Joseph Campbell and why does his opinion matter? He is the inspiration behind the big hit movie franchise Star Wars. All things Star Wars are en vogue right now. According to IMDB.com, this movie which opened just days ago – Star Wars Episode 7 “The Force Awakens”; (see Appendix) – had the biggest US box office opening of any movie … ever. See the box office results here in the photo, retrieved December 22, 2015.

This is an amazing feat, considering that Joseph Campbell has been dead since 1987. But Star Wars creator, George Lucas drew his story-line from Joseph Campbell’s inspirations in the cataloging of the “Hero’s Journey” in his writings. See article here:

Title: Role Model Joseph Campbell
In 1949 Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) made a big splash in the field of mythology with his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces. This book built on the pioneering work of German anthropologist Adolph Bastian (1826-1905), who first proposed the idea that myths from all over the world seem to be built from the same “elementary ideas.” Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961) named these elementary ideas “archetypes,” which he believed to be the building blocks not only of the unconscious mind, but of a collective unconscious. In other words, Jung believed that everyone in the world is born with the same basic subconscious model of what a “hero” is, or a “mentor” or a “quest,” and that’s why people who don’t even speak the same language can enjoy the same stories.

Jung developed his idea of archetypes mostly as a way of finding meaning within the dreams and visions of the mentally ill: if a person believes they are being followed by a giant apple pie, it’s difficult to make sense of how to help them. But if the giant apple pie can be understood to represent that person’s shadow, the embodiment of all their fears, then the psychotherapist can help guide them through that fear, just as Yoda guided Luke on Dagoba. If you think of a person as a computer and our bodies as “hardware,” language and culture seem to be the “software.” Deeper still, and apparently common to all homo sapians, is a sort of built-in “operating system” which interprets the world by sorting people, places, things and experiences into archetypes.

Campbell’s contribution was to take this idea of archetypes and use it to map out the common underlying structure behind religion and myth. He proposed this idea in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, which provides examples from cultures throughout history and all over the world. Campbell eloquently demonstrates that all stories are expressions of the same story-pattern, which he named the “Hero’s Journey,” or the “monomyth.” This sounds like a simple idea, but it suggests an incredible ramification, which Campbell summed up with his adage “All religions are true, but none are literal.” That is, he concluded that all religions are really containers for the same essential truth, and the trick is to avoid mistaking the wrappings for the diamond.

[Star Wars Creator George] Lucas had already written two drafts of Star Wars when he rediscovered Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces in 1975 (having read it years before in college). This blueprint for “The Hero’s Journey” gave Lucas the focus he needed to draw his sprawling imaginary universe into a single story.

Note that the Wachowski Brothers’ wonderful film The Matrix is carefully built on the same blueprint:

Campbell

Star Wars

The Matrix

I: Departure

The call to adventure Princess Leia’s message “Follow the white rabbit”

Refusal of the call Must help with the harvest Neo won’t climb out window

Supernatural aid Obi-wan rescues Luke from sandpeople Trinity extracts the “bug” from Neo

Crossing the first threshold Escaping Tatooine Neo is taken out of the Matrix for the first time

The belly of the whale Trash compactor Torture room

II: Initiation

The road of trials Lightsaber practice Sparring with Morpheus

The meeting with the goddess Princess Leia (wears white, in earlier scripts was a “sister” of a mystic order) The Oracle

Temptation away from the true path¹ Luke is tempted by the Dark Side Cypher (the failed messiah) is tempted by the world of comfortable illusions

Atonement with the Father Darth and Luke reconcile Neo rescues and comes to agree (that he’s The One) with his father-figure, Morpheus

Apotheosis (becoming god-like) Luke becomes a Jedi Neo becomes The One

The ultimate boon Death Star destroyed Humanity’s salvation now within reach

III: Return

Refusal of the return “Luke, come on!” Luke wants to stay to avenge Obi-Wan Neo fights agent instead of running

The magic flight Millennium Falcon “Jacking in”

Rescue from without Han saves Luke from Darth Trinity saves Neo from agents

Crossing the return threshold Millennium Falcon destroys pursuing TIE fighters Neo fights Agent Smith

Master of the two worlds Victory ceremony Neo’s declares victory over machines in final phone call

Freedom to live Rebellion is victorious over Empire Humans are victorious over machines

Source: Fan Site for Obscure Star Wars Inspirations; retrieved December 20, 2015 from: http://www.moongadget.com/origins/myth.html

But one can argue, these are just movies, “make believe”; these are not real people nor real life. That would be a true statement of facts (there is no “Luke Skywalker” nor “Neo” as historical characters), but the principles of a “Hero’s Journey” is real, and present in real life. This is just another example of “life imitating art”. In a previous blog-commentary regarding Caribbean Diaspora member and Hollywood great, Sidney Poitier, it was declared that …

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

These movies do bring a different perspective. According to the foregoing, there are Three Acts to the “Hero’s Journey”:

I. Departure
II. Initiation
III. Return

The publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean recognize the one person can make positive, heroic contributions to his community; and that this role must be forged in society. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU seeks to foster the genius qualifiers in Caribbean citizens. Not everyone can be heroes, but society must be structured to allow heroes to soar. Because …

… one man (or woman) can make a difference! Such a person can impact their community, country … and the whole world.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” – Edmund Burke; 1729 – 1797; an Irish statesman, member of British Parliament and supporter of the American Revolution.

The Caribbean has fostered the hero process, but according to the Three Acts established by Joseph Campbell, our heroes stopped at Act II, they do not “Return”.

They make their heroic contributions to other communities and not their homeland. The Caribbean, thusly “fattens frogs for snakes”. Consider the bad consequences of this reality, as in our brain drain among the college-educated population, which is up to a 70% rate within the entire region.

A quest of the Go Lean/CU roadmap is to lower the “Push and Pull” factors that causes so many Caribbean citizens to flee their beloved homeland. In addition, another quest is to incentivize the far-flung Diaspora to return to the Caribbean. Success in these quests will take a “Hero’s Journey”.

The villain in this real-life story is the poor performing Caribbean economy. So the prime directive of the Go Lean book is to elevate Caribbean society, and its societal engines … defined in these declarative statements, as follows:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant societal engines again foreign and domestic threats.
Improvement Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Go Lean book posits that one person, despite their field of endeavor, can make a difference in the Caribbean, and its impact on the world; that there are many opportunities where one advocate, one champion, one “hero” can elevate society. In this light, the book features 144 different advocacies, so there is inspiration for the “next hero” to emerge and excel right here at home in the Caribbean.

The roadmap specifically encourages the region to lean-in, to foster heroes and champions with these specific community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies:

Community Ethos – Forging Change	Page 20
Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Whistleblower Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation	Page 23
Community Ethos – Minority Equalization	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Mission – Dissuade Societal Abandonment	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Incentivize Repatriation	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Protect Repatriates with heightened Public Safety	Page 45
Anatomy of Advocacies – Examples of Individuals Who Made Impact	Page 122
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Leadership	Page 171
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice	Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Remediate and Mitigate Crime	Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Hollywood – Global Box Office – Imitating Life	Page 203
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts	Page 230

The Caribbean region wants a more optimized society.

This book posits that “bad actors” – even villains: the “Dark Side of the Force” – will emerge to exploit inefficient economic, security and governing models. Early in the book, the pressing need to streamline protections – for citizens and institutions – was pronounced in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12), with these opening statements:

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

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, including … forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

The Go Lean book explicitly acknowledges that optimizing society is not easy; it requires strenuous, heroic efforts; heavy-lifting. That is the quest of the CU/Go Lean roadmap. Other subjects related to heroic efforts of role models have been blogged in other Go Lean…Caribbean commentaries, as sampled here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5964	Movie Review: ‘Tomorrowland’ – ‘Feed the right wolf’ in Society
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5648	Music Role Model Taylor Swift withholds Album from Apple Music
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5506	Role Model: Edward Snowden – One Person Making a Difference
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3490	How One Entrepreneur Can Rally a Whole Community
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2726	Caribbean Role Model – Oscar De La Renta – RIP
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1731	Role Model Warren Buffet – An Ode to Omaha
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1596	Book Review: ‘Prosper Where You Are Planted’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=866	Role Model Bob Marley: The Legend Lives On!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=209	Role Model: Advocate Kevin Connolly

The Go Lean roadmap posits that the CU should foster the genius potential in Caribbean citizens and incubate their potential to maximum production. We should let “heroes be heroes” in their fields of endeavor here at home, no matter how diverse. Many Caribbean Diaspora has done this exactly, abroad in benefiting other communities, while their homelands languish.

They have departed – Act I.
They have initiated as heroes – Act II.
But, they have NOT returned – no Act III.

Enough already!

The roadmap pronounces that we need the participation of many advocates on many different paths for progress. By facilitating, fostering and furthering these initiative, we can have our heroes return to be heroic at home. Only then, will the Caribbean truly become a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

————

Appendix VIDEO – Bonnie Tyler – I Need a Hero (Lyrics) – https://youtu.be/OBwS66EBUcY

————

Appendix VIDEO – Star Wars: The Force Awakens Trailer (Official) – https://youtu.be/sGbxmsDFVnE

Published on Oct 19, 2015 – Watch the official trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, [opened] in theaters December 18, 2015.

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Plea to Philanthropists: Give us your Time, Talent and Treasuries

Posted on May 3, 2017 in Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Who is Sandy Weill? And why is his name important … to our cause for reforming and transforming the Caribbean?

The question relates not just to Mr. Sanford Weill, but to his wife – Joan – as well. So the question is “Who are Sandy and Joan Weill?

Accordingly, the publishers of the book, Go Lean…Caribbean know of them … well. They are featured in the book; they are listed on Page 292 on the list of Billionaire Philanthropists. (That’s Billionaire with a ‘B’). These ones – 113 Billionaires as of July 2013 – had signed the “Giving Pledge”; they have committed to giving more than half of their wealth to charitable causes. See this explanation from the book (and the list) here:

The Bottom Line on Philanthropy
The “Occupy Wall Street” movement emerged in 2011 and proclaimed the slogan “We are the 99%”, referring to income inequality and wealth distribution in the US between the wealthiest One Percent and the rest of the population. But there is more than what “meets the eye” about this One Percent.

As governments around the world pull back, due to austerity and sequestration (US version in 2013), the philanthropic sector will be a critical force in meeting global needs. In what is called the “Giving Pledge” 113 billionaires have committed to give more than half of their wealth to charitable organizations. This level of philanthropy, over $37 billion by Warren Buffett alone, is historically unprecedented. Warren Buffett most lasting contribution will not be his money; rather that he has successfully leveraged his social network and the media to inspire other billionaires to give extraordinary wealth for charitable good. He is reshaping the way the rich think about money and giving, [and the way the rest of the world thinks about the rich]. Some notable names to sign the pledge: Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Home Depot cofounder Arthur Blank and Hedge Fund mogul Bill Ackman, (see Appendix N [on Page 292]) – Forbes.com.

(Click to Enlarge)

Some of these billionaires have pledged to go even further than just giving of their treasuries (money), but also pledge to give their time and talents. This is the familiarity with Sandy and Joan Weill. See the article here from the CNBC TV network. This Opinion-Editorial was written directly by them. See here:

Title: Philanthropy isn’t just about money
By: Joan and Sandy Weill
We both hail from Brooklyn and when we got married 58 years ago our goal in life was very simple. We wanted to do well enough to be able to afford a deep fryer. This is the honest truth. Sandy worked as a runner on Wall Street making $150 a month, while Joan earned more than Sandy working only two days a week as a teacher.

As a result of compound interest over the years, Joan is adamant that Sandy still owes her money from these early days!

Through much hard work and determination, we were able to buy that deep fryer and, as they say, the rest is history. We have been blessed beyond our wildest imaginations, and we plan to spend the years we have left doing what we have been passionate about for almost four decades now, giving back to a world that has been very good to us.

For us, philanthropy is much more than just writing a check. It’s donating your time, energy, experience, and intellect to the causes and organizations you are passionate about. In the early days, we used to say that Joan took care of the streets and Sandy took care of culture. We look at a nonprofit the same way we look at a company—investing in a nonprofit is like buying stock in that organization and we are always looking for the greatest return on our investment.

Education and partnership are at the heart of everything we do philanthropically, and we make long term commitments to the organizations we lead: Sandy is the founder and chairman of the National Academy Foundation (since 1982); chairman of Carnegie Hall (since 1991); chairman of Weill Cornell Medical College (since 1995); chairman of the Green Music Center at Sonoma State University (since 2011); and active with the Lang Lang International Music Foundation; Hospital for Special Surgery; University of California, San Francisco Medical Center; Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy; Sidra Medical and Research Center in Qatar; and Rambam Hospital in Israel.

Joan is chair of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (since 2000); co-chair of the New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center Women’s Health Symposium (since 2000); remains chair emeritus of Paul Smith’s College in the Adirondacks; and is active with Citymeals-On-Wheels, Carnegie Hall, National Academy Foundation, Green Music Center at Sonoma State University and the Lang Lang International Music Foundation. Joan really has a passion for making a difference in people’s lives one at a time.

Given the various hats we wear with different nonprofit organizations that span the entire United States, we see a new paradigm emerging. It is no secret that federal, state and local budgets are shrinking because of today’s challenging economic environment. As a result, the public sector does not have the capital to support education, health care, music and the arts at the level it has been able to do for the last 100 years. The new paradigm we see is the importance of public-private partnerships. The public sector needs the money, and the private sector is going to demand results that will create new, higher standards to benefit everyone. This translates to the need for more philanthropy, and our private sector must answer the call by getting its employees involved and contributing not just financially, but with their time, enthusiasm and experience.

The National Academy Foundation is an example of a public-private partnership model that works. Sandy founded the organization back in 1982 in partnership with the New York City Board of Education, the teachers union and the private sector. The first Academy of Finance opened its doors at John Dewey High School in Brooklyn. Today, the National Academy Foundation has over 500 academies of finance; hospitality and tourism; information technology; engineering; and health sciences that educate more than 60,000 high school students across the country at a very low cost of less than $500 per student. The program has a 97-percent graduation rate with 84 percent of these graduates going on to college, often the first in their family to do so. Employees of more than 2,500 companies volunteer in classrooms, act as mentors, engage National Academy Foundation students in paid internships and serve on local advisory boards.

From our own experiences in philanthropy over the last almost four decades, we have found the following lessons very useful:

Don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

Don’t be afraid to hire people smarter than you.

The busiest people can always do more.

You can run a better private business if you help run philanthropic enterprises.

Whatever you do, be passionate about it.

Keep it focused, you can’t do everything.

If you don’t understand something, don’t do it.

Teams win.

Be a pragmatic dreamer.

Maintain a good sense of humor and never take yourself too seriously.

Philanthropy has been a large part of our lives for many years and is something we are deeply passionate about and enjoy doing together. We would encourage you to set goals, and as you come close to achieving those goals, push them out a little further. You will be really amazed at what you can achieve. After all, we began our journey just trying to get our hands on a deep fryer!
—By Sandy and Joan Weill for CNBC.
Source: CNBC – Consumer and Business News Channel – Posted 09/09/2013; retrieved 05/02/2017 from: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101019341

Related Articles:

Sandy and Joan Weill make $100 million donation

No bank breakup needed with right regulations: Sandy Weill – See the Appendix VIDEO below.

Consuming this information, we learn an important factoid about Sandy and Joan Weill – more on Sandy the “Banker” in the Appendix below – and all private philanthropists for that matter:

“the private [funding] sector [(all philanthropists)] is going to demand results that will create new, higher standards to benefit everyone.”

In the Caribbean, we now welcome these higher standards, as we welcome the contributions from these philanthropists.

This message we now send to these 113 Billionaires on the Giving Pledge List – and all other philanthropists for that matter:

Give us your time, talent, treasuries and whatever higher standards. We will equally pledge to you, to ‘give and take’. We will take your contributions and give to you the needed accountability and corporate governance.

This is a familiar topic for this movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean. We have frequently observed-and-reported on the efforts of philanthropists and NGO’s in their efforts to reform and transform society. We have seen their successes … and failures. Consider the highlights of this previous effort by another “Giving Pledge Billionaire”, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg; where he struggled with trying to remediate the inner city school system in Newark, New Jersey (USA):

The issues of education reform, best practices, and funding options are stressed in the book Go Lean…Caribbean, even though these are not the primary focus of the book. Rather this book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), with the focus being on these following 3 prime directives:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.

Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.

Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

Yet, the book posits that education is a vital consideration for economic empowerment; so too are non-government organizations, like Zuckerberg’s foundation. The book specifically highlights an important role that foundations execute in the sphere of foreign aid, sometimes even better than national governments (Page 219):

One major argument against federally funded foreign aid is that the money is often lost to governmental corruption in the countries it was supposed to help. In 2003, a top university in Bangladesh claimed that at least 75% of all foreign aid given to that government was lost because of corruption. Since faith-based foreign aid focuses on churches or organizations operating independently of the government, funding has a better chance of being used effectively.

The [featured] news article though, highlights an onshore example, in the US, with multi-level governmental support, plenty of money, and yet still: failure! [So the solution for a lot of social problems is not just money alone].

So reforming and transforming the Caribbean takes more than just money; we need wisdom (best-practices and know-how) as well. The Go Lean roadmap provides the step-by-step plan to invite and engage philanthropists in the cause to elevate Caribbean society, to actually get them to give of their time and talent. It does not matter that these philanthropists (members of the One Percent class) may not be Caribbean-based. While many may be physically in the US, Canada and/or Europe, we know that they use the Caribbean as their playground. They are therefore identified as stakeholders of this regional empowerment plan.

The Go Lean roadmap is designed to cater to this One Percent group. See the headlines of this advocacy from the book here:

10 Ways to Impact the One Percent – Page 224

1	Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market This will allow for the unification of the region into one market, thereby expanding to an economy of 30 countries, 42million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion (c. 2010). The CU will foster the development for the entire region to aspire for a better life, filled with opportunities for greater prosperity. Those already across the prosperity thresholds, the One Percent, are also included in the “dream” for a more integrated society. So the CU will not penalize the rich for being rich; on the contrary, the region wants to respond to any invitation from rich philanthropists to engage. The CU will therefore invite more participation from this population, by soliciting direct foreign investments, incentivizing industrial initiatives and promoting activities appealing to the upper classes, like art, music, sports and culture.
2	Oversight for Non-for-Profit Foundations Many of the members of the One Percent facilitate charitable contributions by means of their personal or otherwise aligned foundations. The CU will therefore facilitate the eco-system for not-for-profit foundations.The CU Department of State will facilitate incorporations, administration and oversight. The CU will mandate accountability, transparency, financial integrity, and quality/risk management. In fact these foundations will qualify to utilize a lot of the CU’s e-Delivery methods, systems and resources.
3	Solicit Charitable Contributions Many of the CU advocacies align with the not-for-profit foundations of the billionaires and millionaires included in the One Percent. The CU will establish Special [Liaison] Groups with the organization structure to cater to this “crowd”. The goal will be to solicit their charitable contributions ($ Billions pledged) to CU regional targets. The CU member-states are all considered Third World countries that “need” a helping hand. The CU Special [Liaison] Group will promote the required image, proposals and supportive services.
4	Job Creators Inducements
5	Simplified Tax Code
6	Security Pact – Law Enforcement Provisions
7	Intelligence Gathering and Analysis – Special Victims
8	Maritime Emergency Management
9	Paparazzi Protections
10	High-end Tourism

The points of effective, technocratic stewardship of Non-Government Organizations (NGO’s), social & civic agencies and not-for-profits have been elaborated upon in previous blog/commentaries. Consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10449	Mike Ilitch: Profile of a good Rich Man in his Community
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9038	Plan to Improve Charity Management
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8243	Zuckerberg’s Philanthropy Project Makes First Major Investment
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7822	Sean Parker – Doing More for Cancer
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6422	Microsoft’s Corporate Philanthropy for Kids in Computer Science
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5462	Bad Charity Model: Red Cross’ $500 Million In Haiti Relief
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4037	How to Better Manage Rich Foreign Direct Investors
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3760	Concerns about ‘Citizenship By Investment Programs’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3432	Balanced Attitude about Begging (Soliciting Aid)
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1763	Gates Foundation: Changing the World with Time, Talent & Treasuries

Overall, the Go Lean book stresses the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to reform and transform the economic, security and governing engines of Caribbean society. This effort will be egalitarian towards all men (and women), but we understand that some people – the One Percent – are better equipped to help our transformation goals. We must not fail to extend the needed hospitality to this group.

But there is a need for caution! We do not want the customary corruption that can come from Crony-Capitalists and Plutocrats. This warning was urged in the beginning of the Go Lean book, opening with these pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12):

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

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.

Now is the time for all stakeholders – Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man … – in the Caribbean to lean-in for the empowerments described here-in and in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. We must engage all parties willing to help. If rich people (the One Percent) want to give away half of their wealth, then it will be foolish not to join the queue to receive it.

The Go Lean book urges this wise course for the Caribbean region. We should welcome the resources of the One Percent, their time, talents and treasuries, to help 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 the roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

————

Note: In the interest of full disclosure, this blog-writer is a “Citi” alumnus.

————

Appendix – Sanford I. Weill’s Corporate Biography Summary

Born March 16, 1933, Sanford (Sandy) Weill is an American banker, financier and philanthropist.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]} He is a former chief executive and chairman of Citigroup. He served in those positions from 1998 until October 1, 2003, and April 18, 2006, respectively.

Early life

Weill was born in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York, to Polish Jewish immigrants, Etta Kalika and Max Weill.^[11][12] He attended P.S. 200 in Bensonhurst. He also attended Peekskill Military Academy in Peekskill, New York, then enrolled at Cornell University where he was active in the Air Force ROTC and the “Alpha Epsilon Pi” Fraternity. Weill received a Bachelor of Arts degree in government from Cornell in 1955.^[11]

Weill married Joan Mosher on June 20, 1955. The couple lives in Greenwich, Connecticut. They have two adult children….

Business career

Weill, shortly after graduating from Cornell University, got his first job on Wall Street in 1955 – as a runner for Bear Stearns. In 1956, Weill became a licensed broker at Bear Stearns.^[14] Rather than making phone calls or personal visits to solicit clients, Weill found he was far more comfortable sitting at his desk, poring through companies’ financial statements and disclosures made to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. [His other career positions].

Building Shearson (1960–1981)

Founder of different entities that evolved to Shearson Loeb Rhoades.

American Express (1981–1985)

In 1981, Weill sold Shearson Loeb Rhoades to American Express for about $930 million in stock. Weill began serving as president of American Express Co. in 1983 and as chairman and CEO of American Express’s insurance subsidiary, Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company.

Before Citigroup (1986–1998)

Weill resigned from American Express in August 1985 at age 52. After an attempt to become the CEO of BankAmerica Corp. (and “take over” Merrill Lynch, according to a Jamie Dimon interview in 2002), he persuaded Minneapolis-based Control Data Corporation to spin off a troubled subsidiary, Commercial Credit, a consumer finance company. In 1986, with $7 million of his own money invested in the company, Weill took over as CEO of Commercial Credit. After a period of layoffs and reorganization, the company completed a successful IPO.

In 1987, he acquired Gulf Insurance. The next year, he paid $1.5 billion for Primerica, the parent company of Smith Barney and the A. L. Williams insurance company. In 1989 he acquired Drexel Burnham Lambert‘s retail brokerage outlets. In 1992, he paid $722 million to buy a 27 percent share of Travelers Insurance, which had gotten into trouble because of bad real estate investments.

Post-Citigroup

In 2002, the company was hit by the wave of Wall Street managerial restructuring that followed the stock market downturn of 2002. Charles Prince replaced Weill as the CEO of Citigroup on October 1, 2003.

Advocate for bank break-up

On July 25, 2012, Weill apparently reversed course on the financial supermarket and stated “What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something that’s not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that’s not too big to fail,” Weill said on CNBC. “If they want to hedge what they’re doing with their investments, let them do it in a way that’s going to be mark-to-market so they’re never going to be hit.”^[18][19][20]

Source: Retrieved May 2, 2017 from Wikipedia at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanford_I._Weill

————

Appendix VIDEO – Big banks don’t need to be split up: Sandy Weill – http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000197127

Posted Sep 10, 2013 – The big banks don’t have to be split if the “right regulation” is in place, Sandy Weill, former chairman and CEO at Citigroup, told CNBC on Tuesday, a year after he shocked the financial world by calling for the breakup of the investment banking and commercial banking operations.

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Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Lower Ed.

Posted on April 27, 2017 in Economics, Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

“A fool and his money are soon parted” – Ancient British proverb that gleans inspiration from The Bible book of Proverbs 26:1-11, with the meaning of:
1. It is easy to get money from foolish people.
2. It is difficult or unlikely that foolish people maintain their hold on acquired wealth.

What’s ironic is there are similar colloquial expressions that are even more shocking for the prevalence of financial abuse of the unwise. Consider:

So who is more abominable? The fool who loses out on his new found fortune or the shrewd person that schemes to take advantage of that fool? (It should be noted in this case that the fortune is only rights and credits; every American citizen qualify for a need-based Student Loan from the federal government – that loan is non-dischargeable).

One commentator pushes this thesis even further, positing that:

“The ‘fools’ I think of are all rather harmless creatures, basically well-intentioned and innocent. All of them evoke a certain sense of pity, mixed with amusement.”

So imagine that one who exploits the “fool”! Imagine, if instead of an individual, it is a “system”, a government program, that does the exploiting. This is the actuality of Student Loan financing for Private, For-Profit Schools and Colleges in the US.

This is truly abominable; and yet this is the United States of America.

Say it ain’t so!

In a previous blog-commentary, the “abominable” judgment was even more direct:

The ‘Evil Empire‘ – For-Profit Educational firms and institutions – is finally facing resistance from governmental authorities. Companies in this industry have come under fire for their bad practices and abuse of their customers: young students.

… and now, today, ITT Educational Services, one of the largest operators of for-profit technical schools, ended operations at all of its ITT Technical Institutes.
Source: For-Profit Education – ‘Another one bites the dust’; posted September 6, 2016; retrieved April 26, 2017.

This commentary asserts that there is a need for the Caribbean communities to reform and transform our education deliveries, yet still, we do NOT want to model the American system. This point aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean, which seeks to reboot the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region, to ensure better stewardship of the Social Contract for all citizens in our homelands, strong and weak. The Go Lean book petitions the Caribbean region to do better! It describes the necessary empowerments to optimize the economic, security and governing engines of Caribbean society to ensure a better adherence to the principle of the Greater Good.

In a previous 5-part series of blog-commentaries on the “Strong versus the Weak”, the pattern from the Code of Hammurabi was detailed and presented as an Old World model that is being ignored in the US. The one place we would expect to find mitigations for foolishness – to turn the foolish one wise – would be the education arena. Yet this is where we are finding a consistent pattern of the “Strong abusing the Weak”.

This commentary is an addition submission to that already completed series; we are adding this 6^th entry. The full series is now as follows:

Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Model of Hammurabi
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Mental Disabilities
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Bullying in Schools
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Book Review: Sold-Out!
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – An American Sickness
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Book Review: Lower Ed!

The need for this 6^h entry was spurred by the release of this new book on February 28, 2017 entitled: Lower Ed – The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy by Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom (Ph.D. Sociology who teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University). It is ‘spot-on’ for the judgment of the pattern of abuse of the ‘Weak’ in American society who are innocently looking for “pull themselves up by the boot strap”. See the review-synopsis of this book here following by an PODCAST-interview with the Author:

Book Review: Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy
“With great compassion and analytical rigor, Cottom questions the fundamental narrative of American education policy, that a postsecondary degree always guarantees a better life.” – The New York Times Book Review

More than two million students are enrolled in for-profit colleges, from the small family-run operations to the behemoths brandished on billboards, subway ads, and late-night commercials. These schools have been around just as long as their bucolic not-for-profit counterparts, yet shockingly little is known about why they have expanded so rapidly in recent years —during the so-called Wall Street era of for-profit colleges.

In Lower Ed Tressie McMillan Cottom — a bold and rising public scholar, herself once a recruiter at two for-profit colleges—expertly parses the fraught dynamics of this big-money industry to show precisely how it is part and parcel of the growing inequality plaguing the country today. McMillan Cottom discloses the shrewd recruitment and marketing strategies that these schools deploy and explains how, despite the well-documented predatory practices of some and the campus closings of others, ending for-profit colleges won’t end the vulnerabilities that made them the fastest growing sector of higher education at the turn of the twenty-first century. And she doesn’t stop there.

With sharp insight and deliberate acumen, McMillan Cottom delivers a comprehensive view of post-secondary for-profit education by illuminating the experiences of the everyday people behind the shareholder earnings, congressional battles, and student debt disasters. The relatable human stories in Lower Ed—from mothers struggling to pay for beauty school to working class guys seeking “good jobs” to accomplished professionals pursuing doctoral degrees—illustrate that the growth of for-profit colleges is inextricably linked to larger questions of race, gender, work, and the promise of opportunity in America.

Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with students, employees, executives, and activists, Lower Ed tells the story of the benefits, pitfalls, and real costs of a for-profit education. It is a story about broken social contracts; about education transforming from a public interest to a private gain; and about all Americans and the challenges we face in our divided, unequal society.

Source: Posted and Retrieved 04-26-2017 from: https://www.amazon.com/Lower-Ed-Troubling-Profit-Colleges/dp/1620970600/

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AUDIO Podcast – Terry Gross with Tressie McMillan Cottom – Heard on Fresh Air

March 27, 2017 – For-profit colleges have faced federal and state investigations in recent years for their aggressive recruiting tactics — accusations that come as no surprise to author Tressie McMillan Cottom.
Cottom worked as an enrollment officer at two different for-profit colleges, but quit because she felt uncomfortable selling students an education they couldn’t afford. Her new book, Lower Ed, argues that for-profit colleges exploit racial, gender and economic inequality.
Cottom tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that for-profit institutions tend to focus their recruiting on students who qualify for the maximum amount of student aid. “That happens to be the poorest among us,” she says. “And because of how our society is set up, the poorest among us tend to be women and people of color.”

Notice this small sample of the book’s revelations and disclosures, symptomatic of Crony-Capitalism:

A peer-reviewed analysis, with over 100 interviews – with students, employees, executives, and activists – the story is consistently reflective of a sad, abusive American eco-system.
Big-money industry using shrewd recruitment and marketing strategies to tempt the most vulnerable in society.
Despite well-documented predatory practices and some well-publicized campus closings, ending for-profit colleges won’t end the vulnerabilities that made them the fastest growing sector of higher education.
The weakest in American society – single mothers, systematically poor, underserved and under-privilege – are the ones targeted, exploited and abused – again and again.
The growth of for-profit colleges is inextricably linked to larger questions of race, gender, work, and the promise of opportunity in America.

This commentary and the previous 5 commentaries in this series all relate to nation-building, stressing the community ethos necessary to forge a society where all the people are protected all the time. Who really is the fool in these scenarios? The person being abused by the American eco-system or the ones abandoning home to join that society. The premise in the Go Lean book and subsequent blog-commentaries is that the people of the Caribbean can more easily “proper where planted” in their homeland than to emigrate to the American foreign shores for relief. It is foolish to think that America cares about “us”, when they undoubtedly do not care about the “weak” in their own society.

We need more education in our region; because we need economic growth. Economists have established the relationship between economic growth and education:

“For individuals this means that for every additional year of schooling they increase their earnings by about 10%. This is a very impressive rate of return.” (Go Lean book Page 258).

A lot of Caribbean students do matriculate in American colleges and universities. But this commentary is hereby declaring that we must assuredly look beyond the American model to fulfill our educational needs. According to the foregoing book and AUDIO Podcast, only a fool would invest in American For-Profit private educational institutions.

The word “invest” seems so misplaced. No wonder we have such a poor “Return on our Investment” from our Caribbean students studying abroad. (So many times, they do not even return “home”.)

This is already a familiar thesis for the Go Lean movement – a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) – as the Go Lean book advocates establishing local educational options mostly in response to the failings of the “study abroad model”. We have problems with the American quality education in the For-Profit institutions and we have problems with the threat of further brain-drain. See more details from the book here:

10 Ways to Improve Education – Page 159.
# 2 – Promote Industries for e-Learning
For 50 years the Caribbean has tolerated studying abroad; unfortunately many students never returned home. The CU’s focus will now be on facilitating learning without leaving. There have emerged many successful models for remote learning using electronic delivery or ICT. The CU will foster online/home school programs, for secondary education, to be licensed at the CU level so as to sanction, certify, and oversee the practice, especially for rural areas/islands. At the tertiary level, the CU will sponsor College Fairs for domestic and foreign colleges that deliver online education options.

We need more e-Learning options in our Caribbean homeland, for all education levels: K-12 and college. There are many successful models and best practices to adopt. We are in position to pick, choose and refuse products and services from all our foreign trading partners, including from the US. (We must assuredly avoid their societal defects).

One successful model is “iReady” – see more in the Appendix below.

The US, despite its advanced democracy status, has definite societal defects in the education arena. Overcoming the defects – particularly Crony-Capitalism or exploiting public resources for private gains – make depending on American solutions, foolish.

The Go Lean roadmap seeks to transform the Caribbean education deliveries There are so many successful role models to emulate. Yet still, this will be hard. So many in our society hold the default view:

White is Right

Therefore these one may rather spend their education monies abroad in the US than to engage in a local empowerment plan. That is so foolish!

So yes, the transformation will be hard, heavy-lifting, but not foolish! It will engage all 3 societal engines: economic, security and governance. In fact, the prime directives of the Go Lean/CU roadmap includes the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus – including emergency management – to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic.
Improve Caribbean governance for all people – with empowerments like education – to support these engines.

This comprehensive view – economics, security and governance – is the charge of the Go Lean roadmap, opening with these pro-education pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13):

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

xxi. Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group… This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

So any tertiary education plan for the Caribbean must address the preponderance to exacerbate the brain drain. Going to an American For-Profit institution would just be foolish. We, as a community, would be spending good money, but getting bad returns. What’s worst, imaging getting student loans to finance that education? How likely would there be a “Return on Investment”?

Overall, the Go Lean book stresses the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to reboot, reform and transform tertiary education delivery in the Caribbean; see this expressed in this one advocacy here:

10 Ways to Impact Student Loans – Page 160

1	Embrace the advent of the CU Single Market to leverage across the 42 million people in the 30 member-states.
2	Buy Existing Loans
3	Loan Forgiveness
4	Deferments / Postponements
5	Non-Dischargeable with Bankruptcy
6	Forgivable with Death *and Organ Transplantation Dynamics*
7	Diaspora Eligibility for CU Institutions
8	Grace Periods
9	Public – Private servicers
10	Lessons from Occupy Wall Street (OWS) The OWS protest movement highlighted some legitimate issues with the student loan industry. The US Federal government provides guarantees on student loans (direct and indirect), and the loans are non-dischargeable in any Bankruptcy process, so private loan issuers were assured a profit. The issuers would therefore drive the industry to lend more and more to less capable students at high interest rates. As a result of the protest, the Obama Administration eliminated the indirect channel for student loan, taking the profit motive out of the process; (See more in Appendix IH of the Go Lean book on Page 286). The CU [model] will only direct lend.

The points of effective, technocratic stewardship of tertiary education and student loans were further elaborated upon in previous blog/commentaries. Consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9724	“Why”, “How” and “When” to Transform Caribbean Universities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8669	A Model from Failing Detroit – Make Community Colleges free
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8373	A Lesson in Economic Fallacies – Student Loans As Investments
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5482	For-Profit Education: Plenty of Profit; Little Education
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4487	FAMU – Finally, A Model for Facilitating Economic Opportunity
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1256	Is a Traditional 4-year Degree a Terrible Investment?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=709	Student debt holds back many would-be home buyers

There is an absolute abomination of the “strong abusing the weak” in the American eco-system. We must avoid this American pattern; it may even be necessary to avoid America when it comes to our tertiary education needs.

“We can do bad all by ourselves”.

We have so many options elsewhere. The Go Lean plan is to create the better options here in the Caribbean; if not in your homeland, then perhaps in the next one, to the left or to the right.

It is not hard to do better than the American For-Profit model. Since many times in the past American abuse has proliferated, for those weaker physically, mentally and economically. The movement behind the Go Lean/CU roadmap wants us, in the Caribbean, to do better. Yes, let’s be wise!

Education can be so beneficial to our communities. But let’s not be the fool! Let’s keep “it” here at home and let’s “weed out” any bad practices of Crony-Capitalism in our tertiary education delivery system. Let’s pursue the Greater Good (greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong).

Now is the time to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap to reboot, reform and transform Caribbean education. If we do this, we will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work, learn and play. 🙂

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

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

———–

Appendix VIDEO – Intro to/Login for iReady – https://youtu.be/rhNO2-DQMCU

Published December 15, 2016 – iReady Teacher providing instructions for logging on.
See Video recording of a sample lesson here: https://youtu.be/_xoxdLaudDY

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End of ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’

Posted on April 26, 2017 in Economics, Ethos, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Come this May (2017), it will be ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ … no more!

After 146 years, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will close, shut down and come to an end for good. The Agents of Change in entertainment has been chasing this fabled institution, and time finally caught up with it.

Kenneth Feld, the Chairman and CEO of Feld Entertainment, the company that owns the circus, verbalizes the drama succinctly:

“The competitor in many ways was ‘time’.”

“It’s a different model that we can’t see how it works in today’s world to justify and maintain an affordable ticket price. So you’ve got all these things working against it.”

So now the legacy of exotic animals, flashy costumes, death-defying acrobats and clowns is over, under this model. The iconic American spectacle was felled by a variety of factors, company executives explained these contributing factors:

Changing public tastes
Declining attendance combined with high operating costs
Prolonged battles with animal rights groups

While this spells the end of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, it is not the end of circuses in general or the company Feld Entertainment; they also own-operate other profitable shows that will continue; a sample include:

Monster Jam, Disney on Ice and Marvel Live, etc.

Still, in the end – starting next month – some 500 people who perform and work on the circus shows will be impacted. According to the news article here by the Associated Press, “a handful will be placed in positions with the company’s other profitable shows but most will be out of a job”. See the full article here:

Title: Ringling Bros. circus to close after 146 years
By: Tamara Lush
ELLENTON, Fla. (AP) — After 146 years, the curtain is coming down on “The Greatest Show on Earth.” The owner of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus told The Associated Press that the show will close forever in May.

The iconic American spectacle was felled by a variety of factors, company executives say. Declining attendance combined with high operating costs, along with changing public tastes and prolonged battles with animal rights groups all contributed to its demise.

“There isn’t any one thing,” said Kenneth Feld, chairman and CEO of Feld Entertainment. “This has been a very difficult decision for me and for the entire family.”

The company broke the news to circus employees Saturday night after shows in Orlando and Miami.

Ringling Bros. has two touring circuses this season and will perform 30 shows between now and May. Major stops include Atlanta, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston and Brooklyn. The final shows will be in Providence, Rhode Island, on May 7 and in Uniondale, New York, at the Nassau County Coliseum on May 21.

The circus, with its exotic animals, flashy costumes and death-defying acrobats, has been a staple of entertainment in the United States since the mid-1800s. Phineas Taylor Barnum made a traveling spectacle of animals and human oddities popular, while the five Ringling brothers performed juggling acts and skits from their home base in Wisconsin. Eventually, they merged and the modern circus was born. The sprawling troupes traveled around America by train, wowing audiences with the sheer scale of entertainment and exotic animals.

By midcentury, the circus was routine, wholesome family entertainment. But as the 20th century went on, kids became less and less enthralled. Movies, television, video games and the internet captured young minds. The circus didn’t have savvy product merchandising tie-ins or Saturday morning cartoons to shore up its image.

“The competitor in many ways is time,” said Feld, adding that transporting the show by rail and other circus quirks — such as providing a traveling school for performers’ children— are throwbacks to another era. “It’s a different model that we can’t see how it works in today’s world to justify and maintain an affordable ticket price. So you’ve got all these things working against it.”

The Feld family bought the Ringling circus in 1967. The show was just under 3 hours then. Today, the show is 2 hours and 7 minutes, with the longest segment — a tiger act — clocking in at 12 minutes.

“Try getting a 3- or 4-year-old today to sit for 12 minutes,” he said.

Feld and his daughter Juliette Feld, who is the company’s chief operating officer, acknowledged another reality that led to the closing, and it was the one thing that initially drew millions to the show: the animals. Ringling has been targeted by activists who say forcing animals to perform is cruel and unnecessary.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a longtime opponent of the circus, wasted no time in claiming victory.

“After 36 years of PETA protests, which have awoken the world to the plight of animals in captivity, PETA heralds the end of what has been the saddest show on earth for wild animals, and asks all other animal circuses to follow suit, as this is a sign of changing times,” Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, wrote in a statement.

Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States, acknowledged the move was “bittersweet” for the Felds but said: “I applaud their decision to move away from an institution grounded on inherently inhumane wild animal acts.”

In May of 2016, after a long and costly legal battle, the company removed the elephants from the shows and sent the animals to live on a conservation farm in Central Florida. The animals had been the symbol of the circus since Barnum brought an Asian elephant named Jumbo to America in 1882. In 2014, Feld Entertainment won $25.2 million in settlements from groups including the Humane Society of the United States, ending a 14-year fight over allegations that circus employees mistreated elephants.

By the time the elephants were removed, public opinion had shifted somewhat. Los Angeles prohibited the use of bull-hooks by elephant trainers and handlers, as did Oakland, California. The city of Asheville, North Carolina nixed wild or exotic animals from performing in the municipally owned, 7,600-seat U.S. Cellular Center.

Attendance has been dropping for 10 years, said Juliette Feld, but when the elephants left, there was a “dramatic drop” in ticket sales. Paradoxically, while many said they didn’t want big animals to perform in circuses, many others refused to attend a circus without them.

“We know now that one of the major reasons people came to Ringling Bros. was getting to see elephants,” she said. “We stand by that decision. We know it was the right decision. This was what audiences wanted to see and it definitely played a major role.”

The Felds say their existing animals — lions, tigers, camels, donkeys, alpacas, kangaroos and llamas — will go to suitable homes. Juliette Feld says the company will continue operating the Center for Elephant Conservation.

Some 500 people perform and work on both touring shows. A handful will be placed in positions with the company’s other, profitable shows — it owns Monster Jam, Disney on Ice and Marvel Live, among other things — but most will be out of a job. Juliette Feld said the company will help employees with job placement and resumes. In some cases where a circus employee lives on the tour rail car (the circus travels by train), the company will also help with housing relocation.

Kenneth Feld became visibly emotional while discussing the decision with a reporter. He said over the next four months, fans will be able to say goodbye at the remaining shows.

In recent years, Ringling Bros. tried to remain relevant, hiring its first African American ringmaster, then its first female ringmaster, and also launching an interactive app. It added elements from its other, popular shows, such as motorbike daredevils and ice skaters. But it seemingly was no match for Pokemon Go and a generation of kids who desire familiar brands and YouTube celebrities.

“We tried all these different things to see what would work, and supported it with a lot of funding as well, and we weren’t successful in finding the solution,” said Kenneth Feld.
Source: Associated Press – Posted January 15, 2017; retrieved April 25, 2017 from: https://apnews.com/020bc7b2f16f4446ade338bcf4a500ed

While this is an American drama (consider the slice of Americana portrayed in the movie “The Greatest Show on Earth” highlighted in the Movie Trailer in the Appendix below), there is a lot of consideration in this news that relate to the Caribbean. There are lessons for us to learn and apply in the stewardship of Caribbean affairs. These points are being highlighted by the promoters of the book Go Lean…Caribbean; it presents a roadmap to elevate the 30 member-states in the Caribbean region through economic, security and governing empowerments. The book asserts that the entertainment industry can be a great economic contributor to Caribbean communities. Already, tourism is our primary economic driver, and so amusement and entertainment are closely linked.

There are changing trends in tourism, the same as there had been for circus appreciation. At many Caribbean resorts, the business models of casino gambling and golf resources simply do not have the same appeal as in previous days. There is the same factor that affected the circus: “changing public taste”.

So let’s consider the following lessons that the Caribbean is able to glean from experiences (good and bad) of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus:

There is a need to reconcile past abuses – The Circus had a checkered past of abuses; of the 3 separate circuses that merged over the 146 years, (Ringling Brothers, Barnum, Bailey), the Barnum entity – famed for P.T. Barnum – was known for its exploitation and displays of Freaks, people who were malformed or disabled in some way. This is a total disrespect to dignity and human rights. Lesson: Past sins must be repented and reconciled. (See Go Lean book Page 34: 10 Ways to Manage Reconciliations).
By extension, the abuse of animals was clearly documented by animal rights activists and advocates. The Circus should have just conceded this bad practices and worked to rectify. Instead, after decades of denials, when the irrefutable evidence were presented, the circus had no choice but to retire the Elephants and other exotic animals. There was no structured Change Management so as to prepare the public for the new absence of the elephants. The Circus attendance assuredly declined. Lesson: The Circus did have to answer to animal protection entities in the State and Federal governments; they should have negotiated with stakeholders – even opposers – like partners, not enemies. (See Go Lean book Page 32: 10 Ways to Improve Negotiations).
Circus performers are people too; they have families and children; many performers are children. Many media productions (i.e. documentaries) abound describing Carnie Life. There should have been more concerted effort to bring dignity to this travelling profession, like the travelling schools, without the need for the hard-fought labor rules and concessions. Carnies should have been viewed as indispensable partners. Lesson: The Caribbean can apply many lessons in the management and administration of Sports and Student Athletes; think Sports Academies. (See Go Lean book Page 229: 10 Ways to Improve Sports).
Circuses have excelled with their Transportation innovations – Ringling’s use of railroad tracks, trains and cars have been ingenious. They have also deployed residential cars for the cast and crew while they are on the road. Lesson: The Go Lean roadmap calls for deployment of innovative transportation solutions like ferries and the Union Atlantic Turnpike; logistics are necessary to empower communities. (See Go Lean book Page 205: 10 Ways to Improve Transportation).
Circuses have innovated and engineered amazing Event Centers – Tents and Temporary Stadiums. These have been advantageous since the circus only makes a temporary occupancy. Lesson: The strategies for Event Tourism in the Caribbean member-states require facilitations for stadiums and arenas. What we learn from the circus, is they do not have to be permanent structures. (See Go Lean book Page 191: 10 Ways to Impact Events).
Changing public tastes: – There is a need to understand the market and plan the business for the Caribbean economic engines. Lesson: In our region, casinos and golf are declining as hotel amenities, while Cruises Lines are transforming the public taste for how to consume the Caribbean. (See Go Lean book Page 193: 10 Ways to Impact Cruise Tourism).
Listen to the complaints – Ringling’s officials confess that “public opinion had shifted somewhat”. So in effect, the complainers (animal protesters for the circus; negative commentators for the Caribbean) represent the customers views.
Can’t beat them, join them – Ringling should have partnered with their stakeholders (Cities, Animal Advocates, “Carnies”) to develop a win-win product; but rather, for much of their 146-year history they were exploiters. Lesson: Lean Project Management methodologies, calls for “Plan, Do & Review”. Each year’s post-analysis goals should have been on finding solutions for the known challenges. (See Go Lean book Page 147: 10 Ways to Measure Progress).
Value the ‘Genius’ Factor – The Art & Science of circus must be fostered as an ongoing vocation. With their Clown College, Ringling made the proper effort to foster genius. Lesson: The Caribbean region must also foster those with genius qualifiers. (See Go Lean book Page 27: 10 Ways to Foster Genius).
Circus amusement is a leisure activity, 100% discretionary spending. The public can readily lower their spending. Lesson: The Caribbean cannot depend solely on Tourism, its a leisure activity; we need to trade in essentials. (See Go Lean book Page 195: 10 Ways to Impact Extractions).
Patriarchy & Orthodoxy must go – Diversity and Inclusion should not have been optional for the Ringling circus. Only in recent years, has the Ringling Circus even tried to remain relevant, hiring its first African American ringmaster, then its first female ringmaster, and also launching an interactive smart-phone app. Lesson: Institutions should reflect the better values of society, the Greater Good. (See Go Lean book Page 37: 10 Ways to Impact the Greater Good.).
The Ringling Circus will be missed – An absence of circuses hurts society. Circus amusement can be effective for influencing people: make people happy, feed them and entertain them, then heavy-lifting tasks can be pursued – see this point developed in this previous blog.

As alluded to earlier, there is a model for circus entertainment that works successfully in today’s economy:

Cirque Du Soleil …

This model had previously (1984) rebooted, reformed and transformed circus entertainment, and now they are one of the most successful entertainment enterprises in North America – they continue to soar. This model features death-defying acrobats, costumes, and clowns; only no exotic animals. See the pricing here for their permanent show – Cirque du Soleil La Nouba – in Orlando’s Downtown Disney (Disney Springs) entertainment complex. The field of Economics teaches an important lesson here: Price is a measurement of demand.

Click to Enlarge

Lessons learned!

The Go Lean book presents a plan to reboot, reform and transform the regional economy and create the needed jobs and careers, some even in the amusement & entertainment industry. But, the Go Lean book asserts that this effort is too big a task for just for Caribbean member-state alone; all the 30 member-states must convene, confederate and collaborate in order to effect change. As such, the Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society. 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. There needs to be an organized support for artists and performers. Those with Genius Qualifiers must be fostered and protected.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book stresses that reforming and transforming management of Caribbean talent must be a regional pursuit, considering the genius-qualifier of show-business and sports. This was an early motivation for the roadmap as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 14):

xxxi. Whereas sports have been a source of great pride for the Caribbean region, the economic returns from these ventures have not been evenly distributed as in other societies. The Federation must therefore facilitate the eco-systems and vertical industries of sports as a business, recreation, national pastime and even sports tourism ….

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

This commentary previously related details of the subjects of talent management and fostering genius (including show-business and sports) that can be applied directly in the Caribbean. Here is a sample of previous blogs:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10351	‘Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7866	Switching Allegiances: Jamaican sprinters represent other countries
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2415	How ‘The Lion King’ roared into history
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1446	Caribbean Players in the 2014 World Cup
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1214	The Art & Science of Temporary Stadiums – No White Elephants
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=498	Book Review: ‘The Sports Gene’

The Go Lean book details the community ethos, strategies, tactics and operational advocacies to effectuate this goal of preparing the Caribbean for change. This 5-year roadmap does not want our economic engines to just stop, like the circus is about to do in the US in May 2017. There will still be the need for amusement, entertainment and fun, all such things associated with the circus and leisure travel. And just like the circus was branded “The Great Show on Earth”, our Caribbean destination have been branded, according to the Go Lean book (Page 251):

… the greatest address in the world …
… appreciated not only by the residents but also by the visitors to these shores – estimated at 80 million. But things are missing here. Since we cannot move the islands, the only solution is to fill the deficiency. … This is not the first time a society has had to institute change to adjust to the realities … Many examples abound; lessons can be applied from the success and failures of others.

In this vein, the Go Lean book identifies the Agents of Change affecting the Caribbean marketplace and then tries to prepare the region for its eventuality. The book describes some of these agents as:

Technology
Globalization
Climate Change

The book (and this commentary) concludes (Page 252):

Get moving … now is the time. Opportunities abound; … there is opportunity enough in the preparation for the coming change. So act now! Get moving to that place, the “corner” of preparation and opportunity.

🙂

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.

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Appendix – Movie Trailer VIDEO – The Greatest Show on Earth – https://youtu.be/2QswjButLfA

Published on Sep 10, 2012 – Charlton Heston stars as Brad Braden, the diehard circus manager who lives and breathes to keep the show rolling. With the Big Top about to hit rock bottom, Braden hires The Great Sebastian (Cornel Wilde), a daring trapeze legend, to revitalize the circus. His arrival sparks the rivalry and admiration of Holly (Betty Hutton), Braden’s girlfriend and trapeze star.

License: Standard YouTube License

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Caribbean Roots: Al Roker – ‘Climate Change’ Defender

Posted on April 21, 2017 in Ethos, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Make us proud ‘My Brother’; go fight our battles.

This is the message the Caribbean needs to send to one of its own, Al Roker, the on-air meteorologist for NBC and co-host of the morning newscast The Today Show.

Al Roker has Caribbean roots, as a legacy of parents from the Bahamas (and Jamaica; see Appendix A). He, himself has spent a lot of time there and reflect a lot of its values. Right now, he is being a Champion for a cause that is dear to the Bahamas, and all Caribbean for that matter:

Climate Change.

See how this Caribbean Champion battled prominent Climate Change deniers in this TV broadcast here. What’s sad is the actual denier in this case is Scott Pruitt, the Head of the American federal government environmental Watch-Dog, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency).

America may have the luxury of “sticking its head in the sand” and not deal with Climate Change, but for those of us in the Caribbean, we do not have that luxury – we have a Clear-and-Present Danger right now.

See the news article and VIDEO of this champion’s defense:

Title: Al Roker Debunks EPA Head Scott Pruitt’s Stunning Denial On Human-Caused Climate Change
Sub-title: Roker: “No Credible Science Or Scientist” Would Support Pruitt’s Assertion CO2 Is Not A Primary Contributor To Global Warming
By: Media Matters Staff

NBC weatherman Al Roker debunked EPA head Scott Pruitt’s false claim that carbon dioxide is not a primary contributor to global warming during an appearance on MSNBC Live, explaining that there is “no credible science or scientist” to support Pruitt’s statement.

During the March 10 segment, Roker addressed Pruitt’s comments on the March 9 edition CNBC’s Squawk Box in which Pruitt said “I would not agree” that CO2 is “a primary contributor to the global warming that we see” — a statement completely at odds with the consensus among climate scientists that human activity is the primary cause of climate change.

To rebut Pruitt’s statements, Roker referenced an interview he recently conducted with climate scientist Dr. Marshall Shepherd, who explained that “greenhouse gases are in fact the primary forcing function on a warming climate system. … their fingerprint is there on our naturally varying climate in the same way steroids were on the naturally varying cycle of home runs during the Major League Baseball era.”

Roker also stated “there is no credible science or scientist” that would back up Pruitt’s assertion. Indeed, a number of climate scientists have weighed in on Pruitt’s statement, stating Pruitt’s denial “demonstrated that he is unqualified to run the EPA or any agency” and suggesting that Pruitt “talk with his own scientists and read the National Climate Assessment.”

Notably, however, NBC did not address Pruitt’s climate denial on the widely viewed Today show the same day, nor NBC Nightly News air a segment on Pruitt’s climate denial on March 9 — even though Pruitt’s denial received widespread attention across mainstream media.

————-

See full transcript of the interview between Al Roker and the MSNBC Host Katy Tur in Appendix B below.

————-

VIDEO – From the March 10 edition of MSNBC Live – https://mediamatters.org/embed/clips/2017/03/10/52688/msnbc-msnbclive-20170310-alrokerpruitt

This issue of monitoring, messaging and managing the stakeholders for Climate Change is an important mission for the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The book presents the Caribbean region a roadmap to elevate its societal engines – economics, security and governance – and to be prepared for the Agents of Change impacting daily life in the Caribbean homeland. In total, the book identified these 4 Change Agents:

Technology
Globalization
Aging Diaspora
Climate Change

As a region, we are able to employ mitigations and remediation for all of these agents except for Climate Change. We are all small countries, nowhere on the list of “Big Polluters”, like the US (#2) and China (#1). We have neither a voice nor a vote in those countries, yet we need them to take the issue of Climate Change remediation seriously. Messaging is key! We need people like “Al Roker” – daily audience of 4 to 9 million people – speaking truth to power … on our behalf.

This advocacy – to proclaim impending danger to life and limb – is part of a new effort to elevate the societal engines of the Caribbean. This started with the Go Lean…Caribbean book and is being followed up by this and many other blog-commentaries. See here a sample of previous submissions heralding the need for the Caribbean region to be “on guard” for the imminent threats from Climate Change:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9455	Fix ‘Climate Change’ – Yes, We Can
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7103	COP21 – ‘Climate Change’ Acknowledged
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6893	A Meteorologist’s View On Climate Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4673	Merchants of Doubts – Dynamics of Climate Change Deniers
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2465	Book Review: ‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2276	Climate Change May Affect Food Supply Within a Decade
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2119	Cooling Effect – Oceans and the Climate
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1883	Climate Change May Bring More Kidney Stones

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) as an inter-government agency for 30 regional member-states. This confederation will provide a technocratic stewardship for all the societal engines in the Caribbean. In fact, the prime directives of the roadmap includes the following 3 statements:

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

Overall, the Go Lean book stresses the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to reboot, reform and transform the economic engines of Caribbean society.

What do we do now?

While we hope, pray and lobby the big polluting nations to do more, we have to prepare our Caribbean communities for the imminent onslaughts.

In previous blogs, this commentary cautioned the stakeholders in the Caribbean region, as follows:

Crap Happens! Prepare – The peril of a Climate Change-fueled hurricane is now a constant threat for Caribbean life, for all 30 member-states. It is assured that some Caribbean location will be impacted every year. While there is no guarantee for a strike “here or there”, there is a guarantee that there will be a strike somewhere.
Do Not be Hypocritical – Go ‘Green’ – If excessive carbon in the atmosphere by the Big Polluters is the culprit for infusing Greenhouse Gases, then we, as a region of small countries, need to do our share and set a good example of lowering our carbon footprint. Though our numbers are too small to make an impact, it does send the message that we are willing to “swallow the hard pill/take the medicine” ourselves that we are asking the Big Polluting nations to endure.

The global crisis of Climate Change is impacting all aspects of Caribbean life: economics, security (disaster preparation and response) and governance. A comprehensive view of the challenges befalling our region is the charge of the Go Lean roadmap, opening with these pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 11 and 12):

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.

viii. Whereas the population size is too small to foster good negotiations for products and commodities from international vendors, the Federation must allow the unification of the region as one purchasing agent, thereby garnering better terms and discounts.

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

Now is the time for all stakeholders – residents, governments, Diaspora, scientists, disaster planners, etc. – in the Caribbean to lean-in for the empowerments described here-in and in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. Climate Change is the Number One threat for our society; for the whole world actually, but we are on the frontlines. “We must protect this house”. We must be better and do better and help to make our homelands better places to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

———-

Appendix A – Al Roker’s Earliy Life

Al Roker was born in Queens, New York,^[4] the son of Isabel, of Jamaican descent, and Albert Lincoln Roker, Sr.,^[5] a bus driver of Bahamian descent.^[6] Roker initially wanted to be a cartoonist.^[5] He was raised Catholic^[5] (in the faith of his mother) and graduated from Xavier High School in Manhattan.^[7] He worked on several projects as a member of the school’s Cartooning & Illustration Club. He attended the State University of New York at Oswego where he received a B.A. in communications in 1976.

According to the July 2011 issue of Us Weekly in “25 Things You Did Not Know About Me”, Roker is the first cousin once removed of the late actress Roxie Roker, who was most notable for her role as Helen Willis on the sitcom The Jeffersons and the mother of popular rock musician Lenny Kravitz. That makes Kravitz Roker’s second cousin.^[8]Source: Retrieved April 21, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Roker#Early_life

———-

Appendix B – Transcript: Al Roker Interview by Host Katy Tur

KATY TUR (HOST): The head of the Environment Protection Agency stunned many when he denied carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming.

[…]

TUR: Today show host and weatherman, a man who needs no introduction, Al Roker joins me now. “Stunned many” is a bit of an understatement, said most almost all, gosh, CO2 is not a factor when it comes to climate change. Was all of the schooling that I had as a child and into my adult life completely wrong, Al Roker?

AL ROKER: No, it wasn’t wrong and there is no credible science or scientist who will tell you the contrary. The fact is, carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gases is responsible for climate change.

TUR: No scientist will say this, but we’re having the EPA head say this?

ROKER: Well, look, this is America and you can make whatever statements you want to, but everybody will pretty much agree — in fact, just about an hour ago I interviewed one of the leading climate scientists in this country, Dr. Marshall Shepherd, and here’s what he had to say about it.

[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]

MARSHALL SHEPHERD (DIRECTOR FOR UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA’S PROGRAM IN ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES): The basic physics of the atmosphere suggest that greenhouse gases are in fact the primary forcing function on a warming climate system. Greenhouse gases and the impacts post-industrial age or –– industrial revolution are certainly — their fingerprint is there on our naturally varying climate in the same way steroids were on the naturally varying cycle of home runs during the Major League Bbaseball era.

[END VIDEO CLIP]

ROKER: I think that pretty much sums it it up.

TUR: Yeah, so where — if the EPA head is saying there needs to be more research, but the EPA is losing money to do research, give me the consequences. How important is it and how significant is it to have the EPA head deny something like this?

ROKER: Well I think hopefully cooler heads will prevail upon him to say we need to continue to research this. We need to continue what we’ve been doing because if you look, we’ve got a graphic that basically right around the industrial revolution, we had — there’s been no time in this history of our planet where CO2, even naturally occurring or not, was above 290 parts per million. Alright, now you look at the temperature, we put the temperature on top of that, you can see from the 1880s into the 1940s, temperatures are below average, below the global average, but once we really start to see that red line go up, as the CO2 starts to increase, you can see those average global temperatures continue to rise, and they peaked last year, the warmest temperature ever on record for this planet. So as we continue to add those greenhouse gases — now, that’s not to say that — the greenhouse gases allow us to live on this planet. Without them completely, we would freeze to death. At night we would die. So there has to be some small amount of greenhouse gases. We’re just adding too much.
Source: Retrieved 04-21-2017 from: https://mediamatters.org/blog/2017/03/10/al-roker-debunks-epa-head-scott-pruitt-s-stunning-denial-human-caused-climate-change/215635

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‘Black British’ and ‘Less Than’

Posted on April 21, 2017 in Planning, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Truth be told, a Black person speaking with a British accent gets more respect than a Black person speaking with a Caribbean slang or a ‘Hip-hop’ /‘Jive’ dialect.

It is what it is! Notice this portrayal in the Appendix VIDEO where many Afro-Caribbean citizens in Britain, seem to self-identify more as British than their Caribbean heritage; (POINT 5).

Does this mean that the Black British person is better off on the world stage? Sadly no! The actuality of Blackness still means “Less Than“.

The problem is not the Blackness, but rather Whiteness, the proliferation of White Supremacy … throughout the world.

This is the assertion of the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean, in consideration of reasons why the Diaspora should repatriate back to the Caribbean homeland and why the Caribbean youth should not even depart their homelands in the first place. This thesis was presented in a 9-part series, with these submissions:

All of these prior commentaries related to the disposition of the Caribbean Diaspora in the United States; now we take a look at England, Britain or the United Kingdom. There is a difference … supposedly.

“Britain has done a great job as painting itself as the humanitarian, with the US being the torturer. But that shit ain’t true.” – Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The purpose of this commentary – considering these source materials below – is to relate the following 5 strong points of contention; (these labels are shown throughout this commentary where applicable):

POINT 1 – The world is not fair, equal or just; and if you are of the Black-and-Brown races, the injustice is even more pronounced.
POINT 2 – Charity begins at home! There is a need to reform and transform society wherever you are. No one else will reform your homeland; you must!
POINT 3 – Leaving home, hurts home.
POINT 4 – The children of the Diaspora identify more with their current home, than their parent’s ancestral home.
POINT 5 – When the children do not want to identify with your land of heritage, it is Time to Go, to take them back home.

See this interview here relating Black British reality, with VICE News (UK Desk), the provocative media outlet that exposes the harsh realities of daily life in the Third World and the “First World”; (find more on VICE in Appendix A):

Title: We Spoke to the Activist Behind #BlackLivesMatter About Racism in Britain and America
By: Michael Segalov

… Patrisse Cullors is co-founder of Black Lives Matter — the movement and oft-trending hashtag. Based in LA ([Los Angeles]), she’s been on the front line at uprisings across the US in response to a wave of high-profile deaths of black people in police custody.

[While] on a speaking tour of the UK and Ireland, heading to communities, universities, and holding meetings in Parliament. VICE caught up with Patrisse on the train from Brighton to London in the midst of a hectic schedule. VICE chatted [with her] about how she’s spreading the Black Lives Matter movement across the globe, what’s happening in the States at the moment, and why that’s relevant to the UK.

VICE: Tell us about the origins of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Patrisse Cullors: After George Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder of Trayvon Martin, back in July 2013, myself and two friends came up with the hashtag. My friend Alicia had written a love letter to folks, saying, “Our Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.”

I put a hashtag in front—within days people were using it across the world. We’re talking about all black lives; we weren’t just talking about black men dying in the hands of the police. We’re talking about black women, black trans people, black queer people. We want to show that under the current system of white supremacy, anti-blackness has major consequences. Inside the US, and around the world, anti-black racism has global consequences. Black Lives Matter is a call to action—it’s a mantra, a testimony.

How did you end up at the heart of it?
I’ve been organizing since I was 16. I came out as queer, and was kicked out of home. Along with a bunch of other young queer women of color, we raised each other. We also dealt with poverty, being black and brown in the USA, and trying to figure out how to live our daily lives. My brother was incarcerated in LA county jails at 19, and he was almost killed by the sheriffs. They beat him. They tortured him and brutalized him. This was my awakening, seeing how far the state will go, and how they treat our families.

Most disturbing was the lack of support and absolute neglect that my brother and my family faced after he was brutalized. Part of my upbringing was a feeling of rage, but I also knew I could do something about it. With my mentors, and a civil rights organization, I learned my craft over 11 years. I focused on the school-to-prison pipeline [where young people go straight from school into the juvenile criminal justice system], environmental justice, and police violence.
…
You’ve been in the UK for a week, how has it been, and how does the situation here relate to the USA?

In theory the UK has a significant amount of structures to allow for accountability, of law enforcement in particular. That’s the theory. But in the US we don’t really have these structures to allow for accountability. There aren’t really independent investigators; its just very rare for prosecutions for law enforcement. And so, being here, I’ve realized, there are some systems in place that might actually be good for the US. It just seems those systems don’t work.

Then there are the similarities, the ways in which black people are treated—it’s outright racism. From Christopher Alder being brutalized on tape, hearing the officers calling him racist slurs, to the G4S guards who killed Jimmy Mubenga with racist texts on their phones. You have that same hatred, these white supremacist ideologies coming out of both of our countries. And here too, justice is not being served. We have Mike Brown, no justice. We have Eric Garner, no justice. Here we see the same: Mark Duggan, Sean Rigg. The list is vast.

Is this stuff talked about in the States, like how in the UK we’re aware over here about what’s going on in Ferguson?
Here’s the thing, black people in the US don’t know what’s happening here in the UK. I’m well read, well educated, and coming here and learning these stories I’m like, “Why don’t I know about this? Why haven’t we heard?” The US is very insular. The UK has an image of being better, a humane society in which there isn’t the same level of racism. But now I have a very different perspective that I’m going to take home and talk about. Britain has done a great job as painting itself as the humanitarian, with the US being the torturer. But that shit ain’t true.

Here in the UK there’ve been solidarity actions. People shut down the streets in London and Westfield shopping center too. What’s the impact of these things for people on the ground? Do you notice?
Yes, it was noticed. We’ve seen all the work folks are doing on the ground. From here, where you guys shut down Westfield, to Spain and Brazil. In Israel, African refugees are using the Black Lives Matter mantra to talk about law enforcement violence by the Israeli police. We see it, and we’re in awe. We wanted and needed it to go global.

Where is this going? What happens next?
There are 23 Black Lives Matter chapters right now, in the US, Canada, and Ghana. We need to uplift the local struggles across the country, as well as pushing for greater accountability for law enforcement.

We want legislation that will see divestment from law enforcement and investing in poor communities. We want to build a national project linking families who have been impacted by state violence, with a national database that looks at individual law enforcement officers and agencies. We also want to look at how to develop a system of independent investigation. We want to figure out a victim’s bill of rights, to counter the police bill of rights. Until then, we’re gonna shut shit down.
Source: VICE (UK) News; Posted February 2 2015; retrieved April 20, 2017 from: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/patrisse-cullors-interview-michael-segalov-188?utm_source=vicetwitterus

See related VIDEO’s here on Britain’s Black History; (POINT 1 and POINT 4):

That Black British Feeling – Why Black People in the UK are Marching – https://youtu.be/fB2IcH668xo

Black and British: A Forgotten History Part 1 First Encounters; Full BBC Documentary 2016 – https://youtu.be/6WP6qEc2uaM

Black and British: A Forgotten History Part 2 Meaning of Freedom – https://youtu.be/Tjq1X3TZ02U

Black and British: Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners; The Price Of Freedom (2015) – https://youtu.be/kgaJyp8ix4M

For Caribbean people, the world thinks of us as “Less Than”, whether we are in the Caribbean or in the Diaspora in the UK, Europe or North America. We take the “Less Than” brand with us wherever we go. This is a crisis! The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean seeks to use this crisis, to elevate the Caribbean brand …. globally.

Why is the Caribbean brand perceived as “Less Than”?

Yes, first there is the reality check of being Black-and-Brown in a White world. But also due to our own mis-management of our homeland. It is the greatest address on the planet, and yet our people beat down the doors to get out. Already we have lost 70 percent of our professional classes. So we send this subtle message to the world that “we would foul up the ground wherever we stand”; (POINT 1).

We – the Caribbean region as a collective – must do better; be better! We can reboot, reform and transform from this bad history and bad image; (POINT 2). How?

While easier said than done, this is the comprehensive action plan of the Go Lean book. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU is designed to optimize Caribbean society in the homeland – though there are many benefits to the Diaspora as well – through economic, security and governing optimizations. Therefore the Go Lean roadmap has 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 economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance – including empowerments for image promotion – to support these engines.

Reforming or transforming the UK, Britain or England is not within scope of the Go Lean/CU effort, notwithstanding the impact on our Diaspora there. But the subject of “Image” is inseparable from any discussion of elevating the Caribbean brand. So this commentary is on image, the facts and fiction of being a minority in a majority world or being an immigrant to a foreign country. This applies to any consideration of the Caribbean Diaspora in the British Isles, where their numbers have been reported between 4 and 5 percent of the population; (POINT 4). Consider these encyclopedic details:

British African Caribbean (or Afro-Caribbean) people are residents of the United Kingdom who are of West Indian background and whose ancestors were primarily natives or indigenous to Africa. As immigration to the United Kingdom from Africa increased in the 1990s, the term has sometimes been used to include UK residents solely of African origin, or as a term to define all Black British residents, though the phrase “African and Caribbean” has more often been used to cover such a broader grouping. The most common and traditional use of the term African-Caribbean community is in reference to groups of residents’ continuing aspects of Caribbean culture, customs and traditions in the United Kingdom.

A majority of the African-Caribbean population in the UK is of Jamaican origin; other notable representation is from Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Dominica, Montserrat, Anguilla, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Guyana (which although located on the South American mainland is culturally similar to the Caribbean and was historically considered to be part of the British West Indies), and Belize.

African-Caribbean people are present throughout the United Kingdom with by far the largest concentrations in London and Birmingham.^[1] Significant communities also exist in other population centres, notably Manchester, Bradford, Nottingham, Coventry, Luton, Slough, Leicester, Bristol, Gloucester, Leeds, Huddersfield, Sheffield, Liverpool and Cardiff. In these cities, the community is traditionally associated with a particular area, such as Brixton, Harlesden, Stonebridge, Dalston, Lewisham, Tottenham, Peckham in London, West Bowling and Heaton in Bradford, Chapeltown in Leeds,^[2] St. Pauls in Bristol,^[3] or Handsworth and Aston in Birmingham or Moss Side in Manchester. According to the 2011 census, the largest number of African-Caribbean people are found in Croydon, south London.
Source: Retrieved April 20, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_African-Caribbean_people

There are a number of insights to glean looking at the demographics of the Afro-Caribbean population in the UK. (See Appendix B below). All in all, the Afro-Caribbean populations in the UK prefer to identify themselves more as British than as Caribbean; (POINT 4).

See this portrayal in the Appendix VIDEO below.

Despite the 60 years of futility, our Caribbean people continue to leave, abandoning our homeland; (POINT 3). This is bad; bad for the people and bad for the homeland. Our people “jump from the frying pan to the fire”:

Distress continues …
Oppression persists …
Image: “Less Than”!

This commentary 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 UK. The reasons for the emigration in the first place have been identified as “push and pull”. “Push” refers to the societal defects in the Caribbean that drive people to move away (POINT 2); and “pull” factors refer to the impressions and perceptions that life abroad, as in England, is better. More details apply regarding these elusive “pull” factors:

The UK is NOT the #1 destination for the English-speaking Caribbean Diaspora, not anymore; that distinction is now towards the US. Today’s trending is for more and more new immigration to the US as opposed to the UK; Canada is Number 2.
While the “pull” factor had been compelling in the past, the decision-making of Caribbean emigrants – looking to flee – now needs a reality check! (POINT 1)
“Pull” is further exacerbated by the “push” factors; all of these continue to imperil Caribbean life; we push our citizens out. Then the resultant effect is a brain drain and even more endangerment to our society: less skilled workers; less entrepreneurs; less law-abiding citizens; less capable public servants – we lose our best and leave the communities with the rest. This creates even more of a crisis; (POINT 2).

The Go Lean roadmap posits that the entire Caribbean is in crisis now (POINT 3); so many of our citizens have fled for refuge in the UK and other countries, but the refuge is a mirage. The “grass is not necessarily greener on the other side”. Life in the UK is not optimized for Caribbean people. It is easier to fix the Caribbean than to fix the British eco-system. For our Diaspora there: it is Time to Go! For our populations in the Caribbean, looking to depart: Stay! Our people can more easily prosper where planted in the Caribbean … with the identified mitigations and remediation here-in.

The Go Lean book posits that Caribbean stakeholders made many flawed decisions in the past, both individually and community-wise; (POINT 2). But now, the Go Lean/CU roadmap is new (and improved). This is a vision of the CU as a confederation of the 30 member-states of the Caribbean to do the heavy-lifting of championing better nation-building policies, to reboot the region’s economic-security-governing engines. For one, there is the structure of a separation-of-powers between CU agencies and the individual member-states. So there are “two pies”, so citizens get to benefit from both their member-states’ efforts and that of the CU Trade Federation.

The Go Lean roadmap provides turn-by-turn directions on how to reform the society as a whole. This roadmap admits that because the Caribbean is in crisis, this “crisis would be a terrible thing to waste”. As a planning tool, the roadmap commences with a Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing the approach of regional integration (Page 10 – 14) as a viable solution to elevate the regional engines:

Preamble: And while our rights to exercise good governance and promote a more perfect society are the natural assumptions among the powers of the earth, no one other than ourselves can be held accountable for our failure to succeed if we do not try to promote the opportunities that a democratic society fosters.
As the history of our region and the oppression, suppression and repression of its indigenous people is duly documented, there is no one alive who can be held accountable for the prior actions, and so we must put aside the shackles of systems of repression to instead formulate efficient and effective systems to steer our own destiny.

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

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

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

xx. Whereas the results of our decades of migration created a vibrant Diaspora in foreign lands, the Federation must organize interactions with this population into structured markets. Thus allowing foreign consumption of domestic products, services and media, which is a positive trade impact. These economic activities must not be exploited by others’ profiteering but rather harnessed by Federation resources for efficient repatriations.

The Go Lean book details the community ethos to adopt, plus the executions of the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the eco-systems in the Caribbean region.

The book provides these recommendations in regards to the dynamics of Diaspora living:

Encourage the Caribbean Diaspora to repatriate back to their ancestral homeland – (10 Reasons to Repatriate to the Caribbean – Page 118).
Dissuade the high emigration rates of Caribbean citizens to foreign stories – (10 Ways to Make the Caribbean Better – Page 131).

These subjects (Repatriation and Diaspora) have been frequently commented on in other Go Lean blogs (POINT 4); as sampled here with these entries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11244	‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ or London …
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9485	10 Things We Don’t Want from the UK
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8099	Caribbean Image: ‘Less Than’?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7151	The Caribbean is Looking for Heroes … ‘to Return’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1683	British public sector workers strike over ‘poverty pay’

The book also relates the significance of image/brand management, as with this advocacy: “10 Ways to Better Manage Image” (Page 133):

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

Overall, we must elevate the Caribbean brand. There are active movements now to accentuate the image/brand; consider:

Proclaim ‘International Caribbean Day’

The African Renaissance Monument

Declared “Best in the World”

Accentuate Caribbean Image Tied to the Dreadlocks Hairstyles

Underlying to the Go Lean/CU prime directive of elevating the economics, security and governing engines of the Caribbean, is the desire to make the Caribbean homeland better, to reform and transform our society. If we can do this, we will dissuade the high emigration rate for our young people. But saying that it is “Time to Go“, must mean that we are ready to receive our Caribbean Diaspora from London and other British cities. Are we?

We are not! But this Go Lean roadmap gets us started. This is the intent of the book Go Lean … Caribbean.

The Go Lean/CU roadmap asserts that Britain should not be presented as the panacea for Caribbean ills – we must reform and transform our own society. While Britain or the UK does some things well, that country does not always act justly towards Black-and-Brown people of Caribbean descent; (POINT 5). We must do this ourselves (POINT 2); our region needs the empowerments here-in (jobs, economic growth and brand/image enhancement).

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This is the roadmap to elevate the Caribbean; to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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

———–

Appendix A – Vice News

Vice News (stylized as VICE News) is Vice Media, Inc.‘s current affairs channel, producing daily documentary essays and video through its website and YouTube channel. It promotes itself on its coverage of “under-reported stories”.^[1] Vice News was created in December 2013 and is based in New York City, though it has bureaus worldwide.

Background
In December 2013, Vice Media expanded its international news division into an independent division dedicated to news exclusively and created Vice News. Vice Media put $50 million into its news division, setting up 34 bureaus worldwide and drawing praise for its in-depth coverage of international news.^[2] Vice News has primarily targeted a younger audience comprised predominantly of millennials, the same audience to which its parent company appeals.^[3]

History
Before Vice News was founded, Vice published news documentaries and news reports from around the world through its YouTube channel alongside other programs. Vice had reported on events such as crime in Venezuela, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, protests in Turkey, the North Korean regime, and the Syrian Civil War through their own YouTube channel and website. After the creation of Vice News as a separate division, its reporting greatly increased with worldwide coverage starting immediately with videos published on YouTube and articles on its website daily.^[5]Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_News

———–

Appendix B – British Afro-Caribbean Demographics

Based on a variety of official sources and extrapolating from figures for England alone, the estimates for the number of people in Britain born in the West Indies grew from 15,000 in 1951, to 172,000 in 1961 and 304,000 in 1971, and then fell slightly to 295,000 in 1981. The estimates for the population of ethnic West Indian in 1981 were between 500,000 and 550,000.^[26]

In the UK Census of 2001, 565,876 people classified themselves in the category ‘Black Caribbean’, amounting to around 1 percent of the total population.^[38] Of the “minority ethnic” population, which amounted to 7.9 percent of the total UK population, Black Caribbean people accounted for 12.2 percent.^[38] In addition, 14.6 percent of the minority ethnic population (equivalent to 1.2 per cent of the total population) identified as mixed race, of whom around one third stated that they were of mixed Black Caribbean and White descent.^[38]

In the latest, the 2011 Census of England and Wales, 594,825 individuals specified their ethnicity as “Caribbean” under the “Black/African/Caribbean/Black British” heading, and 426,715 as “White and Black Caribbean” under the “Mixed/multiple ethnic group” heading.^[35] In Scotland, 3,430 people classified themselves as “Caribbean, Caribbean Scottish or Caribbean British” and 730 as “Other Caribbean or Black” under the broader “Caribbean or Black” heading.^[36] In Northern Ireland, 372 people specified their ethnicity as “Caribbean”.^[37] The published results for the “Mixed” category are not broken down into sub-categories for Scotland and Northern Ireland as they are for England and Wales.^[36][37] The greatest concentration of Black Caribbean people is found in London, where 344,597 residents classified themselves as Black Caribbean in the 2011 Census, accounting for 4.2 per cent of the city’s population.^[35]

The UK Census records respondents’ countries of birth and the 2001 Census recorded 146,401 people born in Jamaica, 21,601 from Barbados, 21,283 from Trinidad and Tobago, 20,872 from Guyana, 9,783 from Grenada, 8,265 from Saint Lucia, 7,983 from Montserrat, 7,091 from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, 6,739 from Dominica, 6,519 from Saint Kitts and Nevis, 3,891 from Antigua and Barbuda and 498 from Anguilla.^[39]

Detailed country-of-birth data from the 2011 Census is published separately for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In England and Wales, 160,095 residents reported their country of birth as Jamaica, 22,872 Trinidad and Tobago, 18,672 Barbados, 9,274 Grenada, 9,096 St Lucia, 7,390 St Vincent and the Grenadines, 7,270 Montserrat, 6,359 Dominica, 5,629 St Kitts and Nevis, 3,697 Antigua and Barbuda, 2,355 Cuba, 1,812 The Bahamas and 1,303 Dominican Republic. 8,301 people reported being born elsewhere in the Caribbean, bringing the total Caribbean-born population of England and Wales to 264,125. Of this number, 262,092 were resident in England and 2,033 in Wales.^[40] In Scotland, 2,054 Caribbean-born residents were recorded,^[41] and in Northern Ireland 314.^[42]Guyana is categorised as part of South America in the Census results, which show that 21,417 residents of England and Wales, 350 of Scotland and 56 of Northern Ireland were born in Guyana. Belize is categorised as part of Central America. 1,252 people born in Belize were recorded living in England and Wales, 79 in Scotland and 22 in Northern Ireland.^[41][42][40]Source: Retrieved April 20, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_African-Caribbean_people#Demography

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Appendix VIDEO – Do you call yourself Black British? – https://youtu.be/i3dgzdsAZug

Published on Oct 21, 2016

Category: People & Blogs
License: Standard YouTube License

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