Category: Industries

Pandemic Playbook – Freedom vs Safety

Posted on September 1, 2020 in Government, Industries, Locations, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. – lyrics from America’s National Anthem

There is this great Summer Festival in this small town in the US State of South Dakota, the Sturgis Bike Rally. This event is so impressive that the Caribbean has long been urged to look, listen and learn from this event model. In fact, the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean – introducing the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) – dedicates one Appendix (Page 288) to Sturgis.

If only we can plan and execute events that draw 600,000 people to our small towns. (Sturgis only has less than 10,000 residents).

There is another lesson from Sturgis for us to consider, especially this year – 2020 with the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic – that is the need to balance “Freedom versus Public Safety”. This is a delicate issue with strong opinions on both sides of the issue. (Even the US President would tweet “Liberate X-State” when citizens protested strong lockdowns in their States: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc.). The participants-attendees at Sturgis insisted on their freedoms above and beyond all other values. See the Sturgis story here:

VIDEO – Massive Sturgis motorcycle rally taking place amid coronavirus concerns – https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/massive-sturgis-motorcycle-rally-taking-place-amid-coronavirus-concerns-89793093627

Posted August 10, 2020 – Hundreds of thousands of bikers are expected to gather in Sturgis, South Dakota, where masks are encouraged but not required, despite coronavirus concerns. As schools across the country begin to reopen, Georgia’s largest district is dealing with the fallout from an outbreak.

Related:
More than 100 coronavirus cases in 8 states linked to massive Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota
August 26, 2020 – The annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota drew hundreds of thousands of bikers to the small town earlier this month — despite coronavirus concerns. Now, about three weeks after the rally kicked off, the repercussions are starting to become clear. More than 100 cases of COVID-19 connected to the rally have been reported in at least eight states, the Associated Press reports.

The movement behind the 2013 Go Lean book just completed – during August 2020 – a 6-part series on Pandemic Playbooks for the Caribbean region. It presented many Best Practices for managing our society during times of crisis. This is an important consideration right now as many Caribbean communities have had to institute lockdowns, which some considers “trampling on civil liberties”, in order to protect the general public. Is that right, just and honorable or is the suppression of civil-human rights just an expression of Tyranny. This commentary is an important supplement to the 6-part August Teaching Series. The other commentaries in the series were cataloged as follows:

  1. Pandemic Playbook: Worldwide Leadership – Plan ==> Actual
  2. Pandemic Playbook: Caribbean Inadequacies – Missing the Bubble Opportunities
  3. Pandemic Playbook: Bahamas Example – ‘Too Little Too Late’
  4. Pandemic Playbook: Only at the Precipice ENCORE
  5. Pandemic Playbook: To Be or Not To Be – COVID Vaccine
  6. Pandemic Playbook: Success – Looks like New Zealand

Let’s look at the jurisprudence of government lockdowns that imperil private citizens’ ability to live (attends births and weddings), work (provide for families), worship (limits on free assembly and at funerals) and play (travel and recreation impeded). The restriction placed on citizens by local governments call into question whether these homelands are truly free.

Are our freedoms absolute or only allowed when convenient? Is it Tyranny to impede those freedom during emergencies?

These are all good questions. Let’s see this comprehensive legal analysis by a respected lawyer (and law professor) here:

Title: The Peoples’ Constitution: COVID-19 versus Freedom
By: Ben Lenhart
The COVID-19 pandemic is threatening many of our most cherished freedoms. We are told by the government not to travel. We are told we can’t gather for religious services. We are told we must wear masks, but we must not go to restaurants or stores. Our favorite sporting events, school activities and even graduations are cancelled. In some places, we are told we may not gather even for the most important things in life: the birth of a newborn or the passing of a loved one. At rallies protesting the lockdown, participants claim their constitutional rights are being violated and that the “illegal” government orders must be lifted. Who is right: the protestors or the government?Put another way, do the governments’ actions taking away certain rights, even if only temporarily, violate the Constitution? This article seeks to answer that question using a few real-life examples.

COVID-19 Order Blocks Church in Kansas.
As part of a COVID “stay at home” order, Kansas barred more than 10 people from attending religious services. Two churches sued, claiming violation of their religious freedoms. The First Amendment bars the federal government from (A) establishing any official state religion, or (B) restricting Americans from freely exercising their religion of choice. A Kansas trial court realized this was a hard case: yes, the churches’ constitutional rights were being curtailed, but also, yes, the COVID-19 pandemic required urgent measures to protect public health. For guidance, the Kansas court looked to the famous quarantine case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, where a man refused a mandatory smallpox vaccination during a smallpox epidemic. Recognizing the hard balance, the Supreme Court in Jacobson acknowledged both sides of the issue: First “when faced with a society-threatening epidemic, a state may implement emergency measures that curtail constitutional rights so long as the measureshaveatleastsome“realorsubstantialrelation”tothepublichealthcrisis …” But second, a law purporting to protect public health, may nevertheless be invalid if it “has no real or substantial relation to those objects, or is, beyond all question, a plain, palpable invasion of rights secured by the fundamental law.” In the end, the court upheld the government order requiring the vaccination.

A COVID-19 order taking away our constitutional rights may be valid if (A) that order directly advances a public health goal (such as controlling the spread of COVID-19), and (B) the same goal can’t be achieved in a narrower way that does not curtail our Constitution rights (or curtails them to a lesser degree). If (A) and (B) are not true, the court may decide to strike down the order as unconstitutional.

Applying these rules, the Kansas court sided with the churches and against the government. Noting that Kansas’ stay-at-home-order singled out places of worship for stricter measures, the court found that, while the public health goals were important, they could be achieved while still allowing the churches to hold services in a safe manner with more than 10 people. The case settled on favorable terms for the churches before it could be appealed, and so the churches largely won this fight.

COVID-19 Order Blocks Abortions in Texas.
In order to preserve medical resources during the coronavirus pandemic, a Texas order banned many non-essential medical procedures, including abortions under most circumstances.Roe v. Wadefirst recognized the constitutional right to abortion more than 45 years ago. Abortion providers sued, claiming the order deprived them of their constitutional rights. Much like the Kansas church case, the Texas court recognized the two competing forces: the need to protect public health during the COVID crisis versus the constitutional right to abortion. On the one hand, the court agreed thatindividual rights secured by the Constitution are not lostevenduring a severe public health crisis. There is no “emergency override” of the Constitution. On the other hand, the Texas court, said that “liberty secured by the Constitution … does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint.” Instead, the court fund that “a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members,” even when that means temporarily curtailing certain rights.

In the end, the lower court largely sided with the abortion providers, ordering that they be allowed to continue during the COVID crisis, but an appellate court overruled the lower court, and allowed most of the abortion ban to continue. However, before the courts could come to a final ruling, the case was resolved, and abortions in Texas were largely allowed to continue during the Covid crisis.

COVID-19 Orders Deny the Right To Travel in Many States
To protect public health, many states have ordered that people not travel unless for essential purposes. But the right to travel is one of Americans’ most cherished freedoms. A drive to the mall, or to a friend’s house, or a road trip across America—the freedom to travel “where we want and when we want” helps define America. It is also a core rights long protected by the Constitution (although its precise source is still being debated). COVID travel bans present the same “hard balance” between our safety and constitutional rights. Faced with a severe pandemic where the very movement of people can spread the disease, courts would likely approve a limited travel ban, such as one that lasted a short time and had exceptions for emergencies and essential activities. On the other hand, courts would likely strike down a travel ban that was imposed rigidly for a year or more regardless of changes in the pandemic status, and that failed to allow reasonable exceptions to the ban. Such a ban would be unconstitutional because a more limited travel ban likely could achieve the same goal—protecting public health—without such a severe denial of constitutional liberty.

The Outer Banks Travel Ban
The Outer Banks (OB) is a beloved vacation spot along the North Carolina coast. In March, it banned nonresidents from entering most of the OB but permitted residents to enter. This ban has two potential constitutional problems. First, it denies the right to travel discussed above. Second, by discriminating against non-residents, the ban may violate the so-called Dormant Commerce Clause, which generally prohibits states from favoring their own residents at the expense of out-of-staters. A huge reason why America’s economy has succeeded and grown to the largest in the world is that we have a free market among the 50 states. The constitutional framework allows commerce to flow freely across state lines. By violating this basic rule, the OB may be violating the Constitution unless it can show there is no less restrictive way to protect public health in the OB short of discriminating against non-residents.

Korematsu
The COVID-19 stay-at-home orders impose real hardships, but compare those to the hardships during World War II. After Pearl Harbor, thousands of Japanese American citizens, most of unquestioned loyalty to the United States, were sent to internment camps far from their homes based on fears that a small number would side with Japanese war effort. This was a massive deprivation of the most basic constitutional rights of American citizens. In 1944 a sharply divided court, with stinging dissents, held that the urgent Japanese threat justified this extreme measure. But history was not kind to Korematsu, and it has become one of the Court’s most heavily criticized cases.

Last year, Chief Justice Roberts said this:“The dissent’s reference toKorematsu, however, affords this Court the opportunity to make express what is already obvious:Korematsuwas gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear—’has no place in law under the Constitution.’”

Why was Korematsu so wrong? Both because withheld evidence showed less threat from the Japanese Americans, and because there were ways to achieve the government’s goal (such as police investigative work) that did not involve such flagrant denial our Constitution rights, the order at issue in Korematsu was unconstitutional.

Conclusion
The COVID-19 constitutional balance is hard because the things being balanced are both vitally important: stopping the spread of the coronavirus is a matter of life and death; but many lives have also been lost over the past 232 years fighting to protect the rights guaranteed to all Americans in the Constitution. The examples above shed light on whether any particular COVID-19 order is constitutional. If that order takes away constitutional rights—such as the right to travel, the right to assemble, or freedom of religion—then ask if the government can achieve the same COVID-19 health goal in some other way that does not take away those rights or involves materially less interference with those rights. If the answer is no, then the law may well be constitutional, but if the answer is yes, then the balance may tip in favor of protecting our constitutional rights and striking down the order.

—–

Contributor Ben Lenhart is a graduate of Harvard Law School and has taught Constitutional Law at Georgetown Law Center for more than 20 years. He lives with his family and lots of animals on a farm near Hillsboro.

Source: LoudounNow, Loudoun, Virginia Daily Newspaper; retrieved May 7, 2020 from: https://loudounnow.com/2020/05/07/the-peoples-constitution-covid-19-versus-freedom/

Also see the insistence on freedoms portrayed in the Reader’s Commentary Section on this foregoing article:

By David Dickinson – 2020-05-07:
As if we needed any reminders, COVID-19 amply demonstrates that you can’t trust any level of government. It is also a scary demonstration of how out-of-control powerful we have allowed government to become. I don’t want to downplay the seriousness of COVID-19 and its virulence, but 40,000 people a year die in car accidents and we didn’t shut down highways; 80,000 from diabetes and we didn’t outlaw donuts; 50,000 from regular flu and we didn’t lock down anything (except the cold medicine at the pharmacy).

This commentor is passionate; he conveys the thought of Tyranny if he cannot get his way. This commentor could very well have been speaking from Sturgis, about Sturgis and on behalf of Sturgis; (these same passions bubble in the Caribbean).

The references to Sturgis requires more insight of the city/event, its dynamism; see the Go Lean excerpt (Page 191) here:

The Bottom Line on the Sturgis, South Dakota
Sturgis is a city in Meade County, South Dakota, United States. The population was 6,627 as of the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Meade County and is named after General Samuel D. Sturgis. Sturgis is famous for being the location of one of the largest annual motorcycle events in the world, which [started in 1938 and] is held annually on the first full week of August. Motorcycle enthusiasts from around the world flock to this usually sleepy town during the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

The focus of a motorcycle rally was originally racing and stunts. Then in 1961, the rally was expanded to include the “Hill Climb” and Motocross races.[145] The attendance was tallied in excess of 600,000 visitors in the year 2000. The City of Sturgis has calculated that the Rally brings over $800 million to South Dakota annually. (The City of Sturgis earned almost $270,000 in 2011 from just selling event guides and sponsorships). Rally-goers are a mix of white-collar and blue-collar workers and are generally welcomed as an important source of income for Sturgis and surrounding areas. The rally turns local roads into “parking lots”, and draws local law enforcement away from routine patrols. [The City frequently contracts with law enforcement officers from near-and-far for supplemental support-enforcements during the rally]. (See Appendix J [on Page 288] of Sturgis City Rally Department’s Statistics).

[Sturgis generates a lot of media attention]. Annual television coverage of the festival by the [cable TV network] VH1 Classic includes interviews and performances as well as rock music videos. Also, the Travel Channel repeatedly shows two one-hour documentaries about Sturgis.

Don’t get it twisted, these times of the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic constitute an emergency and “critical times calls for critical measures”. Tyranny is not a consideration. This is where we are. Everybody simply wants public safety and Good Governance. In a previous blog-commentary, this point was made about governmental deliveries during times of emergency:

Good Governance: Stepping Up in an Emergency
Do you know what SOS stands for?

Of course you know what it infers – “Emergency; Need Help” …

SOS, plus 911 and other emergency outreach numbers, are all calls for help. In modern society, it is expected that someone-somewhere will respond.

That expectation is within the assumption of Good Governance. It is expected that someone-somewhere will step-up in the time of emergencies …

… failing this, we would have a Failed-State, [every man for himself].

…
[This roadmap provides] a glimpse of a new Caribbean that is ready for these New Guards. These are not foreigners. These are fellow Caribbean brothers and sisters, representing the 30 member-states in the region. They have the desire to help; they only need Good Governance …

The CU structure allows for an Emergency Management functionality within the Homeland Security Department. The CU‘s version is modeled after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the US. That agency’s emergency response is based on small, decentralized teams trained in such areas as the National Disaster Medical  System (NDMS), Urban Search and Rescue (USAR), Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (DMORT), Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT), and Mobile Emergency Response Support (MERS).

The Go Lean book provides … the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society. We need to be better at responding to the SOS [(emergency)] calls in our region.

Good Governance versus Tyranny … “that is the question”.

This discussion on Sturgis 2020 presents that city/event as a good role model for us in the Caribbean, to contemplate both the opportunities and the bounds-limits of a free society. There is a pattern of Good Governance in Sturgis, even amongst all that Freedom – there is never tyranny. We have looked, listened and learned from that city/event before; most importantly, we have looked at Tyranny before. Let’s consider previous discussions (blog-commentaries) on Tyranny:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18648 Better Than ‘Bill of Rights’ – ‘Third & Fourth Amendments’: Justice First

When strong individuals abuse weaker ones in society, we call it bullying. When governmental institutions do it, we call it: Tyranny.

Planners for a new Caribbean governance must consider constitutional provisions to mitigate the threat of tyranny.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18337 Unequal Justice: Bullying Magnified to Disrupt Commerce

Conditions of Unequal Justice can go from “bad to worse” when bullies are not checked. Such “bad actors” can emerge from terrorizing a family, to a neighborhood, to a community, to a nation, to a region, to a hemisphere, to the whole world. Think: Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, Soviet Russia, British Empire, Napoleonic France, Spanish Inquisition.

Unchecked, bad actors in the community become tyrants – they can even affect the local economic engine.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18321 Unequal Justice: Sheriffs and the need for ‘soft’ Tyrannicide

The reality of southern rural life for African Americans was that justice was impeded by one institution, often one character: the County Sheriff.
People sought refuge and succeeded in their quest for relief and justice by fleeing the jurisdiction of the Sheriff, that State and the whole oppressive racist region of the American South.
The tyrannicide was achieved by removing the racist Sheriffs from office. This was accomplished by defeating them at the ballot box. The people that fled did not defeat the Sheriffs. No, it was only those that stayed; thusly, the reformation took very long.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5506 Role Model: Edward Snowden – One Person Making a Difference

This whistleblower exposed the blatant tyranny in the electronic surveillance system.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2809 A Lesson in History – Economics of East Berlin
The City of “East” Berlin used tyranny to bully its citizens, even for its economics. They operated the city like a maximum security prison and ransomed the citizens wanting to leave.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2338 Welcoming the Dreaded ‘Plutocracy’

Big companies can bully and terrorize small communities. But the structure of a Self-Governing Entity would mitigate their threat of tyranny.

The Coronavirus COVID-19 virus has caused emergencies through out the Caribbean – freedoms have had to be culled in order to save lives and to preserve our economic engines for future executions. There is the need for better balance between freedoms and public safety. The reality and actuality of an efficient Pandemic Playbook reflects the urgent need for the Caribbean member-states to appoint “new guards”.

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders – governments and citizens – to deploy an effective and efficient Pandemic Playbook for our region. Allow the needed emergency powers, but for the shortest times possible. This is the purpose of the Go Lean roadmap; this is how we can make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work, worship and play.

There are good, bad and ugly lessons from Sturgis, South Dakota. There are lessons from other communities as well who have instituted emergencies and managed the careful balance between Freedom and Tyranny. Yes, Good Governance is hard-work; Good Governance in times of emergencies is even more heavy-lifting. So our obligation for an efficient and effective Pandemic Playbook is conceivable, believable and achievable. 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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 accidence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

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

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

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

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Pandemic Playbook – Only at the Precipice, Do People Change – ENCORE

Posted on August 28, 2020 in Ethos, Government, Industries, Social

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going – Old Adage

We have all heard that expression and knows what it means; but here is a different angle:

When things get critical, we cannot sit still or maintain the status quo.

Things have always been critical in the Caribbean, but right now, conditions are even more acute than our normal critical. The world is enduring the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic – every societal engine is shattered.

  • Our revenues are curtailed because the tourism-only economy is shattered.
  • Economic activities in the private sector are shattered due to the fact that there is no money.
  • Governments cannot function.
  • Public Health deliveries are imperiled … and overwhelmed.

Each Caribbean member-state, one after another, is suffering this disposition:

(Click to Enlarge)

In a research report by the University of the West Indies entitled “COVID-19 containment in the Caribbean: The experience of small island developing states” it related the intersection of Public Health measures and economic motivations. The May 25, 2020 report provides this summary:

Tourism is a dominant revenue stream for many Caribbean SIDS, with their reliance on international arrivals, particularly from Europe and North America. Governments were aware that border controls and closures would have severe economic effects. Weighed against this was the known fragility of regional health systems, and governments were keen to avoid their health systems being overwhelmed by a sharp increase in hospitalisations. Using the date of first confirmed case in each country as our indicator, Caribbean SIDS generally implemented NPIs (Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions) earlier than our chosen comparator countries. For movements into a country, the Caribbean on average implemented controls 23 days before their comparator counterparts. For control of movement within countries, the Caribbean implemented controls 36 days before comparators, and for control of gatherings the Caribbean on average implemented controls 30 days before comparator countries.

This report reveals the critical disposition of the Caribbean region; this is the dreaded precipice that the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean have always been on alert for. This actuality aligns with the observation that it is only at the precipice that people are willing to change.

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating the Perfect Storm to finally forge change in the region. This actuality forces us to compose a Pandemic Playbook. We need that now.

This commentary continues the Teaching Series for the month of August 2020 on the subject of Pandemic Playbooks – the need for them and the deficiency there of in the Caribbean. This is entry 4-of-6 from the movement behind the Go Lean book. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. Pandemic Playbook: Worldwide Leadership – Plan ==> Actual
  2. Pandemic Playbook: Caribbean Inadequacies – Missing the Bubble Opportunities
  3. Pandemic Playbook: Bahamas Example – ‘Too Little Too Late’
  4. Pandemic Playbook: Only at the Precipice – ENCORE
  5. Pandemic Playbook: To Be or Not To Be – COVID Vaccine
  6. Pandemic Playbook: Success – Looks like New Zealand

The theme of Forging Change at the Precipice is very familiar to the Go Lean movement. In fact, there was an April 21, 2014 blog-commentary that featured almost the same title:

‘Only at the precipice, do they change’

Who is the “they”?

The target audience we want to change include the people and institutions (i.e. governments, banks, schools, etc.) of the region. We need both Top-Down and Bottoms-Up change.

See how this urgent-emergent crisis can finally usher in the reforms and transformations that Caribbean society have always needed.  Let’s revisit that previous blog-commentary here-now:

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

Go Lean Commentary – ‘Only at the precipice, do they change’

Keanu Nanu

“Life imitating Art”; “Art imitating life”.

This is more than a cliché; it is also factual for describing how people finally get the will to change.

The movie The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) – demonstrates “Art imitating Life” – is a remake of the classic 1951 sci-fi film of the same name; see Trailer VIDEO in the Appendix below. These films are about an alien visitor and his giant robot counterpart who visit Earth.

The character Professor Jacob Barnhardt, in the 2008 version, was played by John Cleese, the English actor of some repute, known for his start with the Mighty Python players.

The counter character in this dialogue, Klaatu, was played by American mega-star Keanu Reeves.

The storyline proceeds that the character Klaatu is a spokesman that preceded the robot sent to destroy human life on earth. And thus this quotation from the Movie Dialogue:

Professor Barnhardt: There must be alternatives. You must have some technology that could solve our problem.

Klaatu: Your problem is not technology. The problem is you. You lack the will to change.

Professor Barnhardt: Then help us change.

Klaatu: I cannot change your nature. You treat the world as you treat each other.

Professor Barnhardt: But every civilization reaches a crisis point eventually.

Klaatu: Most of them don’t make it.

Professor Barnhardt: Yours did. How?

Klaatu: Our sun was dying. We had to evolve in order to survive.

Professor Barnhardt: So it was only when your world was threatened with destruction that you became what you are now.

Klaatu: Yes.

Professor Barnhardt: Well that’s where we are. You say we’re on the brink of destruction and you’re right. But it’s only on the brink that people find the will to change. Only at the precipice do we evolve. This is our moment. Don’t take it from us. We are close to an answer.

(Source: Internet Movie Database – Movie: The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008). Retrieved 04/21/2014 – http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0012790/quotes)

This foregoing dialogue from the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008) is symbolic of the crisis facing the Caribbean. The problem in the Caribbean is not technology, but rather the will to change. This is a consistent theme in the book Go Lean … Caribbean, it asserts that the changes necessary to preserve Caribbean heritage, culture and economies must first be preceded by an evolution in the community ethos. This pronouncement is as follows from Page 20:

The people of the Caribbean must change their feelings about elements of their society – elements that are in place and elements missing. This is referred to as “Community Ethos”, defined as:

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

This book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), a technocratic agency seen as the Caribbean’s best hope to avert the current path of disaster, human flight and brain drain, and grant the Caribbean a meaningful future for its youth.

This movie dialogue synchronizes with the exact details of the book. On Page 21, Go Lean presents a series of community ethos that must be adapted to forge change in the Caribbean. In addition, there are specific advocacies to:

  • Impact the Future (Page 26)
  • Impact Turn-Around (Page 33)
  • Impact the Greater Good (Page 37)
  • Grow the Economy (Page 151)
  • Preserve Caribbean Heritage (Page 218)

As a roadmap, this book provides the turn-by-turn guidance to optimize the Caribbean economy, security apparatus and governing engines.

With the assessment that many Caribbean states have lost more than 50% of their population to foreign shores (Pages 18 & 303), the region is now at that “precipice”.

“It is only at the precipice, do they change!”

Now is the time to lean-in to this roadmap for change, the book Go Lean … Caribbean, and the Caribbean Union Trade Federation. Our society/civilization is at the crisis point.

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

————-

Appendix VIDEO – The Day The Earth Stood Still 2008 Official Trailer  – https://youtu.be/rcSJ-6354-A

Published on Aug 5, 2012 – A remake of the 1951 classic sci-fi film about an alien visitor and his giant robot counterpart who visit Earth.
Keanu Reeves & Jennifer Connelly http://www.keanureeves.us/movie/the-d…
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Pandemic Playbook – Caribbean Inadequacies: Missing the Bubble Opportunities

Posted on August 26, 2020 in Government, Industries, Social, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

Welcome to the … Bubble.

This is the only business model – in the leisure industry – that can find success right now.

For the record, we are addressing the concept of a travel bubble (think isolation bubble):

What is a “travel bubble?”
Travel bubbles, also called travel bridges or corona corridors, do away with that waiting period for a select group of travelers from certain countries where the coronavirus has been contained. “In a ‘travel bubble’ a set of countries agree to open their borders to each other, but keep borders to all other countries closed. So people can move freely within the bubble, but cannot enter from the outside,” says Per Block, an Oxford University researcher in social mobility and methodology. “The idea is to allow people additional freedom without causing additional harm.” Travel bubbles are an extension of one of Block’s research specialties —social bubbles, where people expand their quarantine zones to include more people they consider safe. Block is one of the authors of an Oxford study that suggests social bubbles could be an effective strategy to alleviating coronavirus isolation, although the findings have not yet been peer-reviewed. – Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/five-things-know-about-travel-bubbles-180974983/

The foregoing says “the findings have not yet been peer-reviewed”. Well, the review is in; according to the National Basketball Association (NBA) in the US, the “Bubble” works. See the experiences here:

2020 NBA Bubble
The 2020 NBA Bubble, also referred to as the Disney Bubble[1][2] or Orlando Bubble,[3][4] is the isolation zone at Walt Disney World in Bay Lake, Florida, near Orlando, that was created by the National Basketball Association (NBA) to protect its players from the COVID-19 pandemic during the final eight games of the 2019–20 regular season and throughout the 2020 NBA playoffs. Twenty-two out of the 30 NBA teams were invited to participate, with games being held behind closed doors at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex and the teams staying at Disney World hotels.[5]

The bubble is a $170 million investment by the NBA to protect its 2019–20 season, which was initially suspended by the pandemic on March 11, 2020.[6] On June 4, the NBA approved the plan to resume the season at Disney World, inviting the 22 teams that were within six games of a playoff spot when the season was suspended. Although initially receiving a mixed reaction from players and coaches,[7] the teams worked together to use the bubble as a platform for the Black Lives Matter movement.[8]

After playing three exhibition scrimmages inside the bubble from July 22 to 28, the invited teams each began playing the eight additional regular season games to determine playoff seeding on July 30.[9][10] The 2020 NBA playoffs then began on August 17, and the 2020 NBA Finals is scheduled to begin on September 30. – Source: Retrieved August 26, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_NBA_Bubble

—————

VIDEO – The NBA and Tyler Perry provide Bubble Models – https://youtu.be/WGnP4SfHpZo

Posted August 16, 2020 – Story – With pro basketball teams and staff living in isolation, actors and crew quarantining at Tyler Perry’s Atlanta studios, and families forming self-isolating “pods” for the sake of their children during the coronavirus pandemic, many are working hard to keep protective social bubbles from bursting. Lee Cowan reports.

Despite the threats of the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, the Bubble is working! The economic engine of the NBA is restored-protected; that means the preservation of a $8.76 Billion business enterprise; see the related chart here:

The COVID-19 pandemic is also wreaking havoc on the economy for the Caribbean – where our primary economic driver is leisure travel; no people are consuming vacations nor cruises. We have no Bubble to mitigate this pandemic.

There is an over-arching need for mitigation. See the outstanding COVID-19 cases in the Caribbean (CariCom member-states) as of today:

Source: https://moodle.caribdata.org/lms/pluginfile.php/4951/mod_resource/content/0/26Aug2020%20Regional%20Briefing%20.pdf

We need to look-listen-and-learn from this Bubble strategy; we are missing out!

This commentary is the continuation of the Teaching Series for the month of August 2020 on the subject of Pandemic Playbooks. This is entry 2-of-6 from the movement behind the 2013 book  Go Lean…Caribbean. There is the need for Travel Bubbles in our Playbook. According to the foregoing VIDEO, it works for the NBA, for Tyler Perry Studios and it can work for the 30 member-states of the Caribbean.

“It is possible to beat COVID at it’s own game”.

Yes, we can! The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. Pandemic Playbook: Worldwide Leadership – Plan ==> Actual
  2. Pandemic Playbook: Caribbean Inadequacies – Missing the Bubble Opportunities
  3. Pandemic Playbook: Bahamas Example – ‘Too Little Too Late’
  4. Pandemic Playbook: Only at the Precipice – ENCORE
  5. Pandemic Playbook: To Be or Not To Be – COVID Vaccine
  6. Pandemic Playbook: Success – Looks like New Zealand

This is our objective. Yes, we can!!! With a Pandemic Playbook, it is conceivable, believable and achievable to restore our society and economic engines.

In order to accomplish our objectives, there is the need for this Pandemic Playbook for the Caribbean as a whole and for the individual member-states. The playbook must include Bubbles. Imagine this vision:

An all-inclusive hotel resort with controlled entry-exit. Imagine too, all staff on the property being tested regularly and limited to the property for a few weeks contiguously; lastly, the visitors (tourists) only enter the Bubble after qualified testing.

Wait?! Controlled Access and guaranteed testing?! This is exactly what the CruiseLlines intend to do to restart their economic engine. Remember, these cruise ships cost $Billion; this investment is wasted if they are not transporting passengers and providing leisure. They are crying out for a Bubble strategy.

See their Cruise Bubble plans as portrayed in the Appendix below.

How about land-based resorts?

We strongly urge Caribbean hotels and resorts to copy the NBA model. In fact, while Orlando has privilege of facilitating the NBA end-of-season and playoffs, other communities can (and should) propose solutions for other leagues.

Imagine NCAA Basketball (National Collegiate Athletic Association) …

… there is the annual Battle for Atlantis (Nassau/Paradise Island) tournament; see more here:

The Battle 4 Atlantis is an early-season college basketball tournament that takes place in late November of each year, at Atlantis Paradise Island on Paradise Island in Nassau, Bahamas, on the week of the US holiday of Thanksgiving. The games are played in the Imperial Arena, a grand ballroom which is turned into a basketball venue.[1] The tournament is known for being the richest Division I men’s early-season college basketball tournament. Schools are awarded $2 million in exchange for their participation in the men’s event.[2]

In 2020, a women’s tournament will be added, also featuring eight teams. It will immediately precede the men’s tournament.[3]

The tournament is promoted by Bad Boy Mowers, and is televised by ESPN, ESPN2 and ESPNU.[4]
Source: Retrieved August 26, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_4_Atlantis

Can “we” continue this for 2020, but this time in a Bubble, with these modification:

  • Every player, coach and support staffer must be continuously tested negative to participate.
  • Increase field from 4 teams to 32; modelling the World Cup by FIFA.
  • 8 Groups of 4 teams each; during Group Play, each team plays each other in the group; guaranteeing 3 games.
  • Elimination Rounds continue with the 16 top Teams, then 8, then 4, then 2, then Champion.
  • Facilitate e-Learning for all College Students in the Bubble – they are student athletes.
  • Allow fans, family and media to participate if they comply with the protocols.
  • Perfect the model and repeat through the Caribbean with more 32 Team combinations.

There you have “it”: Caribbean deficiencies averted; economic opportunities exploited.

The Go Lean book and roadmap provides a glimpse of a new Caribbean that is ready to explore all the opportunities in the Sports eco-system. This plan was published as a Playbook … 7 years ago, far before there was a COVID-19 virus.

Luck is the intersection of preparation and opportunity.

The CU/Go Lean roadmap presented a new Caribbean preparedness that is ready, willing and able to deliver economic optimization and Good Governance.

The CU structure allows for a Sports Management functionality – Sports & Culture Administration – within the Cabinet-level agency, the Department of State  (Page 81). The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt the needed community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society. We need these types of efficiencies in our Pandemic Playbook. Consider the specific plans, excerpts and headlines from the book on Page 229 entitled:

10 Ways to Improve Sports

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market
Embrace the advent of the Caribbean Single Market & Economy initiative of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation. This will allow for the unification of the region of 30 member-states into a single market of 42 million people and a GDP exceeding $800 Billion (per 2010). This market size and multi-lingual realities allows for broadcasting rights with SAP-style language options for English, Spanish, French and Dutch. This makes the region attractive for media contracts for broadcast rights, spectrum auctions and sports marketing. The Olympics have demonstrated that sports can be profitable “big business”, and a great source of jobs and economic activity. The CU will copy the Olympic model, and harness the potential in many other sporting endeavors, so as to make the region a better place to live, work and play.
2 CU Games
3 Fairgrounds as Sport Venues
4 Regulate Amateur, Professional & Academically-Aligned Leagues
5 Establish Sports Academies
6 “Super” Amateur Sport Association
Promote All-Star tournaments (pre-season and post-season) for Amateur (School and Junior) Athletics Associations winners. This includes team sports (soccer, basketball), school sports (track/field) and individual sports (tennis, golf, etc.).
7 Regulator/Registrar of Scholar-Athletes – Assuage Abandonment
8 Sports Tourism
The CU will promote tournaments and clinics to encourage advancement in certain sports. These tournaments are aimed at the foreign markets (US, Canada, Europe, Central and South America) so as to generate sports-tourism traffic.
9 Professional Agents and Player Management Oversight (a la Bar/Lawyer Associations)
10 Impanel the CU Anti-Doping Agency

This Go Lean book presents that the organizational structure to deliver a Pandemic Playbook must be in place first – embedded at the onset of the CU Trade Federation – Day One / Step One. Then we will be ready to get “lucky” and avail ourselves of all the profits that Sports eco-system can deliver. We have detailed that profit-potential before; consider this sample of previous blog-commentaries that focused on this industry-opportunity:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18392 Refuse to Lose – A Lesson from Sports
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14527 March Madness 2018 – The Business Model of NCAA Basketball
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14160 The Business Model of Watching the SuperBowl … and Commercials
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12259 The Business Model of the College World Series
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11939 Bad Models: Rio Olympics & Athens Olympics; Same Failure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11287 Creating a Sports Business Legacy in the Pro-Surfing Eco-system
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10820 Miami Sports Eco-System: Dominican’s ‘Home Away from Home’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8272 Lebronomy Fulfilled – Economic Impact of the Return of the NBA Great
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6464 Sports Business Role Model – ‘WWE Network’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3244 Sports Business Role Model – espnW
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2171 Sports Business Role Model – Turn On the SEC Network
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1943 The Future of Golf; Vital for Tourism
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1446 Caribbean Players and Impact in the 2014 FIFA World Cup
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1214 Smart Business Model: The Art & Science of Temporary Stadiums
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1148 Franchise values in NBA Basketball? A “Bubble” or Real? Appears Real!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=318 Collegiate Sports in the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273 Among the 10 Things We Want from the US: Sports Professionalism
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=60 Caribbean’s Olympics: A Dream or A Nightmare?

We want sports! We want profit; We want Good Governance. Most assuredly, we want a Pandemic Playbook so that we can cope with all changes: good, bad and ugly.

Welcome to the ugly of COVID-19.

It’s not too late, we can still reform and transform our Caribbean societal engines (economic, security and governance) to better respond-rebuild-recover from emergencies like this pandemic. This is how we can make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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 – modeling the Olympics.

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

——————-

Appendix – COVID-19 testing ‘very likely’ when Royal Caribbean returns to cruising, executive says
By: Curtis Tate

Royal Caribbean is considering coronavirus testing as part of its plan to resume sailing, a company executive said during a quarterly earnings presentation Monday.

The company has paused its cruise operations since March and hopes to resume them in November, if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lifts its no-sail order, which is set to expire at the end of September. The U.S. cruise industry has voluntarily extended its sailing suspension through Oct. 31. Though company executives gave no firm date for the resumption of cruises, one said testing would be key.

“It’s very likely that testing will occur,” said Michael Bayley, CEO of Royal Caribbean International.He offered no additional details, including whether testing would be for crew members and passengers or to which cruise lines testing would apply.

Royal Caribbean Group owns four cruise brands: Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises, Silversea and Azamara.

Royal Caribbean canceled 1,545 sailings since March 13, including all of its sailings in the second quarter. The company posted a $1.3 billion loss for the quarter and expects to post a loss for the third quarter and for the year.

One tangible impact: Royal Caribbean Group was supposed to receive five new ships by the end of 2021 but now will take delivery of only three: Silver Moon in October, Odyssey of the Seas, in early 2021 and Silver Dawn late in 2021.

COVID-19 impacts: Cruise lines are shedding ships from their fleets. Here’s what it means for cruisers

Royal Caribbean’s Wonder of the Seas was supposed to make its debut next year as the world’s largest cruise ship, but its arrival is on hold indefinitely because of the pandemic.

The ship will be able to carry 6,000 passengers and 2,200 crew members.

Royal Caribbean Group’s fleet includes 62 ships, with another 16 on order.

Jason Liberty, the company’s chief financial officer, said it was looking at selling older ships in the fleet.

“We are evaluating opportunities to sell ships,” he said, while not specifying which ones.

The company reported bookings for 2021 comparable with years past, in a sign that demand for cruising could return. Bayley noted that younger people and loyalty customers were driving sales.

“I’m hopeful we’re going to see a lot of pent-up demand,” he said. “People certainly want to have a vacation next year.”

In the near term, Liberty said, the joint Healthy Sail Panel of Royal Caribbean Group and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings is looking at every facet of safety, from whether ultraviolet lights can effectively kill the virus to how to improve meal service.

Some of the proposed changes might prove costly, such as whether to modify ships to promote social distancing. And such recommendations could smack into the evolving nature of how to best fight the coronavirus, including how soon a vaccine might be on the way.

The company could resume sailings in China and Australia before November, but executives made no commitments in the quarterly earnings presentation Monday.

Ultimately, the prevalence of the virus would determine when sailings can resume, Liberty said.

“It’s a real puzzle,” he said. “There are so many variables to consider.”

Contributing: Morgan Hines, USA TODAY

Source: USA Today – Posted August 10, 2020; retrieved August 26, 2020 from: https://www.fayobserver.com/story/travel/cruises/2020/08/10/royal-caribbean-cruises-likely-have-covid-19-testing-upon-return/3302471001/

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Black Image – Learning from ‘Corporate Reboots’

Posted on July 23, 2020 in Economics, Ethos, Industries, Planning, Social

Go Lean Commentary

All lives matter …

For those of you in the Caribbean, your initial response to this statement may be “Duhh!!!” This is due to the fact that most Caribbean countries have a majority Black population.

But for those in the Diaspora who live, work and play in the US, Canada and Western Europe, you know that this “simple 3-word” statement cannot be taken for granted. This is due to the actuality of this recent movement, which has become a new Civil Rights struggle:

Black Lives Matter.

This is a timely discussion to have today. There are a number of Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests that have taken place … in the US and in other countries around the world. So this is not just an American issue. This is a global issue for Black Image. The need for this message – and movement – is that many times, Black Lives have NOT mattered. The disenfranchisement, repression, oppression and suppression cannot be ignored. Many non-Black people are engaged in this struggle.

Many companies – corporate institutions – have engaged too. There are a lot of lessons we can learn from this actuality.

Yes, Big Companies – think Corporate America – can help to impact Black Image. This process has commenced; this is just another example of corporate vigilantism, but this is a good thing. In the last few months – especially after the atrocious death of the Black Man George Floyd by the hands of a White Police Officer – corporate entities have stepped-in, stepped up and stepped forward. We have these published examples of Corporate Reboots:

  • Aunt Jemima brand to change name, remove image that Quaker says is ‘based on a racial stereotype’
    The 130-year-old brand features a Black woman named Aunt Jemima, who was originally dressed as a minstrel character.
    The picture has changed over time, and in recent years Quaker removed the “mammy” kerchief from the character to blunt growing criticism that the brand perpetuated a racist stereotype that dated to the days of slavery. Quaker, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, said removing the image and name is part of an effort by the company “to make progress toward racial equality.” …
    Aunt Jemima has come under renewed criticism recently amid protests across the nation and around the world sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. – Source: NBC News posted June 17, 2020; retrieved July 20, 2020.
    ———–
    See the VIDEO in the Appendix below.
  • Uncle Ben’s is a brand name for parboiled rice and other related food products. The brand was introduced by Converted Rice Inc., which was later bought by Mars, Inc. It is based in Houston, Texas. Uncle Ben’s rice was first marketed in 1943 and was the top-selling rice in the United States from 1950 until the 1990s.[1] Today, Uncle Ben’s products are sold worldwide. …
    On June 17, 2020, Mars, Inc. announced that they would be “evolving” the brand’s identity, including the brand’s logo. The move followed just hours after Quaker/PepsiCo acknowledged its Aunt Jemima brand is based on a racial stereotype and it will change the name and logo.[16][17]
  • DSW
    Designer Brands Inc. is an American company that sells designer and name brand shoes and fashion accessories. It owns the Designer Shoe Warehouse (DSW) store chain, and operates over 500 stores in the United States and an e-commerce website.[5] The company also owns private-label footwear brands including Audrey Brooke, Kelly & Katie, Lulu Townsend, and Poppie Jones.
    On June 6, 2020, the company published these statements: “We believe Black lives matter. But words are not enough. Now is the time for action. Here’s what we’re doing to help create meaningful change, in our nation and in our company.” – Source: Retrieved July 20, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Designer_Brands.

  • Wells Fargo
    CEO Charlie Scharf announced on Tuesday (July 14, 2020) a series of commitments to ensure the company’s ongoing diversity and inclusion efforts result in meaningful change. [He stated]:
    “‘Black Lives Matter’ is a statement that the inequality and discrimination that has been so clearly exposed is terribly real, though it is not new, and must not continue,” Scharf said in a letter to employees. “The pain and frustration with the lack of progress within both our country and Wells Fargo is clear. I personally, and we as a senior team, are working to develop actions that will meaningfully contribute to the change that is necessary. This time must be different.” – Source: WellsFargo.com retrieved July 20, 2020.

The movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean produces a Teaching Series every month on issues germane to Caribbean life and prospects. The commentary this month presents this 6-part series on Black Image; considering that this is the majority demographic for 29 of the 30 countries and territories that constitute the political Caribbean. This first entry, 1 of 6 in this July 2020 series considers corporate entities that have stepped up to engage this discussion. This is vigilantism; these companies may not have currently been asked for these empowerments but they have responded to the need to elevate Black Image. The full catalog of the series is listed as follows:

  1. Black Image: Corporate Reboots
  2. Black Image: Pluralism is the Goal
  3. Black Image: Colorism – The Stain of Whiteness – Encore
  4. Black Image: Slavery in History – Lessons from the Bible
  5. Black Image: 1884 Berlin Conference – Beyond Slavery
  6. Black Image: The N-Word 101

All of these commentaries relate to “how” the stewards for a new Caribbean can elevate image for the people and institutions of the region. We can and must reboot. But this first entry, the foregoing, conveys an American drama, not Caribbean. Alas, this is the actuality of Black Image: success or failure of one group of Black people in one part of the world have a direct bearing on the image of Black people in other parts of the world.

This was the assertion in the Go Lean book – Page 133 – as it provides this tidbit on Black Image:

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. [205]

Over 100 years ago, the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) came to understand the power and influence of the then new medium of film [201] and added the mandate to their charter to confront the misuse of media to influence negative public attitudes toward race. As early as 1915, the group organized a nationwide protest against the negative portrayals of African Americans in the early film, “Birth of A Nation”. Today, the NAACP Hollywood Bureau continues to monitor the industry for offensive and defamatory images in film and television. It also sponsors the Image Awards Show to honor outstanding people of color in film, television, music, and literature, as well as those individuals or groups who promote social justice through their creative endeavors. A landmark Memorandum of Understanding was signed in 1999 between the NAACP and the major movie studios and TV networks that greatly advanced the cause of diversity in the entertainment industry and created a milestone by which to measure future progress in Hollywood.

We must be concerned about Black Image and Caribbean Image, independently and collectively. This is not new for this Caribbean effort; we had been advocating for image promotion long before the Black Man George Floyd was killed in Minnesota USA in May 2020. The timing of this death was heightened by the reflections afforded by the societal shutdowns from the Coronavirus COVID-19 crisis. But we have had this need from before this pandemic; we have the need now and we will continue to have this need after this pandemic.

There are no Ands, Ifs or Buts; we need to reboot Caribbean image, the same as those companies need to reboot their corporate image:

  • Aunt Jemima has always been a bad stereotype of Black Image (female).
  • Uncle Ben has always been a bad stereotype of Black Image (male).

Those companies did not just up and correct their bad stereotypes at the first request from the affected groups or the general public. No, it was a long-drawn struggle over many decades. In fact, “only after a long train of abuse” is usually the roadmap for minorities to get toleration, acceptance, equality and finally equity from their adjoining majority groups. So there are lessons that we can learn and apply here in the Caribbean from this historicity. Among the lessons:

the strategies, tactics and implementations that can accelerate change in society, change among the minority groups and the majority groups.

The Go Lean book, as a roadmap for the introduction of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), presents an actual advocacy to present the strategies, tactic and implementation to Better Manage Caribbean Image. See here some of the specific plans, excerpts and headlines from Page 133, entitled:

10 Ways to Better Manage Image

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).
This will allow for the unification of the region into one market of 42 million people across 30 member-states, with a GDP of $800 Billion (according to 2010 figures). In addition, the treaty calls for collective bargaining with foreign countries and industry representatives for causes of significance to the Caribbean community. There are many times when the media portray a “negative” depiction of Caribbean life, culture and people. The CU will have the scale to effectuate negotiations to better manage the region’s image, and the means by which to enforce the tenets.
2 Media Industrial Complex
The Caribbean Central Bank will settle electronic payments transactions; this will allow electronic commerce to flourish in the region. With the payment mechanisms in place, music, movies, TV shows and other media (domestic and foreign) can be paid for and downloaded legally. For a population base of 42 million, this brings a huge economic clout.
3 Respect for Intellectual Property
4 Sentinel in Hollywood
Like the NAACP, the CU will facilitate a Hollywood Bureau. It will monitor the industry for offensive and defamatory images in film, television, video games, internet content and the written word. Though the Hollywood Bureau is based in California-USA, their focus will be global, covering the media machinery of Europe, Asia (Bollywood) and elsewhere.
5 Anti-Defamation League
This Pro-Jewish organization provides a great model for marshalling against negative stereotypes that can belittle a race. [200] The CU will study, copy, and model a lot of the successes of the Anti-Defamation League. This organization can also be consulted with to coach the CU’s efforts. (Consider the example of Uptown Yardies Rasta Gang in the game Grand Theft Auto [206]).
6 Power of the Boycott
7 Freedom of the Press
8 Libel and Slander Litigation and Enforcement
9 Public Relations and Press Releases
10 Image Award Medals and Recognition
Following the model of the NAACP Image Awards [202], the CU will recognize and give accolades for individual and institutions that portray a positive “image” of Caribbean life and CU initiatives. This would be similar to the Presidential Medal of … / Congressional Medal of …

The points of fostering best-practices in Image Management is a familiar topic for the Go Lean movement. There are many previous blog-commentaries that elaborated on this subject; consider this sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16944 Women Empowerment – Accepting Black Women ‘As Is’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15858 A Caribbean Network to Better Manage our Image
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18566 Lessons Learned – JPMorganChase Rebooting to make ‘Change’ happen
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11420 ‘Black British’ and ‘Less Than’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10532 Learning from Stereotypes – Good and Bad
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8099 Caribbean Image: ‘Less Than’?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6434 ‘Good Hair’ and the Strong Black Woman
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5088 Immigrants account for 1 in 11 Blacks in USA
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4058 Bad Image: New York Times Maledictions on The Bahamas
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2547 Bad Image: Miami’s Success Due to Caribbean Failure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2251 Bad Image of Ethnic Sounding Names
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2025 Image of the Caribbean Diaspora – Butt of the Joke
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=857 Lesser Image of Caribbean “Dreadlock hairstyles”

The motivation of For-Profit companies have always been to make a profit. The foregoing corporate examples demonstrate good corporate vigilantism to change society, while not abandoning the profit goal. These companies, and the Go Lean movement, accept that both goals can be pursued simultaneously … with gusto.

Recognizing the merits of this strategy is not new; (this was conveyed in the 2013 Go Lean book); it is the universal execution that is new! Yippee! Let’s keep this going!

Now it the time to double-down on improving Black Image around the world.

Now is the time to exert the effort on improving Caribbean Image around the world. (They are not mutually exclusive).

Yes, we can …

This is the heavy-lifting that we must do. This is how we will make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

——————————————

Appendix VIDEO – Aunt Jemima Image To Be Removed And Brand Will Be Renamed, Quaker Oats Announces | TODAY – https://youtu.be/BdH3tmf0tGs

TODAY
Quaker Oats has announced that the image of Aunt Jemima will be removed from all packaging and the brand’s name will be changed. The move comes amid rapid cultural change in the wake of nationwide protests. TODAY’s Sheinelle Jones reports. » Subscribe to TODAY: http://on.today.com/SubscribeToTODAY

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#QuakerOats #AuntJemima #TodayShow

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Hamilton – Comes to the Masses – Encore

Posted on July 15, 2020 in Ethos, Government, Industries, Social

“Not throwing away my shot … young, scrappy and hungry” – Hit song from Broadway musical Hamilton; see link here.

This expensive Broadway play ($450 for two tickets for me) has now come down in price – but only in this new medium of streaming video – the masses can now consume it for $6.99 … for the entire household.

According to a recent Forbes Magazine (June 8, 2020) article:

After opening on Broadway in 2015, competition for a seat became so hot that scalpers at one point were reportedly getting close to $11,000 in the aftermarket. In anticipation of Broadway re-opening on Sept. 8, face-value tickets start at $149 but go for as much as $2,200 a seat in the resale market.

This is the reality of the economics of Supply-and-Demand.

Despite the drop in prices, the production quality is still valued and the producers will make even more money.

Size does matter when it comes to Hollywood.

Hamilton: $1 Billion Franchise
And it did so far faster than other Broadway phenoms. The top three grossing musicals are all more than 16 years old. Hamilton, which turns 5 this year, was on track this year to surpass another smash hit, The Book of Mormon, before Covid-19 forced Broadway’s theaters to close. – Source: Forbes.June 8, 2020

Truly, the stakeholders for Hamilton have not “thrown away their shot’. See this conveyed in this related story here, about the Hamilton blockbuster movie – visualizing the stage play – that was just released to the streaming-media site DisneyPlus:

Title: Why the ‘Hamilton’ Film Works — and Joel Schumacher’s ‘Phantom’ Didn’t
By: Marina Watts

Turning a Broadway musical into a movie is no easy task. Bringing the excitement that was onstage to the silver screen is a challenge, from sets and songs to simply making sure the musical translates to the screen. West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964) and Cabaret (1972) were all successful shows that were adapted for the silver screen with similar success.

Filmed Broadway shows such as Peter Pan (1955), She Loves Me (2016) and Newsies (2017) were also massive hits which opted to shoot a staged performance. So was Hamilton (you may have heard of it).

Hamilton, which premiered on Disney+ on July 3, has been an absolute hit. Between the acting, singing, dancing and songwriting, the filmed version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award-winning show has many viewers obsessed. Disney+ even saw a 74% spike in streaming subscriptions the weekend it premiered, as per Forbes.

What also makes this film adaptation of the staged show work is how it was made. Director Thomas Kail recently revealed exactly how he filmed and edited Hamilton. He used 30 cameras to shoot the musical in three days in 2016 (June 26, 27 and 28, Sunday through Tuesday) and spent three years piecing it together. On the 26th and 28th, Kail shot straight through with an audience. On the 27, he had no audience, allowing him to focus on closer shots of the show.

“I had six cameras that were shooting on the Sunday with different operators and then three fixed cameras or nine total,” Kail explained to Inquirer.net. “Then, I changed all the positions for the fixed cameras for the Tuesday so the multiple gets high really fast, but that’s how we made it.”

This movie musical was an incredible example of converting a stage musical to screens with only three days of footage, unlike Joel Schumacher’s 2004 adaptation of Phantom of the Opera whichtook four months to film.

The big-budget adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical was a cinematographic mess, despite the fact that it had been in development since 1989. Schumacher’s focus on making other films and Weber’s divorce were just two events which added to the delays.

Schumaker starred Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson, Minnie Driver and Gerard Butler as the Phantom, and was nominated for three Academy Awards. But those noms didn’t translate to critical acclaim.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 33% approval rating. “The music of the night has hit something of a sour note: critics are calling the screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s popular musical, histrionic boring and lacking in both romance and danger,” the consensus read. Although critics didn’t like the movie, audiences loved it.

What threw critics appeared to be the movie’s…cinematography and direction. Shots failed to make the sound stages of Phantom look cinematic. The scenes felt like an overstuffed painting, and though that type of spectacle would have translated well onstage for the suspension of disbelief, it felt exhausting onscreen and lacked dimension. The sweeping camera shots and long takes didn’t add anything either, especially when showing off the mostly computer generated sets.

The film’s color schemes were also deemed dull. In the “Masquerade” scene, for example, many colors and bright images are mentioned throughout the song. However, the main colors of the costumes were black and white, a stark contrast to the lyrics.

The set of Hamilton, meanwhile, was simple yet effective. Since they were also using the costumes and the set directly from the show, nothing got lost in translation as far as spectacle went.

Weber was granted full artistic control. When it came to his intentions of adapting Phantom, he said, “We did not want to do a film version of the stage show,” as per Playbill. “We wanted to make a film in its own right.”

Kail, meanwhile, wanted to recreate the theater experience for viewers at home. “I was just interested in trying to create an experience with the film of Hamilton that would let you know what it felt like to be in the theater in June of 2016 in New York City at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. That was the intent,” he explained.

Kail explained that they way they shot the staged musical, they were able to get as close as possible to the actors for an immersive and intimate experience. These close-up shots gave viewers the best seat in the house, unlike Phantom.

“So much of our storytelling is done in the physical vocabulary,” he noted. “If I’m going to close up, it means I’m not on that dance step. It’s very hard to do both those things. So, it was a real balance of making sure that I wanted to give intimacy and proximity, which you have in cinema.”

Additionally, throughout Phantom of the Opera, many of the actors’ mouths don’t appear to match up with the music. There are also many continuity issues, from moments where the Phantom takes off his cloak, to candles being lit and unlit, and masks disappearing and reappearing during the “Masquerade” number, just to name a few errors. These tiny details made a huge difference, and audiences felt like it was sloppy.

Since Hamilton was performed and filmed live without any dubbing, these continuity issues didn’t occur.

That being said, filming the staged musical was not a simple task. “It is a little more challenging in the theater,” Kail noted, “You must also get the stage picture and make sure that the storytelling of the entire group was represented.”

Kail also mentioned how he and Miranda wanted to preserve this particular performance with the original cast of Hamilton. “Theater always disappears. It goes away as soon as the lights come down, whereas cinema, film and television can live on.”

Maybe Phantom of the Opera should be the next musical to get the Hamilton treatment.

Hamilton is available to stream on Disney+. Phantom of the Opera is available to stream on Amazon Prime.

REQUEST REPRINT & LICENSING, SUBMIT CORRECTION OR VIEW EDITORIAL GUIDELINES

Source: Posted Newsweek Magazine July 13, 2020; retrieved July 15, 2020 from: https://www.newsweek.com/why-hamilton-film-works-joel-schumachers-phantom-didnt-1517030

Yet still, this is not a commentary about Broadway or New York; no, this is about the Caribbean. Hamilton was born and raised in the Caribbean (St Croix and Nevis respectively); writer-producer-actor Lin-Manual Miranda is of Caribbean (Puerto Rico) heritage and a lot of the cast and crew hail from the Caribbean homeland. Hamilton is about more than history, culture and politics; no, it is relevant for an economic discussion as well.

This was the theme of a previous blog-commentary from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. That submission was on January 2, 2019 and it asserted that the arts can truly empower a community – “that a community rallies around art creating a unique energy; and art ‘dynamises’ the community, in a very unique way”. Economic opportunities are the natural progression from organizing the arts and artists. While we cannot be Broadway in the Caribbean, we can better harness (and monetize) the natural talents and genius-qualifiers in our region.

This is where the money and the jobs are …

It is only apropos to Encore that previous commentary, from January 2, 2019, here and now:

—————-

Go Lean Commentary – Hamilton – “History has its eyes on you”

This is a memorable line from the hot Broadway play Hamilton:

Immigrants, we get things done!

This is what all the rave is about with this fascinating play; it tells the story of America’s founding fathers through the eyes of the immigrant experience. (This writer saw Hamilton on December 28, 2018 at the Broward Performing Arts Center in Ft Lauderdale, FL).

As was true with all these founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton was White; (“Bastard son of a Scotsman”); Aaron Burr was White; so too George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and others portrayed in this song-and-dance production. But all the participating actors – in the Broadway edition, plus all the other touring companies – are Black-and-Brown minorities – many of them immigrants themselves.

The theme of Hamilton – historic immigrants thriving in America – aligns with the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book was written and published by members of the Caribbean Diaspora living and thriving in America. There is a full acceptance that Caribbean immigrants can thrive in the US, as did Hamilton in his historical context. But many more immigrants arrive everyday, and there is now less tolerance for them, especially for those of the Black-and-Brown populations from the Caribbean. In fact, the current President of the US, Donald Trump, even derisively referred to Haitians as coming from a “shit-hole” country.

So while we can thrive, the question – by the movement behind the Go Lean book – is whether we should. The Hamilton play makes this point, as was related in a previous Go Lean blog-commentary:

When the word got around, they said “this kid is insane, man”
Took up a collection just to send “him” to the mainland
“Get your education, don’t forget from whence you came”
And the world gonna know your name …

It is an established fact that any difficult topic can be more easily communicated if backed-up by a catchy melody and rhyming words. An underlying theme of Hamilton is that nobody does it alone, there must always be community help and support; its like a community investment. There should also be a return on the investment. This point was communicated brilliantly in this news-commentary by a Social Justice Advocate; she stated that “self-made men are never independent of others’ help”. See the full article here:

Title: History Has Its Eyes On Us: Lessons from Hamilton the Musical
By: Courtney Kidd LCSW
Obsession. That’s the only way to describe the feelings of Hamilton followers, and once you’ve seen the show you’d understand why. Hamilton is a punch in the face, spellbinding transport through the life of one of the least well-known founding fathers, but by far one of the most interesting. And the best part? It’s done through the lens of hip-hop music and a cast of almost exclusively non-white actors-including our own dear Alexander Hamilton. While this caused confusion for some, who began to question their 8th grade history memory, it stands as one of the most powerful examples of today’s racial divide and the movements to correct it.

I’ll admit, I was skeptical going into the play. My friend and I had gotten tickets when they first went on sale almost 9 months before opening night. We saw it in its first month on Broadway after the success off-Broadway. I remember sitting in my chair prior to the curtain rise, uncertain of whether I’d like a modern take on a history. Could it reach across the aisle of race? Could it hold attention of a subject most forget about? Would I get it? Did I really wait 9 months and spend hundreds of dollars for something that might just be weird? It took exactly 1 minute until those questions left my mind and instead I was entrapped, enamored, enthralled with this play that lives up to one of the numbers “non-stop.” It was a non-stop journey, filled with humor, and anguish, and longing. I was converted. I was in love.

I went to see it a second time a few months, later, unable to wait until the soundtrack was finally released, I bought a resale ticket at far too high of an amount for my poor social work status. But I had to go, the play had brought about a plague within me; this wasn’t just a good show, it was something far beyond. Much like its creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, I began what has still been obsessive task of reading book after book on Hamilton, and the rest of those influential individuals who shaped the country. I wake up with the music in my head, and despite my best efforts, can’t stop listening to the songs. And then it hit me. This isn’t just a great musical and it’s not just because it is new and different, it’s because despite almost 300 hundred years since this man stood with the revolution, its relevant. And not in the way you think.

Over the past few years we have seen a second wave of the civil rights movement in America. Sadly, Despite the year, minorities, immigrants, and even women are still seen and treated differently than the white male counterpoint. Feelings and reactions peak and overspill in areas like Ferguson and Baltimore. Huge movements such as Black Lives Matter rise up demanding justice in the country that fought and promised a land of freedom and equality. Hamilton isn’t just play to see, it’s a needed reminder. Alexander Hamilton was an immigrant who fought for the revolution, becoming one of Washington’s most trusted aides, rising to one of the highest positions in our military and later our government. From a remarkably young age, he was an abolitionist in a time when that word would be as shocking as to claim you’re an alien. He never allowed his birth and his circumstances to define him, and instead fought his entire life for the beliefs he had, including a strong central government and financial plan that allowed America to be self-sufficient and play with the “big boys” for trade and commerce. Hamilton saw first-hand the potential risks of weak governments while dealing with the military forces. He understood even then that we had to be the United States in order to succeed in this revolutionary experiment. And he wanted those rights for every individual who was here.

Hamilton was a true American Dream hero, but despite what a lot of modern people claim, self-made men are never independent of others’ help. Many wish to believe that they rose to where they are because only due to their remarkable abilities, and for some that is true, but much more often than not there was help along the way. Our founding father is no exception. Although known as a uniquely bright youth on the island of Nevis where he was orphaned at a young age, Hamilton might never have risen to the station he once held without the help of many. Yes, he showed himself to be a studious and adept learner when put in charge of the local trading company-and may have stayed on as a success employee had the Hurricane not hit Nevis with a colossal force. Hamilton, always a writer, penned a poem of what he witnessed, and a local man who believed Hamilton had the capacity for more forwarded it to the influential of the island. Despite the devastation they made an investment in one of their own, raising enough to send our future Secretary of Treasury and war hero to the colonies(America) to pursue a real education. To sum up, if those with means didn’t decide to put forward an investment for an orphan with potential Alexander Hamilton would have mostly likely lived his life and died having never left a small, impoverished island. For a poor, orphan of questionable birth and heritage, that would not have left many surprised, and yet the island rose together to support him.

We’re looking at a similar issue in today’s world. Do we invest in the future, on education, on sustainability for those who can go on to do greatness despite the circumstances of their birth, or do we claim that we got to where we were without assistance from anyone? Hundreds of years after Hamilton discussed the need for equality we are still in the midst of revolutions to save the ideals of our nation. Each person is shaped by those around them, and it is of no surprise that the haves are able to gain a lot more opportunity than the have-nots. For this reason, many assume it is laziness that prevent people from working their way up. Hamilton was the antithesis of lazy, but if it wasn’t for one influential patronage who connected him to the elite, our country may never have gained the footing it needed to be a competitive economy.

We have a responsibility to those around us and who come next to shape the world into a better place for us all, not just for ourselves. We saw yesterday what happens if we don’t stand against those who would spread hatred, and instead hold onto love. As Mr. Manuel so eloquently put:

“…We chase the melodies that seem to find us until they’re finished songs and start to play when senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day. This show is proof that history remembers. We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger. We rise and fall, and light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer and love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside…”

And if you need more convincing, join me in line for some tickets to Hamilton, you won’t be disappointed(seriously if you know how to get reasonable tickets you know how to contact me).

“I consider civil liberty, in a genuine unadulterated sense, as the greatest of terrestrial blessings. I am convinced, that the whole human race is intitled(entitled) to it; and, that it can be wrested from no part of them, without the blackest and most aggravated guilt.”- Alexander Hamilton

*Authors note*- Should Mr. Miranda see this, congrats on the Grammy, call me for unlimited praise and begging for interviews. Your PR man is too good at polite declines.

**Update- And your UNREAL number of Tony nominations and wins!! [See Appendix below].

Source: Social Justice Solution Online Site – posted February 23, 2016; retrieved December 30, 2018 from: http://www.socialjusticesolutions.org/2016/02/23/history-has-its-eyes-on-us-lessons-from-hamilton-the-musical/

————

VIDEO – 70th Annual Tony Awards ‘Hamilton’ History has its eyes and Yorktown – https://youtu.be/5upLudfimso



Undercover Celebs
Published on Nov 4, 2016 – 70th Annual Tony Awards ‘Hamilton’ History has its eyes and Yorktown by the cast of Hamilton at the 2016 Tony Awards where the musical won 11 awards.

The prime directive of the Go Lean book is to empower, elevate and facilitate a better Caribbean society. We want to be able to thrive right here at home – to prosper where planted – thus lowering the motivations to emigrate. In fact, the declarative statements of the prime directive are as follows:

Puerto Rican descendant Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator, writer and original cast member as Alexander Hamilton is well-known for his advocacy for the Caribbean region in general and Puerto Rico in particular. He accomplishes his mission to effect change in the American eco-system through music/song and entertainment. The book Go Lean…Caribbean strives to accomplish its mission with the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). Lin-Manuel Miranda is hereby recognized as a role model that the Caribbean can emulate. He has provided a successful track record of forging change, overcoming incredible odds, managing crises to successful conclusions and rebooting failing institutions. See these previous blog-commentaries that detailed his accomplishments:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14101 Wait, ‘We Are The World’
In September 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated several Caribbean member-states; Puerto Rico was gravely impacted. In the mode of ‘We Are The World‘, many artists – led by Lin-Manuel Miranda – assembled and recorded a song to aid Puerto Rico, entitled ‘Almost Like Praying‘ by Artists for Puerto Rico.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7963 ‘Like a Good Neighbor’ – Being there for Puerto Rico
The US Territory of Puerto Rico needs a Good Neighbor right now. They do not need State Farm; they need the US Government to change the laws to allow them to re-structure their heavy debt “load”. In effect, this community is in crisis, facing financial disaster and needs a helping hand. Lin-Manuel Miranda was on a mission to help Puerto Rico by getting Congress to change Bankruptcy Laws to apply to PR again.

Mr. Miranda has now retired from performing in Hamilton …

… but atlas, he will reprise his role for the highly acclaimed Puerto Rico run in January 2019. See more on that story here:

Title: Puerto Rico Engagement of Hamilton, Starring Lin-Manuel Miranda, Will Sell $10 Tickets Through Lottery and Rush

Sub-title: Over 10,000 tickets will be released through the popular #Ham4Ham initiative, exclusively to island residents.

The upcoming Puerto Rico premiere of Hamilton, in which Tony- and Pulitzer-winning creator Lin-Manuel Miranda will reprise his performance in the title role, will offer island residents a chance to purchase tickets priced at ten dollars.

As previously reported, the blockbuster musical will play San Juan’s Teatro UPR at the University of Puerto Rico (Río Piedras Campus) January 8 through January 27, 2019, before the company (sans Miranda) embarks on a third national tour. Additional casting will be announced at a later date.

A total of 10,000 tickets will be sold at the low price in Puerto Rico as an extension of the blockbuster musical’s popular #Ham4Ham initiative, with 1,000 going to college students (with valid ID) for the January 9 matinee. All remaining tickets for that performance and two subsequent Wednesday matinees will be sold for $10 via digital lottery. Over 200 tickets will be sold to residents via lotto for all other performances.

“Bringing [Hamilton] to Puerto Rico is a dream that I’ve had since we first opened at The Public Theater in 2015,” Miranda said at the time of the initial announcement. “When I last visited the island, a few weeks before Hurricane Maria, I had made a commitment to not only bring the show to Puerto Rico, but also return again to the title role. In the aftermath of Maria we decided to expedite the announcement of the project to send a bold message that Puerto Rico will recover and be back in business, stronger than ever.”

Source: PlayBill Magazine – Posted August 28, 2018; retrieved January 2, 2018 from http://www.playbill.com/article/puerto-rico-engagement-of-hamilton-starring-lin-manuel-miranda-will-sell-10-tickets-through-lottery-and-rush

In the CU/Go Lean roadmap to change the Caribbean, music and theater gets it’s due respect. This point is detailed in the  Declaration of Interdependence at the outset of the book, pronouncing this need for regional solutions (Page 14):

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.

We are looking forward to more art-based accomplishments: the arts can truly empower the community – “the community rallies around art creating a unique energy; and art ‘dynamises’ the community, in a very unique way”. What more can the stewards of the Caribbean do to effect change in the region using the arts and music? The Go Lean book provides a lot more details on Page 230 under the title “10 Ways to Improve the Arts“; see one detail here:

#1: Lean-in for the Emergence of the Caribbean Union
Embrace the advent of the CariCom Single Market Initiative and the Caribbean Union Trade Federation. This will allow for the unification of the region into a Single Market of 42 million people. This size supports the proliferation of ‘art’ (visual/fine, music, performance & film) as an industry. The CU will promote the art exhibition eco-system – allowing marketplaces for artists to congregate and monetize their talents. Structures will also be deployed for media companies to monetize film & performance art. The CU will facilitate the marketing of travelling exhibitions, and touring companies of stage productions. For the region, art can be a business enabler, and expressions for civic pride and national identity.

“History Has Its Eyes On Us” is the title of a song in the Hamilton Play – see Appendix VIDEO – and also a truism. There are lessons we must learn from the history of Alexander Hamilton. We must, like he did, fight for change and progress; as conveyed in the foregoing article:

From a remarkably young age, he was an abolitionist in a time when that word would be as shocking as to claim you’re an alien. He never allowed his birth and his circumstances to define him, and instead fought his entire life for the beliefs he had, including a strong central government and financial plan that allowed America to be self-sufficient and play with the “big boys” for trade and commerce. Hamilton saw first-hand the potential risks of weak governments …

The Go Lean roadmap accepts that the burden is too big for any one Caribbean member-state alone to effect change, thusly it advocates for a collaboration among all member-states. The strategy is to confederate all the 30 member-states of the Caribbean despite their language and legacy, into an integrated Single Market. The Go Lean/CU roadmap details all the strategies, tactics and implementation to forge the Single Market solutions. With these efforts and investments, the returns will be undeniable. We can dissuade our people from leaving in the first place – Alexander Hamilton never returned to British-controlled Nevis after leaving for college. (He did revolt against the British).

We want change in the Caribbean without a revolt. This was proclaimed from the outset of the Go Lean book:

This movement was bred from the frustrations of the Diaspora, longing to go home, to lands of opportunities. But this is not a call for a revolt against the governments, agencies or institutions of the Caribbean region, but rather a petition for a peaceful transition and optimization of the economic, security and governing engines in the region. – Go Lean book Page 8.

The Go Lean roadmap has a simple quest: make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. One man, or woman, can make a difference in this quest. Thank you for that model Hamilton. Thank you for that model Lin-Manuel Miranda. Now to foster the next generation of movers-and-shakers, whether it is politically, economically or in “song-and-dance”. We can impact our homeland with many fields of endeavor.

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders – artists and patrons alike – to lean-in to this roadmap to elevate Caribbean society. Yes, we can! Our quest is conceivable, believable and achievable. 🙂

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 VIDEO – Why History Has Its Eyes On Hamilton’s Diversity | TIME – https://youtu.be/xWrRP6vRGhQ

TIME
Published on Dec 15, 2015 – In 2015, Lin-Manuel Miranda, a man once not known to many outside his circle of Broadway legions, shed light on another man once not known to many outside a circle of knowledgeable historians. But Miranda took one of America’s founding fathers and turned him “and thus, himself” into a star. The Broadway show Hamilton uses rap and hip-hop to tell the story of Alexander Hamilton’s rise to power during the American Revolution. The show broke multiple records for its cast recording and notched record-breaking sales of $32 million before it even hit Broadway. But the cast makes history in different ways, too, with men and women of color playing characters who were all white. There’s an African-American Vice President Aaron Burr, a biracial George Washington and a Chinese-American Mrs. Alexander Hamilton. Subscribe to TIME ►► http://po.st/SubscribeTIME

Category: News & Politics

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Appendix – 70th Tony Awards

The 70th Annual Tony Awards were held on June 12, 2016, to recognize achievement in Broadway productions during the 2015–16 season. The ceremony temporarily returned to the Beacon Theatre in New York City after three years at Radio City Music Hall and was broadcast live by CBS.[1] James Corden served as host.[2]

Hamilton received a record-setting 16 nominations in 13 categories, ultimately winning 11 total.[3] The revival of The Color Purple won two awards. The Humans won four awards, and the revival productions of plays Long Day’s Journey into Night and A View from the Bridge each won two awards.

…

Source: Retrieved December 31, 2018 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/70th_Tony_Awards

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Labor Realities: Essential or Sacrificial – Encore

Posted on June 20, 2020 in Economics, Industries, Social

So you love your community, but does the community love you back?!

This is the description of everyday life for nurses at local hospitals. The Coronavirus-COVID-19 is devastating communities; there is an urgent need for good First Responders. Doctors and Nurses are among those First Responders, and yet nurses seems to be under-appreciated.

Put your money where your mouth is. This has been their continued experience:

Low wages
Deficient supply of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE)

Are these First Responders “Essential or Sacrificial”?

I am NOT a nurse; I am only able to report what the nurses themselves are advocating. Here is that reporting & a related VIDEO production:

Title: Why some nurses have quit during the coronavirus pandemic
By: Safia Samee Ali, NBC News

For weeks, Kelly Stanton wasn’t sleeping. She lay in bed gripped with the anxiety of having to go to work at a Washington, D.C.-area hospital not knowing whether she might bring home the coronavirus to her husband and their three children.

It was inevitable, she thought. She wasn’t protected.

Stanton, a nurse for 28 years, had seen federal safety protocols for health care workers begin to crumble amid the pandemic by early March.

Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding personal protective equipment, or PPE, changed consistently. At Stanton’s hospital, nurses were told that they would have limited access to an already low stockpile of protective equipment and were being asked to reuse single-use masks multiple times, she said.

“Never in my time as a nurse have I seen this,” she said. “It was a position I could never have imagined I’d be in, even in my wildest dreams.”

Each time a safety regulation changed, she said, she began to feel more like “a sheep sent to slaughter” than a front-line nurse, and she started agonizing between her job and her family.

By late March, the risks weighed too heavily, and Stanton submitted her resignation.

“It was an extremely difficult decision, but as a mother and wife, the health of my family will always come first,” she said. “In the end, I could not accept that I could be responsible for causing one of my family members to become severely ill or possibly die.”

As COVID-19 has infected more than 1 million Americans, nurses working on the front lines with little protective support have made the gut-wrenching decision to step away from their jobs, saying that they were ill-equipped and unable to fight the disease and that they feared for not only their own safety but also that of their families.

Many of these nurses, who have faced backlash for quitting, said new CDC protocols have made them feel expendable and have not kept their safety in mind, leaving them no choice but to walk away from a job they loved.

‘We’re not cannon fodder. We’re human beings.’

As the nation took stock of its dwindling medical supplies in the early days of the pandemic, CDC guidance regarding personal protective equipment quickly took a back seat.

Supplies of N95 masks, which had previously been the acceptable standard of protective care for both patients and medical personnel, were depleting, so commercial grade masks, surgical masks and, in the most extreme cases, homemade masks, such as scarves and bandannas, were all sanctioned by the CDC — which didn’t return a request for comment — to counter the lack of resources.

Nurses, among other health care workers, were expected to pivot and adapt with no evidence to the view that new guidelines would provide any significant protection from a novel and contagious disease.

“Things they were telling us we had to now do, you would’ve been fired if we did that three weeks before,” Stanton said. “How is this suddenly OK?”

There had been warning that a pandemic was coming, she said. “Hospital administrators, states and the federal government should have stockpiled PPEs. All three failed.”

COVID-19 patients had only slowly started trickling in, but Stanton could see where things would head. It was almost guaranteed that nurses would be at risk under those conditions, she said.

“We’re not cannon fodder. We’re human beings,” she said.

In many respects, nurses who have had to treat COVID-19 patients with little or no protection, especially in the early days of the pandemic, have become collateral damage.

Nearly 10,000 health care workers on the front lines, including nurses, have tested positive, according to a preliminary survey the CDC conducted from February to April.

Because data collection has been slow and not comprehensive and many people with COVID-19 have been asymptomatic, actual numbers are likely much higher.

At least 79 nurses have died from the coronavirus, the American Nurses Association, which has been independently tracking reports, said Thursday.

“There are huge ethical dilemmas that nurses are now facing,” said Liz Stokes, director of the American Nurses Association Center for Ethics and Human Rights.

“Just imagine having to make decisions every day on whether you’re going to fulfill your professional obligation to care for patients versus sacrificing your personal safety or even that of your family because you’re in a situation where you don’t have adequate resources.”

Nurses have a duty to their patients, but they also have a duty to themselves under the nursing code of ethics, Stokes said. Those are equal obligations, and if you feel morally torn, you have to make the decision that’s right for you, she said.

Stokes added that it’s also important to be thankful for the nurses who have decided to step away because they recognized that they weren’t in the best situation physically or mentally to provide care.

‘No, we didn’t sign up for this’

For Rebecca, a nurse in the Albuquerque, New Mexico, area who didn’t want her full name used for fear that she won’t be rehired, the writing was on the wall when she saw a member of her hospital management collect all N95 masks from her floor and lock them in a cabinet in early March, before the country went into full-blown crisis.

“It’s really demoralizing to see someone lock them up in front of you knowing that you might need one of those,” she said. “The whole scene was very symbolic of how all this was going to go down. And it was a bad sign for what’s to come.”

Rebecca, who has been a nurse for four years, said that communication and infrastructure began to break down fairly quickly and that nurses were expected to make terrible compromises.

Masks were rationed to one per week and sometimes shared. Only nurses who dealt with patients who tested positive for COVID-19 were given an extra N95 mask, even if the patient showed symptoms.

During one 16-hour shift, Rebecca was repeatedly in close contact with a patient who later tested positive — and she wasn’t wearing a mask.

“I knew it was something I could no longer handle,” she said. “I know my limitations.”

Rebecca quit in mid-April, one week after she tested negative for COVID-19 after exposure to the patient.

Since quitting, she has been sensitive to the criticism many nurses like her have faced for stepping away during a pandemic. That’s why many of them have kept their decisions private, she said.

It’s especially hurtful when she reads comments on social media that nurses shouldn’t raise complaints because they “signed up for this.”

“We didn’t sign up to be sacrificial lambs. We didn’t sign up to fight a deadly disease without adequate resources,” she said. “We’re told we’re soldiers. Well, you don’t send soldiers to war without a gun and expect them to do their job, but you are doing that to us.”

The sentiments have been shared by thousands of other nurses who feel they are also being put in dangerous environments.

Last month, the New York State Nurses Association, representing more than 3,000 nurses, filed three lawsuits against the New York State Health Department and two hospitals over the health and safety of nurses treating COVID-19 patients.

Among other things, the lawsuits call out the state for not providing appropriate protective equipment for nurses, not properly training nurses deployed from hospital units and not providing safe enough working conditions for high-risk employees.

While the Health Department declined to comment directly on the lawsuit, it did say it was “deeply grateful for the ongoing efforts of New York’s health care workers to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by testing people who may be infected and treating those who are most in need.”

Quitting has been on the minds of many nurses, said Cara Lunsford, a nurse who founded Holliblu, an online community for nurses.

According to a survey conducted by Holliblu, 62 percent of over 1,000 respondents said they are planning to quit either their jobs or the profession altogether.

“They didn’t sign up to go into work and be unprotected from an invisible enemy, and the pressure is really starting to mount for a lot of nurses,” Lunsford said.

This is an unprecedented time, and nurses weren’t trained to be soldiers or handle biological threats with little protection and resources, she said. And if they leave for their sanity or safety, they shouldn’t be treated as defectors.

Constantly being anointed a “hero” by the public also hasn’t helped the added pressure, Rebecca said. While it’s a nice gesture, it gives the connotation that you should be risking yourself without help and that if you don’t you’re a “coward.”

She added that several colleagues reached out to her about wanting to quit after she left but that many just don’t have the option.

“I’ve realized that I’m very fortunate that I had a choice,” she said. “A lot of nurses have student loans, car loans, and they are single parents. They can’t quit, and that bothers me, because they are being taken advantage of right now.”

‘It was one of the most difficult decisions of my life’

Kate, who didn’t want her full name used for privacy, quit her job at a Virginia hospital in April after she was pulled from her floor as a post-anesthesia care unit nurse and reassigned to critical care after only four hours of training.

Throughout her hospital, protective equipment was siphoned for COVID-19-positive patients, but with testing not fully widespread, she never knew whether someone was infected, and worse she, didn’t know whether she was bringing it home.

Kate would go directly to the attic and quarantine away from her husband and children after getting home from work. But the emotional toll was high, and she could no longer be away from her 1- and 3-year-old children.

She knew she had to walk away from her job.

While putting her family first has got her through the painful decision, she still feels tremendous guilt for leaving.

“It’s not just a job, it’s a calling, and to walk away from it is extremely difficult and painful.” she said. “I wish I could have stayed with my patients. It’s not like I didn’t want to be there.”

Had masks been available and pre-pandemic precautions preserved, “without a doubt I’d still be working,” Kate said.

Stokes, of the American Nurses Association, said: “One of the issues that we are trying to emphasize is that nurses must be supported in whatever decision they make, whether they take the risk or choose not to take the risk to protect families.

“It’s a heart-wrenching decision, and many nurses have expressed that they feel sadness and sorrow that they are leaving their colleagues and patients. It’s a difficult decision, and that in itself can be emotionally traumatic.”

Stokes believes the psychological consequences of putting nurses in these dilemmas will be profound and long-lasting. She predicts high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder and secondary trauma syndrome trailing the pandemic.

“Nurses were already burned out before, and this pandemic might push many of them completely out,” she said.

The mental health toll on medical workers was put into sobering perspective after New York City emergency room doctor Lorna Breen died by suicide. A hotline created by physicians to help doctors deal with the anxiety of combating the crisis said it averages up to 20 calls a day. Another hotline, For The Frontlines, has also been set up as a 24-hour resource for other health care and essential workers.

“I would anticipate increased apprehension possibly extending into anxiety or mood problems,” said Dr. Sheetal Marri, a psychiatrist, referring not only to nurses who continued to work but also to those who stepped back. “These effects will impact the way nurses and other health care professionals will deal with workplace health hazards even after this pandemic is over.”

Stanton said she would like to return to nursing but only once guidelines are restored and she can feel safe going to work again. While she is taking this time to focus on her family, she still misses her job.

“I loved being a nurse. You do it because you care, you want to help people,” she said. ” But right now, nurses don’t feel like heroes. We feel expendable.”

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.

Source: Posted and retrieved May 10, 2020 from: https://news.yahoo.com/why-nurses-quit-during-coronavirus-104910947.html?.tsrc=notification-brknews

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VIDEO – Doctors and Nurses Reveal the Devastating Reality of COVID-19 – https://youtu.be/OVp2U2p4lmE

The Atlantic
Posted April 4, 2020 – Chaos. Fear. Dwindling stockpiles of equipment. Impossible choices. Patients dying alone. These are some of the things that health-care professionals describe facing while fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past week, we spoke with doctors, nurses, and physician assistants at some of the hardest-hit hospitals in the nation. In a new documentary from The Atlantic, they bring us into their devastating new reality.

Subscribe to The Atlantic on YouTube: http://bit.ly/subAtlanticYT

Don’t get it twisted, First Responders are dying, some have even committed suicide in this crisis.

This old adage seem apropos at this time:

Never kill yourself for people who would rather watch you die.

This commentary is manifesting a harsh reality: there are Crony-Capitalistic forces at play! Though only indirectly related, the designs of Big Pharma should not be ignored; this was conveyed in a previous commentary by the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean:

Big Pharma or the Pharmaceutical industry, dictates standards of care in the field of medicine, more so than may be a best-practice. There is [the visual] of a familiar scene where pharmaceutical salesmen slip in the backdoor to visit doctors to showcase latest product lines … there are commission kick-backs [tied] in these arrangements.

As a result, treatments like Chemo-therapy cost $20,000+/month; and the War against Cancer is imperiled due to industry profit insistence.

So there are “Big Profits” in the medical industry, right?! Enough to go around so that everyone benefits, right? Nope; not at all; it becomes obvious very quickly that underlying to Crony-Capitalism is greed – more for them; less for you. In a previous Go Lean commentary, this attribute of Big Pharma was exposed:

Book Review – ‘Thimerosal: Let The Science Speak’
The King of Pop, Michael Jackson, released a song with the title: “They don’t really care about us”; he very well could have been talking about Big Pharma. In a previous blog/commentary, the pharmaceutical industry was assailed over one cancer drug, Gleevec. The commentary clearly depicted the perils of Crony-Capitalism.

Crony-Capitalism is not for the Greater Good. It is not good economics, good security nor good governance. These activities must be monitored and mitigated. [See the Michael  Jackson VIDEO of the song “They don’t care about us” in the link here.]

Accepting the truism of Crony-Capitalism in the medical industry, is there any doubt that nurses consider themselves undervalued by their employers and the overall community?

They have been treated as sacrificial, more so than essential.

This sends a Cautionary Warning to all those medical professionals in the Caribbean that may want to emigrate to the United States.

Stay home – “they do not really care about us”.

For those already in the US, lamenting the sad state of affairs, we urge:

Time to Go! We can readily reform and transform the Caribbean homeland with the lesser Crony-Capitalistic influences.

This was the consideration summary in many previous blog-commentaries:

Consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14114 School Shootings ‘R’ Us – 11 in 23 Days
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14087 Opioids and the FDA – ‘Fox guarding the Henhouse’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12949 US Charities too easily exploit Caribbean Disasters
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11269 Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – An American Sickness
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11057 Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Selling-Out American Workers
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6819 Perils of the deficient American food standards – Easy to Do Better

Essential or sacrificial … is a serious consideration for emigrant (overseas ) workers.

If a country shows little – or no – regards for their own people, imagine how much less they would show towards you, the alien-foreigner-worker?!

(There is the documented “bad” track record of American Cruise Lines treating their alien-foreign-workers with little regard – “modern-day-slavery”).

This “inconvenient truth” is related to a strong point conveyed in another previous Go Lean commentary about the immigrant workers who went to England – after World War II – only to find an unwelcoming society and unappreciated employers – their paychecks were likened to poverty wages. It is only apropos to Encore that original July 10, 2014 blog-commentary here-now:

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Go Lean Commentary – British public sector workers strike over ‘poverty pay’

The grass is not greener on the other side.
Go from being a big fish in a small pond, to a small fish in a big pond.

These expressions are relevant in considering the fate of so many Caribbean Diaspora that had fled their Caribbean homelands over the past decades to take residence in Great Britain. Many of them sought refuge as career civil servants; (one reason [a] was the acute racism and intolerance encountered in private enterprises). These ones are faced with the harsh reality that pay scales in the public sector have not kept pace with inflation; they are now at poverty level. See the news article here:

By: Tess Little (Editing by Stephen Addison)

British strike 1LONDON (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of public sector workers including teachers, council workers and firefighters staged a 24-hour pay strike on Thursday in a stoppage that has prompted Prime Minister David Cameron to pledge a crackdown on union powers.

Protesters marched through the streets of many of Britain’s main cities in one of the biggest co-ordinated labour stoppages for three years.

Denouncing what they called “poverty pay,” they demanded an end to restrictions on wage rises that have been imposed by the government over the past four years in an effort to help reduce Britain’s huge budget deficit.

In London, demonstrators marched towards Trafalgar Square at midday, chanting “Low pay, no way, no slave labour” to the beat of a drum. A giant pair of inflatable scissors, carried by members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), read “Education cuts never heal.”

Firefighter Simon Amos, 47, marched wearing his uniform behind a flashing fire engine parading members of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU). “The government [is] making us pay more for our pension for it to be worth the same, and making us work longer,” he said.

British strike 2The biggest public sector union involved, Unison, said early reports showed the strike had led to 3,225 school closures with more than 1,000 others partially closed.

Refuse collectors, school support staff, cleaners, street sweepers, care workers, nursery assistants and social workers were joining the strike, it added.

Hot spots, it said, included the North East, Wales and East Midlands where most council offices had closed, while more than 60 picket lines have closed most services in Newcastle.

“It is a massive decision by local government and school support workers to sacrifice a day’s pay by going on strike, but today they are saying enough is enough,” said Unison General Secretary, Dave Prentis in a statement.

Britain’s coalition government has enforced a policy of pay restraint for public sector workers since coming to power in 2010, imposing a pay freeze until 2012 and then a one percent pay rise cap, resulting in a fall in income in real terms [compared to inflation].

The Cabinet Office played down the impact of the strike, saying that most schools in England and Wales were open and that fire services were operating throughout the country.

British strike 3On Wednesday, Cameron told parliament he planned to limit unions’ powers to call strikes.

“How can it possibly be right for our children’s education to be disrupted by trade unions acting in this way” he said.

Tough new laws would be proposed in the Conservative manifesto for next year’s general election, he added.

These would include the introduction of a minimum threshold in the number of union members who need to take part in a strike ballot for it to be legal.

The manifesto could also back the introduction of a time limit on how long a vote in favour of industrial action would remain valid.

The NUT mandate for Thursday’s strike, for example, came from a 2012 strike ballot based on a turnout of just 27 percent, Cameron said.

The issue of minimum voting thresholds last arose three months ago when a strike by London Underground train drivers caused huge disruption in the capital, prompting Mayor Boris Johnson to demand that at least half of a union’s members should vote in favour for a strike to go ahead.
Source: Reuters News Service; retrieved 07/10/2014 from: http://news.yahoo.com/public-sector-workers-strike-over-poverty-pay-105040672.html

Frankly, the Caribbean Diaspora employed in the British public sector can now do better at home … in the Caribbean.

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

Unfortunately for the Caribbean, this societal abandonment has continued, since the early days of the “Windrush Generation”[a] right up to now. In a recent blog post, this commentary related analysis by the Inter-American Development Bank that the Caribbean endures a brain drain of 70% among the college educated population; (https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1433).

Change has now come to the Caribbean.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). 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 opening 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 other issues that have been prominently addressed in the Go Lean book, namely that of the Civil Service and Labor Relations. There is the need for a professional staff in the Federal Civil Service. They require marketable benefits and compensation. There is also a role for Labor Unions to play in the elevation of Caribbean society. The Go Lean roadmap envisions an inclusionary attitude towards unions. The Go Lean community ethos is that of being partners with unions, not competitors. The book features specific tools and techniques that can enhance management-labor relationships.

These issues constitute heavy-lifting for the regional administration of the Caribbean:

  • fostering best practices for federal civil service and labor unions,
  • minimizing the brain drain, and
  • facilitating repatriation to the homeland.

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

Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future Page 21
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
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Negotiations Page 32
Strategy – Competition – Remain home   –vs- Emigrate Page 49
Strategy – Agents of Change – Aging Diaspora Page 57
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Versus Member-States Governments Page 71
Implementation – Year 1 / Assemble Phase – Establish Civil Service Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
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
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Labor Unions Page 164
Advocacy – Ways to Manage Federal Civil Service Page 173
Anecdote – Experiences of Diaspora Member Living Abroad Page 216
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora Page 217

The Go Lean roadmap has simple motives: fix the problems in the homeland to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work, learn and play. There should be no need to go abroad and try to foster an existence in a foreign land. So for those of Caribbean heritage working in the British Civil Service, we hear your pleas. Our response: Come home; come in from the cold.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people residing in the homeland and those of the Diaspora, to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This Big Idea for the region is a dramatic change; one that is overdue. The policies & practices of the past have failed Caribbean society. Too many people left, yet have little to show for it.

Caribbean music icon Bob Marley advocated this same charter for the Caribbean Diaspora. He sang to “come in from the cold” in the opening song of his last album Uprisings in 1980. How “spot-on’ were his words in the following music/video:

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

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Appendix – Cited Reference
a: “There was plenty of work in post-war Britain and industries such as British Rail, the National Health Service and public transport recruited almost exclusively from Jamaica and Barbados”. Retrieved July 10, 2014 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_African-Caribbean_people#The_.22Windrush_generation.22

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Good Leadership: Next Generation of ‘Agile’ Project Delivery

Posted on May 23, 2020 in Ethos, Government, Implementation, Industries

Go Lean Commentary

Good Project Management = Good Leadership.

The Art & Science of Project Management is just one way of  improving leadership. As related in the course of this series on Good Leadership, it is possible to change the habits and practices of the leadership of any society. Start at the top or start with the head and the body will follow.

This is a discussion about “tools and techniques”. As the world advances, not only do our tools – think computer hardware, software and communication systems – become more efficient and effective, but also the techniques …

Technique – Lexico, powered by Oxford
A way of carrying out a particular task, especially the execution or performance of an artistic work or a scientific procedure.

Technological tools and techniques evolve … over time.

Speaking of technological evolution, there used to be a time that people with professional careers didn’t know how to …

Type; (think typewriter).

… lawyers, accountants, managers and other occupations would simply dictate (live or into a “Dictaphone”) or wrote freehand and someone else would do the actual typing.

That is right; the typewriter was only used by secretaries, journalists and/or authors; (think Murder She Wrote opening credits). There were jobs like “Typing Pool”, Key-Punch Operators and Data Entry Clerk. Previously, the professional staffers would simply delegate their typing duties to these clerical specialists. In fact, the job title “Clerk/Typist” still exists in the office hierarchy, popular in many government agencies, even though there may be no more typing in their duties.

Then the world changed; driven mostly by technology advances. The Personal Computer was introduced in 1981; then smartphones in the 2000’s; now everyone knows how to type, and do their own typing. The workplace adapted to the new normal.

More technological advances; more adaptation … this time with project leadership. As related, the Art & Science of Project Management is just one form of leadership; good Project Management is part-and-parcel to Good Leadership. The importance of this Art & Science is related in the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean with this quotation (Page 109):

10 Ways to Deliver – # 1: Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market & Economy initiative: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).
… There are many projects that must be delivered on time, within budget and with a measurable satisfaction. These include Public Works, Information Technologies, Industrialization and others. Embracing a technocratic ethos means that these projects cannot be left to chance and hope for the best. They must be delivered. The CU envisions strict project management disciplines in the planning and executions of these regional endeavors.

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The Bottom Line on Project Management Office
A Project Management Office (PMO) is a group or department within a business, agency or enterprise that defines and maintains standards for project management within the organization. The PMO strives to standardize and introduce economies of repetition in the execution of projects. The PMO is the source of documentation, guidance and metrics on the practice of project management and execution. In some organizations this is known as the Program Management Office (sometimes abbreviated to PgMO to differentiate); the subtle difference is that program management relates to governing the management of several related projects. The Project Management Institute (PMI) Program Management Office Community of Practice (CoP), describes the PMO as a strategic driver for organizational excellence, which seeks to enhance the practices of execution management, organizational governance, & strategic change leadership.

PMOs may take other functions beyond standards and methodology, and participate in Strategic project management either as facilitator or actively as owner of the Portfolio Management process. Tasks may include monitoring and reporting on active projects and portfolios (following up project until completion), and reporting progress to top management for strategic decisions on what projects to continue or cancel. Traditional PMOs base project management principles on industry-standard methodologies such as Six Sigma, CMM, Agile and PRINCE2 – (an acronym for Projects in Controlled Environments, version 2); it is a project management methodology. It was developed by the UK government agency Office of Government Commerce (OGC) and is used extensively within the UK government as the de facto project management standard for its public projects).

As the tools and techniques evolve, Agile is the new wave in Project Management. This allows for the role of skilled project managers in societal deliveries; (or skilled project delivery even without project managers). See how this actuality was related in the Go Lean book.

10 Ways to Deliver – # 2: Agile – Lean
Agile project management is an iterative and incremental method of managing the design-and-build activities for engineering, information technology, and new product or service development projects in a highly flexible and interactive manner. Agile, linked to lean techniques, (delivering more value with less waste) is best used in small-scale projects.

There are many flavors – methodologies and frameworks – of Agile. These refer to the values and principles espoused in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development (2010).[5]  These underpin a broad range of software development frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban.[6][7] and SAFe, the most popular subset. See more details on SAFe here; (and related VIDEO’s in the Appendices below):

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a set of organization and workflow patterns intended to guide enterprises in scaling lean and agile practices.[1][2] Along with large-scale Scrum (LeSS), disciplined agile delivery (DAD), and Nexus, SAFe is one of a growing number of frameworks that seek to address the problems encountered when scaling beyond a single team.[3][4] SAFe is made freely available by Scaled Agile, Inc., which retains the copyrights and registered trademarks.[5]

SAFe promotes alignment, collaboration, and delivery across large numbers of agile teams. It was developed by and for practitioners, by leveraging three primary bodies of knowledge: agile software development, lean product development, and systems thinking.[6]

The primary reference for the scaled agile framework was originally the development of a big picture view of how work flowed from product management (or other stakeholders), through governance, program, and development teams, out to customers.[7][8] With the collaboration of others in the agile community, this was progressively refined and then first formally described in a 2007 book.[9] The framework continues to be developed and shared publicly; with an academy and an accreditation scheme supporting those who seek to implement, support, or train others in the adoption of SAFe.

Version 4.5, was released in June 2017[10] while the latest edition, version 5.0, was released in January 2020.[11]

While SAFe continues to be recognised as the most common approach to scaling agile practices (at 30 percent and growing),[12][13][14], it also receive criticism for being too hierarchical and inflexible.[15]

But the way technology advances and evolves, the only constant to change is change itself. So now even the “new thing” of Agile is being supplanted with an even “newer thing”. See this comment here from a relevant authority, and respected co-worker:

Quotation – Suman Surabi, Scrum Master with Daimler Benz (Mercedes-Benz Financial):

Agile is getting diluted…. SAFe and Kanban methodologies are being projected/becoming more popular these days.

If you looked 10 years back, or earlier, Project Management being very popular; then after from 2011-2016/17, Agile become very popular; now after especially from last 2 years SAFe is being projected by others as the popular methodology; even I agree with this to some extent.

… if you see the trends these days, the PM role has become negligible as many projects are going without PM’s – they may only have Product Owners, Scrum Masters and Product Managers. Where as in pure Agile projects, we used to have PM’s, now we see the trend for projects to be run without PM’s.

This commentary presents some strategies, tactics and implementations for pursuing the goal of reforming and transforming the Caribbean region. This commentary, along with the whole output from the movement behind the Go Lean book, asserts that Good Leadership is within reach for the Caribbean member-states. Just a little effort by the right people in the right positions and boom: Change, elevation and progress for everybody. “We” can do more with less.

Every month, the Go Lean movement presents a Teaching Series on a subject germane to Caribbean life. For this May 2020, our focus is on Good Leadership, positing that we need Good Leadership now more than ever, as the world battles the Coronavirus pandemic. This is entry 3 of 6 for this series, which details how to employ the tools and techniques of Agile to deliver projects on time, on budget and with a measurable satisfaction. The full catalog for this month’s series is listed as follows:

  1. Good Leadership – Inaction could be deadly
  2. Good Leadership – Caring builds trust; trust builds caring
  3. Good Leadership – Agile: Next Generation of leadership and project delivery
  4. Good Leadership – Hypocrisy cancels out Law-and-Order
  5. Good Leadership – Example – “Leader of the Free World”?
  6. Good Leadership – Example – For mitigating crime

There are no Ands, Ifs or Buts; we need Good Leadership – among our political, corporate, religious and civic stakeholders – to survive and thrive as a society. We needed this before this COVID-19 pandemic, and we will need it afterwards.

This theme, “effective leadership tools and techniques”, shows the positive consequences of leadership attempting to get better in their deliveries. The points of better deliveries, using lean-agile methodologies in a corporate setting (i.e. CitiGroup) was elaborated in a previous blog-commentary from August 9, 2018:

‘Lean Is’ as ‘Lean Does’ – Good Project Management

“It is good to be lean”.

But lean does not just happen, it takes real effort to be lean.

This is the awakening, right now at the Wall Street Big Bank CitiGroup. They are making an all-out effort to “do more with less” and they are thusly investing in “process and people” or “people and process” to be lean. They have launched an all-encompassing program branded CitiLean – a continuous improvement program with tangible and measurable benefits to Citi and its customers. This features “process and people” in every sphere of Citi’s operations: employees, contractors, suppliers and vendors. In fact, they even present an annual Lean Partner Award to recognize the supplier that most embodies the spirit of CitiLean.

The Go Lean book … asserts that any Caribbean super-national governance must be a lean operation, embracing the best-practices of the Art & Science of lean methodologies. The book opens with this introduction of lean (Page 4):

The CU will also be lean (adjective), in that it will not feature a “fat” bureaucracy. To the contrary, the institutions of the CU Trade Federation will embrace lean, agile, efficient organization structures – more virtual, less physical, more systems, less payroll. This will result in less of a tax burden for the people of the Caribbean.

Also, consider this sample of previous submissions of Good Leadership in corporate settings:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19669 Keep the Change of “Working From Home”
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18749 Learning from Another ‘Great Place to Work’: Mercedes-Benz
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16002 Good Governance: Good Corporate Compliance
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16000 Good Governance: Facilitating Local Economic Empowerment
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15543 Fostering Caribbean Unity – Learning from the Ross University Saga
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14191 Scheduling and Lean Workforce Management in the ‘Gig Economy’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11184 JPMorganChase investing $10 billion in Lean ‘Fintech’ for just 1 year
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8966 For-Profit Education Companies – Plenty of Profit; Little Education
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2126 Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market

In summary, there is a formula for Good Leadership in organization structures; this could be corporate entities or government agencies. The goal is to deliver on behalf of the stakeholders: shareholders or citizens. We need to double-down on this formula. Agile project management has proven that it can ensure on-time, on-budget deliveries. See the related VIDEO’s in the Appendices below.

There is a pandemic crisis – Coronavirus-COVID-19 – we need effective deliveries right now. The scientific best-practice is to:

  • Test
  • Trace
  • Isolate

A culture of Good Leadership, good administration and good delivery will help our society endure this crisis. Let’s all do more, with less – this is the mantra of agile, lean project management.

Yes, elevating Caribbean leadership will actually elevate Caribbean society.

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders – corporate and government – to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap. This is how we will make our homeland a better place to live, work and play.  🙂

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

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

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

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):

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

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

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

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

—————-

Appendix VIDEO 1 – What is Agile – https://youtu.be/Z9QbYZh1YXY  

Mark Shead
Posted May 31, 2016 – This short cartoon answers the question “What Is Agile?” and will give you the background to understand the Agile principles and values and how they can help you and your team work together more efficiently.

If you’d like a free book on this topic, please see below… https://mailchi.mp/326ba47ba2e8/agile…

I’ve published a book called “Starting Agile” that is designed to help you start your team’s Agile journey outright. You can buy a copy from Amazon, but I’m giving free copies away to my subscribers from YouTube.

You can signup for a copy at the link above.

You can subscribe to my channel with this link: https://www.youtube.com/markshead?sub…

If you’d like to connect with me on LinkedIn you can find me at the link below. Just send me a message saying hello and that you found me from one of my videos: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markshead

—————-

Appendix VIDEO 2 – What is Agile Methodology? – https://youtu.be/ZZ_vnqvW4DQ

Mark Shead
Posted Aug 22, 2018 – Agile is a collection of values and principles. So what is this “Agile Methodology” you keep hearing people talk about? If you’d like a free book on this topic, please see below…

I’ve published a book called “Starting Agile” that is designed to help you start your team’s Agile journey outright. You can buy a copy from Amazon, but I’m giving free copies away to my subscribers from YouTube.

You can signup for a copy at this link:

https://mailchi.mp/326ba47ba2e8/agile…

—————-

Appendix VIDEO 3 – Scrum vs Kanban – Two Agile Teams Go Head-to-Head – https://youtu.be/HNd1_irOL5k  

Posted Sep 27, 2017 –
Development That Pays

This is the tale of two Agile teams. It wasn’t just an organisational separation: it was an AGILE separation.

Download your FREE CHEAT SHEET: http://bit.ly/scrum-vs-kanban-cheatsheet

This is a story of Two Agile Teams. More correctly, it’s the tale of one Agile Team that split into two Agile Teams.

What makes the story interesting is that it was more than just an organisational separation.

It was an Agile separation:

– One team continued as before – with *Scrum*

– The other team dropped Scrum in favour of *Kanban*

Will it all end in tears?

→ SUBSCRIBE for a NEW EPISODE every WEDNESDAY: http://www.DevelopmentThatPays.com/-/…

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Keep the Change: Mono-Industrial Economy Exhaustion

Posted on April 26, 2020 in Economics, Ethos, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

We have all seen-heard the common expressions of exhaustion:

I am sick and tired of being ‘sick and tired’.

Grow up Already, and take care of your own business.

I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change; I am changing the things I cannot accept.

From the very beginning we, the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean, set-out to correct this blatant flaw in our societal design – Page 3, Paragraph 2:

Many people love their homelands and yet still begrudgingly leave; this is due mainly to the lack of economic opportunities. The Caribbean has tried, strenuously, over the decades, to diversify their economy away from the mono-industrial trappings of tourism, and yet tourism is still the primary driver of the economy. Prudence dictates that the Caribbean nations expand and optimize their tourism products, but also look for other opportunities for economic expansion. The requisite investment of the resources (time, talent, treasuries) for this goal may be too big for any one Caribbean member-state. Rather, shifting the responsibility to a region-wide, professionally-managed, deputized technocracy will result in greater production and greater accountability. This deputized agency is the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).

Enough already! We are exhausted from all this deficiency.

Thanks to the Coronavirus – COVID-19 crisis, the world is re-thinking mono-industrial trappings. It is not good to “put all the eggs in one basket”. See this dramatization in the Appendix VIDEO below.

If you are dependent on tourism, be On Guard, with no COVID-19 vaccine or treatment, travel restrictions and social distancing will be the new normal for a long time still – maybe 18 months. This means 2022 before a return to 2019 levels of economic output.

Those dependent on tourism are hereby being forced to accept changes and make adjustments.

They are being forced to make a change, not just temporarily to get past this crisis, but rather permanent change to fix the “cracks in the foundation”. They want to Keep the Change and complete the diversification pledge.

This is also the narrative for another industry and another country, that of Saudi Arabia. Right now; their society is mono-industrial – oil – but they want to be less vulnerable to the volatility of oil prices and oil revenues. So they want to contemplate other ways to diversify their economy. They want to Keep the Change; see the Appendix below. Their ‘Will to Change’ is strong as they have been Oil Rich for a long time.

Movie Quotes: Trading Places (1983)
“The best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people” – Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy)

The price of oil dropped to $11.26 a barrel (55 ga1lons) earlier this month; this was the absolute lowest in recent history. Oil revenues cratered for all such Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

How about us in the Caribbean?

While we do have some OPEC members in our region – 2 of 30 – the vast majority of the Caribbean depend on a different mono-industrial engine: tourism. Likewise, most of our countries too, have failed to deliver any diversification to the industrial offering.

The problem is the mono-industrial engine.

The solution is diversification.

How do we go about manifesting this change, Keeping this Change?

(Saudi Arabia is out of scope for the movement behind the Go Lean book).

The Go Lean book presented strategies, tactics and implementations to pursue this goal. The diversification mission was stated as follows (Page 45):

Build and foster local economic engines. This will diversify the economy, while still enhancing the tourism product, and create a perpetual eco-system for job creation. Whereas certain provisions are impractical for a small-population-market, once that market is super-sized, there must be local solutions. This is best illustrated with the regions undeniable need for food, clothing and shelter. A market-size of 42 million must foster industries on Main Street to produce and supply these basic needs. By fulfilling this mission, a strategic and defensive stance, other aspects of the economy gets the peripheral benefit: jobs, lower costs of living, control of inflation – fostering middle class prospects.

Every month, the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean present a Teaching Series on a subject germane to Caribbean life. For this April 2020, our focus was on the impact of the Coronavirus on the economic engines in the region. There is now the need to re-focus on the changes this crisis has ushered in and to Keep the Changes that are good and may have always been needed, like industrial diversification. This is entry 5 of 5 for this series, it completes the series and encores the certainty and urgency to flex our economic muscles to “put our eggs in more than one basket”.

The full catalog for this month’s series is listed as follows:

  1. Keep the Change – Lower Carbon Consumption abating Climate Change
  2. Keep the Change – Working From Home & the Call Center Model
  3. Keep the Change – Schools – Primary to Tertiary – making e-Learning work
  4. Keep the Change – Basic Needs: Cannot just consume; we must produce as well
  5. Keep the Change – Mono-Industrial Economy: ‘All eggs in 1 basket’

Don’t get it twisted, this Coronavirus-COVID-19 threat means death and devastation for many people and it has devastated the economic engines of most countries. There are no Ands, Ifs or Buts; we are not immune here in the Caribbean. We must abide by best-practices or suffer the consequences. Crises bring challenges, challenges bring changes. Some good, some bad and some ugly.

Yes, we can … Keep the Changes for the good benefits. We have always needed to pursue a diversification of our industrial footprint, to accomplish this finally would be good. This diversification goal was previously identified, qualified and proposed with different Industrial Reboot solutions, spread across 2 years. See this chronological list of previous submissions:

  1. Industrial Reboots – Ferries 101 – Published June 27, 2017
  2. Industrial Reboots – Prisons 101 – Published October 4, 2017
  3. Industrial Reboots – Pipeline 101 – Published October 5, 2017
  4. Industrial Reboots – Frozen Foods 101 – Published October 6, 2017
  5. Industrial Reboots – Commercial Gigs 101 – Published February 8, 2018
  6. Industrial Reboots – Call Centers 101 – Published July 2, 2018
  7. Industrial Reboots – Prefab Housing 101 – Published July 14, 2018
  8. Industrial Reboots – Trauma 101 – Published July 18, 2018
  9. Industrial Reboots – Auto-making 101 – Published July 19, 2018
  10. Industrial Reboots – Shipbuilding 101 – Published July 20, 2018
  11. Industrial Reboots – Fisheries 101 – Published July 23, 2018
  12. Industrial Reboots – Lottery 101 – Published July 24, 2018
  13. Industrial Reboots – Culture 101 – Published July 25, 2018
  14. Industrial Reboots – Tourism 2.0 – Published July 27, 2018
  15. Industrial Reboots – Cruise Tourism 2.0 – Published July 27, 2018
  16. Industrial Reboots – Reinsurance Sidecars 101 – Published October 2, 2018
  17. Industrial Reboots – Navy Piers 101 – Published October 9, 2018
  18. Industrial Reboots – Payment Cards 101 – Published October 11, 2018
  19. Industrial Reboots – Medical Schools 101 – Published March 1, 2019
  20. Industrial Reboots – Amusements Parks 101 – Published May 8, 2019

In summary, our Caribbean region needs a diversified industrial landscape to improve our economics, security and governance. This is why we must Keep the Change. emanating from this Coronavirus-COVID-19 crisis.

If the only positive thing that comes from this crisis is a diversified economy, then that would be a good benefit from a bad sacrifice, a good return on a huge investment.

The sacrifices would not have been in vain.

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste!

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders to work to reform and transform our homeland. We urge you to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap to reboot the industrial landscape. This is how we will make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):

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

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

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

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

——————-

Appendix VIDEO – Idioms – Don’t put all your eggs in one basket – https://youtu.be/EFkSIuNTdXc

Posted December 2, 2016

Sprachenzentrum Hochschule Nordhausen

——————-

Appendix – A new direction for the Saudi Arabian economy
Sub-title: As Saudi Arabia moves to diversify its economy away from oil, its private sector is beginning to truly thrive

Saudi Arabia finds itself at a significant economic crossroads. Home to the second-largest oil reserves in the world, the kingdom’s economy has been largely defined by the crude industry since drillers first struck oil in Dammam in March 1938. The discovery marked a watershed moment in the nation’s history, sparking an economic boom and propelling Saudi Arabia towards becoming one of the world’s wealthiest countries. Today, the nation is recognised as a global economic powerhouse, sitting among the G20 countries and boasting one of the highest GDPs in the Middle East.

While oil has brought Saudi Arabia great wealth and prosperity, we know one thing for certain – it won’t last forever. Crude is a finite resource and, although there is much debate surrounding the extent of the nation’s vast oil reserves, some estimates predict that supplies will last just 70 more years. This looming time limit – coupled with a global push to create a greener future – has seen Saudi Arabia begin to craft its vision for a post-oil era.

In 2016, Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched the ambitious Vision 2030, a far-reaching reform plan that aims to diversify the economy away from oil, bolstering the private sector and improving employment opportunities for young people. The plan seeks to create a thriving economy where non-oil sectors such as tourism, manufacturing and renewable energy can drive growth, and entrepreneurial activities are encouraged. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are a main focus for Vision 2030, with the project seeking to increase the contribution of SMEs to the Saudi Arabian GDP from 20 to 35 percent over the next decade. As the government forges ahead with its diversification drive, Saudi businesses must develop in line with these exciting transformations. A new economic ecosystem is emerging in Saudi Arabia and opportunities are plentiful for those businesses that contribute to its creation.

Burgeoning businesses
With Saudi Arabia ramping up its economic transformation plan, the nation’s private sector is truly coming into its own, and non-oil industries are beginning to drive growth. One such industry is the Saudi insurance market, which has shown great promise in recent years, emerging as one of the largest insurance sectors in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. Since first opening its doors to customers in 1986, the Company for Cooperative Insurance (Tawuniya) has grown into one of the nation’s foremost insurance providers, offering more than 60 insurance products – including medical, motor, fire, property, engineering, casualty, marine, energy and aviation insurance – in order to protect Saudi citizens from all manner of risk.

See the full article here: https://www.worldfinance.com/featured/a-new-direction-for-the-saudi-arabian-economy published October 3, 2019 retrieved April 26, 2020.

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Keep the Change: Being ‘Basic’ about Basic Needs

Posted on April 25, 2020 in Economics, Ethos, Government, Industries, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

The strong urging to the Caribbean today is to:

Be more Basic.

What exactly does this mean?

Sometimes the reference is good, sometimes bad, and sometimes ugly.

What does Basic Mean? – www.dictionary.com
In slang, basic characterizes someone or something as unoriginal, unexceptional, and mainstream. A basic girl—or basic bitch as she is often insulted—is said to like pumpkin spice lattes, UGG boots, and taking lots of selfies, for instance.

WHERE DOES BASIC COME FROM?

According to Green’s Dictionary of Slang, basic emerges as slang for someone or something as being “unexciting, unexceptional, or uneventful” in the 1970s. This is an outgrowth of the negative sense of basic as “plain and simple”.

The slang especially stuck to women. In their 1984 song “Meeting in the Ladies Room,” the R&B girl group Klymaxx call a woman basic for making moves on another’s boyfriend. [(See Appendix A below)].

The 2000s saw the rise of the term basic bitch, or a woman who is uninteresting and mainstream in her tastes, interests, style, or personality. Comedian Lil Duval had a 2009 video about the Basic Bitch. [(See Appendix B below)]. The 2011 song “Gucci Gucci” by Kreayshawn features the hook: “And we stunting like / Gucci Gucci, Louis Louis, Fendi Fendi, Prada / Basic bitches wear that shit so I don’t even bother.”

Basic has since become associated with unlikeable, predictable, and ordinary things, especially associated with young white women.

WHO USES BASIC?

While basic can describe anyone or anything considered disagreeably mainstream, it especially insults, as noted, young white women. As basic and basic bitch spread in popular culture, some women aren’t oblivious to their supposed basic-ness but ironically embrace it. But men, be very careful about calling a woman basic, let alone basic bitch. We don’t recommend it.

NOTE:
This is not meant to be a formal definition of basic like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of basic that will help our users expand their word mastery.

The take-away from this foregoing “ugly” definition is that “basic is ‘plain and simple’”.

The plain and simple requirement is that the 30 member-states of the political Caribbean need to do a better job of fulfilling its basic needs: food, clothing, shelter and energy. Globalization has failed us – we must do the Basic ourselves. We do not necessarily need – though we might want – all the fancy solutions.

  • Hungry? Go Fish … or go outside and pluck from a family garden or a family farm. How about plucking eggs or tree-ripen selections from fruit trees (think tomatoes) or a fattened bull for slaughter?
  • Naked? Pull out the sewing machine and make a garment; sweatshops in low-wage countries are the breeding grounds for this virus. How about Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) garments; i.e. mask, gowns, tunics, jackets?
  • Homeless? Gather the building materials and construct a house. Zoning and HOA rules must be agile and flexible. How about allowing family gardens and/or community gardens in urban areas? Barn-houses in rural areas?
  • Stranded? Use the wind to move a turbine and/or move a vehicle (boat) from Point A to Point B. How about generating electricity from alternative sources (wind, sun, thermal and tidal), then powering electric cars?

Thanks to the Coronavirus – COVID-19 crisis, the world is re-thinking the fulfillment of these basic needs. Believe it or not, in every jurisdiction Food Service workers are now regarded as Essential Workers. This is a fundamental change – a shift in values – for jobs that had previously been valued as inconsequential or unworthy for most, except the lowest in society; think  the new immigrants (Migrant Workers) toiling in the fields and the packing houses.

Are these ones now “essential” or sacrificial?

Or are they now … simply Basic?

It’s time to acknowledge the change … and Keep the Change to our value systems. It is time to acknowledge that fulfilling our basic needs is a basic requirement for survival as a people and a collective society.

So often, the basic needs for Caribbean survival were just delegated to others, only fulfilled through imports. But now that it is April 2020 and the world is locked-down, sheltering-in-place, the majority of people have had to avoid gathering for all but essential interactions in order to “flatten the curve”. Those who gather and distribute our food are now more valued and more expensive.

Have you noticed the increase in prices for our necessities? We can no longer be “cute”, only desiring the fancy brands. No, we now have to be basic. We need to Keep this Change.

The 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean had originally asserted that doubling-down on Basic Needs was the key to reforming and transforming the societal engines in our Caribbean homeland. The book stated that the best way to reboot the economy and recover from the Global Crisis – that time it was the Great Recession of 2007 to 2009 – was to double-down on the Basics. There is an actual advocacy of this purpose in the Go Lean book; see here some of the specific plans, excerpts and headlines from Page 152, entitled:

10 Ways to Create Jobs … in the Caribbean Region

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market Confederation Treaty: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU)
The CU will allow for the unification of the region into one market, thereby creating a single economy of 30 member- states, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion. The CU’s mission is to create high-paying jobs for the region, beyond the minimum wage (defined below). Many high-wage industries would be promoted, incentivized and regulated at the federal level, even new industries created. Jobs come from trade; the CU goal is to improve trade. The CU will thus institute Enterprise Zones and Empowerment Zones – SGE’s – with tax benefits: rebates, abatements – as job creation pockets. The CU will capture data, micro and macro economic metrics, to measure the success/failure of these initiatives.
2 Feed Ourselves
The industries of agri-business allow structured commercial systems to grow, harvest and trade in food supplies. Many of the Caribbean member states (Lesser Antilles) acquire all their food in trade, the agricultural footprint is very small, though some countries (Greater Antilles, Belize, Guyana & Suriname) have a low opportunity cost for producing food. But with the Trade Federation in force, intra-region trade will be the first priority. When the demand is qualified, quantified and assured, the supply and quality there in, will catch up.
3 Clothe Ourselves
With textiles manufacturing; fashion merchandising and logistical industries, jobs can be created in the supply of apparel, shoes and accessories. Today, 90 – 99% of the supply is foreign trade. But once the CU regional demand is qualified, quantified and assured, the local supply will catch up further. 4
4 House Ourselves
In the US, it’s a truism of the National Association of Realtors® that “housing creates jobs” [239]. With the repatriation of the Caribbean Diaspora, local building supplies and new “housing starts” will emerge in the Caribbean. Plus, the CU will facilitate mortgage secondary market and pre-fabulous construction thereby fostering new housing sub-industries.
5 Update Our Own Infrastructure and the Industries They Spun
6 Help Regional Businesses Find Foreign Markets
7 Steer More People to S.T.E.M. Education and Careers
8 Welcome Home Emigrants [ or Repatriates]
9 Welcome “Empowering” Immigrants
10 Draw More Tourists

Every month, the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean present a Teaching Series on a subject germane to Caribbean life. For this April 2020, our focus is on the impact of the Coronavirus on the Globe, region, each member-state (national), community and each family. There is the need to re-focus on the changes this crisis has ushered in and to Keep the Changes that were always needed for implementation. This is entry 4 of 5 for this series, which details that there is the need to double-down on Basic Needs (food, clothing, shelter and energy.

The full catalog for this month’s series is listed as follows:

  1. Keep the Change – Lower Carbon Consumption abating Climate Change
  2. Keep the Change – Working From Home & the Call Center Model
  3. Keep the Change – Schools – Primary to Tertiary – making e-Learning work
  4. Keep the Change – Basic Needs: Cannot just consume; we must produce as well
  5. Keep the Change – Mono-Industrial Economy: ‘All eggs in 1 basket’

Don’t get it twisted, this Coronavirus-COVID-19 threat means death and devastation for many people and it has devastated the economic engines of most countries – our Caribbean homelands included. There are no Ands, Ifs or Buts; changes are afoot. Some good, some bad and some ugly.

Yes, we can … Keep the Change for the good benefits. We have always needed to do a better job for Food Security. In fact this was the subject of a whole series in December 2019 where we identified these issues, challenges and solutions:

  1. Food Security – Bread Baskets on Land and Sea
  2. Food Security – Temperate Foods in the Tropics
  3. Food Security – Opportunity: 1 County in Iowa raises all the Beef for a Caribbean Cruise Line
  4. Food Security – FTAA: A Lesson in History for servicing Local Foods
  5. Food Security – Big Chicken – Low-hanging fruit for all Poultry needs

The points of reforming and transforming the Caribbean eco-systems for other basic needs – think clothing, housing and energy – were also elaborated upon in many previous blog-commentaries; consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19327 ‘Missing Solar’ – Inadequacies Exposed to the World
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18287 The Housing Industry can save us – in Good Times and Bad
 https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17280 Way Forward – For Energy: ‘Trade’ Winds
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13985 EU Assists Barbados in Renewable Energy Self-Sufficiency
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14250 Leading with Money Matters – As Goes Housing, Goes the Market
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11737 Robots Building Houses – More than Fiction
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10373 Science of Sustenance: CLT Housing
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10371 Science of Sustenance: e-Clothing
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/? p=10367 Science of Sustenance: Energy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5155 Tesla unveils super-battery to enable Alternative Energy for homes
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2726 Caribbean People have thrived in Fashion industry – Oscar De La Renta
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=665 Real Estate Investment Trusts – Solution for financing Housing industry

Call us Basic … I dare you.

Rather than an insult, we need to be proud to be more technocratic in the fulfillment of our basic needs. “Plain and simple”, we need to:

  • Feed Ourselves
  • Clothe Ourselves
  • House Ourselves

We should be insulted that we are NOT Basic.

This is why we must Keep the Change.

Coronavirus COVID-19 is not a good happenstance – people are dying.

However, if we can use this crisis to forge change in our society, force changes to our “community ethos” (the Will to Change) and to the societal engines for economics, security and governance, then those sacrifices would not have been in vain.

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste!

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders to work to reform and transform our homeland. How? The strategies, tactics and implementations are all identified, qualified and proposed in the pages of the Go Lean book. It’s a full roadmap for change. A complete roadmap to make our homelands better places to live, work and play. 🙂

About the Book

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

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

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

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

Who We Are

The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 14):

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

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

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

xxx. Whereas the effects of globalization can be felt in every aspect of Caribbean life, from the acquisition of food and clothing, to the ubiquity of ICT, the region cannot only consume, it is imperative that our lands also produce and add to the international community, even if doing so requires some sacrifice and subsidy.

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

——————

Appendix A VIDEO – Klymaxx – Meeting In The Ladies Room (Official Video)  – https://youtu.be/_odTlZaoLCA

Klymaxx

Posted Dec 25, 2009 – Best of Klymaxx: https://goo.gl/QEYkmT

Subscribe here: https://goo.gl/2vDd9j

Music video by Klymaxx performing Meeting In The Ladies Room. (C) 1985 Geffen Records

#Klymaxx #MeetingInTheLadiesRoom #Vevo

Music in this video

Learn more

Listen ad-free with YouTube Premium

  • Song: Meeting In The Ladies Room (Radio Edit)
  • Artist: Klymaxx 
  • Licensed to YouTube by: UMG (on behalf of Geffen*); ARESA, UNIAO BRASILEIRA DE EDITORAS DE MUSICA – UBEM, BMG Rights Management (US), LLC, Sony ATV Publishing, CMRRA, Abramus Digital, EMI Music Publishing, LatinAutor – PeerMusic, LatinAutor, Audiam (Publishing), LatinAutor – SonyATV, BMI – Broadcast Music Inc., SOLAR Music Rights Management, and 4 Music Rights Societies

——————

Appendix B VIDEO – @LilDuval BASIC BITCH! – https://youtu.be/PUXt7N_TmdI

[This content of this VIDEO is profane, misogynistic and racist; highly inappropriate, but still considered art.]

Posted Aug 3, 2009

LILDUVAL TV SPOKENREASONS BASIC BITCH CALLING A WOMAN A BITCH YOUR A BITCH NO OFFENSE DRAMA FOR YO MAMA FUNNY COMEDY TWITTER LIL DUVAL NECOLE BITCHIE SKYPE BRAVE JB DA POET FUNNIEST BOY ALIVE FUNNIEST MAN ALIVE FUNNIEST YOUTUBER ALIVE STAND UP COMEDY DEF POETRY JAM BEST POET ALIVE TWITTER ME I LOVE TWITTER

Music in this video

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Listen ad-free with YouTube Premium

 

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Keep the Change: Working From Home

Posted on April 23, 2020 in Economics, Ethos, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

In case you missed it:

After advocating for the Caribbean Diaspora to repatriate back to their ancestral homelands, this writer returned back to the Bahamas in August 2019.

Psst…here’s the not-so-secret revelation:

“I kept my US-based job and simply Work from Home (WFH)”.

Welcome to the modern world …

… while WFH was a minority model operating in a majority world, something is happening in 2020: Coronavirus – COVID-19.

Now many-most White Collar workers have been working from home. It’s been part of the shelter-in-place/lockdown protocols. The majority of people in society have avoided gathering and all but essential contact for people – other than their immediate household – in order to “flatten the curve”.

It has worked!

Though infection rates has progressively risen, it has been far less dire than what was possible or feared. Consider the Bahamas for example, they only have 70 ventilators in the whole country to service 350,000 people; but their infection rates hasn’t exceeded more than 50 by April 2020. The same patterns have materialized in many countries that complied – early – with these protocols. (Italy on the other hand, overwhelmed their hospitals, ICU’s and ventilators at the peak of their crisis).

Public Health Lessons learned!

Change was mandated: many Blue Collar staffers were laid-off or furloughed from their jobs – other than the “essential” workers – during the shelter-in-place periods; unemployment rates soared. But for the White Collar staff, they were able to shift to the Work From Home model…and productivity and incomes were sustained.

Let’s summarize: schools were shuttered; day care facilities closed; e-Learning schemes deployed, and in-the-office jobs suspended, so home became the workplace, class room and college campus and yet many companies found that their White Collar staff still delivered. Think Accounting, Payroll-Human Resources, Information Technology, Collections, and Telephone-based Customer Service continued unabated; even governments and back-office banking (Commercial, Trust, Investment) continued unimpeded. See this portrayal in the follow news article – VIDEO:

Title: As coronavirus forces millions to work remotely, the US economy may have reached a ‘tipping point’ in favor of working from home
By: Lindsey Jacobson

KEY POINTS

  • Companies are enabling remote work to keep business running while helping employees follow social distancing guidelines.
  • A typical company saves about $11,000 per half-time telecommuter per year, according to Global Workplace Analytics.
  • As companies adapt to their remote work structures, the coronavirus pandemic is having a lasting impact on how work is conducted.

With the U.S. government declaring a state of emergency due to the coronavirus, companies are enabling work-from-home structures to keep business running and help employees follow social distancing guidelines. However, working remotely has been on the rise for a while.

“The coronavirus is going to be a tipping point. We plodded along at about 10% growth a year for the last 10 years, but I foresee that this is going to really accelerate the trend,” Kate Lister, president of Global Workplace Analytics, told CNBC.

Gallup’s State of the American Workplace 2017 study found that 43% of employees work remotely with some frequency. Research indicates that in a five-day workweek, working remotely for two to three days is the most productive. That gives the employee two to three days of meetings, collaboration and interaction, with the opportunity to just focus on the work for the other half of the week.

Remote work seems like a logical precaution for many companies that employ people in the digital economy. However, not all Americans have access to the internet at home, and many work in industries that require in-person work.

According to the Pew Research Center, roughly three-quarters of American adults have broadband internet service at home. However, the study found that racial minorities, older adults, rural residents and people with lower levels of education and income are less likely to have broadband service at home. In addition, 1 in 5 American adults access the internet only through their smartphone and do not have traditional broadband access.

Full-time employees are four times more likely to have remote work options than part-time employees. A typical remote worker is college-educated, at least 45 years old and earns an annual salary of $58,000 while working for a company with more than 100 employees, according to Global Workplace Analytics.

New York, California and other states have enacted strict policies for people to remain at home during the coronavirus pandemic, which could change the future of work.

“I don’t think we’ll go back to the same way we used to operate,” Jennifer Christie, chief HR officer at Twitter, told CNBC. “I really don’t.”

Source: Posted March 23, 2020; retrieved April 23, 2020 from: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/23/what-coronavirus-means-for-the-future-of-work-from-home.html

————

VIDEO – With Coronavirus forcing millions to work from home, how productive can the US be while working remotely?  –  https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/03/23/what-coronavirus-means-for-the-future-of-work-from-home.html

Now for the corporate realizations and lessons-learned: perhaps businesses can accomplish Work from Home just as successfully as Work from the Office.

Keep the Change …

This is the theme of the April 2020 Teaching Series from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. This publication serves as a roadmap for the introduction of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). Every month, we presents a collection of blog-commentaries on a consistent subject germane to Caribbean life; this month we cannot ignore the actuality of this Coronavirus crisis. There have been changes to the workplace; some of which might be good; some benevolent consequences are emerging from this. This WFH discussion is entry 2-of-5 for this Keep the Change series. There are other benefits that are also submitted for consideration; the full month’s series are cataloged as follows:

  1. Keep the Change – Lower Carbon Consumption abating Climate Change
  2. Keep the Change – Working From Home & the Call Center Model
  3. Keep the Change – Schools – Primary to Tertiary – making e-Learning work
  4. Keep the Change – Basic Needs: Cannot just consume; we must produce as well
  5. Keep the Change – Mono-Industrial Economy: ‘All eggs in 1 basket’

Yes indeed, there are no Ands, Ifs or Buts …

… regarding COVID-19 – people are dying; patients are suffering; economies are faltering. Many jobs are essential and must persist in the workplace – public safety, food supply chain, etc. – but many jobs too can survive the WFH shift.

This is the business model for the Go Lean roadmap; while the rest of the world wrestle with the choices of which jobs to bring back to the workplace versus which jobs to allow to WFH, the Caribbean Union Trade Federation wants to present the proposals to bring those WFH jobs here. So maybe now, our Caribbean citizens can find new economic opportunities abroad without actually going abroad or abandoning the homeland.

Yes, we can … Keep the Change.

This is not a new discussion for the Go Lean movement. We had long contemplated jobs in the Caribbean homeland that could in-source for clients who are physically in other jurisdictions. In fact, the movement identified these prominent industries:

  • Call Centers – Title Industrial Reboot – Call Centers 101
    Industries that depended on phone calls … now have to reboot their industrial landscape and business model. This is bad! This is good! As it opens the opportunity for jobs in the Call Center industry.
    With modern Internet Communications Technology (ICT) – think Voice-over-IP – a phone call can originate or terminate around the globe, but feel/sound like it is next door. The premise of this business model for the Caribbean is simple: Why not make those calls / answer the phone here in the Caribbean?
    Jobs are at stake.
    … there could be this many jobs:
    Direct and indirect jobs at physical and virtual call centers: 12,000
  • Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)
    Contact Centers today do more than just phone calls, but rather business process outsourcing (BPO), including email, IM, web chat, social media and work flow processing on behalf of 3rd party clients.
    …
    Direct and indirect jobs at physical and virtual call centers: 12,000.
    …
    In addition to these industry jobs; there is also the reality of indirect jobs – unrelated service and attendant functions – at a 3.75 multiplier rate would add another 45,000 jobs.
  • Offshore Banking
    This refers to banks located outside the country of residence of the depositor, typically in a low tax jurisdiction (or tax haven) that provides financial and legal advantages – a mainstay in Antigua, Bahamas, Bermuda and Caymans. These advantages typically include: greater privacy, little or no taxation, easy access to deposits, and protection against local, political, or financial instability. … Legally, offshore activities do not prevent assets from being subject to personal income taxes on interest income, often times it is the privacy feature that skirts tax computation and collection.
  • Graphic Design and Animation
    A round of new jobs are to be found in the executions for this digital world; this is becoming a new playground. This is a glimpse of industrial growth for the 21st Century; this is the sphere of Internet & Communications Technologies (ICT). …
    The Go Lean [book] … makes the claim that innovation and economic growth can result from a progressive community ethos. The book defines this “community ethos” as the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of society; dominant assumptions of a people or period. The book thereafter recommends the ethos of Fostering Genius (Page 27), so as to not only consume this industry’s product offering, but facilitating development and production. The skills to participate in the art and science of this development may not apply to just everyone; it may be limited to a “gifted few”, a “talented tenth”.
    This is why all the other attendant functions must also be facilitated to engage this activity, such as Helping Entrepreneurship (Page 28), Promoting Intellectual Property (Page 29), Impacting Research and Development or R&D (Page 30) and Bridging the Digital Divide (Page 31).
  • e—Government
    e-Government 1.0 refers to just the facilitation of government services via some electronic mode, the first attempt to embrace an online presence and processing; 2.0 refers to the quest for greater citizen participation in the governing/policy-making process, “putting government in the hands of citizens”.[54] This 3.0 brand however, refers to the penultimate e-Delivery, processing and optimization of ICT (Internet & Communications Technologies) among all the different roles and responsibilities. …
    … we must explore the viability and feasibility of e-Government schemes in the new Caribbean, as rebooting the governing engines is part-and-parcel of the Go Lean roadmap.
    Go Lean Book (Page 51):
     The CU’s delivery of ICT [(Internet & Communications Technologies)] systems, e-Government, contact center and in-source services (i.e. property tax systems [and www.myCaribbean.gov]) can put the burden on systems continuity at the federal level and not the member-states. (This is the model of Canada with the federal delivery of provincial systems and services – some Provincial / Territorial presence / governance is completely “virtual”).

The points of reforming and transforming the Caribbean eco-systems so that WFH could thrive have been further elaborated upon in many previous blog-commentaries; consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18749 Learning from Another ‘Great Place to Work’: Mercedes-Benz
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14954 Overseas Workers – Not the Panacea
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11184 JPMorganChase spent $10 billion in 1 year on ‘Fintech’ & Call Centers
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9839 Alibaba Cloud stretches global reach with four new facilities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2126 Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1698 STEM Jobs – ideal for WFH – Are Filling Slowly

So this writer “talked the talk and walked the walk”.

Don’t just do what I say; do what I do.

We have stood on the rooftops and on the steeples and told the Caribbean world that these islands and coastal states are the greatest address on the planet and all efforts should be made to Stay Home or Return Home.

We came home, by executing the strategies of Working From Home. While this was always our plan, we knew that it would be a “Hard Sell” to the Caribbean mentality; this was not the “community ethos”; see the prescription from Page 212 of the Go Lean book:

10 Ways to Promote Contact Centers  # 8: Promote Work-at-Home Options
The CU needs to conduct a public relations campaign to promote the benefits of tele-commuting and minimize any negative stigma associated with head of households working from home. This reflects the realities of media portrayals affecting the choice of careers in prior decades. For example, the 1984 movie Revenge of the Nerds is credited for dissuading young girls from pursuing careers in Science, Technologies, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). [18].

Now the whole world is considering – in response to the COVID-19 crisis – the merits and benefits of WFH. To this change, we say:

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste! Let’s Keep the Change …

… and encourage more people to pursue these strategies, tactics and implementation.

Economics in the homeland are inadequate? We hear you; we see you; we’ll bring more jobs back here!

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap. This is how we will make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 14):

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

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

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

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

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

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