March 2017 – Page 2 – Go Lean…Caribbean

Month: March 2017

Caribbean Roots: John Carlos – The Man. The Moment. The Movement

Posted on March 10, 2017 in Ethos, Social

Go Lean Commentary

The title: “The Man. The Moment. The Movement” is more than just a catch-phrase, its a recipe for successfully transforming society.

Do you remember this Sports Moment That Changed the World?

It was at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. Despite all the attempts by the organizers to keep the Games apolitical and free-of-conflict, the Moment got political and conflicted … and impactful. This was when the Man, John Carlos, the bronze-medal winner in the 200 meters at the 1968 Summer Olympics gave his Black Power salute on the podium with gold-medalist Tommie Smith; this galvanized the Movement – the Civil Rights Movement in general and the Olympic Project for Human Rights in particular. The Movement caused a lot of controversy.

What is not known about this moment is that this Man, John Carlos, has Caribbean roots.

We are so proud!

Consider his biography reference here:

Title: John Carlos
John Wesley Carlos (born June 5, 1945) is an American former track and field athlete and professional football player. He was the bronze-medal winner in the 200 meters at the 1968 Summer Olympics and his Black Power salute on the podium with Tommie Smith caused much political controversy. He went on to tie the world record in the 100 yard dash and beat the 200 meters world record (although the latter achievement was never certified). After his track career, he enjoyed a brief stint in the Canadian Football League but retired due to injury.^[1]

He became involved with the United States Olympic Committee and helped to organize the 1984 Summer Olympics. Following this he became a track coach at Palm SpringsHigh School. He was inducted into the USA Track & Field Hall of Fame in 2003.

He is the author, with sportswriter Dave Zirin, of The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World, published in 2011 by Haymarket Books.

Early life and education
Born in Harlem, New York, to Cuban^[2] parents, John Carlos was a gifted high school athlete and outstanding student who went on to study at East Texas State University on a full track-and-field scholarship. His victories in the 100- and 200-meter dash and as a member of the 4×400-meter relay helped lead ETSU to the 1967 Lone Star Conference Championship. After his first year, Carlos enrolled at San Jose State University where he was trained by future National Track & Field Hall of Fame coach, Lloyd (Bud) Winter.

Carlos was awarded an honorary doctorate from CaliforniaStateUniversity in 2008. In 2012, he was awarded honorary doctorates from his alma maters Texas A&M University-Commerce (formerly EastTexasStateUniversity) and San Jose State University.

Career
At the 1968 Olympic Trials, Carlos won the 200-meter dash in 19.92 seconds, beating world-record holder Tommie Smith and surpassing his record by 0.3 seconds. Though the record was never ratified because the spike formation on Carlos’ shoes (“brush spikes”) was not accepted at the time, the race reinforced his status as a world-class sprinter.

Carlos became a founding member of the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), and originally advocated a boycott of the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games unless four conditions were met: withdrawal of South Africa and Rhodesia from the games, restoration of Muhammad Ali’s world heavyweight boxing title, Avery Brundage to step down as president of the IOC, and the hiring of more African-American assistant coaches. As the boycott failed to achieve support after the IOC withdrew invitations for South Africa and Rhodesia, he decided, together with Smith, to participate but to stage a protest in case he received a medal.^[3] Following his third-place finish behind fellow American Smith and Australian Peter Norman in the 200 at the Mexico Olympics, Carlos and Smith made headlines around the world by raising their black-gloved fists at the medal award ceremony. Both athletes wore black socks and no shoes on the podium to represent African-American poverty in the United States. In support, Peter Norman, the silver medalist who was a white athlete from Australia, participated in the protest by wearing an OPHR badge.

IOC president Avery Brundage deemed a political statement unfit for the apolitical, international forum the Olympic Games was supposed to be. In an immediate response to their actions, he ordered Smith and Carlos suspended from the U.S. team and banned from the Olympic Village. Many supporters, however, praised the men for their bravery. The men’s gesture had lingering effects for all three athletes, the most serious of which were death threats against Carlos, Smith, and their families. Although it has been reported that Carlos and Smith were stripped of their medals, Carlos has indicated this is not true and his medal is with his mother.^[4]

Carlos had his greatest year in track and field in 1969, equaling the world 100-yard record of 9.1, winning the AAU 220-yard run, and leading San JoseState to its first NCAA championship with victories in the 100 and 220 and as a member of the 4×110-yard relay. He was featured on the cover of Track and Field News‘ May 1969 issue.^[5]…

Source: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia – Retrieved March 8, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carlos

This biography should go back further to include John Carlos’s Cuban-Caribbean heritage, that of his father:

John Carlos is of Cuban descent and can understand Spanish. His father, Earl Carlos Sr., was a businessman (a cobbler or shoe repair) and World War I Veteran [fighting for the US]. He was a man proud of his appearance in all circumstances and carried himself in a dignified way. He had to work hard from an early age (like most African-American children of his era, especially in the South of the country) and his parents were born as slaves; [(slavery ended in Cuba in 1886 and he was born in 1895)]. When he participated in World War I, he got wounded and received the Medal of Citation Award for his stoicism on the battlefield. When he returned back home, he had to face racial hatred, economic discrimination, the Roaring Twenties, the Stock Market Crash in 1929, the Dust Bowl in the mid-thirties and World War II. Despite the difficulties, he never became bitter. He met his future wife, Vioris Lawrence (an African-American woman), in 1941, who was later John Carlos’ mother. – MegaDiversities.

This was quite a legacy to absorb. John Carlos had the molding from his proud Cuban father, who left a segregated Cuba and emigrated for a better life in the metropolitan area of New York. Harlem – think Harlem Renaissance – was a better place to be a Black Man than the Jim Crow South or the minority-ruled Cuba. When he stood in defiance in that Moment in 1968, John Carlos was protesting the blatant racism that he experienced and his father before him – Earl Carlos died later, in May 1969. The Movement to uplift oppressed people had began on the global stage, but the Black Power salute was a local action in solidarity with all those oppressed before and after this Moment. He understood that ‘Sport and Politics’ are intrinsically linked, whether right or wrong.

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean recognizes the significance of that Moment and the stage for its execution, the celebrated Olympic Games. The Go Lean book applauds the struggle for Civil Rights and the dynamics of sports. It posits that sports can foster a great influence – and even wealth – in modern society. See this in Appendix B VIDEO.

The sportsman can “rule in people’s hearts”. People marvel at their athletic prowess – billions may be watching on live or tape-delayed TV broadcasts – the participants can forge a positive image and wield power and influence; think:

We can add John Carlos and Tommie Smith to that list.

This Moment was in 1968; that was a pivotal year, so many things happened, mostly bad; consider this sample:

Martin Luther King was assassinated, April 4
Robert Kennedy was assassinated, June 6
Vietnam War Protests – Summer
Chicano (Hispanic) Movement and Red Power (Native Americans) Movement Summer Protests
Mexico City Olympics – October 12 – 27
James Brown song: Say it loud: “I’m Black and I’m Proud”

According to John Carlos, in a recent interview describing the disposition on the ground there in Mexico City: “it was high tension, drama, a powder keg … prior to the Olympics there was a massacre that killed hundreds of young activists”.

That was 1968 … all around; consider the experience of one Californian “back in that day”:

1968 was an exciting time for me. I think it was when my activism was born. Before that time things were pretty rosy. Even though I knew about the [Black] Panthers and had seen Dr. [Martin Luther] King, living in LA you were kind of removed. I do remember expressing a desire to join the Freedom Rides, but my Pastor said ‘No’.

1968 was [when] my friends were coming home from Vietnam or refusing to go.

I remember loaning my boyfriend $$ to go to Philly to go before the Draft Board to argue as a Conscientious Objector. He won and we were so happy.

I remember the day Dr. King was killed and going that night to a service with friends. I remember being so sad and being glued to the TV.

I remember the horror of Bobby Kennedy being killed. I was at work and heard the news.

I remember being so proud of Tommy Smith and John Carlos at the Olympics.

My living room had two posters. One of them on the stand with the black gloved fists held high and the other was [Black Panther Party co-founder] Huey Newton sitting in that Peacock Chair.

Those were the days when I was very active in the Watts Summer Festival. Tommy Jacquette, the founder, was a friend, and we all gathered together to make the event a success. …

I would say that 1968 was the year that I became the person I am today. – Bunny Withers, Los Angeles.

The reality of human rights abuses in America in 1968 was bad, worse or dire – those were the only options. The Black community was far from being treated as equal citizens in that society. But truth be told, other minority groups in the country also experienced oppression, repression and suppression. America was the greatest country on the planet for those that qualified; those that were:

White, Anglo-Saxon, Rich, Male and Straight

Anyone else – everyone else – needed civil rights empowerments.

Fortunately, this is not the conditions of the America of today. It is now a better place to live, work and play. How did this society go from “there to here”?

It took the strenuous efforts of advocates: individuals – Men and Women – and organizations, exploiting Moments and Movements for maximum exposure. They appealed to the public, appealed to their better nature. John Carlos was one such individual.

The third person on the dais, silver medalist Peter Norman of Australia, can also be classified as an advocate fighting to assuage human rights abuses – he also wore a badge of the Olympic Project for Human Rights – he was in solidarity with Smith and Carlos. See the profile VIDEO on his activities in Appendix A below.

The Caribbean has a problem today that we did not have back in 1968. The majority populations of the Caribbean region is/was Black-and-Brown. America was not inviting to this demographic, so our people rarely immigrated to the US. Now with the above-referenced civil rights empowerments, America is now a more fair society for all people. Our Caribbean people now “beat down their doors” to flee to America, and other places – Go Lean book Page 3.

The US is now a “frienemy” for us! We are trading partners; we are aligned; we are allies; many of our students studied there; many of our Diaspora live there. We now have to compete to dissuade our young people from setting their sights on American shores as a refuge and destination of their hopes and dreams. No society can survive with a high abandonment rate – the book Go Lean … Caribbean reports that 70% brain drain rate among our professional populations.

We are failing and need advocates of our own.

We need new role models, with the courage of John Carlos, to help us “battle” against the “push-and-pull” factors that draw many Caribbean citizens away from home to the US. We need Men to seize the Moment and advance this Movement.

The Go Lean movement pursues the quest to elevate the Caribbean region through empowerments in economics, security and governance. Since 29 of the 30 Caribbean member-states (“St. Barths” is the only exception) have majority Black populations, the book pushes further on this subject of racism, positing that it is easier for Caribbean citizens to stay home and effect change in their homelands than to go to America and try to remediate that society. The book therefore asserts that the region can turn-around from failing assessments by applying best-practices, and forging new societal institutions to impact the Greater Good for all the Caribbean.

The Go Lean book posits that sports – individual achievements and the business of sports – can greatly impact society; in addition to the entertainment value, there is also national pride, image and impression. People can override many false precepts with sporting excellence by great role models.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), a technocratic federal government designed to administer and optimize the economic-security-governing engines of the region’s 30 member-states. This is highlighted by these 3 prime directives:

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

At the outset, the roadmap recognizes our crisis and the value of sports in the roadmap, with these statements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13 & 14):

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.

xxvi. 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.

The Go Lean roadmap calls for the market organizations to better garner the economic benefits of sports. One of the biggest contributions the CU will make is the facilitation of sports venues: arenas and stadia. As described in a previous blog-commentary, sports can be big business! And even when money is not involved, other benefits abound: educational scholarships, fitness/wellness, disciplined activities for the youth, image, and pride. No doubt an intangible yet important benefits is depicted in this Go Lean roadmap, that of less societal abandonment.

The movement behind the Go Lean book salute those ones from our past who left their Caribbean homelands for better opportunities abroad; we salute their legacies (foreign-born children) as well. We know that there are “new” athletes who are just waiting to be discovered and fostered throughout the Caribbean member-states. We salute these ones as our future, and pledge to do better to keep them here at home. The book details the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to allow Caribbean people to prosper where they are planted.

In terms of salute, it is appropriate to salute Vioris Louise Lawrence Carlos – the mother of John Carlos. She just recently passed-away, on December 12, 2016, at age 97. This blessed woman’s contributions and life course help to mold the life and legacy of 5 children – including John Carlos – and a whole community.

Previous Go Lean blog-commentaries that identified other sports role models for our consideration:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8495	NBA Greatness and Caribbean Roots: Tim Duncan Retires
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2222	Sports Role Model – Playing For Pride … And More
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1020	Sports Revolutionary: Advocate Jeffrey Webb
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=498	Caribbean Sport Excellence due to ‘The Sports Gene’

In addition, these other Go Lean blog-commentaries have identified other role models with Caribbean roots:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10609	Caribbean Roots: Cast of ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10114	Esther Rolle – Caribbean Roots
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9948	Sammy Davis, Jr. – Caribbean Roots
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8724	Remembering Marcus Garvey: A Role Model; Still Relevant Today
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8619	Clive Campbell – Jamaican Innovation for Hip Hop
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8328	YouTube Role Model with Caribbean Roots: ‘Tipsy Bartender’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2726	Caribbean Role Model – Oscar De La Renta – RIP
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=866	Caribbean Musical Icon and Role Model: Bob Marley

The world is a better place, sports-wise and arts-wise, because of Caribbean contributions. Thank you to all past, present and future athletes and contributors.

Not to be overlooked, but the same as the US had a Climate of Hate in 1968, we have our own societal defects in the Caribbean region today. We cannot claim enlightenment to the achievements of advocates like John Carlos and have a blind eye” to our own “ills”. So let’s stand-up as a Proud People and force our own communities to change. Let’s make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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

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APPENDIX A VIDEO – The Story Behind The White Guy In This Historic Photo – https://youtu.be/t4LvwXYmt3Q

Published on Oct 31, 2015 – In 1968 there was a powerful moment of protest at the Olympic games when two winners put on black gloves to protest what was happening in the country during the civil rights era. Most people don’t know the story of the silver medalist, Peter Norman. Cenk Uygur, host of the The Young Turks, breaks it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

“In an act as appropriate as it is overdue, the Australian House of Parliament is issuing an official state apology Monday to the country’s late, great sprinter Peter Norman. Norman won the 200-meter silver medal at the 1968 Olympics, but that’s not why he’s either remembered or owed apologies. After the race, gold and bronze medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos bowed their heads and raised their fists on the medal stand and started an international firestorm. Many see the iconic image and assume Norman was just a bystander to history, or as he would joke, “the white guy.” But he was standing in full solidarity with Smith and Carlos, wearing a patch on his chest that reads, “Olympic Project for Human Rights.”

Disclaimer: The Young Turks is an online video talk show that provides commentary on news and opinion articles. Often times these articles come from sources outside of our organization. Where possible, we do our best to research and verify various sources before reporting. Content created by third parties is the sole responsibility of the third parties and its accuracy and completeness are not endorsed or guaranteed.

UPDATE to story: http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/j…

Category: News & Politics
License: Standard YouTube License

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APPENDIX B VIDEO – THREE PROUD PEOPLE (Mural project) Tommy Smith, Peter Norman, John Carlos – https://youtu.be/xHcasP4HOo0

Uploaded on May 17, 2009 – This mural was put up about 6 weeks prior to the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympic games. It could be viewed from the McDonaldtown train station platform and from trains travelling past. Trains travel from central Sydney to the Homebush Olympic venue past this mural. As of a few years ago, the mural can no longer be seen from the tracks due to a city rail concrete sound barrier that has been installed.
Peter Norman was repremanded for his part in the action. Peter, in solidarity, wore the Olympic project for human rights badge, which defied the code of conduct. He also came up with the idea of Smith and Carlos each wearing one black glove from the same pair. All three of these guys were very couragous.

Category: Education
License: Standard YouTube License

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Civil Rights, History, Model, Sports

Logical Addresses – ‘Life or Death’ Consequences

Posted on March 8, 2017 in Government, Implementation

Go Lean Commentary

There is the need to reform and transform the Caribbean, with strategies and tactics for modernization of street addresses.

Why is this subject important?

It could mean Life-or-Death.

It is that serious!

Question to a Caribbean man: So where do you live?

Answer: Go down the main street and turn at the corner of the Catholic Church, go two side corners past the mango tree, turn left by the pink house; go down two more houses pass Auntie Mae’s yard, and my house is facing hers.

This is no joke; this is our sad reality. Imagine if the inquirer in this case is an Ambulance Dispatcher. They must send paramedics urgently or a sufferer can die; (think heart attack, stroke, poisoning episode, etc.). Yet still, this above address standard is the Caribbean norm.

We can – and must – do better.

Verily the book Go Lean…Caribbean details a mission to re-organize the addressing scheme in the region for all 30 Caribbean member states. This book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU); this includes a subset institution, the Caribbean Postal Union (CPU). The end result, according to the book Page 78:

The CPU will collaborate with member-states in remapping all residential and commercial addresses for unique house numbers and street names.

There are a lot of advantages for an optimized postal eco-system, none more vital than Life-or-Death. The resultant address from the CU/CPU effort will allow emergency operations to have a consistently logical-sequential-directional address. Yes, this is the standard for North American 911 Emergency operations with their Enhanced 911 (E911) system, which provides both caller location and identification; see the reference here:

Location determination depends upon the Automatic Location Information (ALI) database which is maintained on behalf of local governments by contracted private third parties generally the Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier (ILEC).
…
A 911 address contains a uniform number, the street name, direction (if applicable), and the city. The address number is assigned usually by the grid of the existing community. Each county usually has their own policy on how the addressing is done, but for the most part National Emergency Number Association (NENA) guidelines are followed. These guidelines are expressed by the Master Street Address Guide (MSAG). The exact 911 addresses and associated phone numbers are put into the ALI database. – Wikipedia.

This effort was just recently completed in the Caribbean territory of the United States Virgin Islands; see the Information Sheet on the relevant webpage – published beforehand … circa 2012 – in the Appendix below. This reference depicts the effort for the USVI, the last of the continental American States & Territories to comply. From a Caribbean perspective, this project is now complete for Puerto Rico and the USVI – see the complete Postal Addressing Standard for PR & USVI here. We now need to model it in the rest of the Caribbean, as part of the CPU initiative. But Postal is not our primary motivation; the quest to mitigate Life-or-Death emergencies is a BIGGER concern.

With this empowerment in place, the opening dialogue would go differently; consider this now:

Question to a Caribbean man: We have your address at 5407 Guava Berry Drive. Is there anything blocking access for the ambulance?

Answer: No. Please hurry.

Postal mail efficiency is secondary in this discussion; it is only “gravy”.

With optimized addresses, the CPU will be able to deliver logistical solutions for Caribbean modern commerce. This implementation can transform Caribbean society for the people and institutions.

The Go Lean book details the quest to transform the Caribbean; it features a 370-page how-to guide, a roadmap for elevating the region’s societal engines of economics, security and governance. It leads with economic issues, not administrative ones! But there must be logistical solutions – infrastructure – before many of the economic empowerments can manifest, such as electronic commerce. The book details a www.myCaribbean.gov Marketplace.

The opening dialogue would go differently now:

Question to a Caribbean man: What is your address for your package delivery?

Answer: I’m at 5407 Guava Berry Drive.

The Go Lean/CU/CPU plan calls for the regional consolidation of the postal operations on Day One/Step One of the roadmap, during the Assembly phase. In order to enjoy the infrastructural benefits of the CPU plan, there must be some heavy-lifting in regional governance: the political transformation of member-states vesting their authority to a deputized CU federal agency. This vision is defined early in the Go Lean book (Page 12) in these pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence:

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

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

xv. Whereas the business of the Federation and the commercial interest in the region cannot prosper without an efficient facilitation of postal services, the Caribbean Union must allow for the integration of the existing mail operations of the governments of the member-states into a consolidated Caribbean Postal Union, allowing for the adoption of best practices and technical advances to deliver foreign/domestic mail in the region.

The Go Lean book details the series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster the best practices in infrastructure so as to usher in the delivery of the CPU in the region. Consider this sample:

Tactical – How to Grow the Economy to $800 Billion – Trade and Globalization	Page 70
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Postal Services	Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Interstate Commerce Administration	Page 79
Implementation – Year 1 / Assemble Phase – Establish CPU	Page 96
Implementation – Anecdote – Mail Services – USPS Dilemma	Page 99
Implementation – Ways to Optimize Mail Service & myCaribbean.gov Marketplace	Page 108
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Emergency Management	Page 196
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Urban Living	Page 234

Issues related to the CPU business model have previously been detailed in these Go Lean blog-commentaries, listed here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9839	CPU Model – Alibaba stretches the globe with 4 new Data Centers
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7991	Transformations: Caribbean Postal Union – Delivering the Future
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3187	Robots help Amazon tackle Cyber Monday
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2488	CPU Model – Alibaba Comes to America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1416	CPU Model – Amazon’s new FIRE Smartphone

The need for address standardization is indisputable; there are so many benefits, none greater than Life-or-Death scenarios in emergency situations. The motivation of the Go Lean book is economic empowerment; yet still so many mitigations are presented to optimize the “art and science of Emergency Management”. In a previous blog-commentary, the full details of the 911 Emergency Telephone Number system were examined; consider these quoted excerpts:

The Go Lean book embarks on the strategy to consolidate the Emergency Management (preparation and response) for the entire Caribbean region. Therefore the issue of Emergency Telephone Numbers is of serious concern; sometimes it’s a life-or-death matter.

… everyone expects to pick up a phone and dial a 3-digit code – like 911 – and within short order be able to talk with an Emergency Management First-Responder for Police, Ambulance and Fire incidences. …

The Go Lean book posits that communication technologies must be regulated at the regional level for the Greater Good of the Caribbean. There are too many instances with overlapping spectrum from one member-state to another. Citizens should not need to worry about border considerations during emergency incidences. …

The region needs this delivery; it makes the Caribbean a better place for emergencies.

Issues related to regional coordination of Emergency Management have been detailed in these previous Go Lean blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9334	Hurricane Categories – The Science
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7896	The Logistics of Disaster Relief
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7449	‘Crap Happens’ – So What Now?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5002	Managing a ‘Clear and Present Danger’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4308	911 – Emergency Response: System in Crisis

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions (like Postal Operations), to lean-in for the empowerments in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The CU/CPU will deploy the logistical efficiencies and innovative products-services to impact its prime directives; identified with the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including the consolidation of the state-ran postal operations.

(A quick note on jobs: a previous blog-commentary identified that the Uber-Everything business model can emerge in the Caribbean region once there is address standardization).

The VIDEO here demonstrates how the E911 program works in North America; this is a model for the whole of the Caribbean region:

VIDEO – How E9-1-1 Works – https://youtu.be/MZwBZYyOybI

Uploaded on Dec 14, 2010 – Avaya Emergency Services Product Manager Mark Fletcher, explains how E911 calls and location information in PBX systems gets to the 911 dispatcher at the PSAP. Learn more at http://www.avaya.com.

This CU/CPU roadmap is an important plan for streamlining the addresses in the region. But this is not just a plan for delivering the mail; it is more important than that; it can deliver Life-or-Death solutions. This is our plan for delivering a new Caribbean: a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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

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Appendix – USVI Street Addressing Initiative

What is the Street Addressing Initiative? Who is involved? The Street Addressing Initiative (SAI) is a project spearheaded by the Office of the Lieutenant Governor, and involving many agencies and departments of the Virgin Islands Government, including the Tax Assessor, GIS, Public Works, Planning and Natural Resources, WAPA, Historic Preservation, VITEMA (Emergency Management/E-911), Police, Health, viNGN and others. In addition, Innovative and other private companies are assisting the Government with the Project. The Government has partnered with the University of the Virgin Islands – Eastern Caribbean Center, Applied Geographics (AppGeo) and Spatial Focus, Inc. to develop the addressing system, and to conduct a pilot study that will test methods for assigning address numbers throughout the Territory.

The SAI will ultimately create a street address for every home, business, and other building within the U.S.V.I. At present, the pilot project is underway to test the addressing system and street naming processes. Small areas on each of the 3 major islands (STT, STX, STJ) are included in this pilot program.

I like my current address. Why do I need a new address? Current addresses are based on Estate Names and Plot numbers. These numbers were not assigned in an orderly manner, and have resulted in a confusing pattern of numbering that makes finding an individual house or business difficult. Addresses work because they are arranged in logical, sequential patterns, with well-identified street names, and posted numbers. The SAI will provide a new address number that will conform to a logical and well documented system of numbering. This type of addressing will provide broad benefits such as improved E-911, efficiency for utility service providers and delivery companies like UPS and Fedex. In general, logical addressing helps ensure that others can find you more quickly in an emergency and/or to deliver services or goods.

Why is my new address number so high? Why is my new address so different than my plot number? Your new street address is based on a numbering system developed for the U.S. Virgin Islands. Each island has two numbering systems. For St. Croix, these are centered on the towns of Frederiksted and Christiansted. For St. Thomas, these are centered at Government House in Charlotte Amalie, and at Red Hook. For St. John, they are centered in CruzBay and CoralBay. Lower numbers are used in the towns, and increase as you travel further from these centers. Your new number reflects the relative distance from these starting points.

Plot numbers were created when the land in your Estate was subdivided into lots, or when the original lots were re-subdivided. The numbering does not necessarily follow the street pattern, or maintain a logical sequence. This makes it difficult for emergency responders, service providers, and others to find your home or place of business. These numbers are not useful as addresses. They are, however, useful as property identifiers, and will be maintained for that purpose.

I thought that I lived on a different street than I have been assigned. Why do I have to change my street name? To the greatest extent possible, where streets have existing, official names that have been in use, the SAI will use those names. However, many streets were never officially named when they were created, and the SAI will be working with neighborhood groups and Homeowners’ Associations to designate names for these streets. In a small number of cases, where there are duplicate names, the SAI will need to change one of the names. The Addressing Team will try to minimize the disruption caused by these street name changes.

Now that I have been assigned a new address, what are the next steps? The first, most important step is to post your new address on the front of your house or business in a location that is visible from the street (see next question below). The project team will be communicating your new number and street name to WAPA, Innovative, and VITEMA/E-911 and to the US Postal Service, and other governmental agencies so that these agencies know what your new address is.

Are there any guidelines for putting my new number on my house or business? Numbers should be at least 4” tall, and should be in a contrasting color from the background color of your house. For example, if your house is a light color or white, please use black, dark blue, brown or dark green numbers. If your house is a dark color, please use white, or light colored numbers. Please be certain that your number is completely visible from the street. If your home or building is not visible from the street, the number can be placed on a sign located at the driveway leading to your home or building. Again, the numbers should be a contrasting color to the sign’s background. The examples below show good posted address numbers. Remember that your number must be visible from the street. If your home or business is not visible from the street, you should use a free-standing sign on a post at least 30 inches in height. Numbers should be on both sides of the sign.

Post Style:

House Styles:

What date is my street address effective? New addresses are effective as of July 1, 2013. There will be a public announcement through radio, television and other media to let you know that you should begin using your new number and street name. You may post your new number as soon as it has been assigned.

Can I still use my old address? Many people will continue to use their old address for historic reasons. However, for purposes of US Mail, E-911, and utility services, you are strongly encouraged to use your new SAI address. The existing number is most likely your lot number for tax purposes, and will be retained by the Tax Assessor to identify your property parcel for tax assessment and billing.

When will I see a street sign on my street? The SAI is working with the Government and Department of Public Works to develop a street signage program.

What is my COMPLETE ADDRESS? What is my ZIP Code? What should I write on letters? Your complete address includes your address number, street name, Estate name, plus the Island and ZIP Code. If you currently have a ZIP Code, please keep using it. We will be working with the U.S. Postal Service to identify areas which may need new or additional ZIP Codes.

Example of a complete address:

5407 Guava Berry Drive, Mon Bijou
St. Croix, USVI, 00850

Is my plot number still the same? Yes, there is NO change to your plot number.

I was assigned a provisional road name. What should I do to be assigned a permanent, official road name? In some cases, where a neighborhood has unnamed streets, the SAI will be using a provisional street name. These names will include the name of the Estate and a number to identify the specific “unnamed” road in the Estate. For example, “Contant Provisional Road 10”. The SAI is asking the property owners along each of the streets to suggest a name for the street, and submit it to the SAI for confirmation and approval. If your property is on one of these streets, you will find further information about this process in the addressing packet left on your property.

For further information on the street naming process, please visit the top of the page.

Alternatively, contact the Street Addressing Initiative by telephone or mail at the addresses on your door hanger.

Will my new address affect my utility service? Will my electricity and phone provider use my new address? Will there be loss of service? Your utility services, phone services, etc. will not be affected. The SAI is providing each of the utilities with a listing of all existing and new addresses, so that they may update their records. This does not require any action on your part. Once updated, the providers will use your new address as a service address. If you use a P.O. Box or other mailing address, these will not be changed.

When will the rest of the islands get new addresses? The current pilot project is expected to be finished in July, 2013. The U.S.V.I. Government is currently seeking funding for addressing for the remainder of the Territory as well as for street signage. The Government is hopeful that the remaining areas of the Territory can be addressed within the next 2-4 years.

Source: Retrieved March 7, 2017 from: http://ltg.gov.vi/street-addressing-initiative.html

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Less and Less People Reading Newspapers

Posted on March 6, 2017 in Economics, Ethos, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

The Fourth Estate is under attack … by Free Market forces and technology. We should all be alarmed!

The Fourth Estate (or fourth power)… most commonly refers to the news media, especially print journalism or “the press”. The term makes implicit reference to the earlier division of the three Estates of the Realm: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. – Wikipedia.

This title is a reference to a societal-political force or institution whose influence is undeniable though it may not be consistently or officially recognized. In the US and other countries, there is constitutional protections for Freedom of the Press.

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The United Nations‘ 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers”.

A free press is important for modern societies. Despite all the news and information, it can also be an important sentinel against “bad actors” – yes, “bad actors” will always emerge. But this freedom is a two-edge sword: free to succeed and free to fail. So the entities of the Fourth Estate must adapt, like everyone else, to global changes and competitive shifts, otherwise they die.

In a previous blog-commentary, the following observance was made:

“Print is not dead… yet? I almost didn’t notice!”

“If print is not dead yet, does that mean it is going to put up a fight? Will it make a comback? I say “No”. It is just a matter of time. Print might experience only a slow death, but die … it will.”

Continuing the count, if there is a Fourth Estate, then to no one’s surprise, there is also a Fifth Estate:

The Fifth Estate is a socio-cultural reference to groupings of outlier viewpoints in contemporary society, and is most associated with bloggers, journalists publishing in non-mainstream media outlets, and the social media or “social license” . The “Fifth” Estate extends the sequence of the three classical Estates of the Realm and the preceding Fourth Estate, essentially the mainstream press. The use of “Fifth Estate” dates to the 1960s counterculture, and in particular the influential The Fifth Estate, an underground newspaper first published in Detroit in 1965. Web-based technologies have enhanced the scope and power of the Fifth Estate far beyond the modest and boutique^[1] conditions of its beginnings. – Wikipedia

This commentary is a blog, thus representative of the Fifth Estate. This continues a long series on the theme of New Media:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10052	Fake News? Welcome to America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5353	POTUS and the Internet
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4076	American Media Fantasies -vs- Weather Realities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3974	Google and Mobile Phones – Here comes Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=273	10 Things We *Don’t* Want from the US – #9: American Media Domination
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=248	Print is not dead yet

Welcome to the future. Say “Goodbye” to yesterday. Newspapers are representative of that yesterday. The daily newspaper in most communities are getting thinner, smaller in size, distribution and influence. This fact is born out in this news article:

Study: Less Than A Quarter Of Americans Read Newspapers
(CBS HOUSTON) — The number of Americans reading print newspapers, magazines and books is in rapid decline.

Only 29 percent of Americans now say they read a newspaper yesterday – with just 23 percent reading a print newspaper. Over the past decade, the percentage reading a print newspaper the previous day has fallen by 18 points (from 41 percent to 23 percent). Somewhat more (38 percent) say they regularly read a daily newspaper, although this percentage also has declined, from 54 percent in 2004.

Also according to the recent Pew Research Center poll, Americans enjoy reading as much as ever – 51 percent say they enjoy reading a lot. This is little changed over the past two decades, but a declining proportion gets news or reads other material on paper on a typical day. Many readers are now shifting to digital platforms to read the papers.

Substantial percentages of the regular readers of leading newspapers now read them digitally. Currently, 55 percent of regular New York Times readers say they read the paper mostly on a computer or mobile device, as do 48 percent of regular USA Today and 44 percent of Wall Street Journal readers.

Over the past decade, there have been smaller declines in the percentages of Americans reading a magazine or book in print (six points and four points, respectively) than for newspapers.

Print magazine reading is down by 7 percent from 2006, and book reading is down by 8 percent since 2006. Also, the percentage of people who wrote or received a personal letter declined 8 percent from 20 to 12 in the last six years.

And television viewership may be on the decline next.

While print sources have suffered readership losses in recent years, television news viewership has remained more stable. Currently, 55 percent say they watched the news or a news program on television yesterday, little changed from recent years. But there are signs this may also change. Only about a third (34 percent) of those younger than 30 say they watched TV news yesterday; in 2006, nearly half of young people (49 percent) said they watched TV news the prior day.

Among older age groups, the percentages saying they watched TV yesterday has not changed significantly over this period.

Source: CBS News; posted October 15, 2012; retrieved 03/05/2017 from: http://houston.cbslocal.com/2012/10/15/study-less-than-a-quarter-of-americans-read-newspapers/

The foregoing article is from 2012, but in the most recent episode of CBS Sunday Morning News Magazine (March 5, 2017), there was this “Pulse Poll”:

Many newspapers in major cities are “taking a hit”: circulation is down, advertising is down, the number of pages is down, but retail prices are up. The digital transformation is afoot. Consider the experience of the Miami Herald, in the Appendix below; (regrettably, a very long article).

So instead of newspapers, there is more reliance now on electronic media for news, information, and entertainment. The reference to electronic media does not only mean TV or radio, but rather, it includes the internet. A lot of consumers still read, just not in print, they now use internet websites, social media, e-Readers, blogs and email. This transformation does not only feature computer terminals and monitors, but smaller screens as well, as in mobile telephones or smart phones.

The change from the Fourth to the Fifth Estate is also affecting the legacy electronic media: TV and radio. These institutions are finding competition because of the internet.

As reported in that previous blog, “in the TV industry, more people are abandoning cable contracts for subscriptions services like Netflix and Hulu; they are still able to enjoy their favorite programming, just delivered by alternate means. For radio, the audience is shrinking due to the proliferation of mobile music options like Pandora, Rhapsody, Jango, Slacker, Roxio, etc.”

Are these future prospects true for the Caribbean as well?

The book Go Lean…Caribbean asserts that the “world is flat” and that globalization and technology has taken its toll on all aspects of Caribbean life. How are our media outlets doing in the region?

At first glance, the newspapers still thrive:

Circulation remain strong.
There are just as many pages – per section – compared to 10, 20 or 30 years ago.
The pages are still filled with advertising.
Retail prices has increased beyond inflation, close to $1 in equivalent US dollars.

This disposition is simply because there is less electronic delivery in the Caribbean. Alas, the same technology changes affecting the rest of the modern world will surely impact the Caribbean. Mobile-smartphone devices are becoming more ubiquitous, even in the Caribbean region in the countries normally considered Third World. The newspaper industry in the region will be imperiled if there are no mitigations. The Go Lean book presents that mitigation.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This empowerment effort is designed to move the region forward, to the corner of opportunity and preparation. This roadmap calls for confederating the 30 member-states in the region to provide optimization solutions in the areas of economics, security and governance. The Fourth Estate relates to all three areas. The CU/Go Lean roadmap has these prime directives:

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

There is no doubt, the Print-Journalism industry is in decline. In conflict with the medium over elements of truth, the new American President, Donald Trump, pejoratively refers to the New York Times as the failing New York Times.

The Go Lean book purports that the Caribbean must do better. The Go Lean book details the policies and other community ethos to adopt, plus the executions of strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to elevate Caribbean society, and protect the media industry. The book details how to Bridge the Digital Divide (Page 31), deploy a customized Social Media network (Page 111) – branded as www.myCaribbean.gov with tentacles in mobile technologies – and Ways to Foster e-Commerce (Page 198).

All in all, the Go Lean roadmap posits that as a region, we cannot only expect to consume, but that we must create/compose as well. The end result of this roadmap is a complete eco-system to foster a viable electronic media industry.

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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

————

Appendix – How The Miami Herald is getting to know its audience again

By: Kristen Hare

MIAMI — On the outside, the headquarters of the Miami Herald looks like any building in any part of town filled with wide warehouses, beige office plazas and chain restaurants. Inside, though, the values of the Herald are written on the walls.

Really.

On one teal green wall in slim white letters:

“Publish! Journalistic cowardliness is as evil as censorship.” — Gene Miller

On another (from the adjacent newsroom of the Spanish daily El Nuevo Herald):

“El periódico es una espada y su empuñadura la razón.” — José Martí

A few months ago, something new appeared on the big screen TVs hanging from cobalt blue walls in the middle of the newsroom: Chartbeat.

Newsrooms and journalists around the country have had access to real-time analytics for years. In March, the Herald joined in and gave everyone access to Chartbeat.

Then, every reporter was asked to raise total traffic to their stories by 7.5 percent. They got training in headline writing and search engine optimization. They started forming teams to function like startups, responsible for covering subjects such as Cuba, local government and food.

Change didn’t hit the newspaper industry in one big wallop. It has come, instead, in relentless small ones. The Herald didn’t just start making changes to adapt to digital, either. But for Aminda Marqués Gonzalez, the Herald’s executive editor and vice president, this year’s about accelerating those changes.

All of the shifts have one thing in common: They require everyone at the Herald to pay attention to its audience.

WELCOME TO MIAMI

In the middle of the newsroom, the big screens with Chartbeat tick along like departure boards at a train station. They serve a similar function, too. This story’s stalling, this one’s taking off, this one needs fuel.

The Herald is one of four legacy newspapers in the Knight-Temple Table Stakes Project, a $1.3 million initiative aimed at pushing regional news organizations toward the digital future. Here, analytics have been integral to that process.

But the Herald (and other McClatchy papers) didn’t wait until Table Stakes came along to get started. The company began working with the American Press Institute almost a year ago to try and get to know its audience better.

The institute’s Metrics for News program helps newsrooms figure out where their journalists are spending time, where their audiences are spending time and how to get the two to align more closely. Contrary to the typical notions of clickbait and virality, API has discovered that readers value actual reporting — enterprise work, local crime reporting and long-form journalism, among other things.

The Herald, for example, has found a strong and engaged audience for its local government coverage. But not every story resonates.

“It’s wonderful to say, we value enterprise, our focus is on enterprise, but if you’re a beat reporter, hey you make sources by going to meetings,” said Rick Hirsch, the Herald’s managing editor. “Part of this work is showing up.”

Add to this that Miami-Dade County has more than 30 municipalities, plus a big county and city government, and the Herald’s five local government reporters can’t possibly cover them all, even with a stable of freelancers. The challenge: How can the Herald structure coverage to build sources, keep track of what’s happening and make sure people find and read it?

In part, it’s about being less city-specific and focusing on topics everyone in the area cares about, Hirsch said. Should one reporter cover six cities, or should that reporter focus on transportation issues across them all? Should another focus on corruption? Another on spending and accountability?

“Are there ways to approach local government coverage that looks across city lines?” Hirsch asked. “I think there are, but it requires a little bit of a change in how we go about doing what we do, and it certainly means more of a team approach than we’ve had before.”

In the last few months, editors at the Herald began to see a way they just might be able make that happen.

MIAMI, INC

The Herald has launched several initiatives as part of the Table Stakes project. But one in particular ties in with all the rest: the formulation of “INCs,” (short for incorporated.) Basically, they’re meant to be self-contained startups within the newsroom.

“It’s a really different way of working,” Hirsch said. “The idea behind it is to develop a team approach with a leader who’s responsible to really focus on audience, to work with a team to develop coverage that responds to areas where we know there’s high engagement and at the same time look at other ways to reach people that aren’t just writing stories.”

The people running INCs aren’t just in charge of coverage, but also getting that coverage to spread on social media. And that means thinking digitally.

So far, INCs include Spanish and English coverage of Cuba and the Herald’s food coverage. Other areas that will become INCs are crime and courts, local government, entertainment and coverage of sports that appeals to the Herald’s local and international readers.

Carlos Frías, food editor, is a one-man INC.

It took awhile for him to realize that it’s all about workflow. Now, he aggregates. He works on getting headlines and social media language right. He spends his time on in-depth features. And when Frías sees a story he can’t get to, he reaches out to other departments. Could a suburban reporter cover it? Someone in sports? He’s curating work from the rest of the Herald that makes sense for his audience.

“Before, I was kind of just shoveling coal, but now I’m at the point that I realize that the beauty of this INC idea is you can leverage the resources that you have at the paper,” he said.

In the past, for instance, a story about National Doughnut Day that wasn’t ready for the print edition wouldn’t have been published at all. But when Frías heard about a new doughnut shop, he contacted a suburban reporter and editor, published the story online that day and promoted it heavily on social media. It ended up running in the newspaper on Sunday. A story that previously had limited reach instead got the star treatment with an audience that loves food.

Not all the INCs are as clear or as straightforward, however. In Cuba Today is one of those. The Herald and El Nuevo Herald’s coverage of Cuba has readership in English and Spanish, and became a standalone site in each language in December, before the INCs debuted.

Now, it’s gone from a vertical to a startup within the newsroom.

The team, led by editor Nancy San Martin, has four staffers devoted to coverage of Cuba. Two are reporters, two are producers and translators. The audience for both sites are heavily bilingual. Original content does best.

The challenge, San Martin said, is maintaining two sites in two different languages as well as providing coverage for the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald in print and for digital. She’s considering combining them into one Spanglish site (using a mix of English and Spanish).

Fundamentally, INCs aren’t meant to be verticals but to harness the Herald’s audience, Marqués said. They start by figuring out who the audience is, how to reach it and how to help it grow. They all include aggregation and a strong focus on social media. They also all ask — what else? Beyond advertising, is there anything to monetize? Events? A custom database? A newsletter?

As with real startups, though, each INC has different needs, different expectations and different possibilities. Just like there’s really not one audience, there’s not one formula for reaching them.

NOT THE HUNGER GAMES

When Nicholas Nehamas started at the Herald two years ago, reporters weren’t paying attention to what people were reading, where they were reading it or for how long.

“Now, two years later, I look up and there’s a big monitor with Chartbeat on it,” said Nehamas, who covers real estate, which will eventually become an INC. “And that makes a big difference in the way we think about our coverage and the stories we write, so that’s been a big impact, I think.”

That’s also resulted in something a lot of newsrooms are already doing — deciding what they’ll stop covering. In the past, the business desk covered quarterly earnings reports from banks. No longer.

“There are things you have to cover, even if not many people read them, but this is not one of them,” he said.

Saying no to those reports means more time for enterprise. For Nehamas, that enterprise included being part of the team that investigated the Panama Papers.

One of his fears, when reporters were asked to figure out how readers were responding, was that their efforts would all boil down to clicks. And sure, if he spent all his time writing about J-Lo’s latest home sale, he could meet his traffic goals. But that’s not what’s happened.

“I think reporters are seeing that it’s not going to be ‘The Hunger Games,'” he said. “We’re not going to be out there finding the grossest stories we can to report. We’re still fulfilling the old mission.”

Marqués agreed.

“Listening to your readers doesn’t mean that you lose your journalism values,” she said.

It does mean making lots of adjustments, however. Here are some other changes happening at the Herald that focus on audience:

—The morning breaking news team started working a digital schedule

“It sounds basic, but you can’t have a morning breaking news effort without moving people to the morning,” said Jeff Kleinman, day news editor.

Now, the team works from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., (and their work includes a daily Facebook Live morning update.) They’re not thinking about print packages or print space, but updating stories as more information comes in. When a reporter recently asked Kleinman how long a story should be, it took him a minute to answer.

“I’m not thinking length first thing in the morning,” he said. “I’m thinking speed and video and how this story can develop.”

They’re trying to detach themselves from the print monster, he added, “and it’s a monster that we all love and that’s baked into our newsroom, but it sometimes can hold you back.”

—They’re experimenting

The Herald’s sports desk is toying with the idea that its vast out-of-market readership will read coverage of sports in Spanglish. Instead of launching it as an INC or starting a new vertical, however, they’re testing to see if there’s an audience for it by using a Facebook group.

—They’re betting all these changes will bring a valuable audience

Marqués started at the Herald as an intern in 1986. In 2002, she left to work as an editor at People Magazine. There, she found an industry very tuned in to its audience. Editors knew what stories readers responded to. They tested covers. It was still a print-centric business, but it was also an audience-centric one.

When she returned to the Herald in 2007, Marqués started asking questions about readers. Now, she has tools to answer those questions and to show how readers are responding.

For instance, in June of last year, the Herald had 5.6 million total unique visitors. This June, they hit 10.8 million.

And as the Herald’s newsroom has transformed during the last year or so, its advertising side has as well, said Orlando Comas, McClatchy’s director of sales.

“It’s really less about ‘we’re just a newspaper company’ and more that we are connecting to our local audiences and our local businesses,” he said.

Higher pageviews translate directly into increased revenue from display ads. Indirectly, he said, higher engagement turns into revenue by creating a local audience that stays around and is more valuable to advertisers.

Print is still a focus, and it still brings in money, Marqués said. But the future is digital, “so that’s where we have to be hyper-focused.”

“We say in shorthand, ‘audience first,'” said Suzanne Levinson, who worked for the Herald for more that 30 years and is now head of digital news at McClatchy. “It’s really about adjusting how we do journalism.”

Marqués agreed.

“It’s a new medium. It’s not just a new platform,” she said. “And for too long we all treated it like just another platform.”

TOWARD THE SUMMIT

At its biggest, the Miami Herald had a newsroom of about 435. Now, it’s about 115. The cuts here, like at other newspapers, have been as relentless as the industry changes.

Over the years, the Herald has been sluggish in response to shifts in the news business, said David Neal, a breaking news reporter who has been at the Herald for 27 years.

“I feel like we were like the entire industry,” he said, “we were slow to respond to a lot of changes that you could see coming on the horizon even 20 years ago.”

Chartbeat is great, Neal said. It’s a good tool to see how your work is doing. But, for him, it still comes back to instincts.

“You can still figure out what’s gonna hit: sports, animals, pets of sports stars, a sex cruise.”

Because of all the changes the newsroom has weathered, morale’s not great, Neal said, “but there are still a lot of people here doing good work who are still energized and inspired and doing their best.”

Nehamas, who’s been here for a few years, sees a newsroom more open to change than when he started, and one that’s producing high-quality local journalism.

To him, morale seems very strong right now.

Frías is fairly new to the Herald, so he’s not sure what it was like before Chartbeat and INCs were part of life here. There’s a fear that the newsroom is no longer capable of tackling the kind of journalism the Herald produced 15 or 20 years ago, he said.

“It’s just not true,” Frías said. “It’s just you have to pick and choose your spots.”

San Martin can’t speak for the whole newsroom, but on the Cuba INC, things are working.

“We’ve created a family-style camaraderie and thoroughly enjoy the challenge of going after an increasing and diversified audience,” she said. “There is great satisfaction in knowing that we are attracting national and international visitors to our Cuba sites, including those living on the island.”

They’re seeing more retweets, likes, comments, mentions and aggregations of their work, and that’s satisfying. That doesn’t mean it’s easy, though.

“For us, the future is like climbing a mountain that we know will provide a breathtaking view,” she said. “We just keep working hard to reach the summit.”

FOLLOWING THE SIGNS

The biggest challenges facing the Herald now aren’t really about what’s happening with its audience. Instead, Hirsch said, they’re about time, culture and focus.

“I think this is a hard shift,” he said, “and it is uncomfortable, and so part of the change that people have to make is working differently, and that’s really hard…We’re taking folks who have a lot of muscle memory and working a certain way and saying, let’s do this differently.”

Because of that, all the changes the Herald is pursuing are, for now and probably for good, a work in progress. And that’s tough for people used to waiting to publish, print and share big things until they’re just about perfect.

“I wish it was in our DNA,” Hirsch said, “but it’s going to have to be a learned skill for us.”

When the Herald first relocated to Doral from downtown Miami in 2013, the inside of its new home was one of cold gray walls, countless hallways and turns. Along with the bright colors and fortifying quotes (which, yes, are just paint and words,) the newsroom installed street signs. They hang from many corners.

Palmetto. Miracle Mile. Calle Ocho.

Now, everyone knows their way around. But early on, those signs reminded them of where they’d been and helped them figure out where they were going. It’s not exactly like figuring out a path into a digital future. But it’s not all that different, either.

Source: Posted July 11, 2016; retrieved March 6, 2017 from: https://www.poynter.org/2016/how-the-miami-herald-is-getting-to-know-its-audience-again/414525/

————

See the VIDEO of the Miami Herald Digital Edition here:

VIDEO – Miami Herald Digital Newspaper – https://youtu.be/01GWq9mZsMg

Published on Sep 17, 2012 – Learn about the Miami Herald Digital Newspaper. The Miami Herald Digital Newspaper is an exact replica of the daily paper, available on PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, Android and most tablets. You’ll love the convenience, at home or on the go.
Features include:
– Easy to use and navigate
– Available anywhere in the world with data access
– Share via email, Facebook & Twitter
– Searchable 30 day archive
– Quick links to advertiser websites

http://www.miamiherald.com/digital

Category: News & Politics
License: Standard YouTube License

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150 Years of HBCU’s – ENCORE

Posted on March 5, 2017 in Economics, Government, Strategy

This is the 150 anniversary of Howard University, one of the original Historically Black Colleges & Universities (HBCU). This Washington, D.C. private, co-educational, non-sectarian institution was federally chartered on March 2, 1867.

Shortly after the end of the American Civil War, members of The First Congregational Society of Washington considered establishing a theological seminary for the education of African-American clergymen. Within a few weeks, the project expanded to include a provision for establishing a university. Within two years, the University consisted of the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Medicine. The new institution was named for General Oliver Otis Howard, a Civil War hero, who was both the founder of the University and, at the time, Commissioner of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Howard later served as President of the university from 1869–74.^[14]

U.S. Congress chartered Howard on March 2, 1867, and much of its early funding came from endowment, private benefaction, and tuition. An annual congressional appropriation administered by the U.S. Department of Education funds Howard University and Howard University Hospital.^[15] – Retrieved 03-02-2017 from Wikipedia.

Congratulations Howard!

Listen to this AUDIO-PODCAST of a news-talk show discussing this 150-year anniversary commemoration.

AUDIO-PODCAST: http://the1a.org/audio/#/shows/2017-03-02/more-than-money-building-a-new-future-for-hbcus/

This is a great opportunity to ENCORE a previous blog-commentary from March 6, 2015, regarding a different HBCU, Florida A. & M. University (in Tallahassee, FL) and the impact this and other HBCU’s have on economic opportunities. See that submission here-now:

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Go Lean Commentary – FAMU is No. 3 for Facilitating Economic Opportunity

This commentary is a big proponent of a college education for Caribbean citizens.

This commentary is a big opponent of a college education for Caribbean citizens in American colleges and universities. The reason for the ambivalence on college education is consistent: the benefit of social mobility; facilitating new economic opportunities. We need this upward mobility for Caribbean citizens but in the Caribbean.

Some institutions are better at facilitating social mobility than others. On the National List of institutions, Florida Agriculture and Mechanical University (FAMU) stands out. It is #3 on the list.

In the interest of full disclosure, this writer is a Rattler, an alumnus of FAMU. (The mascot for FAMU athletics is ‘Rattlers’).

The chief goal of the Social Mobility Index (SMI), according to their website, is to stimulate policy changes within US higher education to help arrest the dangerous and growing economic divergence between rich and poor in the country. The gap in the US between rich and poor grew since the Great Recession, reaching proportions not seen since the period leading to and contributing to the onset of the Great Depression and two world wars. The common attributes include crumbling infrastructure, destroying asset values, and forcing high taxation to pay for war efforts.

If we learned anything from the global fallout of the Great Recession (in 2008 and beyond), it was that getting economic policy right in the US may be necessary for long-term world stability. So while the much publicized student debt overhang, now in excess of $1 trillion, imposes distress and financial burden on millions of students and families, it is a symptom of the much greater problem of economic and social divergence in the country. The good news is that colleges and universities carry great potential to powerfully address this problem.

Economist Thomas Piketty stated: “the principal force for convergence [reduction of inequality] – the diffusion of knowledge – …depends in large part on educational policies, access to training and to the acquisition of appropriate skills, and associated institutions.” – Capital in the 21st Century, pp. 21-2. The SMI asserts that if colleges can begin aggressively shifting policy towards increasing access to higher education, particularly for economically disadvantaged students and families, they will establish themselves as a key force for economic and social convergence.

FAMU has accomplished this feat; placing #3 on a ranking of universities pursuing this endeavor.

The full article of the recognition of FAMU’s SMI is provided here:

Title: Social Mobility Index Ranks FAMU as No. 3 Institution in the Nation for Facilitating Economic Opportunity for Underserved Students
(Source: FAMU News and Events Site – Official Communications – Posted 11-01-2014; retrieved 03-05-2015 from http://www.famunews.com/?p=2153)
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The Social Mobility Index (SMI) has ranked Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) the No. 3 institution in the nation for facilitating economic opportunity for underserved students. The University outpaced the nation’s leading Ivy League institutions such as Princeton, Harvard and Yale, which placed 360th, 438th and 440th, respectively, on the rankings list.

The SMI is a new, data-driven ranking system, focused on the problem of economic mobility in the United States. Rankings are based upon an institution’s tuition rate, student economic profile, graduation rate, average early career salary, and endowment.

According to SMI data analyses, FAMU ranks high in its contributions toward narrowing socio-economic gaps by admitting and graduating more low-income students at lower tuition rates, yet with better economic outcomes following graduation. The University is noted on the SMI as having one of the lowest annual tuition rates in the nation.

“We are excited about the SMI recognition,” said President Elmira Mangum, Ph.D. “This new ranking speaks to FAMU’s 127-year legacy of providing access and opportunity to low-wealth citizens across the nation.”

“This ranking also speaks to our strong and unwavering commitment to economic empowerment. Many of our students come to FAMU with the odds stacked against them; however, they leave our institution with a high-quality education, a promising future, and the ability to be effective contributors to society, and, more specifically, to their families,” Dr. Mangum added.

Nearly 92 percent of FAMU students are considered low-income, according to SMI data. However, graduates are leaving the University earning an average salary of nearly $45,000 a year.

For more information on the SMI ranking, visit: www.socialmobilityindex.org.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean posits, along with most economists, that education elevates individuals and entire communities. The book quotes that every year of additional community education raises GDP by 1 percent. Go Lean stakes the claim further that traditional college educated career paths have been disastrous policies for the Caribbean in whole, and for each specific country in particular, for the primary reason that so many students do not return home; or expatriate after returning for a short period. In fact, the World Bank has reported that the Caribbean has a 70% abandonment rate.

In line with the SMI ranking, the Go Lean book promotes education among the strategies to elevate Caribbean society. But this commentary previously asserted that college education has been a bad investment for the Caribbean.

From a strictly micro perspective, college education is great for the individual. The Go Lean book quotes proven economic studies showing the impact that every year of college education improves an individual’s earning power (Page 258). But from the macro perspective – the community – is different for the Caribbean; the region loses out because of an incontrovertible brain drain. Previously, the proverb was introduced of “fattening frogs for snake” referring to the preponderance for Caribbean college educated citizens to abandon their tropical homelands for foreign shores in the US, Canada and Europe, and take their Caribbean-funded education and skill-sets with them.

Change has now come. The driver of this change is technology and globalization. Under the tenants of globalization, institutions like FAMU are competing globally, and can rightly provide e-Learning and Distant Learning schemes. This ties to the other agent of change of technology. The internet allows for deliveries of education services anywhere around the world. The Go Lean book posits that small institutions and big institutions can complete equally on a global basis. If the regional education administrations could invest in more technological deliveries, it would be a win-win for all stakeholders. This type of impact would be more for the Greater Good.

The Go Lean roadmap provides turn-by-turn directions on how to reform the Caribbean tertiary education systems, economy, governance and Caribbean society as a whole. The roadmap commences with a Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing the approach of regional integration (Page 12 & 14) as a viable solution to elevate the region’s educational opportunities:

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

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

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

This book Go Lean… Caribbean, serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This represents change for the region. The CU/Go Lean roadmap has 3 prime directives:

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

The Go Lean book details how education is a vital consideration for Caribbean economic empowerment, but with lessons-learned from all the flawed decision-making in the past, both individually and community-wise. The vision of the CU is a confederation of the 30 member-states of the Caribbean to do the heavy-lifting of championing better educational policies. No more government scholarships; forgive-able loans only from now on. The book details the policies; and other ethos to adopt, plus the executions of the following strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to deploy online education in the region:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments (ROI)	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship	Page 28
Strategy – Mission – Facilitate Education without Risk of Abandonment	Page 45
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Education Department	Page 85
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Labor Department – Job Training	Page 89
Planning – Lessons Learned from 2008	Page 136
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Education	Page 159
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Student Loans	Page 160
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance	Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Managed the Social Contract – Education Optimizations	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Libraries	Page 187
Appendix – Education and Economic Growth	Page 258
Appendix – Measuring Education	Page 266
Appendix – Student Loan Crisis – Ripping Off America	Page 286

FAMU is a model for the Caribbean tertiary educational endeavors.

FAMU has quite a reputation for other accomplishments as well – they are a great destination to live, work, learn and play. Their world famous band, the Marching 100 has been recognized as the “playingest band in the land”. They even shared the field with Prince as the Halftime performance for Super Bowl XLI in 2007 in Miami, Florida. See News–VIDEO of their renown here; and also their 2011 Florida Classic Football Game Halftime Show in Orlando, Florida in the Appendix below.

VIDEO – FAMU 2008 Segment on “CBS Evening News” – https://youtu.be/XqGvUg_rLNs

Posted November 27, 2008 – 2008 edition of the Marching 100… interview on Thanksgiving Night 2008 on CBS News… 11/27/08

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in for the changes described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. We welcome universities like FAMU in their desire to empower minorities in society; we only want that to be done in the Caribbean so as to mitigate societal abandonment. Suggestion: FAMU should develop a global campus presence, with satellite campuses and online matriculations.

Go Rattlers!!!

With the tune set by the Marching 100 band: “I’m so glad, I’m from FAMU”.

This is the win-win the Go Lean roadmap campaigns for. But it’s more than just talk; this is action too. The body part to focus on is not just the mouth; it is the heart – the seat of motivation. Without a doubt, the complete delivery for the Caribbean educational options would help to make the homeland a better place to live, work, learn and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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

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Appendix VIDEO – FAMU Marching 100 Halftime Show @ Florida Classic 2011 – http://youtu.be/FrviGJ1Dvvk

Uploaded on Nov 21, 2011 – The FAMU Marching 100 Halftime Performance at The 2011 Florida Classic. Definitely the best band in the land.

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Petition to Lean-in for the ‘Caribbean Union Trade Federation’

Posted on March 4, 2017 in Ethos, Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean wants to effect change in the Caribbean region.

We are not the government.
We are not the region’s Big Business apparatus.
We are not representative of the security forces.

Yet, we want to optimize all these societal engines.

How can we lead, despite our lack of status?

We can be a Drum Major.

Sounds familiar?

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. – Martin Luther King, February 4, 1968

Assuming the stance of a Drum Major, this movement now presents this Change.org petition to urge the Caribbean to lean-in to this quest to elevate the societal engines in our communities.

Consider the actual petition here and the Letter to the government leaders in the Appendix below:

There is something wrong in the Caribbean. It is the greatest address on the planet, but instead of the world “beating a path” to our doors, the people of the Caribbean have “beat down their doors” to get out. Our societal abandonment rates have technically been reported as high as 60 – 89 percent of our tertiary-educated populations.

These are desperate times, calling for desperate measures.

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to a roadmap to introduce and implement the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) among the 30 member-states of the region. This is presented as a technocratic federal government with powers to optimize the region’s societal engines with these prime directives:

Optimize the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy; there is a potential to create 2.2 million new jobs and to grow the regional GDP to $800 Billion. The deficiency of jobs is one of the reasons that Caribbean people have emigrated.

Establish a security apparatus to protect the economic engines, mitigate threats and ensure public safety.

Improve Caribbean governance to support these above engines, including a separation-of-powers between member-state governments and CU federal agencies.

We must do something and this roadmap for the CU – modeled after the European Union (EU) – has addressed the issues, strategies, tactics and implementations to effect change in our homelands.

Many people love our region – residents, Diaspora and visitors alike – and yet we understand why and how people have left. It is time now to work to elevate our communities. The timing of this effort is urgent, as our youth, the next generation for the Caribbean, may not be inspired to participate in the future workings of our communities. We cannot have a future without our youth.

We must therefore do “this” (lean-in = pursue these goals with gusto) … and do it now.

Sign this petition.

This petition – along with the below letter – will be delivered to:

Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat
CARICOM (15 heads of Caribbean nations and 5 Affiliates)
United Kingdom Minister of State for the Commonwealth and the UN
Republic of Cuba
Dominican Republic
Government of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
Government of the United States Virgin Islands
Kingdom of the Netherlands – Minister Plenipotentiary of Aruba, Minister Plenipotentiary of Curaçao, Minister Plenipotentiary of Sint Maarten
Republic of France – for the Departments of Guadaloupe and Martinique, the Collectivity of Saint Martin and the Collectivity of Saint-Barthélemy.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), a technocratic federal government to optimize the economic-security-governing engines of all 30 member-states. The quest is to streamline the direct stewardship, applying lessons-learned from global best practices.

There is the need for our region to elevate the societal engines of our communities. Fulfilling this need is the underlying theme behind this Go Lean movement, to “appoint new guards” to make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. This Declaration of Interdependence is pronounced at the outset of the Go Lean book (Page 11):

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.

The Go Lean book declares that the Caribbean is in crisis, but posits that a “crisis is a terrible thing to waste” (Page 8). The book asserts that the solution for the Caribbean crisis is within reach:

The Go Lean movement is … a plan to re-boot the Caribbean. 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.

The Go Lean book details a 5-year roadmap, with turn-by-turn directions, for reforming and transforming our homeland. This 370-page manuscript features the community ethos that the region needs to adopt, plus strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute in order to impact the Caribbean region for the needed turnaround.

This petition is addressed to a number of stakeholders, starting with the CariCom, which includes the English-speaking member-states plus Dutch-speaking Suriname and French/Creole-speaking Haiti. Additional addressees include the governments of the Netherlands and France. There is also the need to integrate the US Territories into the fold; so the Go Lean book details the process of Interstate Compacts under US federal law that allows their participation legally. The Dominican Republic is also requested to lean-in to this collaboration as well as they already cooperate with other Caribbean member-states in the CariFORUM economic dialogue with the European Union.

Lastly, there is Cuba. While this country’s participation may have been unlikely in the recent past, today there is a normalization of relations with the United States, the dominant regional power. This paves the way for a full cooperative among all regional Caribbean neighbors; in effect the roadmap calls for the establishment of a Single Market economy among the member-states – 30 in total with 42 million people. They all share the same dysfunctional disposition; they should share in the fight to assuage the crisis.

The efforts to elevate the Caribbean societal engines have been a frequent theme in messaging from the Go Lean movement. Consider the details from these previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10629	Stay Home! A Series Highlighting Reasons to Stay in the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10585	Two Pies: Economic Plan for a New Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10554	Welcoming the French
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9595	Vision and Values for a ‘New’ Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9214	Time to Go! A Series Highlighting Reasons to Repatriate
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8530	Tired Waiting! Ready for Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7151	The Caribbean is Looking for Heroes … ‘to Return’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5759	Bad Example of Greece – Crisis leading to abandonment of Doctors
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5733	Better than America? Yes, We Can!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2547	Miami’s Success versus Caribbean Failure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1433	Caribbean loses more than 70 percent of professionals to brain drain

The Caribbean: the greatest address in the world, and yet such an alarming abandonment rate. This must stop … now!

Why do we think that this Go Lean roadmap will be successful? It is modeled on time-tested best-practices. Remember dysfunctional East Germany? Remember how easily they were integrated into West Germany and a bigger, better society emerged – detailed in the Go Lean book on Pages 132 & 139.

Don’t remember?

That’s because it was seamless, technocratic and drama-free … in terms of international vistas; see Appendix VIDEO below. The prime directives of the Go Lean/CU roadmap is similarly modeled, as a technocratic stewardship for our region, identified with these 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to a $800 Billion GDP & create 2.2 million new jobs. The deficiency of jobs is one of the reasons Caribbean people have emigrated.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and mitigate internal and external threats.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these above engines, including a separation-of-powers between member-state governments and CU federal agencies.

Let’s do this!

Our people have a simple request, they only want a better homeland, a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Appendix VIDEO – The Cost of Reunification | Made in Germany – https://youtu.be/A4v3zeDKjNM

Published on Nov 5, 2014 – Reunification came with a hefty price tag – about 2 trillion euros. More than half that went into social services and programs. About 300 billion euros went into renewing infrastructure and transportation. The massive transfer of funds from West to East spurred an economic boom in Western Germany as well as in the former East.
More Made in Germany on: http://www.dw.de/program/made-in-germ…

Category: News & Politics
License: Standard YouTube License

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Appendix – Actual Open Letter to Caribbean Governments Decision-Makers:

To the Honourable ___________________________________,

We, the undersigned are representative of the views of persons and organizations with an affinity for the Caribbean; we are residents, expatriates, trading-partners and visitors of these communities in the Caribbean region. We present you this petition, reflecting our love for the people and places there-in. But we recognize this reality:

There is something wrong in the Caribbean. It is the greatest address on the planet, but instead of the world “beating a path” to their doors, the people of the Caribbean have “beat down their doors” to get out. Our societal abandonment rates have technically been reported as high as 60 – 89 percent of our tertiary-educated populations.

These facts manifest that these are desperate times, and therefore call for desperate measures.

We hereby urge you to “lean-in” to this roadmap to introduce and implement the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This is presented as an inter-governmental federation with powers to optimize the region’s societal engines with this prime directives:

Optimize the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy; there is a potential to create 2.2 million new jobs and to grow the regional GDP to $800 Billion. The deficiency of jobs is one of the reasons that Caribbean people have emigrated.
Establish a security apparatus to protect the economic engines, mitigate threats and ensure public safety.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these above engines, including a separation-of-powers between member-state governments and CU federal agencies.

We must do something and this roadmap for the CU addresses the issues, strategies, tactics and implementations to effect change in these Caribbean homelands.

The timing of this petition is urgent. When is the right time to address a crisis? The answer is always NOW. We cannot have a future without the youth, and these young people – the next generation for the Caribbean – are not inspired to engage in the status quo. We must impact change in our region, even if it is only for their benefit.

We urge you to lean-in – pursue these goals with gusto – now!

The source reference can be located and downloaded here at: http://www.goleancaribbean.com/

Thank You for your service,

Go Lean … Caribbean Movement

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Stay Home! Outreach to the Diaspora – Doubling-down on Failure

Posted on March 3, 2017 in Ethos, Government, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

How to survive being on fire? Stop-Drop-and-Roll.

What not to do? Dose yourself with alcohol. That would be ‘Doubling-down on Failure’.

This latter visual is the Caribbean dependence on their Diaspora.

The Caribbean is in crisis – “on fire”; over 70% of college educated citizens flee the region, looking for better opportunities. This is the harsh reality. This is also an economic fact as many Caribbean states get 4 to 7 percent of their GDP as remittances back to the homeland from the Diaspora living abroad, mostly in North America and Western Europe. But a strategy to stimulate the remittance side of the Diaspora equation is dysfunctional. The community would do better to encourage 100 percent of their citizens economic output rather than just 4 to 7 percent.

This latter scenario is just ‘Doubling-down on Failure’. This is a losing proposition for the Caribbean – the Inter-American Development Bank reported that Caribbean member-states lose about 10 to 11 percent of GDP from emigration and spent cost of education on those expatriates. Focusing on remittance is just a bad strategy for Diaspora dynamics; rather the focus should be on reducing the Diaspora by dissuading future generations from leaving.

This is why the messaging in this VIDEO is so distressing. It is like the subtle message to the Caribbean population is that they need to leave their homeland, go get success and then please remember to invest in us afterwards. This is the jump-off-the-page thought of this address from the Prime Minister of St. Lucia last month. See here:

VIDEO – PM 38th Independence Message to Diaspora – https://youtu.be/R_eqKr32BQA

Published on Feb 4, 2017 – St. Lucia’s Prime Minister, the Honourable Allen M. Chastanet’s formal address to the Diaspora on the occasion of Independence Day 2017.
o Category: News & Politics
o License: Standard YouTube License

Say it ain’t so!

It is so unfortunate that the people in the Caribbean are beating down the doors to get out of their Caribbean homeland, to seek refuge in these places like the US, Canada and Western Europe. And yet it seems like the Chief Executive of this Caribbean country is encouraging more of it – there is a similar sentiment in the rest of the Caribbean member-states. As a result, we have such a sad state of affairs for our Caribbean eco-system as we are suffering from a bad record of societal abandonment. The reasons why people leave have been identified as “push and pull”:

“Push” refers to people who feel compelled to leave, to seek refuge in a foreign land. “Refuge” is an appropriate word; because of societal defects, many from the Caribbean must leave as refugees – think LGBT, Disability, Domestic-abuse, Medically-challenged – for their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. For these people, they are “on fire” and need to stop-drop-and-roll.

“Pull”, on the other hand refers to the lure of a more prosperous life abroad; many times our people are emigrating for economics solely.

If only we can mitigate these “push and pull” factors, then we can dissuade our people from leaving in the first place. If only we can go from ‘good to great‘ here in the Caribbean homeland. This would be the ideal. But this is not our reality. Considering the messaging from the current Prime Minister of St. Lucia, it is obvious that we cannot depend on the right roadmap to come from the region’s governance.

The alternate strategy being proposed here is to prosper where we’re planted in the Caribbean. But this goal requires heavy-lifting. It is easier said than done. This is the focus of the book Go Lean…Caribbean, to elevate the Caribbean economy so that there would be optimal opportunities at home and no need to supplant to another land.

One of the missions of the book Go Lean…Caribbean is to lower the “pull” attraction of life in foreign lands. This is part 3 of 3 in a series on “Why Caribbean people need to Stay Home“, positing that the “grass is not necessarily greener on the other side”; definitely not for the communities they leave behind. The complete series is as follows:

Stay Home! Remembering ‘High Noon’ and its Back-Story
Stay Home! Immigration Realities in the US
Stay Home! Outreach to the Diaspora – Doubling-down on Failure

From a community perspective, it would be better for Caribbean people to work to remediate the problems in their homeland, rather than flee and send monies back home. But it turns out that this true individual-wise as well. Research shows that it is more advantageous for individuals to invest in their homelands or in themselves (as in advanced education) than to do the heavy-lift of migrating abroad. It turns out this strategy is an Economic Fallacy, that first generation immigrants do not really prosper in their foreign lands – they only survive; it takes their next generation to really thrive. Consider this US example, they usually make less money than legacy Americans:

On average, most Caribbean immigrants obtain lawful permanent residence in the United States (also known as receiving a green card) through three main channels: They qualify as immediate relatives of U.S. citizens, through family-sponsored preferences, or as refugees and asylees. Compared to the total foreign-born population, Caribbean immigrants are less likely to be Limited English Proficient (LEP), but have lower educational attainment, lower median incomes, and higher poverty rates. – Migration Policy Institute, 2016.

Then the problem with next generation success is that at that point in the timeline the stakeholders are not Diaspora anymore, their allegiance has shifted to their new homeland. We have so many immigrant experiences that relate this: Chinese, Italian, Irish, Cuban, etc.. Yes, the reality of Cubans in America is that many of their expatriates fled to exile hoping for a quick return. But now, by the second-and-third generations, their offspring really consider America as their home and Cuba as just their heritage. There will be no prospering back in Cuba.

So how do we in the Caribbean prosper where we are planted in the Caribbean? While this is a simple question (based on the Bible principle of Psalms 1:3), the answer is more complex.

They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season. Their leaves never wither, and they prosper in all they do. – New Living Translation

The book Go Lean…Caribbean concurs with this mission, to prosper where planted in the Caribbean. It serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to do the heavy-lifting of optimizing the societal engines in the region. This Go Lean roadmap uses cutting-edge delivery of best practices to employ strategies, tactics and implementations to impact its prime directives; identified with the following 3 statements:

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

The successful execution of these directives will allow Caribbean stakeholders to prosper, while remaining as residents in their homeland. The Go Lean book seeks to optimize the entire Caribbean economic/security/governance eco-system to reach this goal. This vision is defined early in the book (Page 13 & 14) in the following pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence:

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

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

To be fair to the Prime Minister of St. Lucia, the Honourable Allen Chastanet, there is some concurrence to his contention, this Economic Fallacy; other PM’s in the region have made the same appeal. It is an assumption by many pundits in economic circles, though a minority opinion, that a country’s Diaspora community can be a great source for economic elevation. These pundits posit that the status quo in these developing countries would not lead to the sought-after elevation; it would take “new blood” and the Diaspora are considered candidates for bringing these 3 ingredients:

Trade
Investments
Skills and Knowledge Transfers

See the full report – www.migrationpolicy.org/pubs/Diasporas-EconomicDevelopment.pdf – by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington, DC dedicated to analysis of the movement of people worldwide. See the Executive Summary in the Photo here:

(Click on Image to Enlarge)

This opinion is not shared by the movement behind the Go Lean book. The full MPI Report identifies countries where Diaspora outreach has yielded positive results, like Peru, India and Somalia. A prime difference of these countries versus the Caribbean member-states is the National Sacrifice community ethos, it is undoubtedly missing in the Caribbean – member-states do not even have (work-free) holidays to honor the sacrifices of those that fought, bled and/or died for their country. Caribbean people normally do not show the same level of patriotism. Once Caribbean citizens leave their homeland, they rarely invest back in their ancestral homeland. They normally just send money back to their families. As for investment, they have better choices; think Wall Street.

In summary, the Caribbean Diaspora do not invest back in their homelands because they are not ready, willing nor able. This is the honest assessment of the Caribbean status quo. Thusly, an outreach to the Diaspora is doubling-down on failure!

The Go Lean book details features of assessments, community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to plant and exploit local opportunities in the Caribbean region. See this sample here:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economics Influence Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Privacy versus Public Protection	Page 23
Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens	Page 23
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives	Page 24
Community Ethos – Non-Government Organizations	Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Arounds	Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate 30 Member-States	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Dissuade Next Generation from Emigrating	Page 47
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization	Page 57
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Separation of Powers – Between Member-states -vs- CU Agencies	Page 71
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Planning – Ways to Model the EU	Page 130
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Planning – Ways to Measure Progress	Page 148
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Cancer	Page 157
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Cooperatives	Page 176
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Emergency Management – Deal with Disasters!	Page 196
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Appendix – Education and Economic Growth – Each add’l year = 10% more $$$	Page 258

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in for the empowerments described here in this book Go Lean … Caribbean. It is time for the region to prosper right here where we are planted.

The Caribbean can succeed in this effort to improve the Caribbean as a place to live, work and play. The strategies and tactics of this quest have been detailed in many previous Go Lean blog-commentaries. Consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10585	Two Pies: Economic Plan for a New Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10043	Integration Plan for Greater Caribbean Prosperity
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9595	Vision and Values for a ‘New’ Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8351	A 6-part Series on Economic Fallacies
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7646	Going from ‘Good to Great’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7221	Street naming for Martin Luther King unveils a ‘Climate of Hate’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5733	Better than America? Yes, We Can!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5527	American Defects: Racism – Is It Over?

An outreach to successful citizens living in the Diaspora is futile; it says this is what you have to do – leave – to prosper and be successful.

The alternative messaging for elevating the Caribbean should be: “Let’s double-down on … ”

job creation …
incubators for entrepreneurship …
bridging the Digital Divide …
regional collaboration
e-Learning for At-Home education
and so on … (see Go Lean book Page 45 for full list of strategies).

This is what is needed to prosper where planted in the Caribbean. We need a turnaround. It must start in the head (thoughts, visions, etc.), penetrate the heart (feelings, motivations, etc.) and then manifest in speech and actions.

To the Prime Minister of St Lucia and all the other Heads of Government in the Caribbean region: Do better!

We will help. We hereby urge you to lean-in to the Go Lean roadmap.

To the residents on St. Lucia and all the other Caribbean communities, we urge: Stay Home! The grass is not greener on the other side. The effort to impact any change is easier here in the Caribbean than abroad in some foreign country. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Diaspora, St Lucia, Transform

[Top]

Stay Home! Immigration Realities in the US

Posted on March 2, 2017 in Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

When conditions are dysfunctional at home, people leave … period.

“… we are just making it easy for the clean-up woman” – Classic R&B song by Betty Wright
See Appendix VIDEO below.

This is not good for a family nor for a community. The truth of the matter is that communities need their populations to grow, not recede. So any human flight incidences would create havoc on the functionality of societal engines: economics, security and governance.

This is our status in the Caribbean, but it is not just an incident, not a trickle; it is a flood. The people are beating down the doors to get out of their Caribbean homeland, to seek refuge in places like the US, Canada and Western Europe. We have a sad state of affairs for our Caribbean eco-system so we are suffering from a bad record of societal abandonment – averaging a 70 percent brain drain rate. The reasons why people leave have been identified as “push and pull”:

“Push” refers to people who feel compelled to leave, to seek refuge in a foreign land. “Refuge” is an appropriate word; because of societal defects, many from the Caribbean must leave as refugees – think LGBT, Disability, Domestic-abuse, Medically-challenged – for their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. This is making it easy for the “clean-up woman”.

“Pull”, on the other hand refers to the lure of a more prosperous life in the US (and other destinations); many times our people are emigrating for economics solely.

What is a point of contention is where our emigrants are going. Let’s consider the realities of one such destination: the United States. While things are bad for our residents in their Caribbean homeland, many minority immigrants in America (Black-and-Brown, Muslim, etc.) have to contend with less than welcoming conditions there.

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean has consistently related that the United States of America functions as a Great Society but it has two societal defects: Institutional Racism and Crony-Capitalism. These societal defects can easily create a ‘Climate of Hate‘ that causes people to haze and blame-game the immigrant community.

In a previous blog-commentary, it was conveyed that America treats immigrants unappreciatedly – they are inflicted with a “long train of abuses”. The long-term Americans start towards the immigrants with hate and then eventually tolerate. After some decades they may then integrate with the immigrant community. But only after generations do they appreciate and celebrate the minority group. Think of the American experience of the Chinese, Italians, Jewish and Cuban populations.

This is also the reality of the Caribbean Black-and-Brown that has emigrated to the US, while they can more easily survive, the quest to thrive is more perplexing. They have to live in this environment filled with these societal defects. Consider this news article and these aligning VIDEO’s:

News Article Title: GPS device-maker Garmin reeling after workers gunned down
By: Jim Suhr

OLATHE, Kan. (AP) — GPS device-maker Garmin long has revered diversity in its workforce, even when the locale of its ever-sprawling operational headquarters — a largely white Kansas City suburb — didn’t reflect it.

It’s the place 32-year-old Srinivas Kuchibhotla came to work a few years ago. By his wife’s account Friday he willingly spent long hours on an aviation systems engineering team alongside Alok Madasani, a friend and colleague also 32 and from India.

Kuchibhotla’s trek led him to have a kinship with his boss, Lebanese native Didier Popadopoulos, who says he moved to America at Kuchibhotla’s age and once held the same Garmin job.

But Garmin — a billion-dollar tech giant launched in Kansas as a startup by two men nearly three decades ago — now is reeling, trying to digest Kuchibhotla’s shooting death Wednesday at a tavern just a mile down the road from work. Madasani was wounded, along with a stranger who tried to help.

Witnesses say the gunman, Adam Purinton, yelled at the two Indian men to “get out of my country” and opened fire. Purinton, who was arrested hours later at a bar in Missouri, remains jailed on murder and attempted murder charges.

The shooting happened at a time when many have concerns about the treatment of immigrants in the U.S., some of whom feel targeted by the current administration. President Donald Trump has promised to ban certain travelers and been especially vocal about the threat posed by Islamic terrorist groups.

On Friday, Garmin tried to comfort grieving employees at a closed-door vigil inside the auditorium on its campus in Olathe, Kansas. Kuchibhotla’s widow, Sunayana Dumala, addressed the group of about 200 workers that included Madasani, who was released from the hospital Thursday.

Laurie Minard, Garmin’s vice president of human resources, doesn’t believe the shooting will jeopardize its recruitment of workers from overseas.

“We tend to be a family here,” she said at the Garmin campus, which is waging a $200 million expansion, with plans announced last August for a new manufacturing and distribution center. “We want people to feel safe. We embrace it. We encourage it. We support it. It’s extremely important to us about acceptance.”

At any given time, she said, more than 100 Garmin employees are in the H-1B program, which lets American companies bring foreigners with technical skills to the U.S. for three to six years.

In an eight-year period until fiscal year 2016, Garmin on average obtained 49 certifications for foreign labor — a prerequisite for hiring with an H-1B visa — for an average of 70 positions, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. During that time, 81 percent of the certified positions were in Olathe, the Labor Department says.

Olathe, whose name means “beautiful” in the Shawnee language, is a well-to-do Kansas City suburb where the median household income is above $77,000 a year.

Worldwide, Switzerland-based Garmin Ltd. — the Kansas operation’s corporate parent — has more than 11,400 workers in 60 offices and last year logged $3.02 billion in revenue. Roughly 2,800 workers are at the Kansas headquarters, which Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce spokeswoman Pam Whiting cast as regionally “one of our entrepreneurial success stories” and biggest employers.

Recruiting from overseas isn’t at all unusual in the tech industry, which contends there aren’t enough Americans with specialized skills the companies need.

Indian immigrants in the U.S. has spiked from about 200,000 in the 1980s to more than 2 million today, as Indian-born scientists and engineers fueled the American tech boom. India received more H-1B visas in the U.S. for its temporary high-skilled workers, about 70 percent, than any other country in 2014.

Stunned by Kuchibhotla’s death, Popadopoulos, the Lebanese native who was the man’s boss, said he plans to stay the course.

“When this happened, one of the things I started to think about with my wife (was) ‘Is it time to leave?'” he said.

Then he thought: “Leave where? I’m from here. I really think Srinivas would want us to stick together and stand up for what’s right.”

U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran said he left a message with Olathe’s mayor, offering to help assure people from India who live in Kansas that the actions leading to Kuchibhotla’s death are “not the norm.”

“This is not the nature of Kansas, and we welcome people to the United States, particularly a company like Garmin and many others,” the Kansas Republican said.

___

AP Data Journalist Larry Fenn in New York and AP writers Martha Mendoza in Bangkok and John Hanna in Topeka, Kansas, contributed to this report.
Source: Associated Press – posted February 25, 2017; retrieved February 27, 2017 from: https://www.yahoo.com/news/gps-device-maker-garmin-reeling-workers-gunned-down-013731087.html

—————-

VIDEO #1 – What would America’s Tech industry be like without immigrants? – https://youtu.be/QODK-9-mImg

Published on Feb 3, 2017 – In the recent hate-crime in Olathe, Kansas the gunman exclaimed that he wanted the country back. Consider the words of this deranged killer and ask “What would America’s Tech industry be like without immigrants?”
But maybe, the American people are not so inviting, even though American companies may seek immigrants.
http://global-gathering.com

—————-

VIDEO #2 – Trump Said Immigration Is Bad for the Economy, But Is it? – https://youtu.be/7PHfJ8HY-Ds

Published on Feb 12, 2017 – The new President, Donald Trump, has expressed that immigration is bad for the American economy and society in general. This is just another example of his “alternate facts”. It is not the truth. But it does project that his American administration is not welcoming to immigrants.
The question to the Caribbean: Do you want to go to a party that you’re not invited to or welcomed?
Category: News & Politics
License: Standard YouTube License

This foregoing article relates a hate-crime against immigrants (engineers) from India. They were not Muslims; they were not Mexican; they were not affiliated with the Black-and-Brown populations from Latin America or the Caribbean. But they were non-White and spoke with foreign accents; they therefore were subject to standard American hate-speech, bullying and in this case, a random act of violence; one was murdered.

This commentary is one of the missions of the book Go Lean…Caribbean, to lower the “pull” attraction of life in the US. This is not being done with “smoke and mirrors” but rather this is just the truth. This is part 2 of 3 in a series on “Why Caribbean people need to Stay Home“, positing that the “grass is not greener on the other side”. The complete series is as follows:

Stay Home! Remembering ‘High Noon’ and its Back-Story
Stay Home! Immigration Realities in the US
Stay Home! Outreach to the Diaspora – Doubling-down on Failure

The truth of the matter is that immigrants are better able to survive in America – there is an abundance of minimum wage jobs – but to thrive is more of a challenge; consider the experiences in the foregoing news article. It would seem better for Caribbean people to work to remediate the problems in their homeland, rather than work to become immigrants in the US. But this is no easy task; and despite being necessary, it is hereby defined as heavy-lifting.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean seeks to optimize the societal engines of Caribbean life; it serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU must employ better strategies, tactics and implementations to impact the regional homelands to reform and transform the societal engines. The prime directives of the Go Lean/CU roadmap for technocratic stewardship is identified with the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs. The deficiency of jobs is one of the reasons Caribbean people have emigrated.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and mitigate internal and external threats.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these above engines, including a separation-of-powers between member-state governments and CU federal agencies.

Early in the Go Lean book, this need for careful technocratic stewardship of the region’s societal engines was pronounced (Declaration of Interdependence – Page 12 – 13) with these acknowledgements and statements:

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

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

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

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

Our Caribbean community, no community for that matter, can survive a constant drain against our population and human capital. This is a crisis! This point was crystalized in a previous blog/commentary with this quotation:

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

This is a consistent theme in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book posits that the most serious threat to Caribbean prosperity is the high abandonment rate among its citizens, especially its highly educated, skilled-labor classes.

“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste” – states the book quoting noted Economist Paul Romer.

The opportunity therefore exists to forge change in the economic, security and governing engines of the Caribbean, in response to this crisis. This is the advocacy of the Go Lean book, to position the region at the corner of preparation and opportunity, so as to better compete on the world stage. Our job creation engines have failed to keep pace with the population, therefore fewer and fewer jobs are at home. Thus this region has had a higher and higher emigration rate as the decades pass. If we want our citizens to “Stay Home” then we must provide job options.

How?

First, the region already has a mature tourism product so we now need jobs in other industries.

The following details from the book Go Lean … Caribbean are the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocates prescribed to create non-tourism jobs and elevate the Caribbean economy:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – new Economic Principles	Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – new Security Principles	Page 22
Community Ethos – new Governing Principles	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Arounds	Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness	Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Repatriating Caribbean Diaspora	Page 47
Strategy – Non-Government Organizations	Page 48
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union	Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Implementation – Assemble all Member-States	Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change	Page 101
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate	Page 118
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Better Manage the Social Contract	Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Empowering Immigration	Page 174
Advocacy – Impact the Diaspora	Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Help the Middle Class	Page 223

The Go Lean roadmap is a product of the Diaspora, from those residing in the US – looking at Caribbean residents and longing to go home. The Go Lean book and blog-commentaries assert that the “grass is not greener on the other side”. But we rightfully know that the quest for economic opportunities is the “pull” factor that attracts Caribbean people.

How to create jobs at home? This point – and accompanying lessons – has been exhausted in previous blog/commentaries; consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9751	Where the Jobs Are – Animation and Game Design
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9203	Where the Jobs Are – Employer Models in the United States
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8262	Creating Job Opportunities with UberEverything – An African Model
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8328	Creating Job Opportunities as YouTube Millionaires
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7806	Skipping School to become Tech Giants
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6129	Innovative Partnership Aids Farm Workers/Agricultural Jobs
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6089	Where the Jobs Are – Futility of Minimum Wage
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5759	Pressed by Debt Crisis, Doctors Leave Greece in Droves for New Jobs
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2857	Where the Jobs Are – Entrepreneurism in Junk
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2126	Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2025	Where the Jobs Are – Attitudes & Images of the Diaspora
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2003	Where the Jobs Are – One Scenario: Ship-breaking
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1698	Where the Jobs Are – STEM Jobs Are Filling Slowly

These previous blogs report that this Go Lean roadmap is a hope for change in the Caribbean region. Its a plan that is conceivable, believable and achievable for making the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. Everyone in the region is hereby urged to lean-in to this roadmap. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

———–

Appendix VIDEO – Betty Wright – Clean Up Woman – https://youtu.be/vh-2_kdVcyA

Uploaded on May 27, 2009 Lyrics:

“Clean Up Woman”
A clean up woman is a woman who
Gets all the love we girls leave behind
The reason I know so much about her
Is because she picked up a man of mine

Chumpin’ slick was my ruin
‘Cause, I found out all I was doin’
Was making it easy for the clean up woman
To get my man’s love, oh yeah
Just making it easy for the clean up woman
To get my baby’s love, uh-huh, um-hum

I took this man’s love and put it a shelf
And like a fool I thought I had him all to myself

When you needed love I was out having fun
But I found out that all I had done
Was made it easy for the clean up woman
To get my man’s love, uh-huh
Yeah, that’s what I did, I made it easy for the clean up woman
To steal my baby’s love, oh yeah

The clean up woman will wipe his blues away
She’ll give him plenty lovin’ 24 hours a day
The clean up woman, she’ll sweep him off his feet
She’s the one who’ll take him in when you dump him in the street
So take a tip, you better get hip
To the clean up woman ’cause she’s tough
I mean, she really cleans up

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Civil Rights, Diaspora, Jobs, Kansas

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Stay Home! Remembering ‘High Noon’ and its Back-Story

Posted on March 1, 2017 in Ethos, Industries

Go Lean Commentary

When there is a ‘Climate of Hate’, conditions in society can easily go from bad to worse. We have a lot of lessons from history that supplant this assertion. Consider this lesson from America in the 1950’s.

A revealing new book High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic uncovers the back-story of the classic Western movie ‘High Noon’; it details the grim time in American history, when a bad community ethos permeated, McCarthyism and the resultant blacklist. “These events from the 1950’s have a special resonance today.”

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean has consistently related that the United States function as a Great Society but it has two societal defects: Institutional Racism and Crony-Capitalism. These societal defects can easily create a ‘Climate of Hate‘ and in the 1950’s, the US had it bad … with their stereotyping and “witch hunts” of McCarthyism.

McCarthyism include the speeches, investigations, and hearings of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy (in office 1947 –1957); the Hollywood blacklist, associated with hearings conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC); and the various anti-communist activities of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under Director J. Edgar Hoover. McCarthyism was a widespread social and cultural phenomenon that affected all levels of society and was the source of a great deal of debate and conflict in the United States.

McCarthyism was the practice of making accusations of subversion or treason without proper regard for evidence.^[1] It also means “the practice of making unfair allegations or using unfair investigative techniques, especially in order to restrict dissent or political criticism.”^[2] The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from 1947 to 1956 and characterized by heightened political repression as well as a campaign spreading fear of influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents. …

McCarthyism soon took on a broader meaning, describing the excesses of similar efforts. The term is also now used more generally to describe reckless, unsubstantiated accusations, as well as demagogic attacks on the character or patriotism of political adversaries. During the McCarthy era, thousands of Americans were accused of being communists or communist sympathizers and became the subject of aggressive investigations and questioning before government or private-industry panels, committees and agencies. The primary targets of such suspicions were government employees, those in the entertainment industry, educators and union activists. Suspicions were often given credence despite inconclusive or questionable evidence, and the level of threat posed by a person’s real or supposed leftist associations or beliefs was often greatly exaggerated. Many people suffered loss of employment and/or destruction of their careers; some even suffered imprisonment. Most of these punishments came about through trial verdicts later overturned,^[4] laws that were later declared unconstitutional,^[5] dismissals for reasons later declared illegal^[6] or actionable,^[7] or extra-legal procedures that would come into general disrepute.
Source: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia; retrieved February 26, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

As related in the foregoing, “many people suffered loss of employment and/or destruction of their careers”; this was definitely the case in Hollywood. Consider the experience of the screenwriter Carl Foreman, best known for the film classic Western ‘High Noon’. See the Book Review and related AUDIO-Podcast here:

Book Title: High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic
By: Glenn Frankel
From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Searchers, the revelatory story behind the classic movie High Noon and the toxic political climate in which it was created.

It’s one of the most revered movies of Hollywood’s golden era. Starring screen legend Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly in her first significant film role, High Noon was shot on a lean budget over just thirty-two days but achieved instant box-office and critical success. It won four Academy Awards in 1953, including a best actor win for Cooper. And it became a cultural touchstone, often cited by politicians as a favorite film, celebrating moral fortitude.

Yet what has been often overlooked is that High Noon was made during the height of the Hollywood blacklist, a time of political inquisition and personal betrayal. In the middle of the film shoot, screenwriter Carl Foreman was forced to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities about his former membership in the Communist Party. Refusing to name names, he was eventually blacklisted and fled the United States. (His co-authored screenplay for another classic, The Bridge on the River Kwai, went uncredited in 1957.) Examined in light of Foreman’s testimony, High Noon‘s emphasis on courage and loyalty takes on deeper meaning and importance.

In this book, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Frankel tells the story of the making of a great American Western, exploring how Carl Foreman’s concept of High Noon evolved from idea to first draft to final script, taking on allegorical weight. Both the classic film and its turbulent political times emerge newly illuminated.

———

AUDIO-PODCAST – What A Classic ’50s Western Can Teach Us About The Hollywood Blacklist – http://www.npr.org/2017/02/21/516427212/what-a-classic-50s-western-can-teach-us-about-the-hollywood-blacklist

Posted on February 21, 2017 – Author Glenn Frankel tells Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross that the government was “looking to see or to prove that there had been communist infiltration in Hollywood, that this was part of a mass plot engineered by Moscow to take over our cultural institutions.”

Many who appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee were put on a blacklist that made it impossible for them to work in show business. Among the blacklisted was screenwriter Carl Foreman, whose 1952 classic western High Noon is seen as a parable about the toxic political climate of the time.

This history highlights the bad consequence of societal defects; they can easily be exploited and society further hijacked with blatant malice (bad motives, bad messages and bad actions). This aligns with the Go Lean book’s definition of “community ethos”:

the underlying attitude/spirit/sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society.

The bad ethos of McCarthyism became a “widespread social and cultural phenomenon that affected all levels of America”. The US would not have been a welcoming society for those on the wrong side of this targeting. This truly demonstrates how a ‘Climate of Hate’ exacerbates societal defects, conditions easily go from bad to worse.

America is not much different today … in 2017 compared to the 1950’s. Yes, the laws of the land has been updated, but the attitudes of the people are still intact towards a ‘Climate of Hate’. There is the continuous need for vigilance and truth. The truth of the matter is that America has a lot of work to do to be the Great Society they project to the world. This country should not be the panacea of Caribbean ills. This commentary has consistently asserted that it is easier for the Caribbean member-states to reform and transform its own society than to flee to find refuge in America.

According to the foregoing, the American government turned on some of its most talented and productive citizens during the bad days of McCarthyism. This turned out to be just another extension of the country’s ‘Climate of Hate’. This commentary maintains that hate is in the American DNA.

Too strong?!

Just consider the experience of the nation’s Black-and-Brown populations. This has been duly documented and lamented.

Too old?!

If it is the contention that this is an indictment of the America of old, then consider the fresh experience of Muslim immigrants.

And yet … the people in the Caribbean – mostly Black-and-Brown – are beating down the doors to get out of their Caribbean homeland, to seek refuge in places like the US; (a smaller faction emigrate to Canada and Western Europe). This really conveys the sad state of affairs for the Caribbean eco-system. While things are bad for minorities in America (Black-and-Brown, Muslim, etc.), more Black people want to come in, instead of working to remediate the problems in their own homeland.

This is the reality of the Caribbean disposition: the region suffers from a bad record of societal abandonment. The reasons why people leave have been identified as “push and pull”:

“Push” refers to people who feel compelled to leave, to seek refuge in a foreign land. “Refuge” is an appropriate word; because of societal defects, many from the Caribbean must leave as refugees – think LGBT, Disability, Domestic-abuse, Medically-challenged – for their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

“Pull”, on the other hand refers to the lure of a more prosperous life in the US (and other destinations); many times our people are emigrating for economics solely.

If only we can mitigate these “push and pull” factors, then we can dissuade our people from leaving in the first place. We CAN go from ‘good to great‘ here in the homeland. This is no easy task; and despite being necessary, it is hereby defined as heavy-lifting. This is the purpose of this commentary; this is part 1 of 3 in a series on “Why Caribbean people need to Stay Home“, positing that the “grass is not greener on the other side”. The complete series is as follows:

Stay Home! Remembering ‘High Noon’ and its Back-Story
Stay Home! Immigration Realities in the US
Stay Home! Outreach to the Diaspora – Doubling-down on Failure

The book Go Lean … Caribbean seeks to optimize the societal engines of Caribbean life; it serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU must employ better strategies, tactics and implementations to impact its prime directives; identified with the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines and mitigate internal and external threats.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these above engines, including a separation-of-powers between member-state governments and CU federal agencies.

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

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

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

This is movie season … and movies are an art form that imitates life, while life also imitates movies.

… The 89th Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, honored the best films of 2016, and took place on February 26, 2017, at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, 5:30 p.m. PST. – Wikipedia

The lesson we learn from the back-story of the movie ‘High Noon’ and the foregoing Book Review, is that we have to ‘stand our ground’ to reform and transform our communities in the Caribbean; we have our own ‘Climate of Hate’. So the Go Lean book therefore details this series of community ethos to adopt, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute to forge a permanent transformation in the homeland:

Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation	Page 23
Community Ethos – Minority Equalization	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future	Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations	Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Integrate region into a Single Market Economy	Page 45
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization	Page 57
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Department of Homeland Security	Page 75
Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid	Page 115
Planning – 10 Big Ideas … in the Caribbean Region – Haiti & Cuba	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices	Page 134
Planning – Lessons from East Germany – European Post-War Rebuilding – Attitudes	Page 139
Planning – Lessons from the US Constitution – Progressive & Evolutionary	Page 145
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Empowering Immigration – Case Study of Indian Migrants	Page 174
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice	Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Remediate and Mitigate Crime	Page 178
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Gun Control	Page 179
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security	Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism – and Bullying	Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Intelligence Gathering & Analysis	Page 182
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights	Page 220
Advocacy – Ways to Help Women – Mitigate Gender-based Violence	Page 226
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Youth – Message new Community Ethos – Inclusion	Page 227
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Hollywood – Power of Film	Page 203
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Dominican Republic – Reconciling Neighboring Hate	Page 237
Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Haiti – Regional Climate of Hate against Haiti	Page 238
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Trinidad & Tobago – Indo versus Afro Climate	Page 240
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Guyana – Indo versus Afro Climate	Page 241
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Belize – Cross Border Climate with Guatemala	Page 242
Advocacy – Ways to Impact US Territories – Interracial Climate	Page 244

Underlying the back-story in the foregoing Book Review is the classic Western film: High Noon. See the Appendix VIDEO.

That was a great movie about a man when faced with the choice of ‘fight or flight’, chose to stay and fight rather than fleeing for his own refuge. This film was thought-provoking and impactful … and celebrated. In fact, the film …

… was nominated for seven Academy Awards, and won four (Actor, Editing, Music-Score, and Music-Song)^[3] as well as four Golden Globe Awards (Actor, Supporting Actress, Score, and Cinematography-Black and White).^[4] In 1989, this movie was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. – Wikipedia.

Movies are important in the roadmap to impact the Caribbean; a previous blog/commentary regarding Caribbean Diaspora member and Hollywood great, Sidney Poitier, declared that …

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

The contention is that we can do better in the Caribbean. This is based on one premise: it is easier to reform and transform the Caribbean that it is to reform and transform America. Yes, we can …

The points of effective, technocratic stewardship of the Caribbean have been detailed in these previous blog/commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10532	Learning from Stereotypes – Good and Bad
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9595	Vision and Values for a ‘New’ Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9214	Time To Go: A 6-part series for the Diaspora in the US
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8200	Respect for Minorities: Climate of Hate
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7646	Going from ‘Good to Great’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7221	Street naming for Martin Luther King unveils a ‘Climate of Hate’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5733	Better than America? Yes, We Can!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5527	American Defects: Racism – Is It Over?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1596	‘Prosper where Planted’ in the Caribbean

The issues addressed in this commentary are not related to America alone. We have our own ‘Climate of Hate’ in the Caribbean. While we can learn lessons from the American past and present, we still must do the required heavy-lifting ourselves.

The Go Lean book reports that the Caribbean is in crisis. Too many people leave … due to “push and pull” reasons. Thusly, the region is suffering a debilitating brain-drain estimated at 70% with some countries reporting up to 81%.

The Go Lean roadmap declares that we must, and can, do better. Truth be told, it is easier for the average person to remediate and mitigate defects in the Caribbean homeland than to prosper in foreign lands like the US. This message , while repeated here, must be loudly proclaimed and echoed throughout our Caribbean region.

Every stakeholder, everyone who live, work and play in the Caribbean are urged to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap to turn-around the region. The strategies, tactics and implementations proposed in the Go Lean book are conceivable, believable and achievable. 🙂

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Appendix VIDEO – High Noon (1952) Official Trailer – https://youtu.be/g9CR_tib0CA

Uploaded on Dec 12, 2011 – Classic Western movie starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly.

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