… a member of the Caribbean Diaspora – Jamaica – may have changed the world … for Hip Hop. On this day in 1973, Clive Campbell – better known to history as DJ Kool Herc – helped out his sister by “DJ-ing” her birthday party in a recreation room in The Bronx. History shows that he used his inspiration and influence from his Caribbean musical roots to innovate a music style and performance that would subsequently change the world … for good …
… or bad.
It’s music; you be the judge.
Musical taste is like “beauty” … in the “eye of the beholder”. The main thing is that the music made you listen and maybe learned something about the urban experience of America … and now the world.
See the story of Clive Campbell aka DJ Kool Herc here:
Title: This Day In History: 1973 – Hip Hop is born at a birthday party in the Bronx
Like any style of music, hip hop has roots in other forms, and its evolution was shaped by many different artists, but there’s a case to be made that it came to life precisely on this day in 1973, at a birthday party in the recreation room of an apartment building in the west Bronx, New York City. The location of that birthplace was 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, and the man who presided over that historic party was the birthday girl’s brother, Clive Campbell—better known to history as DJ Kool Herc, founding father of hip hop.
Born and raised to the age of 10 in Kingston, Jamaica, DJ Kool Herc began spinning records at parties and between sets his father’s band played while he was a teenager in the Bronx in the early 1970s. Herc often emulated the style of Jamaican “selectors” (DJs) by “toasting” (i.e., talking) over the records he spun, but his historical significance has nothing to do with rapping. Kool Herc’s contribution to hip hop was even more fundamental.
DJ Kool Herc’s signature innovation came from observing how the crowds would react to different parts of whatever record he happened to be playing: “I was noticing people used to wait for particular parts of the record to dance, maybe [to] do their specialty move.” Those moments tended to occur at the drum breaks—the moments in a record when the vocals and other instruments would drop out completely for a measure or two of pure rhythm. What Kool Herc decided to do was to use the two turntables in a typical DJ setup not as a way to make a smooth transition between two records, but as a way to switch back and forth repeatedly between two copies of the same record, extending the short drum break that the crowd most wanted to hear. He called his trick the Merry Go-Round. Today, it is known as the “break beat.” [(See Appendix VIDEO below).]
By the summer of 1973, DJ Kool Herc had been using and refining his break-beat style for the better part of a year. His sister’s party on August 11, however, put him before his biggest crowd ever and with the most powerful sound system he’d ever worked. It was the success of that party that would begin a grassroots musical revolution, fully six years before the term “hip hop” even entered the popular vocabulary. Source: History Channel – This Day In History – Posted & Retrieved August 11, 2016 from: http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hip-hop-is-born-at-a-birthday-party-in-the-bronx
Can we – in the Caribbean and from the Caribbean – change the world again?
Yes, we can!
This consideration is in line with the book Go Lean … Caribbean. It serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This CU strives to advance Caribbean culture with these 3 prime directives:
Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance.
This will not be the first time a Caribbean personality has changed the world through music (and hopefully not the last). Previously, this blog-commentary detailed the influence of music icon Bob Marley. Today, his name is synonymous with Reggae and socially-conscious music. RIP Bob Marley (1945 – 1981).
The Go Lean book identifies, in total, 169 different musical/national combinations of genres throughout the Caribbean. From these styles, Hip Hop has had its origins and roots. And then the transformation continued, with more inspiration back to the Caribbean sounds and more social messaging (classic of Reggae) going back to the Hip Hop sound.
Music does not stand still; it evolves. An excellent example of this cross-meshing is the musical genre of Reggaeton:
Reggaetón is a genre of music characterized by its repetitive beat rhythm that originated in Puerto Rico. Its roots can be traced back to the “underground” music of the island during the late 90’s, when music borrowing elements of reggae, rap, and hip-hop was being performed (in Spanish) in small, unofficial venues. Bootleg recordings and word of mouth were the means of distribution for this music until 1997. In 1998 eventually that music coalesced into what today is known as Reggaeton. The music’s popularity skyrocketed in the early 2000s as it spread to North American, European, Asian, and African audiences.[1]Source: Retrieved 08/11/2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggaeton.
The movement behind the Go Lean book asserts that “one person can make a difference”. So just like Bob Marley, Clive Campbell aka DJ Kool Herc, should be recognized for his contributions to music, culture and Caribbean identity. This one Caribbean character has made a difference while residing as an alien in a foreign land. He has forge an example and a sample of how other Caribbean stakeholders can do more in the arts and impact the world – we can build a city on “rock-and-roll”.
Too bad he made this impact after leaving his Caribbean home of Jamaica.
Alas, we now bring the quest for change to Jamaica and all of the rest of the Caribbean. And that quest includes music and the arts. Early in the Go Lean book, the contributions that music can make is pronounced as an community ethos for the entire region to embrace, (Declaration of Interdependence –Page 15) with these statements:
xxxii. Whereas the cultural arts and music of the region are germane to the quality of Caribbean life, and the international appreciation of Caribbean life, the Federation must implement the support systems to teach, encourage, incentivize, monetize and promote the related industries for arts and music in domestic and foreign markets. These endeavors will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.
This Go Lean/CU roadmap recognizes that a prerequisite for advancing society is a change in the community ethos – the fundamental spirit of a culture that drives the beliefs, customs and practices – in that society. Music should be appreciated for the truth of its power; it “can soothe the savage beast”. It can communicate culture and impact the economics for a people. One person, or a group of people can do this, can make a difference.
The following list from the Go Lean book details the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to foster the next generation of artist:
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Patents & Copyrights
Page 78
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Culture Administration
Page 81
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media
Page 111
Advocacy – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better
Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Hollywood
Page 203
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music
Page 231
Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Jamaica
Page 239
Thank you Clive Campbell aka DJ Kool Herc; see Appendix VIDEO below.
Thank you for setting the pathway for success for new generations of talented, inspirational and influential artists – musical geniuses of Caribbean heritage – who are sure to follow. These artists, too will “rock the world”.
We are hereby “banking” on it here in the Caribbean, as communicated further in that Declaration of Interdependence –Page 13:
xxi. Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.
The Go Lean book posits “a change is going to come” to the Caribbean. The people, institutions and governance of region are all urged to “lean-in” to this roadmap for change and empowerment. Let’s do this … and make our homeland – all of the Caribbean – a better place to live, work and play.
The economic status in the Caribbean – all 30 member-states despite the colonial legacy – can be summed up with one word:
Crisis!
Alas, the book Go Lean…Caribbean declares that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.
This commentary relates the below Book Review of the publication by Economist and Political Scientist Mark Blyth entitled: Austerity – The History of a Dangerous Idea. This commentary asserts that those who advocate to remediate Caribbean economics needs to avoid a series of Economic Fallacies.
This is commentary 2 of 6 from the Go Lean movement on the subject of Economic Fallacies. As related in the previous submissions on this series, the situation in the Caribbean region is likened to the imagery of an animal foraging for food, but then gets distracted and “chases a squirrel up a tree”. The squirrel in the tree will never be a meal; it is just a waste of time and energy for the animal. This analogy conveys the waste of time associated with a frivolous and fallacious pursuit. The other commentaries detailed in this series are as follows:
All of these commentaries are economic in nature. They refer to rules for managing the valuable resources of time, talents and treasuries. There are rules for winning and rules for losing. Normally these are discovered after the fact, not before hand. So examining the experience of other communities, the winners and losers, can be extremely helpful to our Caribbean cause. This is a mission of the Go Lean roadmap, to learn lessons from how other communities have handled economic crises.
One common remediation for economic crisis has been Austerity. What is Austerity? And is this a good thing or bad thing? First, the dictionary definition is: “reduced availability of luxuries and consumer goods, as brought about by government policy”. Second, consider Mark Blyth’s own definition, here:
The Book Review and VIDEO on Mark Blyth’s Austerity book is as follows:
Book Review: Austerity – The History of a Dangerous Idea By: Mark Blyth
Selected as aFinancial TimesBest Book of 2013 Governments today in both Europe and the United States have succeeded in casting government spending as reckless wastefulness that has made the economy worse. In contrast, they have advanced a policy of draconian budget cuts–austerity–to solve the financial crisis. We are told that we have all lived beyond our means and now need to tighten our belts. This view conveniently forgets where all that debt came from. Not from an orgy of government spending, but as the direct result of bailing out, recapitalizing, and adding liquidity to the broken banking system. Through these actions private debt was rechristened as government debt while those responsible for generating it walked away scot free, placing the blame on the state, and the burden on the taxpayer.
That burden now takes the form of a global turn to austerity, the policy of reducing domestic wages and prices to restore competitiveness and balance the budget. The problem, according to political economist Mark Blyth, is that austerity is a very dangerous idea. First of all, it doesn’t work. As the past four years and countless historical examples from the last 100 years show, while it makes sense for any one state to try and cut its way to growth, it simply cannot work when all states try it simultaneously: all we do is shrink the economy. In the worst case, austerity policies worsened the Great Depression and created the conditions for seizures of power by the forces responsible for the Second World War: the Nazis and the Japanese military establishment. As Blyth amply demonstrates, the arguments for austerity are tenuous and the evidence thin. Rather than expanding growth and opportunity, the repeated revival of this dead economic idea has almost always led to low growth along with increases in wealth and income inequality. Austerity demolishes the conventional wisdom, marshaling an army of facts to demand that we austerity for what it is, and what it costs us.
About the Author
Mark Blyth is associate professor of political science at the JohnsHopkinsUniversity and the author of Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century.
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Editorial Reviews
“Austerity is an economic policy strategy, but is also an ideology and an approach to economic management freighted with politics. In this book Mark Blyth uncovers these successive strata. In doing so he wields his spade in a way that shows no patience for fools and foolishness.”
— Barry Eichengreen, George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science University of California, Berkeley
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“Of all the zombie ideas that have been reanimated in the wake of the global financial crisis, austerity is the most dangerous. Mark Blyth shows how austerity created the disasters of the 1930s, and contributed to the descent of the world into global war. He shows how European austerity policies have prevented any recovery from the crisis of 2009, while rescuing and protecting the banks and financial institutions that created the crisis. An essential guide for anyone who wants to understand the current depression.”
— John Quiggin, author of author of Zombie Economics
——-
“Most fascinating is the author’s discussion of the historical underpinnings of austerity, first formulated by Enlightenment thinkers Locke, Hume and Adam Smith, around the (good) idea of parsimony and the (bad) idea of debt. Ultimately, writes Blyth, austerity is a ‘zombie economic idea because it has been disproven time and again, but it just keeps coming.’ A clear explanation of a complicated, and severely flawed, idea.” — KIRKUS REVIEW
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‘One of the especially good things in Mark Blyth’s Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea is the way he traces the rise and fall of the idea of “expansionary austerity,” the proposition that cutting spending would actually lead to higher output. EL As Blyth documents, this idea spread like wildfire.’ — Paul Krugman, The New York Review of Books
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“Among all the calamities spawned by the global financial crisis, none was as easily avoidable as the idea that austerity policies were the only way out. In this feisty book, noted political scientist Mark Blyth covers new territory by recounting the intellectual history of this failed idea and how it came to exert a hold on the imagination of economists and politicians. It is an indication of the sorry state of macroeconomics that it takes a political scientist to expose so thoroughly one of the economics profession’s most dangerous delusions.”
— Dani Rodrik, Rafiq Hariri Professor of International Political Economy, The John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
Published on Mar 27, 2013 – Governments the world over are looking at austerity measures to help battle the financial crisis. Author and Ivy League professor Mark Blyth tells Steve Paikin why he thinks this is a bad idea.
The Go Lean book details the economic crisis stemming from the 2008 Great Recession. But the book prepares societal engines of the Caribbean so as to not waste this crisis; it calls for the establishment of a regional administration to monitor, mitigate and manage the economic dynamics of the region. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The prime directives of this federal entity are described as:
Optimize the economic engines of the Caribbean to elevate the regional economy to grow to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establish a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance and industrial policies to support these engines.
So the Go Lean roadmap calls for the CU to serve as the regional administration to optimize banking and sovereign debt in the region. Part of the CU roadmap is the accompanying Caribbean Central Bank. (CCB). The premise of the book is simple: that the problems of the region are too big for any one member-state to resolve alone. This point was pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence in the Go Lean book (Pages 12 – 13) with these 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.
xxv. Whereas the legacy of international democracies had been imperiled due to a global financial crisis, the structure of the Federation must allow for financial stability and assurance of the Federation’s institutions. To mandate the economic vibrancy of the region, monetary and fiscal controls and policies must be incorporated as proactive and reactive measures. These measures must address threats against the financial integrity of the Federation and of the member-states.
The Go Lean/CU/CCB roadmap is designed to deliver many empowerment activities to elevate Caribbean society. These activities will carefully balance the obligations of the past (debt) and the needs of the Caribbean future: we need growth and jobs … now. Debt is really just other people’s money; which always come with strings attached, as in repayment in a foreign currency … with interest.
What exactly is the Go Lean plan to counter the economic fallacy of austerity?
Economic growth …
… as in creating jobs through industrial and entrepreneurial endeavors – for a grand total of 2.2 million new jobs.
How is this different from previous administrations?
Technocratic administration for an economy of $800 Billion GDP; just consider these two strategies: Exclusive Economic Zones and Self Governing Entities.
Exclusive Economic Zones will facilitate both economic empowerment (like Fisheries management) and security assurances for the territories between the islands and the outer reaches of the Caribbean Sea. – Go Lean book (Page 104).
SGE’s are necessary features of the CU roadmap, allowing for industrial parks, technology labs, medical campuses, agricultural ventures, airport cities and even the Capital District. All aspects of their administration are managed by the CU, including monetary issues managed by the Caribbean Central Bank. – Go Lean book (Page 105).
The cautionary tales of austerity-like measures have been repeatedly addressed and further elaborated upon in these previous blog/commentaries:
Reform at the brink of disaster, only at the precipice
The CU is designed to do the heavy-lifting of organizing Caribbean society to benefit from the lessons from austerity measures and the underlying sovereign and municipal personal debt crises of other communities. Since the purpose of austerity is to impact economic turn-around, it is important to fully dissect the anatomy of austerity programs. This was the goal and successful execution of the book in the foregoing Book Review; austerity is an economic fallacy. This goal is also a mission of the Go Lean book as it details the community ethos to adopt, plus the executions of the following strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the economic turn-around of Caribbean communities:
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Money Multiplier
Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations
Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Return on Investments
Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future – Count on the Greedy to be Greedy
Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Mission – Fortify the Stability of the Securities Markets
Page 45
Strategy – Provide Proper Oversight and Support for the Depository Institutions
Page 46
Tactical – Growing the Economy – Minimizing Bubbles
Appendix – Airport Cities – Models for Self Governing Entities
Page 287
Appendix – Tool-kits for Capital Controls
Page 315
The Go Lean roadmap posits that change is coming to the Caribbean; we do not want to be over-dependent on other people’s money – that means answering to other people’s demands. As the title of Mark Blyth’s book concludes: its a dangerous idea. This has been the campaign of the Go Lean movement, to pursue economic growth, not debt. The movement (book and blog-commentaries) have even trumpeted a solution for the current public debt – no austerity, rather robust capital markets using a single Caribbean currency. Change is afoot!
The summary of the book in the foregoing Book Review is that austerity as a turn-around strategy is a dangerous idea, an economic fallacy. It is not a best-practice. The best way to correct economic stagnation and recession is simply growth! Period!
Aggressive debt repayment should only be pursued during periods of growth.
With the Go Lean roadmap, change has come to our region. But there is the need for a permanent union to provide efficient stewardship for Caribbean economy, security and governing engines. There must be the constant balancing act between past debt obligations and future growth. The Go Lean…Caribbean book posits that this challenge is a direct result of agents of change facing the modern world, as in globalization. This challenge is too big for just any one member-state to tackle alone, so there must be a regional solution. This is the quest of the multi-state technocratic administration of the CU.
The people and institutions of the region are hereby urged to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap, to embrace the economic turn-around and avoid austerity. Only then, can we make the Caribbean a better homeland to live, work and play. 🙂
This subject of “Respect for Minorities” is dominant in the news right now. This commentary is 3 of 3 in this series on lamentations for defective social values. The complete series is as follows:
Respect for Minorities: Reconstruction then Redemption – A Lesson in History
There are these familiar proverbs:
1. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. – The Bible; Ecclesiastes 1: 9
2. The more things change, the more they remain the same.
There is a lot of history in the United States regarding “Respect for Minorities”; and the lessons from that history apply for the Caribbean. In this case, there is the history of the 2nd Reconstruction and 2nd Redemption that applies directly to Caribbean people living in the US. Life in the US for our Diaspora has been a familiar theme for the publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean; this theme has been exhausted in the book (Page 118 – Reasons to Repatriate to the Caribbean) and in countless blog/commentaries (see list below), within the quest to dissuade Caribbean people from emigrating to the US and to encourage many of the existing Diaspora to return to their homelands, to repatriate.
Why is this so important? The Go Lean movement (book and blogs) have been consistent: it is easier for the people of the Caribbean – a majority Black and Brown demographic – to prosper where planted in their homelands than to endure as alien residents in foreign countries. This commentary asserts the key ingredient for reforming and transforming societies with diverse demographics: “Respect for Minorities”. This commentary seeks to learn this lesson based on life (and history) in the US; though the principles here can easily apply to Canada and the many western European countries that receive our citizens. Consider this analogy:
Do you want to go a party – that you hear is a lot of fun – uninvited? What if you hear the host really wants you at the party, and then when you get there you discovered that they want you to serve and work and cater to the other preferred guests; you are just there as support staff? Want to go home yet?
This is the experience for so many Caribbean Diaspora when they ‘come to America’. Just take a quick tour at so many tourist/travel facilities at America’s principal cities. So many of the “serving” staff are of Caribbean heritage. One would talk to taxi drivers, hotel maids, waiters and retail store clerks and you discover that these ones descend from the Caribbean.
You think: They came here for “this”? They are minorities among a majority that has little respect for them.
There is this above scenario, and then … there is “prosper where you’re planted”:
Just like a tree planted by the rivers of water
That bring forth fruit in due season Source: The Bible – Psalms Chapter 1 verse 3 – King James Bible
This was the strong point made by one of the key figures in African-American history, Booker T Washington. He asserted that the African-American community must work to prosper in its own hometown, that they must seek reconciliation with their White neighbors and find a way to co-exist. This was a good plan for Black America, the minorities; but White America, the majority population didn’t always cooperate. The effort to reconcile was attempted before, immediately following the Civil War, during the period of Reconstruction; 1865 – 1877. This period of time actually featured some real progress in liberating and promoting the previous enslaved minority population – an enfranchisement of all freedmen. But then, at the end of the formal Reconstruction period, there was redemption…
… redemption: a return to American original values, that is “White supremacy” and the repression of the African-American race.
During this Redemption period: Jim Crow laws – segregation in public places – were implemented, as the follow details depict:
The end of Reconstruction … was followed by a period that White Southerners labeled Redemption, during which White-dominated state legislatures enacted Jim Crow laws and, beginning in 1890, disenfranchised most Blacks and many poor Whites through a combination of constitutional amendments and electoral laws. The White Democrat Southerners’ memory of Reconstruction played a major role in imposing the system of white supremacy and second-class citizenship for Blacks. – Sourced from Wikipedia.
That was then, 130 years ago; how about now? The notion of an Encore/”Second Take” seems unthinkable; and yet this is the historicity of events and experiences after this 2nd Reconstruction – the Civil Rights movement of the 20th Century: think Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Affirmative Action, Minority Set-Asides, etc.. See the encyclopedic reference here:
Reference Title: Second Reconstruction Second Reconstruction is a term that refers to the American Civil Rights Movement. In many respects, the mass movement against segregation and discrimination that erupted following World War II, shared many similarities with the period of Reconstruction which followed the American Civil War. The period of Second Reconstruction featured active participation on the part of African-Americans to regain their rights that they had lost during the period of Redemption and Jim Crowsegregation in the latter part of the nineteenth century.
During Second Reconstruction, African-Americans once again began holding various political offices, and reasserting and reclaiming their civil and political rights as American citizens. Unlike Reconstruction, however, most African-Americans abandoned the Republican Party for the Democratic Party. A noteworthy feature of Second Reconstruction was the political realignment that occurred in 1965, which transformed the nature and composition of both the Republican and Democratic Party’s, eroding the Democratic Solid South.
In the same way, however, that Reconstruction was followed by Redemption, some have also claimed that period following Second Reconstruction could be termed a Second Redemption characterized by more conservatism on the part of the federal government, and several Supreme Court decisions that weakened the scope of civil rights reforms, especially in the Northern States
The years between 1954-1972 have often been called the Second Reconstruction, since it has noteworthy similarities with the First Black Reconstruction (1865-1877), which began with the abolition of slavery by the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment. Both periods saw African Americans making tremendous gains in the fields of politics and civil rights. Three major Supreme Court decisions (the Brown decision on school desegregation (1954), desegregation of public transportation (1956); bussing to achieve school desegregation (April 1971), two legislative enactments (the Civil Rights Act, 1964, and the Voting Rights Act, 1965) and the March on Washington, D.C. (April 28, 1963), many demonstrations and riots, resulted in major alterations in race relations. There was “change within change,” and America would never be the same.
While the Second Reconstruction destroyed the legal foundations of the segregationist system, it also highlighted the further and more difficult challenge of translating legal victories into real change. Moreover, the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., removed a key symbol and source of unity in the nonviolent freedom struggle. According to one activist, King was “the one man of our race that this country’s older generations, the militants, and the revolutionaries and the masses of black people would still listen to.” As the limitations of the Civil Rights movement became more apparent, growing numbers of young African Americans advocated Black Power as an alternative to nonviolent direct-action strategies. Partly because revolutionary black organizations like the Black Panther party (formed in 1966) emphasized the mass mobilization of poor and working-class blacks, armed struggle, and opposition to the Vietnam War, they came under the combined assault of federal, state, and local authorities. Under the weight of official and unofficial white resistance, the Black Power movement fragmented and gradually dissipated by the early 1970s.
Late Twentieth Century Developments. As the civil rights and Black Power movements weakened, white resistance to the gains of the Second Reconstruction intensified. Opposition to affirmative-action policies in employment and education were closely related to the deindustrialization of the nation’s economy. The loss of jobs to mechanization and low-wage overseas factories affected all industrial workers, black and white, but the persistence of overt and covert discriminatory employment practices rooted in white kin and friendship networks made black workers and their communities especially vulnerable to economic down swings. African-American unemployment rates persisted at well over the white rate, especially among young black males. At the same time, the beneficiaries of existing affirmative-action programs–the middle class and better-educated members of the black working class–experienced a degree of upward mobility and moved into outlying urban and suburban neighborhoods. They left working-class and poor blacks, disproportionately single women with children, concentrated in the central cities, where violence, drug addiction, and class-stratified social spaces intensified, causing acute tensions in day-to-day intraracial as well as interracial relations.
Perhaps even more than in the industrial era, the post- industrial age challenged African Americans to develop new strategies for coping with social change and the persistence of inequality. Some of their emerging responses built upon earlier struggles. Institution-building, marches, participation in electoral politics, and migration in search of better opportunities all continued to express black activism and resistance to social injustice. Yet, much had changed in the nation and in African American life, and such time-tested strategies took on different meanings in the 1980s and 1990s. Rising numbers of southern- born blacks returned to the South during the 1970s. After declining for more than a century, the proportion of blacks living in the South increased by 1980. Other African Americans rallied behind the Rainbow Coalition and supported the Reverend Jesse Jackson’s bid for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988. Still others endorsed Nation of Islam minister Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March (MMM) in 1994. Calling the march a “day of atonement” for black men, leaders of the MMM encouraged black men to earn and reclaim a position of authority in their families and communities. Four years later, many black women responded to the MMM’s gender bias with their own Million Woman March, which emphasized the centrality of women in the ongoing black freedom struggle. Through these various actions and many more, African Americans continued to resist shifting forms of inequality and gave direction to their own lives as a new century began.
These same years saw the emergence of a new generation of African-American academics, musicians, performers, sports figures, and writers. Such diverse men and women as the scholars and public intellectuals Henry Louis Gates, Cornel West, and Stephen L. Carter; basketball superstar Michael Jordan and track-and-field athlete Jackie Joyner-Kersee; film actors Eddie Murphy and Denzel Washington; jazz musicians Joshua Redman, Herbie Hancock, and Wynton and Bradford Marsalis; television celebrity Oprah Winfrey; and an array of novelists and writers including Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison enriched American life and gave voice to the black experience.
By the 1990s, the nation’s more than 30 million African Americans, representing about 12 percent of the total population, had transformed themselves from a predominantly rural people into an overwhelmingly urban people; from a southern regional group to a national population living in every part of the nation; and, perhaps most importantly, from a group confined to southern agriculture, domestic service, and general labor to a work force with representation in every sector of the nation’s economy. Source: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia – Retrieved May 26, 2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Reconstruction
Uploaded on Jul 28, 2009 – Gen. Colin Powell talks about the Henry Louis Gates arrest with Larry King. He said the story “went viral” when President Obama commented on the story. Also, Powell thinks that America “isn’t quite post-racial” at this time. “These problems still exist in post-racial America.” However, he suggested that Gates should not have argued with the policeman arresting him. “You don’t argue with a police officer,” he says.
Powell also called the arresting cop, Sergeant James Crowley, “an outstanding police officer.”
Also, at 5:10, Powell admits he’s been profiled “many times” [even] as the National Security Advisor.
This conclusion of a 2nd Redemption is not so far-fetched!
Just consider the current campaign of Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump: “Make America Great Again“. It bears to mind the question: “just when was America great before”? Answer: After the first Redemption.
It should be hard to justify migrating to this American climate/eco-system, rather than the quest to prosper where planted in the homeland. The societal defects in the Caribbean – that “pushes” many to flee – must be that acute!
The book Go Lean…Caribbean declares that the “Caribbean is in crisis”; but asserts that this crisis is a terrible thing to waste. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU); an initiative to bring change, empowerment, to the Caribbean region; to make the region a better place to live, work and play. This Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:
Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.
The book describes the CU as a technocratic administration with 144 different missions to elevate the Caribbean homeland. This underlying goal is stated early in the book with this pronouncement in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12):
xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law…
Change has come to the Caribbean. The Go Lean book declares that for permanent change to take place, there must first be an adoption of new community ethos of the Greater Good; this term community ethos refers to the national spirit that drives the character and identity of its people. This Greater Good ethos, with genuine concern and respect for minority groups, is what was missing in previous American generations … and current Caribbean population. This point of “Respect for Minorities” is therefore our biggest lesson from this consideration in history – the foregoing encyclopedic reference.
The Go Lean roadmap was constructed with this and other community ethos in mind, plus the execution of strategies, tactics, implementation and advocacies to forge the identified permanent change in the region. The following is a sample of these specific details from the book:
Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification – Historic Motivation of Black America
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Choose
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – All Choices Involve Costs
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation
Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Minority Equalization
Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations
Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future
Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius
Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship
Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property
Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development
Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations
Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing
Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness
Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Anecdote – LCD versus an Entrepreneurial Ethos
Page 39
Strategy – Vision – Confederation of the 30 Caribbean Member-States into a Single Market
Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Celebrate the Music, Sports, Art, People and Culture of the Caribbean
Page 46
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union
Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy
Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers: Federal Administration versus Member-States Governance
Page 71
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change
Page 101
Implementation – Foreign Policy Initiatives at Start-up
Page 102
Implementation – Ways to Deliver
Page 109
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate to the Caribbean
Page 118
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region
Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better
Page 131
Planning – Ways to Better Manage Image
Page 133
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy
Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs
Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance in the Caribbean Region
Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract
Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism – Anti-Bullying Mitigations
Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Communications
Page 186
Advocacy – Ways Impact the Diaspora
Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage
Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts
Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music
Page 231
Previous Go Lean blog/commentaries stressed issues relating to respect for minority rights and full societal inclusion. The following sample applies:
Hypocritical US slams Caribbean human rights practices
The purpose of the Go Lean movement (book and blogs) is not to fix America; it is to fix the Caribbean. We want to learn important lessons from this advanced democracy who have endured a bitter history but has now emerged as the richest, strongest and most-prosperous nation in world history. The US is now a “frienemy” of the Caribbean. As we lose so many of our Caribbean citizens to life in the Diaspora in the US.
Some reports are that the Diaspora and their heirs amount to over 20 million American residents. America’s population and economy grows while our region is in crisis.
Our people leave our homelands due to “push and pull” reasons; “push” as in societal defects that cause many to seek refuge abroad, and “pull” in the presumption that American life is now optimized for the Black-and-Brown people. But a consideration of this commentary helps us to understand the “DNA” of American society, that while “Respect for Minorities” is improved, it is far from optimized.
The recommendation from this commentary and the Go Lean book in general is:
“stay home” in the Caribbean and work toward improving the Caribbean homeland.
And for those who have left, please consider repatriating home and bring us your “time, talent and treasuries”; help us reform and transform our society.
The US should not be considered the panacea of Caribbean hopes and dreams”. With the adoption of the appropriate community ethos, strategies, tactics and implementations of the Go Lean roadmap, we can make all Caribbean member-states better places to live, work and play. 🙂
This is not just a “what if” scenario. This really happened! But not as a proposition to the whole country of the United States to contest; no, only for 9 men to consider – the Justices of the US Supreme Court. The end result: Unanimous … in favor of change.
This commentary is a discussion on image, the facts and fiction of being a minority in a majority world or being an immigrant to a foreign country. This anecdote is related in the book Go Lean…Caribbean, in its Epilogue entitled “The Greater Good”. The book details this experience:
Future Focus – Brown v. Board of Education (1954) This was a landmark United States Supreme Court case in which the Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation, insofar as it applied to public education. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court’s (between 1953 and 1969, when Earl Warren served as Chief Justice) unanimous decision (9–0) stated that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal”. As a result, de jure racial segregation was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution (Fourteenth Amendment). This ruling paved the way for integration and was a major victory of the civil rights movement.
This landmark ruling created chaos for nearly 60 years; the animosity created was real and every aspect of American society was affected. (Most legislative assemblies in the southern states passed resolutions and sanctions condemning the Supreme Court decision, though the federal law superseded all state legislations). Cities and urban areas suffered from white flight, where white Americans fled the cities to move out to the suburbs to avoid the integration of urban schools; with their flight went their capital and tax base. Many American cities have still not recovered, for example Detroit filed for Bankruptcy in July 2013 after suffering the pangs of distress from this white flight for 60 years.
So why would the learned men on the Supreme Court make this unanimous ruling and caused so much havoc on American life. Were they not wise, could they not “read the writing on the wall”? The answer is an emphatic No! They knew the real beneficiary of their judgment would come later. Their wisdom was strewn from the experience of modern society waging two world wars, the last of which was just concluded 9 years earlier. They saw the rampage, saw of devastation of 60 million deaths around the world and appreciated the wisdom that a downtrodden people would not stay down, that they would rise and revolt, that they would risk their lives and that of their children to pursue freedom. The Warren Court knew that the status quo of race inequality could not continue, but in order to effectuate that change would take writing-off an entire generation (or two). That time had come, the generation was now (1954); but the hope was with the next generation, and so the curative measures started with the children of that day, so that inevitably, future generations would inhabit an America that would not judge its people by the color of their skins, but rather the content of their character.
The issues pronounced here in the Go Lean book highlights an important factoid: de jure versus de facto…
de jure = according to law
de facto = in reality
As a result of the 1954 Supreme Court’s decision, the de jure policy of the US was that of racial equality. But in reality, that decision didn’t manifest on the streets for the everyday man. The facts did not change the fiction, racism continued to dominate the American eco-system, even today. The aft-mentioned 20 million African-Americans in the US were viewed, treated and labeled as “Less Than“.
Don’t agree; think this is all fiction, speculation or propaganda?! Consider this VIDEO:
Published on Jan 19, 2016 – Every white person who wants to be treated how blacks are in this society stand up. [For this white audience, no one did.]
This is a relevant discussion for a Caribbean consideration, as 29 of the 30 member-states have a majority Black population; (St. Barthélemy is the only exception). So the Caribbean Diaspora and their legacies residing in the US – the Migration Policy Institute reported in 2012 that the numbers may be as high as 22 million – fits into the Black-and-Brown demographic. Unfortunately, every year that transpires, more and more Caribbean residents flee to foreign shores, like the US. The same report continues:
… the Caribbean population in the U.S. has surged more than 17-fold over the past half-century. But three-quarters of “Caribbeans” in the country arrived during the last two decades of the 20th century.
Why would they leave their beloved homelands? And what is their experience when they do leave and immigrate to the US?
The Go Lean book delves into the reasons for emigration. It identified them as an equation of “push and pull” factors. These factors highlight reasons that people want to get-away from “home” and seek “refuge” in these foreign countries. “Refuge” is a good word; because of societal defects, many from the Caribbean must leave – think LGBT, Disability, Domestic-abuse, Medically-challenged – for their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. In addition, the lure of a more prosperous life in the US (and other destinations) drive the “pull” side of the equation. This aligns with the facts: there is always some doing better, and always some doing worse.
But what truly is the experience when these ones arrive in America?
Answer: Less Than!
The experience of new Caribbean Diaspora members is that their work ethic is appreciated by employers; they are welcomed for the mass of blue-collar or menial jobs. White-collar ones, not so much. Then there is the language challenges. Many Caribbean islands speak Creole-derivatives of European languages of Spanish (Cuba, Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico), French (Haiti and the French Caribbean islands), Dutch (Suriname and 6 islands – ABC and SSSIslands). These ones must come to the US and be classified as “English Speakers of Other Languages” (ESOL) for education and employment purposes. As for the English-speaking Caribbean, the consistent experience is one of a foreign accent; broken English spoken with a Caribbean “sing-song”. All in all, language fluency may be challenging.
This is the reality for the Caribbean Diaspora; they may find themselves invisible in the socio-economic relevance of American life; this is more fact than it is fiction. Is it surprising that this “Less Than” experience is preferred to enduring life at home in the Caribbean? This conveys the extent of the Caribbean defects.
An example of Caribbean “Less Than” is evident in the experience of dreadlock hairstyles. Those sporting this hairstyle are just immediately under-valued; treated as “Less Than“.
This is real talk about “Less Than“. This is not a reference to the de jure of American life, but rather the de facto. (Similar experiences are reported from the Diaspora communities in other countries, like in Toronto, Canada and London, England). The purpose of this commentary is to draw attention to the Go Lean book. It serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). One goal of the roadmap is to lower the “push and pull” factors that lead many residents in the region to abandon their Caribbean homeland for American (or Canadian or European) shores. Another goal is to improve the image of Caribbean people, at home and abroad. We must target the societal defects and fix them. The Go Lean/CU quest is to reform and transform our region so that we may prosper where we are planted in our Caribbean homelands, so that our people do not have to leave to become aliens in a foreign land, to be ridiculed for their skin color, accents, and hairstyles (dreadlocks). This goal is detailed in the Go Lean book, presented as the prime directives, as follows:
Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.
The Go Lean roadmap calls for many changes and empowerments. There is so much we learn from the American experience, past and present. One paramount lesson: basic rights should not be subject to a public referendum. One group (minorities) should not have to seek the permission of another group (majority) to be happy. There should be a recognition of fundamental rights, above and beyond any national opinion polls.
Another important lesson we learn from the American experience is that the image associated with a minority group can be reformed and transformed. Look at the African-Americans populations; now it is considered politically incorrect to hold racist views or to engage in racist activities. The President of the US is actually an African-American. Image or brand management works, if there is someone (or something) working “it”.
The CU is not slated to be a national government, but rather a confederation of national governments (and overseas territories); so the CU does not feature sovereignty; it features the functionality of a Trade Union, capable of promotional activities and peer-pressure on domestic and international stakeholders. The CU/Go Lean effort is to cajole, prod and incentivize these individual member-states to embrace the protocols of international human rights mandates. The CU/Go Lean roadmap calls for fundamental human rights to be codified in regional treaties. These mandates would correspond to the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, which declare that:
… civil, economic and social rights should be asserted as part of the “foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”. – Go Lean book Page 220
There would be no place for any sub-group within the Caribbean population to feel as “Less Than” while at home.
The CU/Go Lean roadmap does not seek to reform America (or Canada or Europe); that is out-of-scope for our movement. Our quest is to reform and transform the Caribbean only. But we do try to manage impressions and images that these regions consume of Caribbean people, life and culture; we must accentuate the positive (promotion) and dissuade the negative (anti-defamation).
Domestically, there are many defects of Caribbean life that the Go Lean movement seeks to address. Right now internationally, these more advanced democracies, (US, Canada and Europe) may only consider us as parasites, but we would rather be recognized as protégés. This is a matter of image. This point is pronounced early in the book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 & 13) with many statements that demonstrate the need to remediate Caribbean communities and enhance the Caribbean world-wide image:
xix. Whereas our legacy in recent times is one of societal abandonment, it is imperative that incentives and encouragement be put in place to first dissuade the human flight, and then entice and welcome the return of our Diaspora back to our shores. This repatriation should be effected with the appropriate guards so as not to imperil the lives and securities of the repatriated citizens or the communities they inhabit. The right of repatriation is to be extended to any natural born citizens despite any previous naturalization to foreign sovereignties.
xx. Whereas the results of our decades of migration created a vibrant Diaspora in foreign lands, the Federation must organize interactions with this population into structured markets. Thus allowing foreign consumption of domestic products, services and media, which is a positive trade impact. These economic activities must not be exploited by others’ profiteering but rather harnessed by Federation resources for efficient repatriations.
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.
xxiv. 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, like that of ship-building, automobile manufacturing, pre-fabricated housing, frozen foods, pipelines, call centers, and the prison industrial complex. In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism, fisheries and lotteries – impacting the region with more jobs.
It goes without saying that every Caribbean member-state would prefer to keep their people – especially their educated work force – at “home” to prosper in the homeland. But this is not the de facto reality. It is no small task to assuage this crisis. The Go Lean book describes it as heavy-lifting; the book provides real solutions, detailing a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the region, member-states, cities and communities economic prospects. See this sample here:
Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth
Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier
Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations
Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future
Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius
Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship
Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development
Tactical – Tactics to Forge an $800 Billion Economy – High Multiplier Industries
Page 70
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Self-Governing Entities
Page 80
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change
Page 101
Implementation – Steps to Implement Self-Governing Entities
Page 105
Implementation – Ways to Deliver
Page 109
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate to the Caribbean
Page 118
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better
Page 131
Planning – Ways to Better Manage Caribbean Image
Page 133
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy
Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs
Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance
Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract
Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Communications
Page 186
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology
Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Hollywood
Page 203
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora
Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts
Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music
Page 231
Advocacy – Ways to Impact US Territories
Page 244
Advocacy – Ways to Impact British Territories
Page 245
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Dutch Territories
Page 246
Advocacy – Ways to Impact French Territories
Page 247
It is the quest of every Caribbean leader to minimize the size of the Diaspora. They wish …
… but wishing alone will not accomplish this goal – there must be real solutions to the “push and pull” realities. One member-state alone may not have the leverage and/or economies-of-scale to effect the needed reform. This is why the regional scale is different … and better. This is the purpose of the Go Lean…Caribbean roadmap: to compose, communicate and compel regional solutions back in the Caribbean homeland to lower the “push and pull” factors.
This subject – “push and pull” – was examined further in other related Go Lean commentaries, as sampled here:
10 Things We Don’t Want from the US – Discrimination of Immigrations
Fact and Fiction
So is an 8-ounce glass with 4-ounces of water half-full or half-empty?
This is the reality of fact and fiction on image.
Mathematically, 4 is half of 8. But the “full” or “empty” label is the perception, impression and image to the beholder; as in:
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
The Caribbean has a lot to work with. But our “glass is not empty”! We have been recognized as “best in the world” in certain circles. We feature the best …
With some measure of success with the solutions at home, and communicating the facts and fictions of Diasporic life, we should be able to reduce the size of our Caribbean Diaspora, repatriating many to return to the homeland. Even more so, we should reduce the “push and pull” factors that lead many to abandon the region in the first place. The Caribbean entertains 80 million visitors every year; we are associated with the image of a great place to ‘play’. We now need to complete that visual: a great place to live, work and play.
Yes, we can!
So are we “Less Than” ?
Not here … at home. Our Caribbean region is actually comprised of a diverse array of cultures, races, religions and languages.
So “say it loud” …
We are Black … and proud.
We are White … and proud.
We are Indo-Caribbean … and proud.
We are Chino-Caribbean … and proud.
We are mixed races … and proud.
We are Caribbean … and proud!
This commentary has previously identified African-American Abolitionist Frederick Douglass as a role model for the Caribbean, despite the fact that his advocacy was 150 years ago. His is quite the legacy:
“Those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” – Frederick Douglass
The publishers of the book Go Lean…Caribbean recognize the contributions of role models who used civil disobedience to reform and transform their societies, Frederick Douglass included. The book specifically details (Page 122) these other advocates:
Mohandas Gandhi
Indian Independence
Dr. Martin Luther King
African-American Civil Rights Movement
Nelson Mandela
South Africa’s Anti-Apartheid
Cesar Chavez
Migrant Farm Workers in the US
Candice Lightner
Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)
The quest to transform society, as accomplished by these foregoing named advocates, is familiar to the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. This book asserts that the societal engines in the Caribbean (economy, security, and governance) are deficient and defective and need to be reformed and transformed to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. This is commentary 4 of 4 from this movement on the subject of transformations: how to move our region from the deficient-defective status quo to the undisputed title of “greatest address on the planet”. All these commentaries detailed transformation issues, as follows:
The Go Lean book details the quest to transform the Caribbean; it features a how-to guide, a roadmap for elevating the region’s societal engines using effective tactics like civil disobedience.
Civil disobedience has been effective in the past … see a related history here:
The use of nonviolence runs throughout history. There have been numerous instances of people courageously and nonviolently refusing cooperation with injustice. However, the fusion of organized mass struggle and nonviolence is relatively new. It originated largely with Mohandas Gandhi in 1906 at the onset of the South African campaign for Indian rights. Later, the Indian struggle for complete independence from the British Empire included a number of spectacular nonviolent campaigns. Perhaps the most notable was the year-long Salt campaign in which 100,000 Indians were jailed for deliberately violating the Salt Laws.
The refusal to counter the violence of the repressive social system with more violence is a tactic that has also been used by other movements. The militant campaign for women’s suffrage in Britain included a variety of nonviolent tactics such as boycotts, noncooperation, limited property destruction, civil disobedience, mass marches and demonstrations, filling the jails, and disruption of public ceremonies.
The Salvadoran people have used nonviolence as one powerful and necessary element of their struggle. Particularly during the 1960s and 70s, Christian based communities, labor unions, campesino organizations, and student groups held occupations and sit-ins at universities, government offices, and places of work such as factories and haciendas.
There is rich tradition of nonviolent protest in this country as well, including Harriet Tubman’s underground railroad during the civil war and Henry David Thoreau’s refusal to pay war taxes. Nonviolent civil disobedience was a critical factor in gaining women the right to vote in the United States, as well.
The U.S. labor movement has also used nonviolence with striking effectiveness in a number of instances, such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) free speech confrontations, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) sitdown strikes from 1935-1937 in auto plants, and the UFW grape and lettuce boycotts.
Using mass nonviolent action, the civil rights movement changed the face of the South. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) initiated modern nonviolent action for civil rights with sit-ins and a freedom ride in the 1940s. The successful Montgomery bus boycott electrified the nation. Then, the early 1960s exploded with nonviolent actions: sit-ins at lunch counters and other facilities, organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); Freedom Rides to the South organized by CORE; the nonviolent battles against segregation in Birmingham, Alabama, by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC); and the 1963 March on Washington, which drew 250,000 participants.
Opponents of the Vietnam War employed the use of draft card burnings, draft file destruction, mass demonstrations (such as the 500,000 who turned out in 1969 in Washington, D.C.), sit-ins, blocking induction centers, draft and tax resistance, and the historic 1971 May Day traffic blocking in Washington, D.C. in which 13,000 people were arrested.
Since the mid-70s, we have seen increasing nonviolent activity against the nuclear arms race and nuclear power industry. Nonviolent civil disobedience actions have taken place at dozens of nuclear weapons research installations, storage areas, missile silos, test sites, military bases, corporate and government offices and nuclear power plants. In the late 1970s mass civil disobedience actions took place at nuclear power plants from Seabrook, New Hampshire to the DiabloCanyon reactor in California and most states in between in this country and in other countries around the world. In 1982, 1750 people were arrested at the U.N. missions of the five major nuclear powers. Mass actions took place at the Livermore Laboratories in California and SAC bases in the midwest. In the late 80s a series of actions took place at the Nevada test site. International disarmament actions changed world opinion about nuclear weapons.
In 1980 women who were concerned with the destruction of the Earth and who were interested in exploring the connections between feminism and nonviolence were coming together. In November of 1980 and 1981 the Women’s Pentagon Actions, where hundreds of women came together to challenge patriarchy and militarism, took place. A movement grew that found ways to use direct action to put pressure on the military establishment and to show positive examples of life-affirming ways to live together. This movement spawned women’s peace camps at military bases around the world from Greenham Common, England to Puget Sound Peace Camp in Washington state, with camps in Japan and Italy among others.
The anti-apartheid movement in the 80s has built upon the powerful and empowering use of civil disobedience by the civil rights movement in the 60s. In November of 1984, a campaign began that involved daily civil disobedience in front of the South African Embassy. People, including members of Congress, national labor and religious leaders, celebrities, students, community leaders, teachers, and others, risked arrest every weekday for over a year. In the end over 3,100 people were arrested protesting apartheid and U.S. corporate and government support. At the same time, support actions for this campaign were held in 26 major Cities, resulting in an additional 5,000 arrests.
We also saw civil disobedience being incorporated as a key tactic in the movement against intervention in Central America. Beginning in 1983, national actions at the White House and State Department as well as local actions began to spread. In November 1984, the Pledge of Resistance was formed. Since then, over 5,000 people have been arrested at military installations, congressional offices, federal buildings, and CIA offices. Many people have also broken the law by providing sanctuary for Central American refugees and through the Lenten Witness, major denomination representatives have participated in weekly nonviolent civil disobedience actions at the Capitol.
Student activists have incorporated civil disobedience in both their anti-apartheid and Central America work. Divestment became the campus slogan of the 80s. Students built shantytowns and staged sit-ins at Administrator’s offices. Hundreds have been arrested resulting in the divestment of over 130 campuses and the subsequent withdrawal of over $4 billion from the South African economy. Central America student activists have carried out campaigns to protest CIA recruitment on campuses. Again, hundreds of students across the country have been arrested in this effort.
Nonviolent direct action has been an integral part of the renewed activism in the lesbian and gay community since 1987, when ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) was formed. ACT UP and other groups have organized hundreds of civil disobedience actions across the country, focusing not only on AIDS but on the increasing climate of homophobia and attacks on lesbians and gay men. On October 13, 1987, the Supreme Court was the site of the first national lesbian and gay civil disobedience action, where nearly 600 people were arrested protesting the decision in Hardwick vs. Bowers, which upheld sodomy laws. This was the largest mass arrest in D.C. since 1971.
Political Analysis
Power itself is not derived through violence, though in governmental form it is usually violent in nature. Governmental power is often maintained through oppression and the tacit compliance of the majority of the governed. Any significant withdrawal of that compliance will restrict or dissolve governmental control. Apathy in the face of injustice is a form of violence. Struggle and conflict are often necessary to correct injustice.
Our struggle is not easy, and we must not think of nonviolence as a “safe” way to fight oppression. The strength of nonviolence comes from our willingness to take personal risk without threatening other people.
It is essential that we separate the individual from the role she/he plays. The “enemy” is the system that casts people in oppressive roles.
Civil disobedience is still effective today!
The Go Lean book serves asa roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to empower societal elevation (economics, security and governing engines) for the Caribbean region. This roadmap focuses on the political transformations and the practical transformations to elevate the Caribbean region, individually and collectively. But as identified in the foregoing quotation from Frederick Douglass, power is never ceded … without demand. It takes agitation, plowing up the ground, “thunder & lightening” and struggle. Those in power in the status quo will do what all “men” in power try to do: keep it!
The required transformation for the Caribbean may very well take some acts of civil disobedience, challenging the dysfunctional economic status, perhaps even with economic boycotts, sit-ins, general strikes, picket lines, marches and messaging campaigns.
There are effective role models for this as well. Consider here the very recent experience of the University of Missouri Football team:
Amid escalating protests over complaints of racial bigotry at the University of Missouri, the school’s football team said it won’t play until the University President resigns or was replaced. These football players threatened to go on strike. At least 30 players with the support of their coach made the demand. They wanted University President Tim Wolfe to resign for allegedly failing to confront racial tensions at the school. Commentary: Mizzou Football And The Power Of The Players
Posted November 18, 2015; retrieved May 22, 2016
Members of the University of Missouri Tigers football team – after threatening civil disobedience – returned to practice Nov. 10, 2015 at Memorial Stadium in Columbia, Mo. –Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images
It’s accepted that thePresident of the University of Missouri stepped down in a racial dispute only when the football team threatened not to play a game. The players showed us again — surprise, surprise — how powerful is football, and let’s throw in basketball, too, throughout our bastions of higher education.
It would have cost old Mizzou a million-dollar penalty had it forfeited. It would have cost the players next to nothing, because the NCAA rules they must be amateurs and risk serious injury for the love of the game. Ironically, for once, having nothing to gain actually strengthened the players’ hand.
The particular racially insensitive issues at Missouri and those that’ve produced protests at other colleges have nothing to do with sport, but, on the other hand, it’s worth noting well over half of the football players who bring in the big money in the big-time conferences are African-American. The percentage of minority basketball players is even higher.
The Go Lean book relates that the experience of Frederick Douglass and other advocates assert that one man or one woman can make a difference and impact his/her community, country and the whole world. Now we must add the student-athletes of the University of Missouri to that podium of role models for us to emulate.
The Go Lean/CU roadmap is designed to motivate the people, institutions and governmental leaders of the Caribbean, regional stakeholders, to make an impact – by the use of civil disobedience if necessary – on the region’s societal engines corresponding with these prime directives:
Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.
The focus of the previous commentary, Frederick Douglass’ legacy, is relevant for our life and times and the Go Lean prime directives. Notice the parallels: The institution of slavery was initiated for economic purposes; it took civil disobedience in the form of a civil war to assuage. In addition, there was no consideration to security principles for the enslaved population. But for the consideration of the Go Lean book, the subject of consideration is one of governance, the need for technocratic stewardship of the regional Caribbean society; how to reform and transform it. This point of governance against the backdrop of civil disobedience was pronounced early in the book, in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 10 – 14) with these declarations:
Preamble: As the history of our region and the oppression, suppression and repression of its indigenous people is duly documented, there is no one alive who can be held accountable for the prior actions, and so we must put aside the shackles of systems of repression to instead formulate efficient and effective systems to steer our own destiny. … whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.
xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.
xxxiii. Whereas lessons can be learned and applied from the study of the recent history of other societies, the Federation must formalize statutes and organizational dimensions to avoid the pitfalls of [other] communities.
The Go Lean book stresses key community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies necessary to reform and transform the eco-systems of Caribbean society and apply the lessons learned from other advocates. The book details the following:
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future
Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius – Developing genius in many endeavors, i.e. Sports
Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Arounds
Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations
Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate all 30 member-states / 4 languages into a Single Market
Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Build and foster local economic engines
Page 45
Tactical – Ways to Foster a Technocracy
Page 64
Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – CU Federal Government versus Member-State Governance
Page 71
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Failed States Marshall Plan
Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better
Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Advocate for Human Rights
Page 134
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy
Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance
Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract
Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Wall Street – Lessons Learned from Occupy Wall Street Protests
Page 200
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage
Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights
Page 220
Civil disobedience lead to political transformation and practical transformation. Protest movements, with civil disobedience activities, have effectively reformed and transformed societies in the past, present and no doubt, the future. Scattered through the pages of history, many times protest leaders have become political leaders. Consider Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Lech Walesa of Poland.
Previous Go Lean blogs presented other lessons for the Caribbean to learn from considering protest movements from history; the following previous blog/commentaries apply:
British public sector workers strike over ‘poverty pay’
The words of Frederick Douglass echo loudly through the ages (19th, 20th and 21st centuries). Reform and transformation only comes with a struggle. This is because “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
This reality applies doubly for the Caribbean!
The Caribbean region is in crisis – all 30 member-states! But this crisis would be a terrible thing to waste. We must use this crisis as a motivation to transform the region. Motivation alone will not bring change – the powerful ones in the status quo will not give up power willingly; they will not accept change willingly. There must be struggle, employing tactics like civil disobedience! As conveyed by Frederick Douglass, we “cannot get the rain without thunder and lightening”. The Go Lean movement – books and blogs – call for rain, and calls for “thunder and lightening”. The movement calls for forging change – transformations – through approaches like the Fun Theory, Sales Process, Power of Music, Food Therapy, and Risking Too Much to Lose.
Once we succeed in transforming the Caribbean societal engines, we must then ensure the changes are permanent! The Go Lean book declares that for permanent change to take place, there must first be an adoption of new community ethos, the national spirit that drives the character and identity of its people. The roadmap was constructed with the primary community ethos of the Greater Good, not a political nor profit motive; but rather a commitment for the “greatest good for the greatest number of people”.
Now is the time for all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this Go Lean regional solution. With this roadmap, the Caribbean can transform to a better society; a better place to live, work and play. 🙂
Here is a fact we have learned about transformations: there must be political transformations and practical transformations.
The Go Lean quest is to transform the 30 member-states in the Caribbean region. We are not the first …
… and we guarantee that we will not be the last.
So there are good, bad and ugly lessons for us to consider from other societies at other times. Take the recent example of Iraq. This is one of the lessons we have learned from that society: the practical transformation is easier than the political transformation. After the regime change by the United States in 2003 – a practical transformation – the country had a very tough time forging a stable society … because they could not succeed with the required political transformations. This is heavy-lifting, requiring collaboration, compromise and consensus-building. Iraq is not so homogeneous; they have sectarian discord, multiple ethnic groups that compose the country: Shiite, Sunni, Kurds, Yazidis and others; different religions, races, ethnicities, languages, values and goals.
The dysfunctions created voids in leadership, administration and security. Enter ISIS!
This experience relates that one benefit of getting the political transformation right is some assurance of peace and security.
Another benefit: Money!
Once political transformations transpire, the opportunity emerges to acquire free money. Again, consider Iraq:
On November 20, 2004, the Paris Club of creditor nations agreed to write off 80% ($33 billion) of Iraq’s $42 billion debt to Club members. Iraq’s total external debt was around $120 billion at the time of the 2003 invasion, and had grown another $5 billion by 2004. The debt relief will be implemented in three stages: two of 30% each and one of 20%.[133] Source: Retrieved May 11, 2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq#Economy
This point aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean, which asserts that the societal engines in the Caribbean (economy, security, and governance) are deficient and defective; in some cases we even feature Failed-States (think: Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico and others). The book posits that the region can improve and make our homelands a better place to live, work and play.
How? One way we can “get over the hump” of transformation is to acquire Free Money… as much as possible.
This is commentary 2 of 4, from the movement behind the Go Lean book, on the subject of transformations: how to move our region from the deficient-defective status quo to the undisputed title of “greatest address on the planet”. All these commentaries detail these issues, considering:
The Go Lean book details the quest to transform the Caribbean; it features a how-to guide, a roadmap for elevating the region’s societal engines of economics, security and governance. It leads with economic issues, not political ones!
It recognizes that while political transformation is heavy-lifting – requiring collaboration, compromise and consensus-building – economic ones are a little easier. Show up in any community with a boatload of jobs and people will line-up around the corner to transform and accept the jobs … and any dependent conditions. (Free Money always comes with conditions!)
This is the Go Lean quest … but first, we acquire all the “free money” possible. (There should be no entitlement attitude to Foreign Aid).
A previous blog related how the community of Haiti was granted $500 million in grants-aid for the 2010 Earthquake; the money was collected and administered by the American Red Cross … but very little of it reached it’s target destination in Haiti. The assertion is that we must take the lead for our own administration and stewardship.
Build it, and they will come. – Movie Quotation
The Go Lean position is that if we put the technocratic processes in place, we will benefit from a lot of available grant-aid monies. These “free” monies can help us to “get over the hump”, to succeed with the needed transformations in our society; see VIDEO here:
Published on Mar 4, 2014 – Everything you need to know about U.S. foreign aid in 3 minutes, i.e. foreign aid is only less than 1 percent of the US federal government’s budget.
The book Go Lean … Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation for the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). As a federation or federal government representing all 30 member-states, the prime directives of this roadmap is the cause of elevating society by addressing these 3 focus areas:
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, including efforts with non-governmental agencies, to support these engines.
The samples and examples of so many other societies provide us with role models for how to procure grant/aid for our cause; see photo here.
Continuing with Iraq, that country was able to procure a lot of grant/aid/loans from different international sources; see here:
Foreign aid to Iraq has increased to handle reconstruction efforts.
In 2004 the U.S. Agency for International Development was responsible for awarding contracts totaling US$900 million for capital construction, seaport renovation, personnel support, public education, public health, government administration, and airport management. The World Bank committed US$3 billion to US$5 billion for reconstruction over a five-year period, and smaller commitments came from Japan, the European Union, Britain, and Spain. Russia canceled 65 percent of Iraq’s debt of US$8 billion, and Saudi Arabia offered an aid package totaling US$1 billion. Also, Iran has been accused of giving some monetary support to individual political parties. Some US$20 billion of US 2004 appropriations for Iraq were earmarked for reconstruction. Effective application of such funds, however, depends on substantial improvement in infrastructural and institutional resources. Because Iraq’s international debt situation had not been elaborated in 2005, for the foreseeable future US funds are expected to pay for capital investments in rebuilding. Source: Retrieved May 11, 2016 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_aid_to_Iraq
We can, and must, do better in the Caribbean, compared to Iraq, a country still in disarray. We are able to be more accountable, transparent and productive with grants/aid that we receive. The Go Lean book fully anticipated this strategy, as Page 115 cited:
The Go Lean/CU roadmap provides the scale and the means by which to plan and act for our Caribbean emergencies and natural disasters… But … the Caribbean must not be perennial beggars; we do need capital/money, especially to get started.
CariCom -vs- the Caribbean Union The conclusion of consultants hired to advise the CariCom [(Caribbean Community Secretariat)] confessed that the Pact’s tacit strategy is to exploit the international donor community. The CU represents a break from this “Rich Man-Poor Man-Beggar Man-Thief” stance, and leans in to the alternate ethos of “Butcher-Baker-Candlestick Maker”. The CU vision is a Trade Federation that earns its keep thru trade and industriousness. In the Federation roadmap, the CariCom is re-constituted to the CU in Year 3.
In the Caribbean, we need grants/aid … to get started, to “get over the hump”; then we want to be able to stand-alone as a mature democracy – a regional Single Market. We need the initial help to optimize all 3 societal engines: economics, security and governance:
The economic help we seek should be viewed as seed money, so that we can sow in the fields of our marketplace, and later reap bountiful harvests. See Appendix VIDEO below.
The security help will allow us to foster a regional homeland security apparatus of our own; there is the specific need for military “hardware”; (think watercrafts, helicopters, and unmanned aerial drones).
For governance, we need technical assistance; the focus here is more on “software” or intellectual property, to provide better shepherding to the federal government, member-state governments and non-governmental organization (NGO) so as to execute the roadmap.
The following list from the Go Lean book is a sample of the strategies, tactics, implementation and advocacies of the Go Lean/CU roadmap related to the quest to foster more international aid:
Community Ethos – Lean Operations
Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing
Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Customers – Member-State Governments
Page 51
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization
Page 57
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union
Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy
Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers
Page 71
Anecdote – Turning Around the CARICOM construct
Page 92
Anecdote – “Lean” in Government
Page 93
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change
Page 101
Implementation – Foreign Policy Initiatives at Start-up
Page 102
Implementation – Ways to Deliver
Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Better Manage Debt
Page 114
Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid
Page 115
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better
Page 131
Planning – Reasons Why the CU Will Succeed
Page 132
Planning – Lessons Learned from the West Indies Federation
The Caribbean can truly be a great place to live, work and play. With the proper structures, we can qualify for a lot of ‘free money’, but free always comes with conditions and strings. That makes us dependent, not independent; we maintain a status of a parasite, not a protégé. This is why the strategy in the roadmap is not to depend on Foreign Aid for the long term, but rather to tease and tempt the people and institutions in the region to conform and acquiesce to behavioral changes needed in the community. Consider this as a “carrot and stick” motivation:
Comply and get the money
Non-compliance and future money is taken away
Remember, political transformations versus practical transformations…
… many politicians are arrogant, dogmatic and defiant; but when the budgets do not add up, they begrudgingly become willing to be practical and pragmatic. Math rules … over mania. Consider this:
There is a current issue in some Caribbean member-states where there is the need to correct constitutional deficiencies for gender equality; (the Bahamas in particular has a public referendum slated for June 7, 2016). One strong motivation is the compliance with the United Nation’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Future foreign aid and grants are tied to the successful execution of these constitutional reforms.
Previously, Go Lean blogs commented on transformations, identifying the status in Caribbean member-states; as sampled here:
CARICOM deliver address on reparations – Looking for Free Money
There is a community ethos that fosters the building of effective economic engines, deploying an efficient security apparatus and organizing governing stewardship. It is called the Greater Good! The Go Lean roadmap describes any continuation of a dependent attitude, or expectation of entitlement to foreign aid, as “parasite” but the mature, independent attitude as “protégé”. So this roadmap calls on the Caribbean region to be collectively self-reliant – interdependent – both proactively and reactively.
Transformations …
… any transformation to the Caribbean societal engines must be permanent! The Go Lean book declares that for permanent change to take place, there must first be an adoption of new community ethos, the national spirit that drives the character and identity of its people. The roadmap was constructed with the primary community ethos of the Greater Good, not a profit motive, not a perennial-beggar motive nor a nationalistic motive; but rather a commitment for the “greatest good for the greatest number of people”.
Now is the time for all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this Go Lean regional solution. With this roadmap, the Caribbean can transform to a better society; a better place to live, work and play. 🙂
Published on Oct 15, 2012 – Bran Dougherty-Johnson and Jennifer Holt designed the animated clip for Building Markets. Hatfarm produced the sound design. Category: Nonprofits & Activism
This Go Lean blog-commentary from May 5, 2015 is re-distributed on this occasion of Cinco De Mayo 2016. As always, this year’s commemoration is a celebration of Mexican culture, more so than Mexican history.
Bienvenido Amigos …
————–
Go Lean Commentary
Today (May 5) is Cinco De Mayo – celebrating this is a move of solidarity with Mexico; its people and culture – Enjoy the festivities!
Enjoy the Mexican food, spirits, music and culture. The country and people of Mexico have so much to offer the world – see VIDEO below – this includes the Caribbean.
One thing more that they can offer us in our region: A Lesson in History!
The summary of this celebration is simple on the surface: Mexican forces commanded by General Ignacio Zaragoza defeated the French army in the Battle of Puebla on 5 May 1862. 4 days later, on 9 May 1862, The then-President Benito Juárez declared that the anniversary of the Battle of Puebla would be a national holiday,[14][15][16][17][18] regarded as “Battle of Puebla Day” or “Battle of Cinco de Mayo”. Although today it is recognized in some countries as a day of Mexican heritage celebration, it is not a federal holiday in Mexico.[19]
Considering the real history of Cinco De Mayo is a really big deal. For starters, while Mexico was not the aggressor in this war, they were not exactly blameless.
The 1858 – 1860 Mexican civil war known as The Reform War had caused distress throughout Mexico’s economy. When taking office as the newly-elected president of the Republic in 1861, Juárez was forced to suspend payments of interest on foreign debts for a period of two years. At the end of October 1861 diplomats from Spain, France, and Britain met in London to form the Tripartite Alliance, with the main purpose of launching an allied invasion of Mexico, taking control of Veracruz, its major port, and forcing the Mexican government to negotiate terms for repaying its debts and for reparations for alleged harm to foreign citizens in Mexico. In December 1861, Spanish troops landed in Veracruz; British and French followed in early January. The allied forces occupied Veracruz and advanced to Orizaba. However, the Tripartite Alliance fell apart by early April 1862, when it became clear the French wanted to impose harsh demands on the Juarez government and provoke a war. The British and Spanish withdrew, leaving the French to march alone on Mexico City. French Emperor-President Napoleon III – the first democratically elected French President – wanted to set up a puppet regime, the Mexican Empire.
Thus started this French Intervention in Mexico. The effects of these 5 years were far-reaching, even to this day – consider the similarities in flags for these countries.
Title: French Intervention in Mexico 1862 – 1867 Emperor Napoleon III of France was the instigator, justifying military intervention by claiming a broad foreign policy of commitment to free trade. For him, a friendly government in Mexico would ensure European access to Latin American markets. Napoleon also wanted the silver that could be mined in Mexico to finance his empire. Napoleon built a coalition with Spain and Britain while the U.S. was deeply engaged in its own civil war from 1861 to 1865.
Here is the main timeline of this French Intervention period:
1. 1862: Arrival of the French After the initial victory by the Mexicans at the Battle of Puebla, the war continued in a different direction. The pursuing Mexican army was contained by the French at Orizaba, Veracruz, on 14 June. More British troops arrived on 21 September, and General Bazaine arrived with French reinforcements on 16 October. The French occupied the port of Tamaulipas on 23 October, and unopposed by Mexican forces took control of Xalapa, Veracruz on 12 December.
2. 1863: The French take the capital The French army of General François Achille Bazaine defeated the Mexican army led by General Comonfort in its campaign to relieve the siege of Puebla, at San Lorenzo, to the south of Puebla. Puebla surrendered to the French shortly afterward, on 17 May. On 31 May, President Juárez fled the capital city (Mexico City) with his cabinet, retreating northward to Paso del Norte and later to Chihuahua. Having taken the treasure of the state with them, the government-in-exile remained in Chihuahua until 1867.
French troops under Bazaine entered Mexico City on 7 June 1863. The main army entered the city three days later, led by General Forey. General Almonte was appointed the provisional President of Mexico on 16 June, by the Superior Junta (which had been appointed by Forey). The Superior Junta with its 35 members met on 21 June, and proclaimed a Catholic Empire on 10 July. The crown was offered to Austrian Prince Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian, following pressures by Napoleon. Maximilian accepted the crown on 3 October.
3. 1864: Arrival of Maximilian Further decisive French victories continued with the fall of Guadalajara, Zacatecas, Acapulco, Durango by 3 July, and the defeat of republicans in the states of Sinaloa and Jalisco in November.
Maximilian formally accepted the crown on 10 April, signing the Treaty of Miramar (between France and Mexico), and landed at Veracruz on 28 May. He was enthroned as Maximilian I, Emperor of Mexico, [under French occupation].
4. 1865: Beginning of Republican victories After many more French victories, finally on 11 April, republicans defeated Imperial forces at Tacámbaro in Michoacán. In April and May the republicans had many forces in the states of Sinaloa and Chihuahua. Most towns along the Rio Grande, [(the border with the US),] were also occupied by republicans.
The decree known as the “Black Decree” was issued by Maximilian on 3 October, which threatened any Mexican captured in the war with immediate execution.
5. 1859-1867: U.S. Diplomacy and Involvement The United States did not condone the French occupation of Mexico but it had to use its resources for the American Civil War, which lasted 1861 to 1865. Then-President Abraham Lincoln expressed his sympathy to Latin American republics against any European attempt to establish a monarchy; and the Congress passed a resolution in disgust of these French actions. In 1865, The US supported the sale of Mexican bonds by Mexican agents in the US to fund the Juarez Administration, raising up to $18-million dollars for the purchase of American war material.[16] By 1867, American policy shifted from thinly veiled sympathy to the republican government of Juarez to open threat of war to induce a French withdrawal, invoking the Monroe Doctrine, a policy to thwart any aggression by European powers in the Americas.
6. 1866: French withdrawal and Republican victories Choosing Franco-American relations over his Mexican monarchy ambitions, Napoleon III announced the withdrawal of French forces beginning 31 May. Taking advantage of the end of French military support to the Imperial troops, the Republicans won a series of crippling victories in Chihuahua on 25 March, Guadalajara, Matamoros, Tampico and Acapulco in July. Napoleon III urged Maximilian to abandon Mexico and evacuate with the French troops; [but he persisted]. The French evacuated Monterrey on 26 July, Saltillo on 5 August, and the whole state of Sonora in September. Maximilian’s French cabinet members resigned on 18 September. The Republicans defeated imperial troops in Oaxaca in October, occupying the whole of Oaxaca in November, as well as parts of Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí and Guanajuato.
7. 1867: Republicans take the capital The Republicans occupied the rest of the states of Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí and Guanajuato in January. The French evacuated the capital on 5 February.
On 13 February 1867, Maximilian withdrew to Querétaro. The Republicans began a siege of the city on 9 March, and Mexico City on 12 April. On 11 May, Maximilian finally resolved to try to escape through the enemy lines. He was intercepted on 15 May. Following a court-martial, he was sentenced to death and executed on 19 June. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French intervention_in_Mexico
This subject has relevance for the Caribbean. Mexico is a stakeholder in Caribbean affairs. They have a vast coastline (Yucatan Peninsula) on the Caribbean Sea, plus a few Caribbean islands (Cozumel, Isla Mujeres, Isla Contoy, and Isla Blanca). This country is also a member of the ACS – Association of Caribbean States – one of the relevant entities that must be assembled for this regional integration movement championed in the book Go Lean…Caribbean.
The underlying theme of this Lesson in Mexican History is the lack of effective security for the people and societal engines of Mexico. Now, after 150 years, this historic pattern has continued; Mexico proceeded to endure one revolution-rebellion-overthrow-coup d’etat after another until recent times.
The Caribbean cannot afford this same disposition: the dread and damage endured from decades of dysfunction.
Today, Mexico is known as a lawless society in many pockets, especially along the US border. Considering the art and science of security, it is sad that they never got it right! They resemble a Failed-State in so many perspectives. This is where their history, especially those 5 years of the Franco-Mexican War, provides lessons for the Caribbean people and institutions. But this Go Lean movement does not seek to remediate Mexico; this is out of scope. Rather the focus is strictly on the 30 Caribbean member-states: islands of the Caribbean plus the Central & South American states that caucus with the Caribbean Community (Belize, Guyana and Suriname).
This effort to elevate Caribbean society fully recognizes that security mitigations must be prioritized equally with economic and governing remediation. This is an underlying theme of the book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book declares that the region is in crisis, at the precipice of Failed-State status. This is the assertion of the Go Lean book, that the region must prepare its own security apparatus for its own security needs.
This book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). So while the CU is set to optimize Caribbean society through economic empowerment, the security dynamics will be inextricably linked to this same endeavor. Therefore the Go Lean roadmap has 3 prime directives:
Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.
The book contends, just as the French proved to be a “bad actor” to Mexico in 1862, that new “bad actors” will emerge for the Caribbean to contend with. This will be as a by-product of new economic successes in the region. This point is pronounced early in the book with the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 12) that claims:
x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices … to assuage continuous threats against public safety.
xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.
The need for the Caribbean to appoint “new guards” or a security pact to mitigate foreign and domestic threats in the region is the primary lesson to glean from the foregoing encyclopedic article – a consideration of the history of Cinco De Mayo. This security pact is to be legally constituted by a Status of Forces Agreement which would be enacted as a complement to the CU confederation treaty. The Go Lean roadmap provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn directions on how to deploy cutting-edge strategies, tactics and implementations to succeed in this goal.
In addition, there are other lessons – secondary – that we learn from this consideration of the history of Cinco De Mayo:
The Go Lean book details a roadmap with turn-by-turn directions for transforming the Caribbean homeland. The following is a sample of the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the Caribbean region for this turnaround:
Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Economic Systems Influence Choices
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Anti-Bullying and Mitigation
Page 23
Community Ethos – Minority Equalization
Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives
Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing
Page 35
Strategy – Vision – Confederating a Non-Sovereign Union
Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Protect Economic Engines from threats
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract
Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Justice
Page 177
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security
Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Mitigate Terrorism
Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights
Page 220
Mexico is a beautiful country, with a beautifully diverse population plus a lot of natural resources. They experience a vibrant tourism product where millions visit annually for Mexican hospitality – they are a fit competitor of Caribbean tourism, even for cruises. See VIDEO here:
Published on Feb 27, 2014 – A production of the Mexico Department of Tourism; commissioned for the Central American and Caribbean Games in Veracruz from November 14 to 30, 2014.
Many people visit Mexico, but few would consider moving there permanently. In fact just the opposite occurs, the societal abandonment problem in Mexico is very pronounced. Their northern neighbor, the United States, has constant security issues of illegal Mexican migrants. Mexico has been dysfunctional for their entire history as a Republic. They must do better! While this quest is out-of-scope for the CU/Go Lean roadmap, we can learn lessons from their actions and inactions.
The Go Lean book posits (Page 3) that the Caribbean islands are among the greatest addresses in the world. But like Mexico, instead of the world “beating a path” to our doors, the people of the Caribbean have “beat down their doors” to get out; despite the absence of any war or revolution … like our Mexican neighbors. Our abandonment is inexcusable.
May we learn from this history of Mexico! Mexican culture is great! Enjoy the festivities: their people, food, drink, music and dance. But let’s do better … than they have done. Let’s make the Caribbean even better, where our citizens can prosper where they are planted; let’s make our homeland better places to live, work and play. 🙂
In previous blog-commentaries promoting the book Go Lean…Caribbean, it was established that “bad things happen to good people”; (i.e. ‘Crap Happens’ – So What Now?, Managing a ‘Clear and Present Danger’). Yes, disasters are a reality for modern life. The Go Lean book posits that with the emergence of Climate Change that natural disasters are more common place.
… these natural phenomena may not be associated with Climate Change, but alas, they too are more common and more destructive nowadays. (People with a Christian religious leanings assert that “an increase of earthquakes is a tell-tale sign that we are living in what the Bible calls the “Last Days” – Matthew 24: 7).
The motives of the Go Lean book, and accompanying blogs is not to proselytize, but rather to prepare the Caribbean region for “bad actors”, natural or man-made. The book was written in response to the aftermath and deficient regional response following the great earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010. Many Non-Government Organizations (NGO) embarked on campaigns to shoulder a response, a relief and rebuilding of Haiti. Many people hold the view that those efforts did a lot of harm, along with some good.
In a previous blog-commentary, it was reported how the fundraising campaign by one group, the American Red Cross, raised almost US$500 million and yet only a “piddling” was spent on the victims and communities themselves.
Now we learn too that many good-intentioned people donated tons of relief supplies that many times turned out to be “more harm than help”. See the story here in this news VIDEO; (and/or the Narration Transcript/photos in the Appendix below):
Posted April 24, 2016 – Many of the well-meaning articles Americans donate in times of disaster turn out to be of no use to those in need. Sometimes, they even get in the way. That’s a message relief organizations very much want “us” to heed. This story is reported by Scott Simon, [on loan from] NPR. (VIDEO plays best in Internet Explorer).
This commentary asserts that more is needed in the Caribbean to facilitate good disaster relief, in particular a technocratic administration. This consideration is the focus of the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies of the Go Lean…Caribbean book. The declaration is that the Caribbean itself must be agile, lean, and optimized in providing its own solutions for disaster recovery. The alternative, from past experiences like in this foregoing VIDEO, is that others taking the lead for our solution seem to fall short in some way … almost every time!
The Go Lean book declares (Page 115) that the “Caribbean should not be perennial beggars, [even though] we do need capital/money to get started”, we need technocratic executions even more.
What is a technocracy?
This is the quest of the Go Lean movement. The movement calls for a treaty to form a technocratic confederation of all the 30 member-states in the Caribbean region. This will form a Single Market of 42 million. The consolidation and integration allows for economies-of-scale and leverage that would not be possible otherwise. “Many hands make a big job … small”. But it is not just size that will define the Caribbean technocracy but quality, efficiency and optimization as well.
According to the Go Lean book (Page 64), the …
“… term technocracy was originally used to designate the application of the scientific method to solving social and economic problems, in counter distinction to the traditional political or philosophic approaches. The CU must start as a technocratic confederation – a Trade Federation – rather than evolving to this eventuality due to some failed-state status or insolvency.”
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to provide better stewardship for the Caribbean homeland. The foregoing VIDEO describes the efforts of non-governmental organizations (NGO) in shepherding disaster reliefs. These NGO’s are stakeholders in this Caribbean elevation roadmap. Even though many of the 30 member-states are independent nations, the premise of the Go Lean book is that there must be a resolve for interdependence among the governmental and non-governmental entities. This all relates to governance, the need for this new technocratic stewardship of regional Caribbean society. The need for this resolve was pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 & 14) with these acknowledgements and statements:
i. Whereas the earth’s climate has undeniably changed resulting in more severe tropical weather storms, it is necessary to prepare to insure the safety and security of life, property and systems of commerce in our geographical region. As nature recognizes no borders in the target of its destruction, we also must set aside border considerations in the preparation and response to these weather challenges.
ii. Whereas the natural formation of the landmass for our lands constitutes some extreme seismic activity, it is our responsibility and ours alone to provide, protect and promote our society to coexist, prepare and recover from the realities of nature’s occurrences.
x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices … to assuage continuous threats against public safety.
xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.
xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of the human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.
xxxiii. Whereas lessons can be learned and applied from the study of the recent history of other societies, the Federation must formalize statutes and organizational dimensions to avoid the pitfalls of [other] communities.
This is the quest of CU/Go Lean roadmap: to provide new guards for a more competent Caribbean administration … by governmental organizations and non-governmental organizations. (NGO would also be promoted, audited and overseen by CU administrators). The Caribbean must do better!
Our quest must start “in the calm”, before any storm (or earthquake). We must elevate the societal engines the Caribbean region through economic, security and governance empowerments. In general, the CU will 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 the Caribbean homeland.
Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines.
Uploaded on Mar 30, 2011 – [In 2009], Transportation Manager Chip Chappelle volunteered to help The UPS Foundation coordinate an ocean shipment of emergency tents from Indiana to Honduras. Since then, he has managed the logistics of humanitarian aid from every corner of the world to help the victims of floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes and cyclones.
The Go Lean book stresses our own community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies necessary for the Caribbean to deliver, to provide the proactive and reactive public safety/security provisions in the region. See sample list here:
Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Whistleblower Protection
Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principles – Intelligence Gathering
Page 23
Community Ethos – Security Principles – “Crap” Happens
Page 23
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations
Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Return on Investments
Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Cooperatives
Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future
Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Arounds
Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing – Emergency Response
Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate all 30 member-states/ 4 languages into a Single Market
Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Prepare for the eventuality of natural disasters
Page 45
Strategy – Agents of Change – Climate Change
Page 57
Tactical – Ways to Foster a Technocracy
Page 64
Tactical – Growing the Economy – Post WW II European Marshall Plan/Recovery Model
Page 68
Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – CU Federal Government versus Member-State Governance
Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – State Department – Liaison/Oversight for NGO’s
Page 80
Implementation – Assemble All Regionally-focus Organizations of All Caribbean Communities
Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change
Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Foster International Aid
Page 115
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Homeland Security Pact
Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better
Page 131
Planning – Ways to Improve Failed-State Indices – Governance and the Social Contract
Page 134
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy
Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs
Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Housing – Hurricane Risk Reinsurance Fund
Page 161
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance
Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract
Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security
Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Improve for Natural Disasters
Page 184
Advocacy – Ways to Develop a Pre-Fab Housing Industry – One solution ideal for Haiti
Page 207
Advocacy – Ways to Re-boot Haiti
Page 238
The Go Lean roadmap seeks to empower and elevate Caribbean societal engines to be better prepared for the eventual natural disasters. The good intentions of Americans, as depicted in the foregoing VIDEO, is encouraging … but good intentions alone is not enough. We need good management! We need a technocracy! While it is out-of-scope for this roadmap to impact America, we can – and must – exercise good management in our Caribbean region. So what do we want from Americans in our time of need? See VIDEO here:
Published on Nov 2, 2012 – A series of PSAs released by the Ad Council explain why cash is the best way to help. The campaign was launched on November 5, 2012 by the Ad Council and supported by the coalition — which includes CIDI, the U.S. Agency for International Development, InterAction, the UPS Foundation and National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster.
The Go Lean book calls on the Caribbean region to be more technocratic: collectively self-reliant, both proactively and reactively. Because of Climate Change or the Last Days, natural disasters (i.e. hurricanes and earthquakes) will occur again and again. Considering that our American neighbors may Pave our Road to Hell with Good Intentions, we need to prepare the right strategies, tactics and implementations ourselves, to make our region a better homeland to live, work and play. 🙂
Appendix Transcript – When disaster relief brings anything but relief
When Nature grows savage and angry, Americans get generous and kind. That’s admirable. It might also be a problem.
“Generally after a disaster, people with loving intentions donate things that cannot be used in a disaster response, and in fact may actually be harmful,” said Juanita Rilling, director of the Center for International Disaster Information in Washington, D.C. “And they have no idea that they’re doing it.”
Rilling has spent more than a decade trying to tell well-meaning people to think before they give.
In 1998 Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras. More than 11,000 people died. More than a million and a half were left homeless.
And Rilling got a wake-up call: “Got a call from one of our logistics experts who said that a plane full of supplies could not land, because there was clothing on the runway. It’s in boxes and bales. It takes up yards of space. It can’t be moved.’ ‘Whose clothing is it?’ He said, ‘Well, I don’t know whose it is, but there’s a high-heeled shoe, just one, and a bale of winter coats.’ And I thought, winter coats? It’s summer in Honduras.”
Humanitarian workers call the crush of useless, often incomprehensible contributions “the second disaster.”
In 2004, following the Indian Ocean tsunami, a beach in Indonesia was piled with used clothing.
There was no time for disaster workers to sort and clean old clothes. So the contributions just sat and rotted.
“This very quickly went toxic and had to be destroyed,” said Rilling. “And local officials poured gasoline on it and set it on fire. And then it was out to sea.”
“So, rather than clothing somebody, it went up in flames?” asked Simon.
“Correct. The thinking is that these people have lost everything, so they must NEED everything. So people SEND everything. You know, any donation is crazy if it’s not needed. People have donated prom gowns and wigs and tiger costumes and pumpkins, and frostbite cream to Rwanda, and used teabags, ’cause you can always get another cup of tea.”
You may not think that sending bottles of water to devastated people seems crazy. But Rilling points out, “This water, it’s about 100,000 liters, will provide drinking water for 40,000 people for one day. This amount of water to send from the United States, say, to West Africa — and people did this — costs about $300,000. But relief organizations with portable water purification units can produce the same amount, a 100,000 liters of water, for about $300.”
And then there were warm-hearted American women who wanted to send their breast milk to nursing mothers in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
“It sounds wonderful, but in the midst of a crisis it’s actually one of the most challenging things,” said Rebecca Gustafson, a humanitarian aid expert who has worked on the ground after many disasters.
“Breast milk doesn’t stay fresh for very long. And the challenge is, what happens if you do give it to an infant who then gets sick?”
December 2012, Newtown, Connecticut: A gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Almost instantaneously, stuff start arriving.
Chris Kelsey, who worked for Newtown at the time, said they had to get a warehouse to hold all the teddy bears.
Simon asked, “Was there a need for teddy bears?”
“I think it was a nice gesture,” Kelsey replied. “There was a need to do something for the kids. There was a need to make people feel better. I think the wave of stuff we got was a little overwhelming in the end.”
And how many teddy bear came to Newtown? “I think it was about 67,000,” Kelsey said. “Wasn’t limited to teddy bears. There was also thousands of boxes of school supplies, and thousands of boxes of toys, bicycles, sleds, clothes.”
Newtown had been struck by mass murder, not a tsunami. As Kelsey said, “I think a lot of the stuff that came into the warehouse was more for the people that sent it, than it was for the people in Newtown. At least, that’s the way it felt at the end.”
Every child in Newtown got a few bears. The rest had to be sent away, along with the bikes and blankets.
There are times when giving things works. More than 650,000 homes were destroyed or damaged in Hurricane Sandy in 2012. Thousands of people lost everything.
Tammy Shapiro is one of the organizers of Occupy Sandy, which grew out of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
“We were able to respond in a way that the big, bureaucratic agencies can’t,” Shapiro said.
When the hurricane struck, they had a network of activists, connected and waiting.
“Very quickly, we just stopped taking clothes,” Shapiro said. Instead, they created a “relief supply wedding registry.”
“We put the items that we needed donated on that registry,” said Shapiro. “And then people who wanted to donate could buy the items that were needed. I mean, a lot of what we had on the wedding registry was diapers. They needed flashlights.”
Simon asked, “How transportable is your experience here, following Hurricane Sandy?”
“For me, the network is key. Who has the knowledge? Where are spaces that goods can live if there’s a disaster? Who’s really well-connected on their blocks?”
Juanita Rilling’s album of disaster images shows shot after shot of good intentions just spoiling in warehouses, or rotting on the landscape.
“It is heartbreaking,” Rilling said. “It’s heartbreaking for the donor, it’s heartbreaking for the relief organizations, and it’s heartbreaking for survivors. This is why cash donations are so much more effective. They buy exactly what people need, when they need it.
“And cash donations enable relief organizations to purchase supplies locally, which ensures that they’re fresh and familiar to survivors, purchased in just the right quantities, and delivered quickly. And those local purchases support the local merchants, which strengthens the local economy for the long run.”
Disaster response worker Rebecca Gustafson says that most people want to donate something that is theirs: “Money sometimes doesn’t feel personal enough for people. They don’t feel enough of their heart and soul is in that donation, that check that they would send.
“The reality is, it’s one of the most compassionate things that people can do.”
“The Caribbean is arguably the greatest address on the planet”, as declared in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. (This “greatest” attribute is defined for terrain, culture and hospitality). Yet the region has an unconscious-able brain drain rate, where 70 percent of the tertiary-educated population has fled.
Why!?
This question has been asked repeatedly! Many times the published answers are really describing the symptoms and not the root-causes. In the end, the answer is not so easy! The Go Lean book defines it as heavy-lifting. The Go Lean approach is an examination of the word “Lean”. In the book the word is presented as a noun, a verb and an adjective; all inclusive of the agile concept. The lean/agile concept is an understanding that value is a derived-result from a continuously optimizing key process, that repeats as a cycle .. again and again.
The Go Lean book (Page 4) relates that …
… lean thinking changes the focus of management from optimizing separate technologies, assets, and vertical departments to optimizing the flow of products and services through entire value streams that flow horizontally across technologies, assets, and departments to customers.
One expression of the lean methodology that can be used to dissect/”add value” to the key question (” Why such a high brain drain rate”) in this commentary is the iterative interrogative technique: 5 Why’s. See details of this agile-lean technique below. Using this technique, the 5 Why’s needs to be extended to 7 actual Why questions, as follows:
Problem: Why do Caribbean citizens abandon their homelands?
5 Whys is an iterative interrogative technique used to explore the cause-and-effect relationships underlying a particular problem.[1] The primary goal of the technique is to determine the root cause of a defect or problem by repeating the question “Why?” Each question forms the basis of the next question. The “5” in the name derives from an empirical observation on the number of iterations typically required to resolve the problem.
The technique was formally developed by Sakichi Toyoda and was used within the Toyota Motor Corporation during the evolution of its manufacturing methodologies. In other companies, it appears in other forms. Under Ricardo Semler, Semco practices “three whys” and broadens the practice to cover goal setting and decision making.[2]
Not all problems have a single root cause. If one wishes to uncover multiple root causes, the method must be repeated asking a different sequence of questions each time.
The method provides no hard and fast rules about what lines of questions to explore, or how long to continue the search for additional root causes. Thus, even when the method is closely followed, the outcome still depends upon the knowledge and persistence of the people involved.
—–
The questioning for this example could be taken further to a sixth, seventh, or higher level, but five iterations of asking why is generally sufficient to get to a root cause. The key is to encourage the trouble-shooter to avoid assumptions and logic traps and instead trace the chain of causality in direct increments from the effect through any layers of abstraction to a root cause that still has some connection to the original problem. Note that, in this example, the fifth why suggests a broken process or an alterable behaviour, which is indicative of reaching the root-cause level.
It is interesting to note that the last answer points to a process. This is one of the most important aspects in the 5 Why approach – the real root cause should point toward a process that is not working well or does not exist.[3] Untrained facilitators will often observe that answers seem to point towards classical answers such as not enough time, not enough investments, or not enough manpower. These answers may be true, but they are out of our control. Therefore, instead of asking the question why?, ask why did the process fail?
A key phrase to keep in mind in any 5 Why exercise is “people do not fail, processes do”.
Rules of performing “5 Whys”
In order to carry out the 5-Why analysis properly, following advices should be kept:
It is necessary to engage the management in 5 Whys standard in the company. For the analysis itself, remember about right working group. Also consider facilitator presence for more difficult topics.
Use paper or whiteboard instead of computers.
Write down the problem and make sure that all people understand it.
Distinguish causes from symptoms.
Take care of the logic of cause-and-effect relationship.
Make sure that root causes certainly lead to the mistake by reversing the sentences created as a result of the analysis with the use of expression “and therefore”.
Try to make our answers more precise.
Look for the cause step by step. Don’t jump to conclusions.
Base on facts and knowledge.
Assess the process, not people.
Never leave “human error”, “worker’s inattention”, etc. as the root cause.
Take care of the atmosphere of trust and sincerity.
Ask the question “why” until the root cause is determined, i.e. such cause the elimination of which will cause that the error will not occur again.[7]
Criticism
While the 5 Whys is a powerful tool for engineers or technically savvy individuals to help get to the true causes of problems, it has been criticized … as being too basic a tool to analyze root causes to the depth that is needed to ensure that they are fixed.[8] Reasons for this criticism include:
Tendency for investigators to stop at symptoms rather than going on to lower-level root causes.
Inability to go beyond the investigator’s current knowledge – cannot find causes that they do not already know.
Lack of support to help the investigator ask the right “why” questions.
Results are not repeatable – different people using 5 Whys come up with different causes for the same problem.
Tendency to isolate a single root cause, whereas each question could elicit many different root causes.
These can be significant problems when the method is applied through deduction only. On-the-spot verification of the answer to the current “why” question before proceeding to the next is recommended to avoid these issues. In addition, performing logical tests for necessity and sufficiency at each level can help avoid the selection of spurious causes and promote the consideration of multiple root causes.[9]
Uploaded on Jul 23, 2009 – The 5 Whys (Free 6-Page PDF at http://www.velaction.com/5-whys/ ) is one of the simplest problem solving tools used in Lean manufacturing and Lean offices. This presentation shows how to use the 5 Whys, and what to watch out for. Created and presented by Jeff Hajek of Velaction Continuous Improvement.
Category: How to & Style
License: Standard YouTube License
Wow, the root cause “Why Caribbean citizens abandon their homelands” is tied to the community ethos and embedded racial inequalities in the ancient European world. Now that we know – thanks to the iterative interrogative technique – we can deploy new community ethos plus new strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to turn-around Caribbean failings into opportunities for success.
The Go Lean book identifies Toyota Motor Company as a role model for deploying agile/lean methodologies in delivering quality. Quality delivery is a mission of the Go Lean movement. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation for the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). As a federal government, there will be the need to employ agile/lean methodologies to ensure that a small organizational footprint can provide the facilitations to enhance the region’s economic, security and governing engines. For a regional population of 42 million, the plan is to only engage 30,000 federal civil servants, but with a lot of systems and agile methodologies. That is lean!
The Go Lean book was constructed with community ethos – national spirit that drives the character and identity of its people – in mind, plus the execution of strategies, tactics, implementation and advocacies to keep the regional government lean. The following is a sample of these specific details from the book:
Preface – Use of “Lean” in the Public Sphere
Page 4
Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations
Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future
Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship – Incubators
Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development
Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Sharing
Page 35
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness
Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Mission – Build and foster local economic engines
Page 45
Tactical – Separation of Powers: Federal Administration versus Member-States Governance
Page 71
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change
Page 101
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate to the Caribbean
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 – Ways to Improve Governance in the Caribbean Region
Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract
Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Leadership
Page 171
Advocacy – Ways to Manage Federal Civil Service
Page 173
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora
Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage
Page 218
The Go Lean roadmap presents the CU as a real organizational structure. So all the references in the foregoing encyclopedic reference regarding agile-lean organizations, enterprises, companies and/or firms could apply directly and indirectly to the CU Trade Federation. Yet, the federal agencies and civil servants are not the only focus of the Go Lean/CU roadmap. The prime directives of this roadmap is to reach out into the community and impact the societal engines in these ways:
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.
Previously, Go Lean blogs detailed other opportunities to deploy agile methodologies. Consider this sample:
Go Green Caribbean – Pursuits for Lean energy in the region
The message to the people of the Caribbean region is that the Caribbean’s past is not to be the Caribbean’s future. The catalyst for change in the Caribbean is the CU. This “heavy-lifting” task to implement agile/lean methodologies in the Caribbean is the charter of the CU technocracy.
Now is the time for all Caribbean stakeholders – residents, Diaspora, businesses and institutions – to lean-in for the optimizations and empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. Yes, we can make the region a better homeland to live, work and play. 🙂
“Fighting on arrival; fighting for survival“. – Lyrics from song Buffalo Soldier by Bob Marley.
This is the experience of the Pan-African Diaspora in all of the Americas. Truly a sad origin history, “Coming to America” as slaves. And yet, the African race has proliferated in much of the Americas, most notably in the Caribbean, where the one-time slaves emerged as the majority population in 29 of the 30 member-states; (the only other New World non-Caribbean country with a majority Black population is Brazil). After a few turns in world political developments, these majorities now run the governments in most of these Caribbean countries.
It took “blood, sweat and tears” to reach this accomplishment. This connotes military action, warfare and sacrifice. The most prominent of Black fighting men in the history of the New World is the Buffalo Soldier.
Caribbean Music legend Bob Marley is to be credited for educating much of the world with this history. In his landmark song Buffalo Soldier; he sang their praises – see lyrics in Appendix A.
Uploaded on May 2, 2011 – This song was released post humorously in 1983, after Bob Marley’s death.
Just who were the Buffalo Soldiers and what are their connections to the Caribbean? See this encyclopedia reference here:
From 1863 to the early 20th century, African American units were utilized by the Army to combat the Native Americans during the Indian Wars.[14] The most noted among this group were the Buffalo Soldiers:
This nickname was given to the “Negro Cavalry” by the Native American tribes they fought in the Indian Wars. The term eventually became synonymous with all of the African American regiments formed in 1866. At the end of the U.S. Civil War the army reorganized and authorized the formation of two regiments of black cavalry (the 9th and 10th US Cavalry). Four regiments of infantry (the 38th, 39th, 40th and 41st US Infantry) were formed at the same time. In 1869, the four infantry regiments were merged into two new ones (the 24th and 25th US Infantry). These units were composed of black enlisted men commanded by white officers such as Benjamin Grierson, and occasionally, an African-American officer such as Henry O. Flipper. The “Buffalo Soldiers” served a variety of roles along the frontier from building roads to guarding the U.S. mail.[15]
These regiments served at a variety of posts in the southwest United States and Great Plains regions. During this period they participated in most of the military campaigns in these areas and earned a distinguished record. Thirteen enlisted men and six officers from these four regiments earned the Medal of Honor during the Indian Wars.[16]
After the Indian Wars ended in the 1890s, the regiments continued to serve and participated in the Spanish–American War (including the Battle of San Juan Hill in Cuba), where five more Medals of Honor were earned.[17]
All of the New World , despite their European colonizers – Dutch, English, French, Portuguese or Spanish – was developed on the same economic policy: slavery!
This ugly institution was so entrenched that only a model war would effectuate its abolition permanently. That war was waged in the United States (1861 – 1865) as a proxy to all the New World territories. Shortly thereafter, the institution was abolished in the remaining countries that still maintained it in the region, i.e. Brazil. (The US was not the first; that distinction belong to Haiti, which endured a slave rebellion and battles for emancipation; the Spanish colonies followed shortly there-after, then the French, then the British).
The Buffalo Soldiers are most noteworthy because they fought for dignity for all the African race in the New World, though this was not pronounced in their commission, only now gleaned from their legacy. See Trailer below for one of the many movies.
The movement and underlying book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that Caribbean people must now consider the weight of history and re-assign these islands and coastal states as their only homeland. As a people, the African Diaspora have fought and paid for these lands; they have shed “blood, sweat and tears” for their New World homelands. The ancestral home of Africa is no longer relevant. We now need to “prosper where we are planted” here in the Caribbean. Bob Marley said it best:
I mean it, when I analyze the stench –
To me it makes a lot of sense:
How the Dreadlock Rasta was the Buffalo Soldier,
And he was taken from Africa, brought to America,
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival.
The freedoms we enjoy today, were not free!
They cost our ancestors and predecessors all their had to offer: a full measure of sacrifice and devotion. They gave of their sons and daughters. This is the important lesson to learn in considering the history of these American fighting men. As our ancestors and predecessors, they paid a steep price – “they punched our tickets” – for progress. We must regard their sacrifice.
This is one reason why we must adopt a National Sacrifice community ethos. This vital quality has been missing for far too long. This is why the region has such a deplorable abandonment rate: no [perception of] pain, no gain; no comprehension of sacrifice, no sense of value.
As a region, we must do better. We must discourage the emigration, brain drain and further societal abandonment.
The book Go Lean…Caribbean and accompanying blogs provide lessons from history in considering the fighting men of the American Civil War. The Caribbean region’s debilitating societal abandonment rate – 70 percent of college educated had fled for foreign shores – is proof positive of the absence and lack of this National Sacrifice ethos.
Early in the Go Lean book, this need for careful review of the history of slavery was acknowledged and then placed into perspective with this pronouncement (Declaration of Interdependence –Page 10):
As the history of our region and the oppression, suppression and repression of its indigenous people is duly documented, there is no one alive who can be held accountable for the prior actions, and so we must put aside the shackles of systems of repression to instead formulate efficient and effective systems to steer our own destiny.
As the colonial history of our region was initiated to create economic expansion opportunities for our previous imperial masters, the structures of government instituted in their wake have not fostered the best systems for prosperity of the indigenous people.
So the consideration of the Go Lean book, is to identify and correct all bad community ethos – the fundamental spirit of our culture – and to foster positive community ethos (such as National Sacrifice and deferred gratification). This point was also pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13) with this statement:
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.
This book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to spearhead the elevation of Caribbean society. The book advocates learning lessons from many events and concepts in history, covering all societal engines: economics, security and governance. The roadmap seeks to reboot these engines to ensure that all Caribbean stakeholders have the opportunity for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with no abusive exploitation of any ethnic group; no suppression, repression or oppression of any people: African or not!
The Go Lean roadmap seeks to employ “best-practices” to impact the CU 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 ensure the respect of human rights and public safety.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.
The Go Lean book stresses the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to reboot, reform and transform the eco-systems of Caribbean society. These points are detailed in the book as follows:
Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Choose
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices
Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future
Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations
Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Cooperatives
Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future
Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact a Turn-Around
Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness
Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good
Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate 30 Member-States
Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Enact a Defense Pact with Militia and Naval Forces
Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Keep the next generation at home
Page 46
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union
Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy
Page 64
Implementation – Assemble – Incorporating all the existing regional military organizations
Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change
Page 101
Implementation – Security Initiatives at Start-up
Page 103
Implementation – Ways to Deliver
Page 109
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate to the Caribbean
Page 118
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean – Confederation Without Sovereignty
Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better
Page 131
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy
Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs
Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract
Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security
Page 181
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora
Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage
Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Protect Human Rights
Page 220
There are other lessons for the Caribbean to learn from considering history; the following previous blog/commentaries apply:
A Lesson in History: America’s War on the Caribbean
The concepts in this commentary are more profound than just the lyrics of a reggae song. It is bigger than music, it relates to life and legacy. The recent legacy of the Afro-Caribbean community is one of dysfunction and abandonment. But the ancient history – Buffalo Soldiers in particular – should give us pause and cause to reflect and reform our commitment to a National Sacrifice ethos.
No appreciation, no sacrifice; no sacrifice, no victory!
The Go Lean roadmap seeks to reform and transform the Caribbean societal engines, urging the adoption of new positive community ethos, such as National Sacrifice. This is an expression of deferred gratification, choosing to focus more on the future than on the present. The Go Lean book relates that the “African Diaspora experience in the New World is one of future gratification, as the generations that sought freedom from slavery knew that their children, not them, would be the beneficiaries of that liberty. This ethos continued with subsequent generations expecting that their “children” would be more successful in the future than the parents may have been”. Deferred gratification is a form of sacrifice.
We should value this sacrifice. Such gratitude makes our community better, more resilient and more long suffering.
Now is the time for all stakeholders in the Caribbean to show proper appreciation for the sacrifices by leaning-in to this roadmap for Caribbean empowerment. All the empowerments in this roadmap require people to fight for their homeland. We can learn so much from the Buffalo Soldiers:
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival; Driven from the mainland to the heart of the Caribbean.
If you know your history, Then you would know where you coming from, Then you wouldn’t have to ask me, Who the ‘eck do I think I am.
The Go Lean quest is simple, learn from history and work to make the Caribbean region a better place to live, work and play. 🙂
Appendix A – Song Buffalo Soldier Lyrics – Sang by Bob Marley
Buffalo Soldier, Dreadlock Rasta:
There was a Buffalo Soldier in the heart of America,
Stolen from Africa, brought to America,
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival.
I mean it, when I analyze the stench –
To me it makes a lot of sense:
How the Dreadlock Rasta was the Buffalo Soldier,
And he was taken from Africa, brought to America,
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival.
Said he was a Buffalo Soldier, Dreadlock Rasta –
Buffalo Soldier in the heart of America.
If you know your history,
Then you would know where you coming from,
Then you wouldn’t have to ask me,
Who the ‘eck do I think I am.
I’m just a Buffalo Soldier in the heart of America,
Stolen from Africa, brought to America,
Said he was fighting on arrival, fighting for survival;
Said he was a Buffalo Soldier win the war for America.
Dreadie, woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy,
Woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy!
Woy yoy yoy, woy yoy-yoy yoy,
Woy yoy yoy yoy, yoy yoy-yoy yoy!
Buffalo Soldier troddin’ through the land, wo-ho-ooh!
Said he wanna ran, then you wanna hand,
Troddin’ through the land, yea-hea, yea-ea.
Said he was a Buffalo Soldier win the war for America;
Buffalo Soldier, Dreadlock Rasta,
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival;
Driven from the mainland to the heart of the Caribbean.
Troddin’ through San Juan in the arms of America;
Troddin’ through Jamaica, a Buffalo Soldier# –
Fighting on arrival, fighting for survival:
Buffalo Soldier, Dreadlock Rasta.
Published on Mar 9, 2015 – Buffalo Soldiers Trailer 1997; Director: Charles Haid; Starring: Danny Glover, Bob Gunton, Carl Lumbly, Tom Bower, Gabriel Casseus.
Official Content From Warner Home Video
This day – August 11 – in 1973 …
