In liberation theology we talk about the first moment, and then the second moment. The first moment is the experience itself, the act itself ... the experience of isolation, dislocation, subjugation - whatever-ation it might be. The second moment is the reflection on what happened in the first moment; the opportunity to examine what happened, and why ... how what happened might impact our preconceived notions of life, and how we might need to change those notions to include all the new information of the experience. Consider Sunday and Monday's experience the first moment. When the first moment is so awful as to boggle the very mind, as to threaten to pull one into despair - begin the second moment analysis - begin to look for what there is to learn, the why's and wherefores of the situation. This is what I did today.
I tried to put into perspective the experiences, and the discomforts of those experiences. I took in the debates happening all around me, the news reports, the discussions, the online forums. I observed anger, frustration, fear, hopelessness ... and then in the midst of this I heard echos of responsibility, faith and love.
I think it's fair to say there is a general sense of speculation - people here do not know what is going on and that is because the pieces which we are formally being presented by the media do not make sense. They don't add up. And where there is illogic entwined with propaganda and speculation, it is inevitable that fears escalate. Amidst fear, we are tempted to abandon logic and justice altogether - 9/11 and the War on Terror being prime examples of this ... today I decided not to be terrified ... so on the ground today, here is what I observed:
I'm here for a few months, "visiting" from Canada. I'm staying with my mom in a home that is in "a good part of town". The windows all have grills on them - standard practice in urban Jamaica. The house is surrounded by a 10-plus foot wall. The wall has barbed wire on top of it. We have a large double-gated entrance to this protected property in this good part of town. It is operated by an automatic gate opener. We have a rottweiler (Paris) and a pit-bull (Toby) in the yard. All the grills have vibration sensors on them. In the night we set an alarm. We have panic buttons. If we think someone is on the property and press the button (or the alarm is triggered), a security company (whose services my mom receives for a monthly fee) sends armed personnel to our home. They have a key to open the gate. They check out the premises to keep us safe. My mom pays taxes in Jamaica. When I worked here I too paid taxes. By the time all the deductions are made, these taxes approximate one third of one's salary. This is in "a good part of town." But we are "safe".
My sister, with her husband and children live in a gated townhouse community on Long Mountain. The gated community concept supercedes the need for individuals paying for their own, individual protection. But the windows still have grills on them. The gated community is patrolled by armed guards working with a security company. This is in "a good part of town." But they are safe.
We blithely call it protecting ourselves, but it is our response to crime - and for many of us unfortunately it is our only response to crime - to protect ourselves. We do nothing to address the root causes; operating out of the individualistic, capitalist philosophy of the modern-day western world, we look out for number one. The rest is up to someone else. Conveniently sitting with chains of our own making, staring at the darkness - the shadows cast on the wall of the cave - imagining the shadows to be a reality, imagining the chains to be of someone else's making. Imagining? Or conveniently choosing to see it this way?
We are not blockaded into our communities against our will - we choose instead to blockade ourselves, in order to keep ourselves safe in an urban area rife with criminal activity. Understand though that crime, like addiction, is a symptom of a problem - not the problem itself. A drug don, an arms dealer - these too are symptoms of bigger problems - not the problem itself. When weapons are being moved, someone is buying them, someone is using them, someone is selling them ... someone is benefiting from the power advantage that the weapons bring them. When drugs - marijuana, cocaine are being sold - someone is buying them, someone wants them, someone is numbing something they don't want to feel by taking a substance that takes them out of their reality for a little while. The illegality of trading guns and narcotics is the icing on a cake of the hollowness people seek to fill with power and drugs. If there is no cake, there is nowhere to put the icing. We attack the icing - the criminality - without addressing the cake - the spiritual and economic hollowness that comes from this unbalanced pyramid of values in which money and an imagined security is our god, and we place our faith in a panic button, crying "corruption" when the house of cards falls down around our ears.
Toby, our pit-bull, is a haunted beast with an appetite for plastic. On Sunday night, he gnawed a wire out from under my mother's car in hot pursuit of a rat (or the sheer pleasure of chewing on plastic - he's a haunted beast so who knows what his motivation was). So today my mom got a drive to work, and I went to pick her up at lunch time. I opened the electronic gate to drive out (in my little Samurai which Toby is also trying to consume); an ambulance sped by with a JDF (Jamaica Defense Force - the Jamaican Army) vehicle in front and behind - soldiers with large guns in all three vehicles. I drove to my mom's workplace which is on the University Hospital premises. It was quiet on the roads, with very little traffic for a working day (when according to Bruce Golding we should be resuming "business as usual"). As we were leaving the Hospital premises, another ambulance sped past us, again with JDF vehicles in front and behind. This time I could see the patient who was in the ambulance. We got back home, closed the gate behind us. Safe? You figure? How long is the rope called "individual safety" in a community that is under fire?
I checked online, listened to the radio news. What is happening here, is it a war on terror? or is it a war of terror? My sister and I talked about the responsibility that the people in West Kingston had to leave the area when the offer was made to them. I don't imagine it is a simple choice, if they had the choice at all. Some allegations are that they are being kept there by force, by the criminal element. News reports show residents who are claiming loyalty to the Don. Understand this - the Don provides the order in the community. He speaks into actualization crime management in these communities. On his word, robberies, rapes and assaults stop. Or go. People in these communities are always (and I don't mean just since the recent uprisings) complaining about police brutality. Police in turn always claim the assaults were initiated by the gunmen. Who do we trust?
And if we hold the people in these communities responsible for keeping the criminal element aloft, do we hold ourselves responsible when we did nor provide them options of other places to live where they could feel as safe as the Don makes them feel, even if only part of the time? Isn't a slice of cake with icing on it better than none at all? I never offered anyone any cake; never took the time to examine too closely their hunger and my capacity to bake something to fill their hollowness, so who now am I to complain that they took the cake from someone who took the time to offer it to them? Even if they did also take advantage of the disadvantaged in the process. Whether I blame today's Don, Bruce, Seaga or the CIA, it matters not; there is only one face guaranteed to look back at me in the mirror every day.
As an "upper St Andrew browning", I've experienced my own share of inappropriate police behaviour; enough to believe that people less empowered than I am would experience far worse than I have. I am lucky, I am blessed. I grew up in a home with two educated parents who were both employed, who put our education first; I grew up in a community of middle-class economic status, in a community where each home had it's own yard, with running water and light. Having been educated though, having received the opportunities, and furthermore, having read far outside my range of study and being aware of the situation in Kingston, what have I done?
When I taught at UWI, and encountered a student who came from West Kingston, who told me how he had to leave his books with a friend on hall, as people in his community would not have let him leave to come to university had they known that was his destination, what did I do? Not enough.
When I worked on electrifying inner-city housing projects in Trenchtown and Tivoli Gardens, and realised that our safe passage into and out of these communities depended on getting the Ok from the area Don, what did I do? Not enough.
When I came back from school in Canada in 1999, and realised that people were being held up at their gates in "the good parts of town", beyond installing an electronic gate opener, what did I do? Not enough. Certainly nothing to address the cake - just the icing on the cake.
So when I react now with empathy to the situation of my brothers and sisters in the communities of West Kingston now, I react also with the responsibility of realizing that, as a responsible, educated, aware Jamaican, I have not done enough to try to solve the problems I long knew existed here. I have not been my brother's keeper. I have not done enough to try to represent the under-represented, to try to defend the undefended. I have, like so many others, just worked towards maintaining my own comfort zone. So now, as I lay my head down to sleep tonight, for another restless night, wondering if we might be assaulted by gunmen in the night, I recognize too that my reaction of fear stems partly from my own lack of taking responsibility. No one person can do it alone, but also no one person can expect to see and know a wrong and, doing nothing about it, expect the wrong to peacefully go away. It must come home to roost. Pointing a finger leaves three more pointing right back at me.
In all this sense of responsibility I feel, tonight in Kingston we are blessed with rain. It is a gentle rain, falling like forgiveness, reminding us one and all that there is a Creator whose grace surpasses all understanding, whose night-time lightening illuminates the sky, and whose thunder rumbles loudly to remind us that not all rumbles are taking life ... not all rumbles are gunfire and mortar; in the new day that comes tomorrow we have a new opportunity to react with responsibility for the society, community and world we live in - rather than just looking about our individual security ... for the individual pursuit of happiness cannot create a peaceful country for us to live in. In this, my second moment on this subject, God reminds me that forgiveness and renewal is possible with this rain.
(And please dear God, speak to Toby so he doesn't eat my car again tonight).
