By Clash! Collective: In recent week, we published a cache of documents on the historic Movement for Barbudan Secession and a commentary on CLR James and Bob Marley. At first, these two entries in the Clash! archives may appear disconnected. Both, however, describe the subordination of the Caribbean working people in urban garrisons and smaller island dependencies by postcolonial rulers. The ignoble Prime Minister of Antigua, Gaston Browne embraces a tradition of state violence dictated by postcolonial autocrats toward ordinary people in their own territories. The people of Barbuda know this well. So, too, do the people of Tivoli, Sea Lots, and Cité Soleil; Union Island, Nevis, and Tobago.
CLICK HERE TO GET ON THE ABN WHATSAPP
CLICK HERE TO GET ON THE ABN WHATSAPP
This May, Antigua will play host to the United Nations’ 4th International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS4). Browne and his government will continue their pathetic masquerade by wailing about their “vulnerability” as a class of postcolonial elites and begging North American, European, and Gulf paymasters to line their pockets with “green capital” and “climate financing.” Browne is not alone in this masquerade. When the community of mercenary elites from the small-island states of the Caribbean and the Pacific arrive in St. John’s, they will join Browne in this deplorable charade.
Indeed, there are many security institutes throughout the hemisphere and the Global South dedicated to policing Black and colonized people. The leaders of these states (the ruling and opposition parties) have collaborated to ensure that nobody sings “I shot the sheriff” like Marley once did. Not a single politician will denounce the Caribbean police states that conspire to put working people in their place. Not one of them is dedicated to a society in which Caribbean toilers are not dispossessed. Not one is carrying out a genuine strategy to minimize violence against ordinary Caribbean people. They are not champions of our freedom; they are the architects of our wretched condition.
Who is Dispossessing Ordinary Caribbean People?
In the struggle against apartheid in South Africa, a popular freedom song confronted the settler dispossession of Black Africans with the refrain, “kill the Boer, kill the [white] farmer.” Today, this survives as an insistent refrain against global white supremacy and its capture of the post-apartheid state. However, this refrain is also insufficient for our present political moment. In the Caribbean, like South Africa, the dispossession of ordinary people of African and Indian descent is carried out not only by European elites but by their Black, Indian, and Cape Coloured partners in crime.
To “Kill the Boer” and put an end to our own wretched condition, we must also “slap down Gaston Browne” and “shoot the [black] sheriff” who carries out his state of emergency by murdering and dispossessing Caribbean people with impunity. Who will dare to join us in singing Marley again? Whether people know abroad or not, the Caribbean’s Bob Marley was always talking about oppressive Black police.
Clash! does not serve as an advisor to any Caribbean government or political party. We do not make friends or compacts with anyone who desires to rule over a police state like Browne and his ilk. As Marley said, “Rasta nuh work fi no CIA.” Neither do we work with the CIA’s deputies who mock and murder ordinary people while crying poverty and vulnerability to their imperialist handlers.
CLICK HERE TO GET ON THE ABN WHATSAPP
We are not experts on Antigua and Barbuda. Ordinary Antiguans and Barbudans themselves are the experts on their own affairs. So we listen and follow closely as observers and evangelists of Caribbean unity and federation from below.
We at Clash! have expressed solidarity with the Barbudan people in their struggle against disaster capitalism and the dastardly Gaston Browne regime that likes to make projections like a leader of the region at home and abroad.
PM Browne donated $5,000 from his salary to the infrastructural costs of this global meeting not out of the goodness of his heart. His international partners in private accumulation, though they will pretend to talk about ecological crisis, will conspire to monetize it for themselves. The global guests are coming to see about their shared local and regional investments. They want an environment of security that the bombastic Browne who believes in over-delivering cannot provide.
And no matter how much this authoritarian politician tries to fake it until he makes it, no amount of reinforcements will contain his vulnerability as Antigua puts on this international gathering. At this moment of danger (for Gaston Browne), we await everyday people in Antigua & Barbuda to punch above their weight, take the world stage, and be the spark of the entire Caribbean region.
Counting Sheep, Counting Cops
The Browne government has contributed to many sleepless nights for Barbudans. Some who have difficulty sleeping ‘count sheep’ until they doze off. We propose everyone will get a better sleep if they start counting cops and soldiers. If we all peer into the Bureau of Public Secrets, we can discover why together.
Antigua and Barbuda has less than 100,000 people. It officially only has 350 police. And an army of less than 200. In other words, there is one police officer for every 285 citizens. And one soldier to every 500 citizens. There are 1,000 to 2,000 Barbudans. If the Antiguan police and armed forces aimed its sights on Barbudans alone, they would boast 3–6 police and 1–2 soldiers per each Barbudan.
CLICK HERE TO GET ON THE ABN WHATSAPP
Every Antiguan and every Barbudan will not think exactly alike. Some do not know exactly what they want. Some Barbudans identify with the Antiguan government. Some Antiguans identify with the Barbudan struggle against the Antiguan government.
These conflicting tendencies in the popular will also exist among the police and military itself, who have husbands, wives, partners, parents, and children thinking about the dilemmas of Barbuda and the Caribbean at their kitchen tables and under the street lamp at night.
If one in every five who serve in the armed forces are sympathetic to the Barbudan cause, then the policing of demonstrating Barbudans would even be less reliable. These numbers need not be exact. They only matter in specific scenarios of impending confrontation.
The Best Protest Strategy is a Plural One
Antigua is 14 miles long and 11 miles wide and is 108 square miles. Barbuda is 15 miles long by 8 miles wide and is 62 square miles. Over a space of 170 square miles there are 350 police to maintain what is normatively termed law and order. This means there are only two police for each square mile. Those police can easily be isolated and lose their way within any one of these miles on their own. If all 350 police are mobilized to confront a march or demonstration in Codrington or St John’s, the rest of the country would be open for ordinary people to assemble and conceive of the new society for themselves. Perhaps the best protest and disobedience strategy at the moment of this global gathering is to advertise projections of direct action at multiple locations at the same time. Certainly, activists should not be preoccupied with strategies of containment of their protest at the SIDS4 meeting that the government will assuredly organize.
CLICK HERE TO GET ON THE ABN WHATSAPP
During the SIDS 4 Meeting, Barbudans and their supporters may publicly call for a day (or a week of action) where at least five rallies are called for. We can imagine Barbuda solidarity actions at, (1) The SIDS4 meeting in St John’s, Antigua which will undoubtedly be highly policed, (2) Jumby Bay, an Antiguan private island resort for the billionaire class that Browne proposes as a model for Barbudan dispossession (imagine how explosive on a global scale would be protest at Oprah Winfrey’s property there) (3) The largest Barbudan village of Codrington, (4) The Peace, Love, and Happiness resort development in Barbuda, and (5) The home of Prime Minister Browne. It is conceivable that 200 Barbudans and their supporters could be mobilized to all these locations at the same time.
Strategically, if these are called all at the same time, the activist coalition can decide in fact if instead they all wish to rally in one location as a expression of direct action against the Browne and the CARICOM block assembled in St. John’s.
Whatever Barbudan activists such as John Mussington, Jacklyn Frank, Mackenzie Frank and Devon Warner do in their wisdom to protest or speak out against the fraud of Gaston Browne as he masquerades as a legitimate person on the world stage, the opening they provide will invite ordinary Antiguans and Barbudans to independently show their power and expose the Browne regime in front of the world.
Caribbean working people and the unemployeds are known to be very powerful. Though we do not always know our own power until we find ourselves “catching power” and the spirit of insurgency at an unexpected moment. Just as it would be very inconvenient if the conference hotels or meeting halls were to experience a power outage during the SIDS Meeting, it would be very stimulating for the people of Barbuda and Antigua to exercise their power of protest at this same moment in history.
Just as electrical utility workers have the power to fix or create power outages, their fellow toilers can conjure the power of direct action. Members of parliament, of all party affiliations, may think they hold power in Antigua and Barbuda. But throughout our history, Caribbean people rise up periodically to demonstrate where power truly lies! And the electrical workers just might leave the political elites who enjoy misleading us in the dark for a change.
CLICK HERE TO GET ON THE ABN WHATSAPP
Water and sewage workers through tinkering with the hydraulics and gauges can cause raw sewage to come shooting out of bathtubs, sinks, and toilets. This filth can be re-routed to private dwellings, hotel rooms, police stations, or army barracks. Motor cars and hotel rooms without keyless entries can be easily jammed with substances that can easily be found at the market or around our home. A basic fact: there are only five fire stations in Antigua and Barbuda, and they will likely be focused on the global gathering spaces in St. John’s. Children should not be encouraged to play with matches, but imagine what adults could responsibly carry out along the southern coast of Barbuda to restore peace, love, and happiness.
The V.C. Bird Airport in Antigua will receive many distinguished visitors. What better way to welcome these visitors than a Barbuda solidarity action at the airport? Of course, at other moments, Caribbean people have disrupted air travel as Martiniquais farmers did in 1992 by occupying the airstrip and dumping several tonnes of bananas directly onto the tarmac. That is what disobedience is for: disruption of business as usual. And when global visitors gather in large numbers, a small place can become congested, and with lack of experience of large numbers compounded, less manageable.
Barbudans and their friends should expect that means of transportation that working people rely on to travel between Antigua and Barbuda by water, or from Antigua to Jumby Bay, will be undermined (or the attempt will be made) in some way the closer the week comes of the SIDS4 gathering. Yet we suspect that Barbudans have a way of understanding and anticipating such a challenge. Further, the Browne government cannot easily shut down access to Barbuda and Jumby Bay and showcase his plans to partner with global capital at the same time.
Even if Gaston Browne asks the imperialists and other small developing states for reinforcements, they will not have local knowledge of the terrain. The details of the plight of the Barbudan people, the attack on their communal land tenure, their social ecology, the laws the state have violated, are well known. What is still not well known is the self-governing capacities of the Barbudan people (and their friends) to embody the next chapter in Caribbean political thought and a new epoch in Caribbean history.
(Clash! is a collective of advocates for Caribbean unity and federation)
CLICK HERE TO GET ON THE ABN WHATSAPP
Аdvеrtіѕе wіth thе most visited news site in Antigua and Barbuda ~ Wе оffеr fullу сuѕtоmіzаblе аnd flехіblе dіgіtаl mаrkеtіng расkаgеѕ. Yоur соntеnt іѕ dеlіvеrеd іnѕtаntlу tо thоuѕаndѕ оf uѕеrѕ іn Antigua аnd аbrоаd via our One Signal push notifications! Соntасt uѕ аt [email protected].
———————————————————————
CLICK HERE TO GET ON THE ABN WHATSAPP
CLICK HERE TO GET ON THE ABN WHATSAPP
CLICK HERE TO GET ON THE ABN WHATSAPP
CLICK HERE TO GET ON THE ABN WHATSAPP
CLICK HERE TO GET ON THE ABN WHATSAPP
CLICK HERE TO GET ON THE ABN WHATSAPP
Make a donation to help support ABN, via PayPal: [email protected]. Follow Antigua Breaking News on X, formerly Twitter @ABNAntigua, and Instgram @AntiguaBreakingNews and on Facebook. Send us a message on WhatsApp at 1-268-779-3189 or email us at [email protected].
