Keith Smith

So many of us in the Caribbean media are holding our breaths and crossing our fingers as writer extraordinaire, editor-at-large and journalistic guru, Keith Smith of the Trinidad Express, lies in a hospital bed in Port of Spain fighting the biggest battle of/for his life. Hopefully, this struggle will also join his great journalistic repertoire sometime in the future.

The Blindness of New Love

I remember the great Caribbean economist and thinker, Lloyd Best, expressing his political position by saying he could not describe himself as an unbiased commentator on most public issues because not only was he not a supporter of the political contestants at the time, he was against them all.

Best’s position soon became a part of my own statement of principle whenever prying acquaintances and even complete strangers attempted to wrangle a narrow partisan position out of me. For sure, this is not mere parroting of a teenage memory, but a view I have grown more and more to associate myself with over the years – especially given the level of contact with national and Caribbean politicians I have had as a journalist.

This is not to say that I have not often agreed with the national politicians. I agreed just as much with the late Prime Minister George Chambers regarding the need for urgent caution on matters of the national economy in 1981 (I was a Tapia candidate for the election that December), as I did with ANR Robinson on the same question in 1986 and with Patrick Manning in 1991 and, thereafter, with Brian Kuei Tung and with Mariano Brown and, now, Winston Dookeran. No mention of Basdeo Panday, because he never appeared to believe in or to be committed to anything on such questions.

How therefore could I have been “a PNM” in 1981? How could I have been “an NAR” in 1986 when the administration was soon branded by my column in the Express during that period as a “bourgeois revolt”? How could I have been “a UNC” when I participated in one of the most sustained campaigns for a free press we have ever witnessed in Trinidad and Tobago (credit for which has erroneously been assigned to retired publisher, Ken Gordon, by the way)? How could I now be “a UNC” or “a COP” when the signs of real political change seem so distant?

I however believe my journalism during the tenure of the respective political parties was as independent and as fair as is possible under authoritarian conditions – such as those under which we continue to endure in the English-speaking Caribbean.

Many colleagues cringe when I use the term “authoritarian culture” to describe the way we work in the Caribbean, but I insist that there need not be open ostracism, injury or death for there to be conditions that foster an absence of independent thought in favour of silence.

The most urgent political question of these times in the Caribbean therefore seems to be how do we break from the grasp of authoritarian politics and culture and seek true freedom and independence.

The former Education Minister under Chambers, Marilyn Gordon, struck my siblings’ names off a Balisier House Carnival band lineup, post-1981, Robinson’s Information hit-man summoned the “foreign correspondents” (I was a stringer for Prensa Latina back then) to discuss the slandering of the country overseas with a view to silencing us, Keith Rowley thought I was an agent of “the opposition” during 1991-1995 and Panday (to my utter bewilderment) branded me a “political dinosaur” sometime between 1995 and 2001.

Some were amazed that I functioned as a freelance television presenter and producer for the Government Information Division during the Panday era, was retained as Communication Coordinator for the Fifth Summit of the Americas under Manning and, since then, functioned as a Communication Advisor to a state regulatory agency, yet find time to write freely and openly about public affairs and the economy for various journalistic principals.

All of this comes readily to mind as we contemplate the prospects for the “People’s Partnership” administration in Trinidad and Tobago. It is difficult terrain to navigate, if only because of the disastrous path blazed by the previous regime, but it is an exercise we do not engage at our peril.

In many respects, though, the opinion-leaders to whom so many pay close attention are simply not engaging the task of casting a sharp and critical eye. Instead, there is either open adoration or barely-disguised hatred and quick resort to partisan labelling and open condemnation as, among other things, being “a PNM” or “a UNC” or “a COP.”

The fact is, I am not unbiased on this question, I am against all of them and what they, in essence, represent. This, indeed, constitutes an open declaration of political position and intent.

Satisfied?

So, what now?

What now, is that I continue to openly declare myself opposed to authoritarianism and the sycophancy and kow-towing to authority that follow. The subtle corruption of keeping the bosses politically satisfied, at all costs. The bright-eyed blindness of new love and the penance that flows in its absence.

Already, the various shades of such corruption are apparent. There are shadows behind the trees that grow longer with each passing day. More to come.

Condemning Violence Against the Media in Mexico and Elsewhere

AUSTIN, Texas — Distinguished investigative journalists and members of media support organizations from 20 countries in the Americas and Europe strongly condemned the killings of journalists and attacks on media by organized crime, particularly in Mexico. They insisted that international organizations and governments in the Americas assume their responsibilities to guarantee the rights to life and information that are included in their constitutions.

The “Austin Declaration” was issued by participants of the 8th Austin Forum on Journalism in the Americas, conducted Sept. 17–18, 2010, at the University of Texas at Austin. The annual gathering, which focused this year on coverage of drug trafficking and organized crime, was conducted by the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at UT Austin and the Open Society Foundations programs on media and Latin America.

The Austin Forum began Friday (Sept. 17) with the news of the shooting death of 21-year-old Mexican photography intern Luis Carlos Santiago, who worked for El Diario in Ciudad Juárez. His 18-year-old fellow intern, Carlos Manuel Sánchez, was injured in the attack.

"Since we started organizing this annual meeting in Austin of journalists and journalists organizations in 2003, this is the first time that the participants decided to issue a public declaration at the end of the meeting," said Professor Rosental Calmon Alves, director of the Knight Center. "And it is not surprising that something so extraordinary has happened, considering the gravity of the situation facing journalists in Mexico and other countries of the hemisphere, especially those who cover drug trafficking and organized crime, which were the themes of the Austin Forum this year."

"The declaration shows the international outrage at so many attacks on journalists and the news media of Mexico and other countries. It also shows the solidarity that all participants of the Austin Forum wanted to send to the journalists and their families, especially in the regions that are most affected, like Ciudad Juárez and other cities close to the border between Mexico and the United States," Alves said.

The Austin Declaration reads as follows :

“Renowned investigative journalists from throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, who gathered at the University of Texas at Austin for the 8th Austin Forum on Journalism in the Americas, organized by the Knight Center, declare their strongest condemnation of the killings of journalists, and attacks of any kind against the media, that are being unleashed by organized crime in Mexico, and that have been committed for years amid the negligence of the government.

“From Mexico to the Southern Cone, drug trafficking and organized crime have become the biggest threat against democratic society and life. In other countries, such as Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia, the media and journalists are under fire. Freedom of expression and the right of citizens to be informed are in grave danger throughout the region. Confirming this has been the point of all the participants’ presentations at the Forum.

“The participants of the Austin Forum, from various media, declare their decision to take action, denouncing the impunity with which the bands of organized crime are operating, and insisting that international organizations and governments of the region – particularly Mexico – recognize the urgency of the moment and assume their responsibility to guarantee a minimum of two rights included in their constitutions. The rights to life and to information must be restored.

From Austin, we send this demonstration of our solidarity with all our colleagues in danger.

Sept. 18, 2010, Austin

• Juan Javier Zeballos, Asociación Nacional de la Prensa (Bolivia)

• Mauri König, Associação Brasileira de Jornalismo Investigativo

• Mónica González, CIPER Chile

• Ginna Morelo Martínez, Consejo de Redacción y El Meridiano de Cordoba (Colombia)

• Álvaro Sierra, University for Peace, Costa Rica

• Giannina Segnini, La Nación, Costa Rica

• Mónica Almeida, El Universo, Ecuador

• Carlos Dada, El Faro, El Salvador

• Benoît Hervieu, Reporters Sans Frontiers Bureau Amériques, Francia

• Claudia Méndez Arriaza, El Periódico, Guatemala

• Gotson Pierre, AlterPresse, Haiti

• Byron Buckley, Association of Caribbean Media Workers y Press Association of Jamaica

• Marcela Turati, revista Proceso y red Periodistas de a Pie (México)

• Marco Lara Khlar, Insyde (México)

• María Teresa Ronderos, Verdad Abierta, Colombia

• Mike O’Connor, Committee to Protect Journalists

• Óscar Martínez, El Faro, El Salvador

• Samuel González, criminal justice consultant, México

• Carlos Chamorro, El Confidencial, Nicaragua

• Dilmar Rosas Garcia, Centro Latinoamericano de Periodismo, Panamá

• Osmar Gómez, Foro de Periodistas Paraguayos (FOPEP)

• Gustavo Gorriti, IDL Reporteros, Peru

• Luz María Helguero, Red de Periodistas de Provincias del Perú

• Ricardo Uceda, Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS), Peru

• Tyler Bridges, journalist

• Paul Radu, Romanian Center for Investigative Journalism

• Ana Arana, Fundación MEPI, México

• Bruce Bagley, University of Miami

• Bruce Shapiro, Dart Center for Trauma & Journalism, United States

• Cecilia Alvear, National Association of Hispanic Journalists /Unity -Journalists of Color (U.S.)

• Judith Torrea, blog Ciudad Juárez : en la sombra del narcotráfico

• Luis Botello, International Center for Journalists

• Ricardo Trotti, Inter-American Press Association

• Steven Dudley, InSight / Organized Crime in the Americas

• Javier Mayorca, El Nacional, Venezuela

• Algirdas Lipstas, Open Society Foundations, Media Program

• David Holiday Open Society Foundations, Latin America Program

• David Sasaki, Open Society Foundations, Latin America Program

• Gordana Jankovic, Open Society Foundations, Media Program

• Miguel Castro, Open Society Foundations, Media Program

• Sandra Dunsmore, Open Society Foundations, Latin America Program

• Lise Olsen, Investigative Reporters & Editors and Houston Chronicle, United States

• Donna de Cesare, University of Texas at Austin

• Rosental Calmon Alves, University of Texas at Austin

• Kristel Mucino, Washington Office on Latin America y Transnational Institute

• Ricardo Sandoval Palos, International Consortium of Investigative Journalism/Center for Public Integrity (U.S.)

• Gabriel Michi, Forum del Periodismo Argentino (FOPEA)

• Dean Graber, University of Texas at Austin

• Summer Harlow, University of Texas at Austin

• Ingrid Bachmann, University of Texas at Austin

• Mónica Medel, University of Texas at Austin

• James Ian Tennant, University of Texas at Austin

• Joseph Vavrus, University of Texas at Austin

Independence, Diversity and Self-Confidence - Trinidad and Tobago

We have been around long enough as an independent state to understand that the raising of our own flag on August 31, 1962 had value and potential in excess of political self-determination and a notion of economic choice.

For one, the ability to determine constitutional and legislative values and to command indigenous human and natural resources unfolded as both opportunity and as intrinsic challenge. Small states finding their way in the world, under crippling pre and post-colonial circumstances, have consistently been found to be haplessly subject to such conditions.

The offshore orientation of the economy is now widely acknowledged and accepted, and undoubted vulnerabilities on account of geography, limited capacity and a lack of self-confidence have taken intractable root. There is now little doubt that political independence has neither brought us true freedom nor has it led to a trough of sustainable prospects for a future as a sovereign state.

It is not that we have been hopeless at political negotiation or that we have been unable to prosper, in relative terms, through economic decision-making. In many respects, we have conducted our affairs at a high level of civility and we have covered much developmental ground. Our score card on Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is impressive.

Up to this point, Eric Williams, CLR James, William Demas and Lloyd Best are absolutely indispensable if we were to understand some key paradoxes. There is an established pathway that leads us to an understanding of how and why we have failed to advance the gains of political independence yet thrived in important ways. Economic determinism, political under-achievement and cultural insufficiency feature prominently and are irresistible subjects to ponder even in the face of the statistical high-points.

The fact that cultural, political and economic institutions have under-performed is however difficult to deny. There is yet no grasp of the changing “peoplescape” and certainly no sense of an economic destiny over which we have an adequate measure of decisive control in the final analysis. The political parties and their vital organs, in the absence of official life-support, are moribund and particularly useless in pursuit of the broader, civic self-determination that separates free people from those who are not.

The resort to authoritarianism and paternalistic dependence and control remains impulsive and few are to be found who consistently patrol the boundaries of rights and freedoms. As a consequence, important questions of state-sanctioned killing, free expression and independent jurisprudence are subject to official “vaps” and sycophantic advocacy capable of 180 degree shifts. In this respect, political complexion has made no difference.

To move us forward, new levels of understanding are needed which concede that the Trinidad and Tobago of 2010 is not the same country we came up with in 1962. The challenge of managed diversity, to cite one important example, is certainly not the same.

In many respects, it makes sense that a Ministry of Multiculturalism exists. But there is yet no evidence that the relevant political and administrative managers and functionaries understand the true nature of the challenge. This government ministry, perhaps above all others, has the greatest potential to move the development of the country forward.

This has nothing to do with financial support for entertainers or official dicta that seek to regulate taste or repairs to the National Academy for the Performing Arts. It has to do with acquiring a proper understanding of the changing nature of our society and the value of the global interface to which we are now - and have always been - inextricably attached.

There are few greater manifestations of under-development than our failure to recognise this important point. Cultural policy cannot be founded on xenophobia nor can it be built on static notions of what comes together to constitute what some would wish to describe as a “national culture”. The current nonsense of proposed regulated media content, ostensibly to “protect” national cultural products, falls far short of a proper understanding of this.

The fact is the channels of so-called cultural imperialism have the potential to offer net gains if we choose to be more confident and more independent.

Because these points are not understood, the potential of some features of our economic diversity is not correspondingly recognised. How, for example, have some of our newest arrivals sustained what appears to be a glut of food establishments throughout the length and breadth of the country? How have others, from not so far away, been able to preserve artisanal skills which they deliver at lower cost and at a higher level of productivity?

There is, as well, the lost potential of our Caribbean engagement at the hands of our own parochialism and xenophobia. To what extent, for example, is the Caribbean paradigm envisaged when we define “national culture” and our wealth as a people? We do not understand the value of such a stock of assets at our peril.

Instead, we are finding it hard to accept the fact of our changing collective face. The durability of our political independence needs to be matched by a much higher level of self-confidence and a willingness to negotiate much wider spaces. Some individuals, manufacturers and banks understand this much better than players in other sectors.

In the end, our independence has to be pursued and achieved with a much higher understanding of who we really are and what we desire for ourselves.

(First published in the Trinidad Guardian - Tuesday August 31, 2010)

Word to New T&T Journalism Interns

These remarks were made at the launch of a newspaper internship programme in Trinidad and Tobago on Wednesday August 11, 2010. Students between the ages of 16 and 19 were selected on the basis of their performance in a writing competition. They are being interned at the Trinidad Guardian:

I am very honoured to have been selected to say these few words to you as you accept the challenge of being introduced to one of the most important professions anyone can consider entering. Like other similarly old and enduring professions it has faced more than its fair share of infamy. But, at its core, its basic tenets strike at the most noble aspirations of human beings – the need to know and to understand changing realities, and in so doing claim and secure our future.

As a consequence of this important mandate, free societies vest in media enterprises and the journalists who operate within them, a variety of freedoms and rights derived from the broader, more universal freedom to express oneself. In Trinidad and Tobago, this manifests itself in the constitutional guarantee of a free press. We are the only Commonwealth Caribbean country with such a feature in its national constitution and some of us have had, over the years, to defend its continued presence there.

In return, there is the implicit agreement that we provide our society with the journalism it not only deserves but which it requires as we move from one stage of development to the next and as we confront some of the most difficult challenges we have ever had to face. It is a journalism that insists on the basis principles of fairness, balance, accuracy and a commitment to truthfulness.

Our people deserve the best journalism and we need to deliver it. I am not sure we are currently doing so.

But none of this is possible in an environment in which direct and indirect forms of censorship are officially applied, neither is it possible under conditions in which self-censorship is allowed to take root. Meeting the requirements of such a journalism is also impossible if the people assigned such responsibilities are not equipped with the basic intellectual and material tools to perform such a function.

This programme is an important start. We have with us today, some of the brightest and the best who have come forward. The panel of judges marveled at the high standards, as if we ever fell for the view that the current generation ought to be written off. Instead, we found there are scores of you who care, who seek to understand and who believe you can help convert this country into a different kind of place.

It was evident that some considerable reading is taking place, that some high level of interpretation of events is occurring and, most importantly, there is pursuit of an understanding of the realities. Through this, and through you, this entire exercise can and will benefit from the special perspectives you as young people bring. They are perspectives that bring the irreverence, skepticism and candour of youth and a way of looking at the problems of our society that cuts through the fluff and fog age and experience (as valuable as they are) sometimes bring.

There is another quality you can also bring to the profession that is, unfortunately, not in abundant supply nowadays. This is the attribute of humility. Because it is sometimes absent, the stupid, simple question is often omitted. Because it’s not there, opinion is sometimes more highly valued than information. Because there is so little humility, hubris and conflict predominate. The news, someone once said, is always more interesting, and certainly more important, than the journalists that cover it. That’s lesson number one.

So, we are here, ready and willing to make our first embrace of this noble profession. The time we have is short, so we get down to some work in a little while. Our sessions will be deep and intense. We will find time for some wholesome fun and, at the end of it all, I am hoping it would be as much a learning experience for me as it would be for you.

Facing our New Caribbean

The CARICOM Single Market project runs a very serious risk of running terminally aground if both officialdom and the people of our Community continue to ignore a number of marked shortcomings in the manner in which we have engaged our development.

The first and most important phenomenon is associated with a chronic lack of self-confidence and the concomitant failure to be responsible for ourselves and our own future. This manifests itself in the ease with which we attribute to external factors some rather stark internal deficiencies.

The serious rise in violence and crime is not the fault of foreign television programming, neither is it an exclusive function of the influx of deportees driven out of the United States by an increasingly oppressive immigration regime. There is also no empirical support for the view that the rise in crime, in some of our previously peaceful communities, is the product of a situation in which CARICOM immigrants are becoming more visible – they have always been present.

We are, by and large, producing our own generations of criminals – thugs, deviants and misfits with no rightful place among law-abiding citizens. But because political survival so often relies on blaming someone else for one’s own shortcomings, Caribbean politicians are too easily relying on playing the card of xenophobia and outright bigotry.

The result has been an atmosphere of intolerance, fear and discrimination against those groups in our regional community that have found it fit to seek opportunities in countries within which there are vast similarities and with whom they share similar historical antecedents.

The politicians are not the only ones to blame. When a CARICOM immigration officer exercises an official prerogative to grant a CARICOM visitor a stay of three days when the region’s leaders have agreed to automatic granting of six-month stays – whatever the administrative injunction, that immigration officer is reflecting a pre-disposition that has to be more widely-shared within his or her own national community. By the way, similar attitudes do not, as a matter of course, apply to non-CARICOM visitors in many of our countries.

Another not unrelated factor is the fact that we, as a regional community, have not been managing our greatest strength, our diversity, very well.

This is reflected in both official and unofficial actions designed ostensibly to “protect” what we consider to be social and cultural mores, values and products. Language is one such element. The CARICOM Secretariat has come face-to-face with this through the advent of Suriname and Haiti membership of the Community. But our societies are experiencing grave cognitive dissonance in accepting the fact that not only does our regional community now speak English (as an official language), Bhojpuri, Hindi, Dutch, Sran Tongo, Kweole, Papiamento, Mandarin, Cantonese, Q’eqchi and French, but we need to add Spanish and Portuguese in the cases of previously-unlikely countries such as Guyana, Belize (not as unlikely) and Antigua & Barbuda.

So, what constitutes this “Caribbean culture” we need to “protect”? When short-sighted artistes and cultural entrepreneurs clamour for forced broadcast exposure for a narrow band of largely “traditional” Anglo/African entertainment products created within the small borders of individual territories there appears to a general misunderstanding of who “we” are. “We” are the multitudes of children of modern Chinese and Indian “indentures” (and sometimes slaves) all over the region, Guatemalan and Honduran economic refugees in Belize, Brazilian miners and traders in Guyana and Suriname, Cubans in Jamaica, and Dominicanos demanding ancestral space in Antigua and Barbuda.

Is our Single Market literature reflecting this diversity? When we speak of “we” are we speaking about all of us? Of course not!

Instead, we are practising the same official and unofficial bigotry as our North American neighbours when we continue to deny the existence of our new Caribbean. The Caribbean has to aim at becoming a net beneficiary of “cultural imperialism” by exploiting the wide open markets on North and South America. In the free market of expression, there is space for everyone, but our vision is not extending beyond our tiny, limited markets. This holds true not only for cultural industries and you will see evidence of this in many areas of manufacturing and services.

There is no new aboriginal population about to be decimated in this space, only an expanding universe of experience and opportunity. The Single Market process misunderstands this at its peril.

Remembering Dennis Pantin

Growing up and confronting anew the challenges of our lives we generally meet two primary groups of influential people – those who guide our behaviour and the things we do, and those who provide us with the perspectives and wisdom we require to interpret the world around us.

The latter are not often readily recognised in the absence of focused contemplation. For example, the influence of my late grandfather, Samuel Gibbings, was not really fully appreciated until many years after his death when I started paying attention to the principle of “fairness” required of the proper practice of journalism. It was then I recalled his many, usually unscheduled, lectures from the head-master’s stage at Caroni Presbyterian School in Trinidad.

My father, Arthur ‘Cips’ Gibbings, brought clear, uncluttered perspectives on human behaviour and how well-developed inter-personal skills contribute toward the shaping of the bigger social picture.

Then came the teenage years and Lloyd Best – one of the leading Caribbean economists and thinkers of our time. I am used to saying that my father and Lloyd Best contributed more than half of what I know and understand about the world. The other half came in smaller but not insignificant doses. Some people account for more than a small slice of wisdom and understanding. Dennis Pantin was one of them. On Tuesday July 13, 2010, Dennis left us almost as suddenly as the news that he had been diagnosed earlier this year with intestinal cancer.

Dennis was not only the brother of renowned Caribbean journalist, Raoul Pantin, but was himself once a radio reporter and, latterly, an author and newspaper columnist on economic and political affairs. But many will remember him as Professor of Economics at the University of the West Indies and founding Coordinator of the Sustainable Economic Development Unit (SEDU) of the UWI. From there, Dennis brought the perspective of sustainable development to the public policy debate particularly from the standpoint of Caribbean economic development.

As a young reporter, I often consulted with Dennis (in lieu of similar consultations with an increasingly irascible and impatient but magnificent Lloyd Best) on economic issues I felt I did not have a proper grasp of. He, together with the deceased Frank Rampersad and Frank Barsotti and (very much alive) people such as Anthony Gonzales and Karl Theodore were among the most generous contributors to my development as a journalist who had an interest in economics and finance.

Dennis was also special because he was always plain-talking, well researched and always ready with anecdotal support for his many views on so many issues. Like me, he too dabbled in the politics of the Tapia House Movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1976, he was the Diego Martin East candidate for Tapia. In 1981, I ran in Arouca. I think these backgrounds also helped strengthen a longstanding professional relationship that often ventured freely into discussions on politics, politicians and leading public personalities and events.

As his time approached earlier this year, I believe he must have experienced the creative tension that existed between the need to speak frankly and openly about the Trinidad and Tobago reality and the urge to explore, through his column, the memories he had accumulated throughout a rich and abundant life.

On February 28, 2010 – not long after initially learning of his illness – Dennis wrote the following column in the Trinidad Guardian:

Reflections of a February 26, 1970 Cub Reporter

Published: 28 Feb 2010

On the morning of February 26, 1970 (40 years ago last Friday) I was given my first “outside” assignment as a cub reporter at 610 Radio to cover a UWI student demonstration. “Dem university students playing the ass this morning, Pantin. Go out and cover it for us,” were the instructions—or close enough, anyway—from old school, hard-boiled chief News Editor, Jerome Rampersad (deceased). Not that he necessarily meant that literally –although you never knew with “Ram,” as he was affectionately known to all. In fact, his very covering of the story was an indication that he felt it was important. Moreover, as far as I am aware, no other reporter, cub or otherwise, was present at the demonstration’s start. I immediately grabbed my notebook and virtually ran from Abercromby Street to South Quay, where the first set of university students and other demonstrators were gathering at the Canadian High Commission offices.

The reason was to protest the Sir George William incident in Canada, where scores of students, including T&T and other West Indians, were arrested. (In last month’s T&T Review, Bukkha Rennie provides an insider view of what happened there and then). There were not that many demonstrators, as I recall, and the march proceeded to Independence Square, where they got to the steps of the Royal Bank of Canada. Then an incident occurred which, in my opinion, was the trigger for 1970, although it was a blaze simply awaiting a light to ignite, anyway. This occurred when the demonstrators were stopped at the steps and Dave Darbeau (as he was then: Khafra Kambon now) went up to an officer in khaki.

Absolutely radical thing

I did not hear the exchange, but the officer then shoved Khafra in his chest, and he fell back unto the other demonstrators, who then ran into the bank and did the absolutely radical thing of discarding savings and other deposit slips on the ground. By then, the temperature had, however, increased, with more police arriving and a curious lunchtime crowd gathering to observe what was happening. Soon, the march moved on to the Roman Catholic Cathedral, where some demonstrators entered and began to place placards on many statues of saints, etc adorning the church, but already in Lenten vestments, as it were. Shortly afterwards, Geddes Granger (Makandal Daaga) arrived, and the atmosphere got even more charged.

However, the march eventually dissipated that afternoon. It was the next day that the real action began, when some of the so-called leaders were arrested overnight and brought to court to face charges. Suddenly, the hundreds of demonstrators had turned into thousands. And the rest, they say, is history (captured in my brother Raoul’s own eyewitness account of 1970: “Black Power Day: a Reporter’s Account of 1970), although I am not sure this history is being taught in our police academies, given the recent treatment of the People’s Democracy march around the Red House.

Sensational gripping element

By the time the Cathedral entry occurred, however, the place began to swarm with more senior journalists, from both print and broadcast media. Later, I was to notice the long, lanky frame of a senior to me in Fatima, Lennox Grant, then an Express reporter, whose particular long-legged stride had been noticeable from those days.

By October of that year, we were both, together with Keith Smith, enrolled as first- year university students. When I did return quickly to 610 to report for the 12 noon newscast, Alfred Aguiton, another Fatima graduate in Raoul’s time, grabbed my story and taught me the most basic rule in journalism: start with the most sensational gripping element, and let every thing else follow. (I had begun with the South Quay start and slowly got to the Cathedral: which, of course, was the central sensational news.)

Unfinished ‘Revo’

The 1970 “Revolution” was, to be brutally honest, put down by the forces of reaction, although its own internal contradictions meant that, by itself, it was unlikely to be able to deliver without other support. What remains relevant are two of 1970’s key slogans: “Power to the people’ and “Indians and Africans unite.”

“Power to the people”

As I have argued previously in this column, I think the Constitution Reform Forum has updated and more structurally integrated these two slogans with maxims of its own, the first being: “From maximum leaders to maximum participation.” This breathes life into “power to the people” beyond punching fists in the air in Woodford Square after a speech by, well, a maximum leader. The second is from “Winner takes all to all Take Win,” which accepts that for a long time, racial securities will remain and can be best assuaged by giving people some degree of control over their own communities.