The NEW age of revolution

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There's a video I shared on Facebook. Its purpose: to explain to the world the real purpose behind the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) movement in France. The speaker in the video calls it "the revolution". 

We live in a revolutionary age. It's not something we can escape. Marshall McLuhan, writing long ago, observed that when the medium of communication changes, the entire world—social, cultural, political—shifts. In his book The Gutenburg Galaxy he offers evidence for his position, exploring in particular how the shift from script-culture (when books were handwritten) to print-culture (when writing could be mass-produced) bore fruit in the various revolutions of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He also demonstrated how the shift to broadcast media from print media (he lumped film in with print, but radio and television with broadcast media) had a similar revolutionary impact.

So it should be unsurprising that actual political revolutions are now happening—on both the right and the left. It should be unsurprising, indeed expected, that these revolutions are protests, one way or another, about the representative government associated with today's democracies—protests about the way in which the people we elect to represent us do NOT represent the people who elected them.

I've argued elsewhere and I want to argue again that it's time for us to rethink democracy. Not to get rid of it, but to re-tool it. Questions will arise. Print and broadcast culture flattened the world, created a shared culture that could be experienced by many people at once. The digital world ruled by clustering algorithms has retribalized society. There is absolutely no need—indeed, there is little space at all—for people with different views of the world to interact at all, much less discuss/debate their differences. But democracy is founded upon dialogue and debate. How do we keep our democracies alive when the world is being fragmented by algorithm into groups of people who consume the same things and think alike?

Discuss. And to get you started (or to finish you?), check out this experiment. To find out more about it in real time (which is how I got started), check out this podcast.

The Progressive Forum (3)

Here is the presentation I gave at today's Progressive Forum. [wpvideo nELGXa7V ]https://youtu.be/I7xJW6phfEQ

The Progressive Forum (2)

Gowon Bowe's presentation (what I could record of it). Forty-five minutes' worth. Ran out of memory before he was finished.https://youtu.be/00dRJTLbr-Y

The Progressive Forum (1)

Michael Stevenson's presentation at the Progressive Forum.https://youtu.be/EsRMRBw7xmk

Why democracy is more than just casting a vote

There's a common perception in The Bahamas, and perhaps in other parts of the world too, though I can't speak to them, that democracy flourishes during election seasons, when the citizenry is given its chance to elect the people that will govern the nation in ordinary times.

According to this perception, the power of the Bahamian people (in our parliamentary system) is limited to one moment in time, generally falling roughly every five years, when the citizens of the nation indicate their approval or disapproval for the way in which their affairs have been handled by voting for or against the group of people who have handled those affairs. Once that moment has passed, though, the people's power subsides, and the elected officials assume it.

But that is not all there is to democracy. Not at all.

What democracy is

The idea of "democracy"—at least the idea that the western world holds about democracy—is said to have originated in Ancient Greece, in Athens. Rather than being ruled by a monarch or an aristocracy, the government consisted of the Athenian citizens themselves. These citizens would gather in public spaces to discuss the affairs of the city-state, and vote directly on important matters.But that was ancient times, and only a handful of people living in Athens were considered "citizens": men who owned land. This limited the government to a small group of people who had decision-making power, and excluded from this process were women, servants, people who owned no land, and slaves.

Later manifestations of democracy, those that found their expressions in the Americas, initially adopted this model. But this was expanded in the nineteenth century to include all free male citizens of a particular nation-state, and then in the twentieth to include women as well. By the time we entered the twenty-first century, the idea of "democracy" included the right of all citizens of a nation-state to have some say—usually through voting for representatives—in their government.

So we can say that what we understand democracy to be is government of the people by the people. How that actually works itself out, though, is a matter of some difference the world over.Here in The Bahamas, it's worth thinking about the way we have so far engaged in the process, and it's time to ask ourselves whether the democracy we have become used to—casting a vote every five years—is still meeting our needs today.

Bahamian democracy—direct or representative?

What we practice here is representative democracy, a form of democracy which depends on the sovereign (i.e. the citizens) choosing individuals to represent their wider concerns in a place of government. The election of those individuals is a matter of trusting them to work not only for the general good but also in the interest of those people they represent.

This is a different form of democracy from that practised in ancient Greece or in ancient Africa, or even in Switzerland until the twentieth century. In those societies, democracy was direct: citizens gathered in public spaces to vote on matters that pertained to them.

Direct democracy works well in situations where the society is relatively small, where issues can be brought before town meetings and discussed by the populace, or where democracy is limited to certain sectors of the population—say land-owners, or men, or members of a certain race or class.

Representative democracy works better when populations grow too large for individual citizens to have a useful perspective of the needs of the whole society. It also is useful in situations where a minority of citizens have the education, the means, or the information to comprehend the bigger picture. It is a very practical way of running a society. Good government, after all, is time-consuming and requires a lot of effort.

The benefits of representative democracy

When populations grow too big and issues are pressing, every challenge cannot logistically be brought before every citizen to be voted upon. Further, ordinary citizens tend to be driven primarily by their own self-interest, and are not in the habit of considering the common good, especially where that common good might infringe upon their own needs or desires.

Take the question of New Providence traffic, for example. The source of the problem is simple: there are too many cars on the island. The solution is also simple: to reduce the number of cars on our roads in one way or another—by restricting the number of cars that can be imported, or by limiting the number of cars that a household can own, or by creating an efficient public transportation system that makes it unnecessary for individuals to have to drive everywhere.But which individual is likely to opt for any of these solutions? Some of us may voluntarily choose to limit ourselves to one car per household, but the probability that all of us will do so is slim. In a case where we voted directly on this issue, most people would probably choose to benefit themselves and their families and ignore the common good.In this situation, representative government is a valid option. Individuals are elected to take the difficult decisions on behalf of the state as a whole. And by voting for those individuals, most citizens agree to have a single person represent them at the decision-making levels in society.

The dangers of representative democracy

The issue facing us now in The Bahamas is that our governments are only as good as the people who represent their constituents. Our form of representative government is not very extensive. In a country of 400,000 odd people, we have the equivalent of one representative for every 1,000 citizens. This representative is expected to do many things: serve as members of the cabinet, chairs of government agencies, legislators, and representatives of their constituencies. They are expected to handle the most mundane annoyances—like the collection of trash and repair of potholes—as well as national and international issues, like foreign investors' project proposals and avoiding financial downgrades.

Unfortunately, the majority of representatives that we elect are ill prepared for these responsibilities. Our system of government is also poorly structured to meet the needs of the twenty-first century. The fact that we have only one single tier of government—people who serve at the national level—is also a drawback. It does not allow people who wish to serve their nation to gain experience in thinking and planning collectively, with the result that bad decisions are routinely made.

Our system is also overly partisan. In the normal scheme of things, the citizenry is given a say only at election time, and the ordinary citizen has no say over the people who are brought before them to elect. The vast majority of these individuals are selected by political parties in closed-door sessions with no public oversight and no accountability to the citizenry. Candidates are presented to the electorate in a take-it-or-leave-it manner, in the confidence that the electorate will simply vote along party lines.

Once elected, the MPs are no longer accountable to the people who elected them. There is nothing compelling them to keep their constituents informed about the legislation that comes before them as MPs; they are not obliged to consult with the people they purport to represent before voting on any particular matter. Indeed, their primary loyalty is expected to be to their political party, not to the citizens they represent. What this creates is an oligarchy rather than a democracy, and defeats the principle of government for and by the people. What we get instead is government for and by the party, a distortion of the very idea of democracy.

We need a new approach

The democracy that we practice here in The Bahamas, this voting for people who represent parties, not the citizenry, is not serving us well. The people we send to the House of Parliament are not our representatives at all. They are not there to serve us. They are there to serve their political parties, and we, the citizens, have no say within those entities unless we decide to declare an affiliation with one or the other, become an active member, and get to a place where we can vote for prospective candidates. But this state of affairs defeats the purpose of one person, one vote. Those people who choose the candidates do so behind closed doors, and are not accountable to the citizenry for that vote. The citizens, on the other hand, are at their mercy when they are faced with their choices at election time.

So what can we do about it?

Democracy: more than just casting a vote

In the first place, we have to get past this idea that democracy is something that happens once every five years. We have to get beyond the concept that the people we send to the House of Assembly are our "leaders", and remember they are our representatives. We have to start exercising the rights that are guaranteed us in our constitution, namely the freedoms of conscience (to believe what we want to believe), of expression (to say what we think) and of assembly (to gather together in large groups) to make our voices heard. When we are not happy with the way in which we are being represented, we have the right—indeed, because this is a democracy, we have the duty—to let our representatives know we are not happy. And we have to be prepared to do this whether we have leaders to follow or not.

So when we are unhappy with the way in which our representatives are serving us, we have the right and the duty to say so, and there are many legal channels available to us. There are certain limits on our freedom; we are not guaranteed absolute freedom of expression, for instance, and certain forms of speech, certain things we say—or the way in which we say them—have consequences. But we do have the right to say what we think, and we should. One of the slogans used by the We March movement of 2015-2016 was this: the power of the people is greater than the people in power. We would do well to remember that.

There is one last thing I need to say about democracy. One thing that is intoxicating about the idea that democracy is the government of the people by the people is the sense that it is the majority that makes the critical decisions. I frequently see discussions of democracy lead to this point: that whatever the majority of the people in the nation want is what must happen.But that misses the point of democracy, which is that each individual member of a society is equal to every other individual member. The mob (the unthinking majority, which reacts based on emotional, often selfish, impulses) is not greater than the individual; democracy is an aggregate of individuals. What that means is that in true democracies, the rights of minorities are guarded and protected.

The place of the minority

In our system, which elects people based on a simple majority of votes (the first-past-the-post system), we tend to hold the idea that if a citizen is not part of the mainstream, their rights are not valuable. But this is called the tyranny of the majority, and it is a danger that goes along with democratic systems that rely on the will of the majority. The tyranny of the majority is as dangerous a form of tyranny as any other, and must always be guarded against.It's not easy for individual citizens to think about the rights of others. After all, it's human nature to look out for one's own self-interest and seek to maximize it. But if we believe in democracy, this is a principle to which we must adhere, and it is a practice that we must exercise.

So as we move to hold our representatives accountable, as we move to make them aware of our will, as we move to ensure that they represent the citizens of our nation and not just their political parties or their own personal desires or benefit, we must also remember that the nation is greater than our own individual interests. As co-governors of this state, we have to recognize that we are and must be our neighbours' keepers, and it is our duty to look out not only for ourselves but also for all the others whose rights may have been overlooked because they are not part of the majority.

Democracy is not an easy thing! But it is worthwhile. We must never stop thinking about it, questioning it, and finding ways to expand it. So I challenge you, my fellow Bahamians. What are you doing to make our Bahamian democracy bigger, stronger and better?

Reflections on Majority Rule 2018 (better late than never)

Fifty-one years and two months ago, on January 10, 1967, the Colony of the Bahama Islands held the election that concluded with what we have come to call "Majority Rule". In 2014, January 10 was officially legislated as a public holiday. And four years after the creation of the Majority Rule Day public holiday, we remain divided as a people as to how, or even whether, to mark this moment, to commemorate this event.The problem is fundamentally political.On one hand, it's politically partisan. No matter how we spin history, it's impossible to separate majority rule from the ascension of the Progressive Liberal Party to the government. The election of the PLP constituted Majority Rule. Put another way, the black majority of this nation chose the PLP to represent it.It's also structurally political. Majority Rule is about the right of the racial majority in The Bahamas to direct its own fate. Before 1967, Bahamians of European descent were socially, economically and politically supreme, Bahamians of non-European descent subordinate. Being part of the white minority conferred a whole system of privileges that the black majority was denied. These included things as simple as access to health care and a high school education, protection from exploitation in the workplace, access to electricity, running water, telephone service and basic sanitation, the opportunity to start businesses or enter the professions, the ability to borrow money from banks, the ability to save money in banks, the right to own land where one pleased, the ability to vote for people who looked like us to represent us in the place where laws were made, and so on.These two elements, the partisan and the structural, combine to make the celebration of Majority Rule Day a point of discomfort for many Bahamians.

The problem of party politics

Opposition politics

First things first. It seems very difficult for contemporary opponents of the Progressive Liberal Party to celebrate their victory on January 10, 1967. Let's face it. That victory represents a political defeat, one when a way of life that was three centuries old came to an abrupt end.  The United Bahamian Party, formed in 1958 in answer to the growing political consciousness of the Bahamian people, dissolved less than 15 years later, in large part because Majority Rule made what it stood for obsolete. But upon that dissolution,  several former members of the UBP helped constitute the Free National Movement in 1972, and they have carried the pain of the 1967 defeat into the political climate of the twenty-first century. You can hear echoes of the UBP philosophy in social media discussions that suggest, sometimes outright, sometimes by implication, that the country was better governed before 1967: the budget was balanced, the education was better, corruption was non-existent, Bahamians were more mannerly, etc. These perspectives mirror and replicate paternalistic arguments advanced first by the British throughout the colonial era, then the UBP in the 1960s and then by the FNM in the 1970s––that the black majority was not ready to govern itself, that it had to be taught how to do so, slowly, and with extreme caution. For the Bahamians who fall into this category, Majority Rule Day is an unwarranted celebration of something that they believe (as the UBP and the FNM predicted in the sixties and the seventies) to have failed.

Governing politics

But there's another side to this issue. Let's not forget that it took The Bahamas 47 years to make Majority Rule Day a public holiday, and the Progressive Liberal Party, the immediate beneficiary of Majority Rule, was in power for 33 of those 47 years. Indeed, the social revolution that brought about Majority Rule swept the PLP into power and kept that party there for twenty-five years straight. It would seem only logical that the party of Lynden Pindling, the Black Moses who led the Black Bahamian Israelites out of the bondage of Bay Street's Egypt and towards the Promised Land on the tenth day of the first month should enshrine that day, should make it the first public holiday of this Bahamian era.But it did not. It was not until the Bahamian Black Moses had been dead almost 14 years that January 10 was elevated to a public holiday. How do we explain this?I'm going to go out on a limb and argue that to focus too closely on the actual events of January 10, 1967 was not in the interest of the PLP of the 1970s and the 1980s. In the first place, the PLP did not actually win the election that was held on January 10. The result of the 1967 election was a tie: 18 seats for the UBP and 18 for the PLP. No government could be formed until that broken. We all know now that in order for either party to form a government, negotiations had to be carried out with two men who were members of neither major political party of the day. Those negotiations, as we can see from the newspaper at the top of this blog post, were not finalized until January 14, some four days after the election, and they ended by giving the PLP a slim margin of one seat in the House of Assembly. (For those people who don't know the details, the two men were Randol Fawkes, who represented the Labour party, and Alvin Braynen, an independent. Braynen accepted the position of Speaker, which meant that he did not normally have a vote in the House, and Fawkes agreed to form a coalition government with the PLP, becoming the first Minister of Labour in the Pindling cabinet.)Perhaps the reason that Majority Rule was not made a public holiday during the first 25 years of the PLP's rule was that the PLP victory dependent entirely upon the actions of two individuals who were not members of the Progressive Liberal Party. The scrutiny that would have accompanied the creation of a holiday before that date meant that PLP would have had to modify its liberation mythology, the one that placed Lynden Pindling alone the head of the movement towards freedom. It would have meant recognizing the contribution of a white Bahamian and the contribution of a labour leader—a labour leader whose independence of spirit meant that he had criticized the PLP when he had seen fit to do so.And so, as uncomfortable as the commemoration of January 10, 1967 makes people who oppose the PLP as a political party, it has also been regarded with considerable ambivalence by the PLP itself.

The problem of structural politics

Beyond party politics, though, it would appear that there are other issues being debated that indicate an extension of that ambivalence further than members of one political party or another. Even for some of those people who recognize the significance of the 1960s to the expansion of democracy in The Bahamas, there is debate about the nature and the timing of the achievement.

Why 1967 is the right date

First of all, there's a question of whether the 1967 date is the most significant one. There is a school of thought that suggests that we should consider recognizing November 26 as Majority Rule Day, rather than January 10.For those who aren't aware, November 26, 1962 is the date on which Bahamian women voted for the first time. The proponents of this position make the argument that the extension of the suffrage to women had more significance in terms of creating a democratic majority than the almost accidental election of the PLP in 1967. Key to this particular argument is the idea that what we should be commemorating when we honour Majority Rule is the ability of the Bahamian populace to participate freely in the democratic process, rather than any particular outcome of that process. This argument is bolstered by the fact that, even though the PLP obtained only a small minority of the seats in parliament in 1962, it did win the popular vote.But this position relies on certain assumptions that are not borne out by the facts. Women's Suffrage was among a number of critical electoral reforms that followed the 1958 General Strike. Before that, there was plenty that was undemocratic about Bahamian general elections.Until 1942, voting was done by a show of hands in open halls; bribery for votes was widespread and blatant. It often took the form of a torn banknote. Half of the note would be given to the elector before he voted. If he raised his hand at the right moment for the correct candidate, he would be given the other half of the banknote at the end of the election.Property, not age, was the primary qualification to be able to vote. If you did not own your own property, or if you did not rent a property valued at over a certain amount, you could not vote. On the other hand, each man was permitted to vote as many times and in as many places as he owned property. The Bahamas was divided into districts that returned two or three representatives to parliament, and the wealthier you were, the more votes you could use. General elections were held over the period of three to four weeks to allow landowners to visit every island on which they owned land and vote.In this scenario, ordinary black Bahamian men were at an extreme disadvantage. If they did not own property, they could not vote at all. If they did own land, the likelihood that they owned more than one piece of land was slender. And if they did (like, say, L. W. Young) own multiple plots of land, the chances that they owned that land in more than one or two voting districts was almost negligible.At the other end of the spectrum stood a handful of men at the top of society. By the middle of the twentieth century, these men were being referred to as "the Bay Street Boys", and they made a point of acquiring land on every single island of The Bahamas. This gave them the right to vote in every single district, and thereby affect the outcome of any general election. The idea of one person, one vote, even as late as 1958, was not one that had any traction in The Bahamas.But the property vote (known as plural voting) was not the only way that a single Bahamian could conceivably cast numerous votes in an election. There was also the company vote—something that conferred a vote to men who served as directors on the boards of companies for each directors' position that they held. This rendered the influential even more so, and guaranteed that a handful of white Bahamian businessmen could affect the outcome of any election.In the wake of the General Strike of January 1958, the British colonial government  strongly recommended that a series of basic reforms be put in place in the Bahamian electoral system. Among these reforms were the extension of the vote to Bahamian women, the abolition of the company vote, and the abolition of the property vote. Two of these three recommendations were put in place in time for the 1962 election. Women were allowed to vote for the first time, and the company vote was abolished. But the plural vote remained, albeit in a restricted fashion. Landowners had the choice of voting in their residential district and one other.This was a limitation on the excesses of the past, but it was not the kind of suffrage that we associate with fair and open democracies, where one adult has one vote and one vote only. That particular electoral reform was not implemented until 1964, when the new constitution prescribed new constituencies, which elected ONE parliamentarian each, and each adult had one vote, subject to residential qualifications. The result: 1967 was the first such election.

That knotty problem called "race"

Another source of deep discomfort with the celebration of majority rule has to do with the question of who the "majority" referred to. It's apparent that we are still deeply conflicted about the Bahamian history of racial discrimination. But here are the facts. Until 1967, Bahamians were separated—the word should probably be segregated—into separate and definitely unequal groups. These groups were racially defined: people of European heritage occupied a highly privileged position in society, while people of African and mixed descent were subordinate. Numerous structural strategies maintained this situation, among them the various anti-democratic electoral strategies mentioned above. Majority rule meant, quite simply, that the members of the government for the first time represented, at least in appearance, the majority of the Bahamian population.There's one final reason why people are deeply ambivalent about this holiday, and it's this: although majority rule for Black Bahamians was attained in 1967, the majority of contemporary Bahamians feel unrepresented by the governments they elect. The question, quite fairly, is raised: what was truly gained by majority rule?

Who's the majority, anyway?

I want to come back to this point, because it's valid, and it's worth its own blog post. But that's another reason why we question the value of this day.Let me try and suggest an answer.Each generation faces its own struggles. In situations where freedom has been denied to any portion of a population, it takes time for that freedom to be felt and experienced by all. Our grandparents triumphed with their achievement of majority rule. But we have not advanced the struggle far enough. We live in a society where significant majorities—Bahamian women, for one example, and Bahamians who were not born before independence—remain underrepresented. Women comprise a slim majority (51%) of the population, but are still denied basic civil rights. This does not constitute majority rule.Further than that: the true majority of the population, Bahamians under the age of 45, is marginalized and unrepresented in the legislature. They are undereducated, poorly served by social programmes, underemployed, and leaving. For them, the concept of majority rule is a cruel joke.But it is possible to criticize the present while honouring the past. That, I believe, is our duty as we face Majority Rule Day every year. There is one major point about this new holiday: it forces us to face our social divisions, past and present, and forces us to talk to one another. It doesn't allow us to forget or ignore the injustices we have inherited and never resolved. And for that I'm grateful.Facebook Live video of Majority Rule Symposium 2018

The day after the day after

Elections are over. The Bahamian people have voted, and the vote was historic.It's not just that it was the cleanest sweep ever in the history of party politics in our nation. It's not just that for the first time since 2002 that any governing party has been elected by a simple majority of the electorate (i.e. over 50% of the votes cast). And it's not even that this was the first election in our history in which the sitting Prime Minister was not only voted out of office, but also lost his own seat. These are all remarkable things in themselves, but they're not the most remarkable one.

What strikes me most in this election was the independence and the power of the voters.

Several people have commented on the new government, observing, with a measure of truth, that the Pindling era is now over, but I would put it differently. I'd say that the era of the One Leader is over. Because the true victors in this election were not the Free National Movement MPs who will be sworn in and take their positions in our legislature and executive over coming weeks. The true victors on May 10, 2017 were the Bahamian people.Now, stick a pin. I've made it pretty clear over the past few months that I don't regard changing of one political party for another as any guarantee that life in The Bahamas will get better (sorry, Red Tsunami). It may feel better for a few weeks or months, but simply changing our leadership will not, and cannot, heal our nation. Electing a new party to government doesn't automatically fix the economy, find young people jobs, make Baha Mar work to our advantage, eradicate crime and violence. It doesn't even guarantee that corruption will no longer be part of our political landscape. It gives us time to breathe and take stock, but the causes of our troubles don't recognize parties in power. They come out of us, and they have to be solved by us.I've said it before: our systems are deeply flawed, and we have to strip them down and rebuild them—not once, but again and again, so that they remain relevant and robust and continue to meet our needs.What makes me hopeful about the future is not that we changed the government. It's the way in which we changed it. We didn't follow the politicians' lead; they followed the people's. We called for debates, and candidates debated. We held town halls and they came. We, the people, demanded that our politicians respected us; and those who didn't were voted away.

What's historic in this election is that we, the Bahamian people, have collectively lost our taste for being dictated to by the political elite.

The leaders of the political parties were less important than the issues we wanted addressed by our representatives: issues of accountability, of transparency, of governance, of respect for the citizens in whose place they stand. While there was plenty of leader-bashing going on, it didn't really seem to be the core of the matter. No. What seemed to be even more important was that we were looking for representatives—people who would take our needs, concerns, and worries with them when they entered the House of Assembly to form the new government.Watch this, though.

Our governing structures are not set up to deliver what we have so clearly shown that we want.

It's not realistic for us to expect that if we live in a constituency whose representative is called to serve in the cabinet, that person should be meeting the needs of the constituency as well as working to solve the very real problems of the nation. It's even unrealistic for us to expect that back-benchers can meet the needs of their constituents while at the same time they are dealing with critical legislation in the House of Assembly. So even as we're celebrating, we need to be planning how we use this euphoria to fuel the way we move forward.Because it can't all be about marching and protests, though there's power in collective voices and feet. It can't always be adversarial, us vs. them, you-for-me-or-against-me politics, whether that happens inside or outside the House of Assembly. We need to find ways to build up structures that allow for constructive dissent. You and I don't have to share the same opinion in order for us to build our society collectively and inclusively—in fact, it's better for the collective when we disagree and we have to fight our corners using reason and passion. Dissent sharpens ideals, and makes people think harder about what they really believe, and the result is better for all.I for one have no more tolerance for the politics of exclusion, whether the people being excluded are of another race or ethnicity or creed or gender or sexual preference or political affiliation or ability.

We are all Bahamians, and we all have a place in this land together. We need to start building that new country.

OK, my fellow Bahamians. It's not enough simply to change prime ministers and parties and faces in the house of assembly. We have to change the structures too. We can't stop rolling now. Let's begin building the country we want to live in tomorrow, and leave this nation better than we met it.

Democracy, ritual, responsibility, and ... (yep) spoiling the ballot, giddily

We live in a democracy. It's not perfect, but we adhere to certain fundamental principles. Like this one: individuals are entitled, even encouraged, to hold widely divergent views. The vigourous debate of those views extends and enriches democratic life.

Unfortunately, we tend to avoid that kind of debate. Rather than engaging with opposing ideas, fighting our corners and reviewing our positions based on different points of view, many of our discussions about principles and philosophy take on a personal cast. This happens most often when we wish to divert attention from an argument that we find outrageous or unsettling. Instead of engaging with the divergent idea, we prefer very often to cast "shade". Our general response to such an argument is to tear down the arguer, rather than to dive into the discussion at hand.

As someone observed to me recently, "Bahamians love shade".

And so it works.

Here's how it works. Instead of thinking further about the issue, our focus slips to the person talking about the issue, and the more we can think of to discredit that person, the more we imagine the argument has been won.

There's another name for this method of discussion. Rhetoricians call it the ad hominem fallacy, and it's a way of not arguing at all.

Last weekend, Front Porch took me to task for a number of positions I've apparently taken regarding the Bahamian political process. Now I have no problem with being challenged in an intellectual fashion. As anyone who knows me well will tell you that I find good, old-fashioned debate exhilarating. At the same time, though, I find the refusal to debate ideas by choosing to discredit the person putting forward the ideas lazy, disingenuous, and weak.

(Notice what I just did there? I dismissed the ad hominem argument in an ad hominem way. Instead of showing what was wrong with it, I just described it, using a string of adjectives. But I didn't demonstrate why the ad hominem argument is weak or lazy. I just said that it was. At the end of the day, you believed me, or you didn't, but not because of any evidence. You believed me or you didn't probably because you like me, or you don't—or else you just took the adjectives on face value. Which you shouldn't, because adjectives are very slippery, lightweight words which, in an argument, all too often say more about the person using them than about the thing they're used to describe.)

But there's a better way to argue.

Let's have a look at what “Simon” appears to have disliked about my political stances. There were a number of issues that offended. Some of them have some history to them—statements I made before the 2012 election—and some of them have a measure of currency.

Specifically, they were:

• Policy and political rallies;

• The role of minority governments;

• The role of representative governments;

• The spoil the ballot campaign; and

• The election of Bahamian Senators.

I'm going to deal with the first one, the one which stretches all the way back to 2012, in this post. I'll save the other four for another post. One which won't be quite so giddy. It'll probably be insipid instead.

Hyperbolic irresponsibility & woeful uninformation

So. Here's the first dismissal:

Before the last election, Bethel engaged in the sort of hyperbolic irresponsibility that one might expect from someone woefully uninformed. She noted that she heard nothing about policy at political rallies.

She was dead wrong.

Simon, Front Porch, "The Rituals of Democracy", April 13 2017,

emphasis added to highlight adjectival phrases

Let's see what I actually did say.

I have heard absolutely nothing from any party about what the future holds. The PLP has crafted some very general principles for the next few years, but these, when decoded, seem to amount to a reinstatement of what was in the works between 2002 and 2007 when they were in power. The FNM has focussed very much on vague generalities like “proven leadership” and “deliverance”, and what has been done, largely in material, infrastructural terms, in the very recent past ... The DNA speaks in broad terms, pushing the buttons that they feel gain them support, but not showing any real coherent ideology about which their philosophy has been crafted.

("Elections—and beyond", April 11, 2012)

According to “Simon”, both Christie and Ingraham contradicted these statements by offering "policy and programmatic ideas in a variety of areas." Well, OK. I'm going to guess Simon and I have different definitions of policy and programme, and we could agree to disagree—if that was all there was to it.

But that's not the issue at hand. “Simon” went further. Rather than focussing on the idea of political rallies, Simon chose to comment on my professional competence: "It was odd that as an anthropologist she could not, or refused to, understand the brilliance of the political rally as a ritual of democracy."

This extends the fallacy beyond the ad hominem attack into the realm of the strawman argument—because, had I been interested in the anthropological function of political rallies, I would have talked about it. For political rallies are, as “Simon” quite rightly says, an important part of political ritual. But important as rallies are, their function does not make much room for discussions of policy and programme.

Here's what “Simon” doesn't say about the anthropological approach to the ritual function served by the political rally. The ritual of the political rally uses revelry and fun to build bonds among potential supporters. When people allow themselves to be caught up in the euphoria of the moment, they engage in something anthropologists call communitas—a kind of group bonding that doesn't come from any objective similarity among the people involved or any objective coherence to what they are being told in the process, but from the collective activity they're participating in. In this situation, the action is what matters about the ritual, not the content. It engages humans at the level of the body, not the mind, and so what is said matters less than how it is said. Rhythmic speaking, call and response, catch phrases, bombastic delivery—these are what count.

In other words: had I been talking anthropologically, I would have said that the purpose of the political rally is not to offer or discuss policy or programmes. A good rally is like a party or a show; if policy or programmes are mentioned, they have to be offered in such a way that they don't break the mood. So I'll accept that Christie and Ingraham offered policy and programmatic ideas in 2012. I'm not so sure that anyone really heard them. If the rallies were successful (and they were), they were not supposed to.

My criticism was not of the lack of policy at political rallies. It related to the lack of vision anywhere in the 2012 campaign. The Plan and the Manifesto and the DNA's contract looked great to be sure, but that's not the kind of vision I was thinking about. Rather, I was looking for an articulation of the kind of Bahamas we would be living in in twenty or thirty years' time, and could not find it anywhere. I wasn't looking for it at the rallies. But I wanted something else—some online address by a party leader to outline and explain that party's vision of the future, some acknowledgement of where we were in 2012 and how we were going to change direction and move in a different one, even some recognition of the fact that we were now in a 21st century, digital world and analogue solutions were just not going to cut it anymore. And there was nothing. Nada. Except, perhaps, shuffles, sidestepping, and holograms.

As I'm being castigated not only for hyperbole but also for woeful uninformation, it might be worth looking at what else is contained in that same blog post in April 2012 from the perspective of April 2017 (the emphasis is added). If anyone is still doubtful about why, in this election, I am considering spoiling my ballot, here's what I said five years ago, almost to the day.

I’m preparing for five more years of struggle, no matter who wins or doesn’t win this election; for five more years of escalating violence in our society; for five more years of a contracting economy, traffic problems, and decreasing revenues. I’m preparing for five more years of governmental desperation, of prostitution of the country to the biggest donor (China seems to be the crowd favourite right now), of undereducation and of brain drain, no matter who wins.

("Elections—and beyond", April 11, 2012)

emphasis added to highlight the elementsthat maybe weren't quite so woefully uniformed

Five years later, those words seem almost prophetic. (They weren't; they were just the logical outcome of the lack of vision/policy/programmes that plagued the 2012 elections). Check back in a couple of days to find out more about my stellar and breathtaking ignorance. But for now, cheers. 

Seeding the Revolution: Methods & Madness

People ask me the same questions again and again.

1. Why go out of your way to spoil the ballot—why not stay home/go to the beach?
2. What is spoiling the ballot going to achieve?
3. Why aren't you looking at the candidates on offer and considering voting for a person rather than a party?
4. If you're so dissatisfied, why don't you run/find an independent to run in your constituency?

These are not questions that are easy to answer. I've been thinking about this election for a loooonnnng time and have a whole lot to say.Several times I've started to explain them on camera. Here's one, recorded back in November 2016, right after President Trump's election. Perhaps it'll begin to give an answer.[wpvideo MQ11ozrc] 

Seeding the revolution: Rethinking the vote

1) Majorities. Marching.Almost a month ago I started to write a post about the two marches being held on January 10. It didn't get finished for various reasons, none of them very good. What I envisioned for the post was a meditation on the value of both events. I wanted to recognize and honour #majorityruleday, the revolution of the past. Majority rule, for all our confusion and resistance to it today was a massive achievement in our country, one which has been overly politicized and wilfully misrepresented and misunderstood ever since it happened. For twenty-five years we revised Fawkes and Braynen out of the moment, and left the history to hearsay and memory. For another twenty we refused to acknowledge the moment in any positive, national way, for fear, I can only surmise, of offending our most powerful minority. For the past five we have been celebrating it as though it was merely the significant achievement of a single political party, ignoring the truth that some of the most vocal and active fighters for majority rule later became the founders of a second political party which was severely critical of the way in which the majority began to rule. We have never honoured the moment as it deserves to be honoured: as the first  democratic victory of the Bahamian people in their bid to gain freedom and opportunity in their own land.But I also wanted to recognize the revolution of the future. The significance of #wemarch is greater than the sum of its parts. Although we Bahamians like to imagine ourselves as a model democracy—we have peaceful revolutions,  we have high voter turnout, we change our governments quietly, and in the twenty-first century we have not yet allowed either major political party to gain ascendency over the other—we have grown dissatisfied with the limits of that democratic process. There is a growing sense that one vote every five years is not enough democracy. #wemarch is an expression of that sense, and the events of January 10, which saw two peaceful, good-natured marches taking place on the same day two blocks away, signalled that there is more than one majority to be considered. Among the majorities who found expression in #wemarch on January 10 were the majority of Bahamians who are under the age of forty, as well as the majority of Bahamians who are female. Neither majority is represented in the current House of Assembly (the average age of the Bahamian population is 30 years old, and the average age of the representatives in the House is 55; and the 13% of the MPs who are female is a poor representation of 51% of the Bahamian population who are women).2) Extending democracyMore recent events—the PLP's convention, for one, and the resounding failure of the third #wemarch initiative, last Friday's union protest, for another—have opened the door on a discussion that seeks to dismiss #wemarch as a mere  extension of partisan politics, a manoeuvre on the part of those individuals who are opposed to the current administration. There's some justice in that position. We inhabit a time when the opposition parties to the PLP government are splintering. #wemarch has acted as a catalyst for anti-government protest. The case can be made that even though the Free National Movement is the weakest it has been in a generation, #wemarch has allowed dissatisfied Bahamians the opportunity to stand together in criticism of the government. No doubt this is exasperating to the party in power, which, all its shortcomings aside, is extremely well placed for a victory at the polls this year. Small wonder that the movement is looked upon as partisan. But this dismissal misses the core point: Bahamians are tired of the limited democracy they exercise. Bahamian citizens want more—more government BY the people, less government FOR the people. There seems to be a general lack of faith that the latter is truly for Bahamians' benefit, and I suspect this lack of faith, for all its current focus on the PLP, extends to all organized political parties. To attempt to discredit the movement by suggesting that it is a power bid by its leaders is to overestimate their power over the movement, and to underestimate the energy inherent in it.The problem is, that energy is currently poorly focussed. #wemarch is an indication of a broad sense of dissatisfaction with where we find ourselves, but neither it nor the opposition parties nor even the non-party opposing the opposition has given the Bahamian people anything to stand FOR. There is, I believe, a reason for this, and it's very simple. We are out of practice. We have become addicted to strong leaders and have lost the habit of charting our own courses. We are looking, in short, for messiahs. Like the Israelites of old, we seem to want to be ruled by kings. Let them do the heavy lifting, and we will place our "X"s accordingly.But that is in no way, given the challenges we are about to face, anywhere near enough to live by.In the first place, our “messiahs” are out of touch. They are out of touch with the majority of the Bahamian people, who were born well after 1973 (the average MP was born before 1962), and who make well under the $2.5 million average in assets declared by MPs upon their election in 2012. And perhaps equally disturbing, they are out of touch with the massive global shifts that will without doubt affect the generation of Bahamians who will be hitting their middle and later years towards the end of this century.These include the shifting of global power which has been happening quickly yet subtly over the past few decades, from the Americas to Asia; they include the global environmental shifts which will threaten the entire Bahamian archipelago perhaps even before my own life is over; and they include the shifting focus on energy sources, which will be “alternative” long before most of us are ready for that moment. They are also out of touch (this time by choice) with the global conversation about human rights that has been ongoing for some time but which will become central, and more urgent, as Trumpism gains momentum.Consider this.

1. Not one politician has mentioned in any sensible, comprehensive way, what they plan for The Bahamas to do about Donald Trump’s stated intention to have his nation less involved in global affairs, more involved in its own.
2. Not one has considered how we might weather any impending domestic crisis that might be precipitated by possible radical American decisions, such as the removal of pre-clearance facilities, or the withdrawal of permission to peg our dollar to the US dollar.
3. Not one has talked about how we will respond if (or when) Trumpism leads to a tightening of all immigration laws, both legal and illegal, or how our economy hopes to absorb individuals who may be forced to leave the USA and return to The Bahamas because of new immigration policies north of us.
4. Few have discussed in any serious way how we (not foreign direct investors) can move from fossil fuel-based energy sources to cleaner, contemporary, renewable power.
5. Few have outlined a plan for the cleaning of New Providence’s air or our groundwater.
6. Not one has talked seriously about the development of our archipelago’s considerable natural and domestic resources, although many appear ready to sell these to the first bidder to come along.
7. Not one of them appears to have considered how our population of under half a million people might withstand a serious move by China, most likely the next superpower, to gain a physical foothold on the borders of the USA, for which the islands of The Bahamas are ideally suited.
8. None has truly grappled with the issue of feeding ourselves, of generating enough food to feed 500,000 for three months or more, should Trumpist isolationism tighten US borders to imports or exports abroad (unlikely, but not impossible).
9. Not one has even discussed with the Bahamian people what response our government is planning for us should sea levels rise even a fraction of the six feet predicted to happen by 2100. I am not even certain that they are measuring sea levels to test to see whether any rise is occurring today, though I could be wrong about that.

These are the issues that face the twenty-first century Bahamas, not jobs. Not tourism. Not the reform of Bahamian land tenure to allow us to sell more of our birthright to foreigners who can’t manage their own money properly. Not even (gasp, shock, yes I said it) crime, which is a symptom of social illness rather than a cause unto itself—and which, in most countries, is a problem dealt with by municipal governments rather than national ones. Yes, several may seem fanciful and apocalyptic; but they are not impossible futures. And the fact that not one politician, not one political party, not one individual seeking to run for office thinks enough of the electorate to discuss them is evidence enough for me to suggest that no political messiah is coming for us anytime soon.And so we need to enact a different kind of democracy—a different approach. Selecting candidates from one political party or another will just not cut it any more. Casting votes for the people who are offering themselves for positions is a waste of the democratic process. Once again, we need, and we deserve, more.#spoilthevote**Photograph of dead reef in The Bahamas is taken from The Climate Change Initiative of the University of The Bahamas

Seeding the Revolution: Spoiling the Vote

Elections are coming.They have to be. Constitutionally, they have to be held by the middle of this year. Between now and May, presumably, Bahamian voters will know which constituencies they reside in, who their candidates are, and what choices they will have at the polls this time.In response to this knowledge, the talk everywhere has turned partisan. The PLP convention has sparked a flurry of discussion of all kinds. People who oppose the current government have seized convenient, if meaningless, talking points like "Where the VAT money gone?", while people who support the government invoke track records and party stability.The thing is, much of this discussion is moot. No matter how much we enjoy the trash talk, only a minority of us are set to influence the outcome of this next election. Voter registration has been remarkably slow so far. According to the latest announcements by the Parliamentary Registrar's office, the number of registered voters still sits below 100,000—some 88,000 at time of writing, compared with around 125,000 in January 2012. Why this might be is a matter for another time. What concerns me at this moment is that voting for our MPs is the only way in which over 70% of the Bahamian population gets to participate directly in the democratic process. This year, about half of the eligible voters have decided to opt out of the process.This is a red flag. It signals something fundamentally wrong with our democracy. It also opens the door for an increase in governmental abuses. The less involved in the democratic process the population becomes, the less accountable officials and politicians have to be. And as of this moment, no matter what the turnout, the next government will be elected by a minority of Bahamian citizens. Minority rule, welcome back home.I'm going to propose that there is a possible solution. It's not one that will change the outcome of the 2017 election in any appreciable way. At the moment, that outcome depends on which party is most successful in getting its base out to register and vote, a simple numbers game. But it can change the measure of accountability we can demand of our elected officials. And it may well impact elections in the future.It's this. Go and register. As Bahamian citizens we have that right, and it was fought for and won by people far more more determined and principled than we are today. And then, if you're unhappy with the politicians or with the system or the country, don't fall for the least-of-two-evils rhetoric; spoil your ballot.I'll say it again. Go register. Go vote. But spoil the ballot.It's easy to do. You can mark your X outside the box, or you can write something other than your X on the paper, or you can draw a picture, or you can vote for your mother, or you can vote for your dog, or for the man in the moon.You're probably asking now: what's the point? The end result will be the same.And I'll say: Yes, and no.You won't change the outcome of this election if you register and spoil the ballot instead of sitting this one out. But you will send a message to whichever minority government is elected in May. And it's this:We are watching, we will hold you accountable. We reject the bad choices you gave us. Do better. Don't think the strategists are not watching. They are paying very close attention. Voter apathy will send the message that Bahamians don't care what they do. But a spoiled ballot, even if the counts are not released to the public, will tell a very different tale.Give me another post, and I'll explain why.

A shift into the dark?

I am not American. However, I recognize the United States of America for providing a model for democracy around the world. No, its democracy is not perfect, but it is earnest. In principle, it seeks on numerous levels to work against tyranny, to empower its citizenry. The execution of these has been far from perfect, but the ideals have been sound.There is a status post on Facebook that individuals are copying and pasting. It essentially outlines every step that the new president of the United States of America has taken since his inauguration. I do not know the sources personally, so I am taking other people's word that these things actually happened.The thing that is worrying about the list is that the majority of these cases consist of actions that are fundamentally anti-democratic, that explicitly reduce the ability of Americans to self-expression, that muzzle the right to free speech, that increase the possibility of a tyrant beginning a process of domination in a nation widely regarded as the birthplace of democracy. Further, is it my imagination, or does the turn to violence, or the condoning of state-accepted violence, have a definite fascist cast.I want my friends and family who support Donald Trump to tell me why this is not the case, please.The list is as follows: (I've changed the stars to numbers so that we can see the length of the list).

1. On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the DOJ’s Violence Against Women programs.
2. On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.
3. On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities.
4. On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
5. On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Minority Business Development Agency.
6. On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Economic Development Administration.
7. On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the International Trade Administration.
8. On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership.
9. On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services.
10. On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Legal Services Corporation.
11. On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ.
12. On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the DOJ.
13. On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
14. On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Electricity Deliverability and Energy Reliability.On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
15. On January 19th, 2017, DT said that he would cut funding for the Office of Fossil Energy.
16. On January 20th, 2017, DT ordered all regulatory powers of all federal agencies frozen.
17. On January 20th, 2017, DT ordered the National Parks Service to stop using social media after RTing factual, side by side photos of the crowds for the 2009 and 2017 inaugurations.
18. On January 20th, 2017, roughly 230 protestors were arrested in DC and face unprecedented felony riot charges. Among them were legal observers, journalists, and medics.
19. On January 20th, 2017, a member of the International Workers of the World was shot in the stomach at an anti-fascist protest in Seattle. He remains in critical condition.
20. On January 21st, 2017, DT brought a group of 40 cheerleaders to a meeting with the CIA to cheer for him during a speech that consisted almost entirely of framing himself as the victim of dishonest press.
21. On January 21st, 2017, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer held a press conference largely to attack the press for accurately reporting the size of attendance at the inaugural festivities, saying that the inauguration had the largest audience of any in history, “period.”
22. On January 22nd, 2017, White House advisor Kellyann Conway defended Spicer’s lies as “alternative facts” on national television news.
23. On January 22nd, 2017, DT appeared to blow a kiss to director James Comey during a meeting with the FBI, and then opened his arms in a gesture of strange, paternal affection, before hugging him with a pat on the back.
24. On January 23rd, 2017, DT reinstated the global gag order, which defunds international organizations that even mention abortion as a medical option.
25. On January 23rd, 2017, Spicer said that the US will not tolerate China’s expansion onto islands in the South China Sea, essentially threatening war with China.
26. On January 23rd, 2017, DT repeated the lie that 3-5 million people voted “illegally” thus costing him the popular vote.
27. On January 23rd, 2017, it was announced that the man who shot the anti-fascist protester in Seattle was released without charges, despite turning himself in.
28. On January 24th, 2017, DT tweeted a picture from his personal Twitter account of a photo he says depicts the crowd at his inauguration and will hang in the White House press room. The photo is of the 2009 inauguration of 44th President Barack Obama, and is curiously dated January 21st, 2017, the day AFTER the inauguration and the day of the Women’s March, the largest inauguration related protest in history.
29. On January 24th, 2017, the EPA was ordered to stop communicating with the public through social media or the press and to freeze all grants and contracts.
30. On January 24th, 2017, the USDA was ordered to stop communicating with the public through social media or the press and to stop publishing any papers or research. All communication with the press would also have to be authorized and vetted by the White House.
31. On January 24th, 2017, HR7, a bill that would prohibit federal funding not only to abortion service providers, but to any insurance coverage, including Medicaid, that provides abortion coverage, went to the floor of the House for a vote.
32. On January 24th, 2017, DT ordered the resumption of construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline, while the North Dakota state congress considers a bill that would legalize hitting and killing protestors with cars if they are on roadways.
33. On January 24th, 2017, it was discovered that police officers had used confiscated cell phones to search the emails and messages of the 230 demonstrators now facing felony riot charges for protesting on January 20th, including lawyers and journalists whose email accounts contain privileged information of clients and sources.From News and Guts*credit for compilation: Karen Cornett-Dwyer
34. On January 24th, 2017 DT threatened martial law by 'sending in the feds' to Chicago.

#wemarch like flamingoes

Something has changed in the air. Today, I took part in a peaceful march from Arawak Cay to Rawson Square in Nassau. I can't easily articulate why, though. It was not a protest on my part. It was most certainly not a partisan gesture; I have come to consider Bahamian party politics (the only kind I can honestly talk about) a petty, visionless affair more concerned with personal vendettas than with any exercise of statehood. It was partly curiosity that took me out, partly the desire to see and take part in a Bahamian social movement, partly wanting to be there for myself so that I could make my own memory of the moment and not have others define it for me.But mostly it was for the expansion of Bahamian democracy. And to take a step in a new direction, to be there on the ground as we Bahamians, for so long dependent on whatever saviour-leader we can identify, begin to pick up the reins of democratic action for ourselves.For we have not been raised as a protesting nation. We have for a long time been a deeply partisan one, and successive governments run by the two feuding political parties have deepened the divisions in our society. We have for too long treated our democratic duty as little more than the right to take part in popularity contests. We've refused to analyze what has ailed our society, but have rather chosen to scapegoat and shift blame around as though we are engaged in a giant game of shuffleboard rather than the business of running a country. We have used our MPs and party affiliations as avenues for favour, and have ignored the incompetence, the visionlessness and the cupidity of those for whom we voted because of the kind of loyalties people attach to sports teams. We have used our party acronyms and colours as reasons to hurl invective at one another and somehow that has made us feel better about ourselves. And we have closed our eyes as our nation—which, though little, could be great—grows smaller and smaller and poorer and poorer in every way possible. We've been content to let it happen because we have political stability and peaceful elections and leaders we an approach and gladhand and cuss out as the feeling strikes us. But none of that has changed anything real at all. Now, I'm not saying that #wemarch today can change anything on its own. That was the main reservation I had about it: that it stood for too many things, that the list of grievances was too long, that this was a catch-all demonstration that lacked focus and real propulsion for change. I turned up and walked the route not only to be part of the march and to participate in this democratic moment, but also as an anthropologist, to observe, to analyze the moment. To see whether it was something truly revolutionary or whether it was something else, something as dismissible as some supporters of the current government have suggested. I believe that something basic has changed in the way we do politics. I am not saying that it is a deep-seated change or a permanently new way of doing things; only time will tell that. But I believe that today #wemarch inspired  :

1. A deep sense of patriotism. The march was supposed to be a silent one, and presumably a solemn one. But we are not normally a solemn people. Visitors to our country have always remarked on the warmth of the Bahamin people, something I've usually taken with a heap of salt; we are so very often angry and bitter these days. But what stuck out most about the march was just that—warmth. And a deep love for our country. The song we sang as we rounded the corner to Navy Lion Road was "March On Bahamaland"—our national anthem. 
2. The achievement, through social media, of a bottom-up One Bahamas. For many years leaders of various sorts have tried to impose a sense of unity on Bahamians, but it has been a false unity, one which has been deeply partisan—witness the golden colours that abound on Majority Rule day or the crimson ones that were linked with the One Bahamas celebrations. There was no sense of false unity today. Perhaps it was the sense of awe at the numbers of people who marched, or the even larger numbers wearing black, but there was some measure of solidarity in the marching and the occupation.
3. A sense of empowerment. I am not saying that it is not a fragile one, but it is critical. One of the things that has been prevalent in Bahamian society for too many years is a deep sense of helplessness, a sense of being out of control, of mistrust of those in power (and this goes for the FNM as well as the PLP), a sense of being out of place, being unwanted in one's homeland. Not so much today.
4. A sense of possibility. People were friendly, people were communicating, people were stepping out of their silos and making contact with people from other domains. Active and hopeful politicians were on the march, but they were almost incidental. They were following the people, which is the way it probably should be in a democracy. 

So. It was a start. For those of us talking about the revolution, this was not it: but it was the beginning of a turn in a different direction. There's a saying, or a rumour, about the flamingo, the Bahamian national bird. It's said that when one starts marching in a particular direction, the others will follow. This is what happened today. This was step one.Step two: to figure out where we're going from here. **featured photo by Rosemary Clarice Hanna

Hurricane Matthew: #massivefail (2)

I'm writing this in the cool breeze and dark room of a home in an area which not only has yet to see electricity restored, but even to see any presence of our Power and Light company for blocks around.* Hurricane Matthew blew past us two weeks ago, and we have yet to return to normalcy. I am a citizen, and a patriot, and I am ashamed of the way in which our government has responded to this disaster.

Let me point to the areas of greatest failure.

1. Bahamas Power and Light

I have already criticized this company roundly on social media. Let me be very clear: my criticism does not stem from my personal situation. After the last major hurricanes to affect electricity services in the capital, we invested in the sort of generator that could withstand this kind of power loss -- a workhorse of an engine. Rather, my criticism stems from the fact that the result of BPL's ineptitude in the wake of this storm has compounded rather than alleviated the suffering and trauma experienced by the residents of the Bahamas' capital city, and it did not have to be that way.BPL has worked hard to earn my criticism. I will give props to the company for restoring power to the hospitals, the security agencies, and Paradise Island the day after the hurricane. That part of their strategy made sense, considering that Atlantis was being used by many as a hurricane shelter and a home away from home. But that is where my commendation stops.Thereafter, BPL's response to the hurricane was wrong-footed, revealing that the new managers were clearly out of their depth. In the first instance, the company was wrong to reject hurricane protocols established by its parent company, BEC. This decision left residents of Nassau perplexed and rattled, as we did not see the company mobilize and jump into action until after our first weekend in darkness. Rather than beginning as soon as the storm had passed, it seemed, BPL was wasting time "assessing" the extent of the damage. No doubt it was working feverishly to repair its own plants. But this was accomplished in utter silence, in the absence of any real communication to the customers it served and on whose money -- from our taxes and from our pockets -- it depends for its own survival.In the second instance, the communications in which it engaged after this sluggish first response were not only inadequate, but downright insulting. The tenor of the communications came off as defensive and self-serving, with frequent references to the "unprecedented" nature of this storm and the lack of adequate resources to address the state of emergency.This was insulting because while Hurricane Matthew is widely claimed to have been the strongest storm to directly hit Nassau since 1929, the reality is that the situation is more a matter of degree rather than of quality. In my adult memory, I can count eight storms which have affected New Providence substantially, six of them this century. Further, as we should all be well aware, a decade ago two of those storms devastated Grand Bahama and wiped out its power generation ability altogether, requiring the replacement of all the utility poles from Freeport to West End in 2004-5. Our legacy power company, BEC, has extensive experience in dealing with hurricane recovery within and outside of Nassau and has learned how to do it well. BPL's insistence that the impact of Matthew was somehow extraordinary rang false, and had the effect of discounting everything Bahamians have learned about the restoration of power after major storms.So while I am perfectly willing to agree that Matthew may have affected our power generation plants more than any other in recent times, and that it may have left a different kind of destruction behind, I cannot accept that BEC lacked the experience or the strategies that would allow the capital to be functional more quickly and in a more reasonable amount of time. The fact that the majority of the island of New Providence remained without light until the Sunday after the storm spoke more to the inexperience and hard-headedness of the new management team than to the magnitude of the storm. After all, Matthew sideswiped New Providence as a Category 3 storm, and the eye passed us by. The continual references to its "unprecedented" nature sounded like excuses for ineptitude.Let me support this point with some more comprehensive detail. These are the other significant storms we have weathered in New Providence in the past quarter century: Hurricane Andrew (Cat 5) (1992), Hurricane Floyd (Cat 3-4) (1999), Hurricane Michelle (Cat 1) (2001), Hurricanes Frances (Cat 4) and Jeanne (Cat 3) (2004), Hurricane Irene (Cat 3) (2011), and Hurricane Sandy (Cat 1) (2012). For Bahamians, and for Nassauvians, although the eye of a hurricane has not come this close to us for some fifteen years -- not since Hurricane Michelle, whose eye stayed over the capital for some hours -- the statement that the strike was "unprecedented" has the effect of dismissing our collective experience as irrelevant, unworthy of recognition.Let me be clear on another point, too.  Lest people misunderstand what I expect from our power company and imagine that I am judging the response of BPL to the storm solely by the restoration of power to the capital, let me assure you that I am not talking about full restoration of services here. Hurricanes bring devastation, and I do not expect miracles. I do, however, expect rationality in the wake of a storm; I expect our power company to understand the way New Providence works, and to make decisions that minimize suffering and confusion rather than ones that exacerbate that suffering.I am talking about commitment, confidence, and communication. After those other hurricanes that disrupted the capital's electricity -- primarily Andrew, Floyd, Michelle, Frances and Jeanne -- residents of New Providence were given comprehensive reports of the damage to the electrical grid, a general understanding of the scope of the repairs to be undertaken, and then regular updates about the progress of those repairs. We have come to expect this kind of respect, and we have missed it sorely this time. It is the kind of communication that allows us to understand that while it might take weeks to restore full electricity to the whole island, two weeks after those storms, the capital will function again. Schools without significant damage will re-open. Businesses will return to some level of normalcy. Traffic will move without snarls at traffic lights and many communities will have their power restored.Additionally, in those past storms, after two weeks, we all knew our electricity corporation was working for us. Crews had been visible throughout the island from the moment the storm had passed, at times even before the all-clear was given. It was understood that the restoration of electricity to as many people as possible was of the highest priority. We understood that BEC recognized that the swift resumption of power generation was critical to the recovery of the economy and of the island, and public confidence was boosted by the corporation's clear communication and a sense of commitment to the quickest restoration in the shortest possible time.I cannot say that I have confidence in any of the above this year. On the contrary: BPL has succeeded in convincing me that its primary interest lies in conserving its bottom line, in protecting whatever revenues it expected to earn from this management contract, rather than in restoring power to the people it serves in the shortest possible time. It may well have worked to restore power in the shortest cost-effective possible time, but that is not the same thing at all, and it inspires little confidence in me that I matter to BPL in any way other than the payment of my electricity bill.I resent this deeply. Unlike money which was paid to BEC in the past, this insistence on cost-effectiveness is not, and cannot be, merely to ensure efficiency. It must also be to repatriate some of the revenues earned from Bahamian pockets to the USA, where the parent company of the new management resides. Otherwise what would be the point of accepting the management contract?There may be people who will argue with me, who will take the stand that even in an emergency, money matters more than people. For the sake of neo-liberal argument, I'll give them that point, although every atom in my body screams that it is wrong. Even so, if cost effectiveness is your primary motivation, I expect a level of fiscal efficiency. If your goal is cost-effectiveness, at least achieve it with the minimal possible disruption to normal life. Even here BPL's miscalculation has been great. Its slowness and muddled strategy of restoration has resulted in the following impacts on life in the capital:

• the slow restoration of internet and cable communication, which is dependent in many cases on the restoration of electricity
• the inability of public schools to reopen as scheduled owing the continued lack of power to their surrounding communities, a direct result of the company's decision to leave the northeastern and southern segments of New Providence to the last
• the protracted power outage at the Port of Nassau, the core of New Providence's economic activity
• the continued inability of a considerable proportion of the business community to function at full capacity, as much of the economy of New Providence is still centred in and around the city of Nassau in the neglected north-eastern segment of the island, and also as a result of their remaining without cable and internet
• traffic chaos owing to the scores of traffic lights that remain non-functional in the wake of the hurricane

Even as I write this, these are the traffic lights that impact me personally that remain non-functional, two weeks in: Village and Bay, Village and Shirley, Shirley and Mackey, Mackey and Bay, Mackey and Pyfrom (Bar 20), Mackey and Madeira, Parkgate and Village. The lights at Madeira and Montrose, Madeira and Mount Royal, Madeira (Fifth Terrace) and Collins, Rosetta and Sears, Rosetta and Hawkins, Rosetta (Fourth Terrace) and Collins, Mackey and Wulff, Collins and Wulff, East and Wulff, Market and Wulff, Nassau and Meadow/Boyd, Elizabeth and Shirley, Blue Hill and Cumberland, Blue Hill and Dillet. These are not insignificant junctions. No doubt there are scores of others. These are not rural outposts, and they are not areas that can go without traffic signals for long. But they are testimonies to the way in which BPL's approach to this storm was woefully and tragically off the mark.What is more, it appears as though, contrary to a more established practice of  tackling the most difficult jobs first, BPL has left them to the last. This means that the people who were most impacted by the storm itself -- who suffered the flooding from the storm surge, who lost cars and roofs to falling trees, who lost their vehicles and their furniture and in some cases the stability of their homes -- are also those people who remain the most neglected two weeks after the storm. This has the effect of compounding their trauma and of increasing, rather than alleviating, their suffering. I am not suggesting that the damage to the electrical system that occurred in those areas should, or could, be fixed immediately. But I am saying that there is some comfort to be had simply from knowing that one's area is a priority for officials, from knowing that you are on someone's list, that you are not being forgotten. And that is what has sorely been lacking in this post-Matthew time.In short, BPL's recovery plan has appeared ad hoc, foreign, and woefully unsuited to the realities of life on New Providence. I can only conclude that what has happened at BPL -- as BEC delivered a far better service after hurricanes, even if it did not deliver much in the way of service day-to-day -- is that the new managers have come in with their own way of doing things, and disregarded protocols that have been in place for decades. (I am only speculating here, and my speculation is fuelled both by rumour and by a deep bias against the outsourcing of any essential utility to an external company, so take this part of my criticism with the appropriate dose of salt.) I suspect, however, that the new managers discounted the institutional and local knowledge that allowed BEC to function to this point, given the decrepitude of the plant and the chronic misallocation of funds it has suffered for decades. I suspect that the new managers instituted their own post-hurricane protocols instead of considering the value of those that have been tried and true -- to their detriment. There were babies in that bathwater, as we have all found out.There is very little in the way of mitigation that can be had at this stage, but there are some things that can be done.One of the areas that stands out most glaringly about BPL's non-handling of this crisis is its persistent refusal, apparently, to offer any rebates to its customers in this difficult time. Not only have the press conferences that I have heard mentioned cost at every turn, BPL -- unlike every other public utility company in the nation  -- has insisted clearly that they will continue to bill their customers for their services and that they will continue to disconnect those customers for non-payment of their bills.Come again? Is BPL the only agency in this country to emerge without loss in the wake of this hurricane? Is the right to repatriate profits more important than the ability of Bahamian citizens to recover from the storm? Is BPL oblivious to the ways in which it has compounded the suffering and slowed our recovery? Are we expected to pay for this massive failure?Words massively fail me here. The only thing I can do is to call upon the bosses of BPL, the politicians we have elected to manage our nation, to demand that some other arrangements be made, to demand that BPL recognize its contribution to our suffering and to at least consider offering reduced bills to those who have been without power for longer than seven days. Something concrete, something tangible, must be exchanged for the frustration, confusion and inefficiency that we have experienced from BPL over the past two weeks.What I would also like to see now is some humility in the wake of this disaster. At the very least, I would like to see the new managers learn something from this experience.They should learn something about the Bahamian people -- that we expect better than they have given us after this hurricane. They should learn something about the expertise that they met in the corporation that they were contracted to manage -- that perhaps local expertise is worth listening to, worth making room for, worth promoting. They should learn something about going into another country armed with the assumption that they way that they do things elsewhere may not be the best way, may not even work if transplanted. And they should learn something about basic communication. The provision of electricity should be divorced from spin. Tell the truth, tell it fairly, and gain the confidence of your consumers. Try to confuse us with numbers and percentages and mumbo-jumbo of the American kind, and worse, charge us for it, can only yuck up our vexation (Eng. translation: raise our ire).That is all.------

*Edit: the very night I wrote this post, the trucks came. They appeared in the neighbourhood by threes. One car, three trucks. 14 days after the hurricane. But the restoration of power was not as easy as that. By the time this publishes, it may have been achieved, but for now: we're still in darkness. [Back]

Gilbert Morris on the Referendum

In a well organized society, equality cuts both ways, and must include for instance changes to family law so that good fathers, can gain custody or have proper access to their children. Overall, I do not believe this referendum contributed to the good of The Bahamas. Governments of the Bahamas are too political and so undermine their credibility as constitutional arbiters. We cannot make the first change to our constitution some rule change on a narrow basis. Bahamians need to learn the basic meaning of having a constitution, and feel kinship with its principles.

Source: On Referendum 2016 by Gilbert MorrisI appreciated this analysis. Go read the whole thing. 

Talking about a revolution sounds like a whisper

It's been a long time since I was one for debating politics. I'm not saying it never happened. I am a Bahamian after all. But I've since recovered from that particular illness. There is little to debate. There is little that is happening worth debating.OK, so I know that the pundits and the newspapers might disagree with me here. After all, you have only to open a computer or a newspaper and you will see drama splashed across the page or screen. Hit men. Foreign investors. Referenda. Rogue politicians insulting people. The wry satire of political one-liners. The rabid hate of, well, haters. And crime, crime, crime.But there is nothing to debate about these things. There are simply facts. They are sobering facts. They tell us very serious things about who and where we are as a people and a nation. And yet we do nothing about the facts. Rather, we use them for entertainment. We use them to point fingers at public figures, to rack up Likes on Facebook, to provide "commentary" on what we generously call "politics", to delude ourselves that engaging in that kind of conversation is making any kind of difference.We are in decline, because we spend too much time talking about people and situations, and too little time doing anything to bring about change.  We continue to assume that those people who present themselves for election to public office can make any kind of dent in this decline, and waste hours and breath bigging up or tearing down this or the other of those people.We willfully ignore another fact: that far too many of today's public political actors are either devoid of any shred of integrity or compassion or intelligence, or else have compromised so much of themselves that integrity, compassion and intelligence have been bartered away for nominations, political ascendency, power. We disregard the very clear truth that virtually all the people we're currently faced with electing have had to choose between their personal convictions, their values, their goals for their nation (assuming they began with these), and their place in their particular political party—and that virtually all of them have made the wrong choice. What we see in the political sphere are greed, truthlessness, cowardice, megalomania, and lunacy.  When last did we see our politicians display qualities like honesty, humility, or common sense? These days, party politics are a corrosion which destroys everything it touches.And so I have absolutely nothing to say about political parties. Do not ask me to say anything; do not ask me to comment on any one of them; they are all compromised, all tarnished, all corrupt in many ways, big and small. One or two individuals stand up head and shoulders above the crowd; but even these have sacrificed their ability to bring about real change for the perceived security of remaining tethered to their parties.But I do have something to say about this:

We need a movement.I am the first Volunteer.I am not going to create a new initiative. I am going out from the studio everyday, and I am going to help those who are already helping others; I am going to serve our people and I am going to ask you to send them what you can to help, but more than that, I am going to ask you to join me.Simply put, My Fellow Bahamians, we are in the midst of an unprecedented national emergency. A crisis of faith, a crisis of conscience, and ultimately, a crisis, not just of leadership but of servant leadership.Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said: "Anyone can become great, because anyone can serve. In service is our greatness". Therefore, my friends, I will do everything in my power everyday from here forward not to permit any Bahamian child to go to bed hungry, homeless or in fear.I am going to live Dr. Kings message.And, I am asking you to join me.--Jeff Lloyd

Amen. I am on board. It's a new day. Talking about a revolution sounds like a whisper, and I'm whispering.

Back to the Referendum

Eighteen months ago, I was invited to write an article for Global Voices about the proposed referendum on gender equality in The Bahamas. It was published in October 2014, a month before the referendum was initially scheduled to take place. That the referendum didn't take place is common knowledge now; it was postponed to allow "public education" to take place. Well, it's now back on the national agenda, and I'm not sure how much education has happened. So I am now going to publish what I wrote back then in its entirety in an attempt to inform the discussion we are now having with some facts.The Commonwealth of The Bahamas is amending its 41-year-old constitution. I’m using the present continuous tense, because the amendment is a process, one that began some twelve years ago in 2002. Back then, a constitutional referendum was held and failed—the proposed amendments to the Constitution were rejected by the general public. But the need for amendment has persisted, and ever since 2012 a constitutional referendum has been imminent.The main issue at hand is the question of equality between the sexes under the constitution. The most striking instance of inequality in our constitution is that between men and women in relation to their ability to pass on Bahamian citizenship, but, as the most recent Constitutional Commission has noted, the inequalities in the current constitution are manifold. This Commission has narrowed them down to the following categories: inequality between men and women, between children and between married and single people. To this we can add inequality based on place of birth.The last item on that list notwithstanding, the Constitutional Commission has drafted four bills which, if passed by the two Houses of Parliament and agreed to by the general public, will make Bahamian citizens more equal than non-Bahamians by seeking to address the first three inequalities.Put simply, the main inequalities are as follows:- Married Bahamian men and unmarried Bahamian women automatically pass their citizenship on to their children at birth.

• Bahamian women cannot pass their citizenship on to their overseas-born children at birth, if they are married to a non-Bahamian.
• Single fathers may not pass their citizenship on to their children, as the constitution defines children born out of wedlock as not having a father.
• The non-Bahamian wives of Bahamian men are afforded the right to be granted citizenship upon application.
• The non-Bahamian husbands of Bahamian women are afforded no such right.

The issue, however, is complicated by several other requirements that make the passing on of citizenship from parent to child less straightforward. Primary among these is a clause which addresses the institution of marriage. Under this clause, unmarried Bahamian mothers are defined as “fathers” for the purpose of passing on their national status to their babies. This particular clause also nullifies single Bahamian fathers’ ability to pass on their citizenship.The four bills drafted to amend the constitution seek to rectify the situation. They are designed to promote equality for children, among men and women, and to enshrine the principle of equality throughout the constitution. The first of these seeks to award the children of both Bahamian men and women citizenship at birth. The second entitles all non-Bahamian spouses of Bahamian citizens to Bahamian citizenship. The third allows single Bahamian fathers to pass their citizenship on to their offspring. And the fourth bill seeks to enshrine the principle of equality between the sexes in the constitution by adding the word “sex” to the list of categories under which discrimination is prohibited.On the surface, this seems a simple enough task. It is complicated, however, by a public discussion which has focused mainly on the fourth amendment—the one which is, in its own way, the simplest of the proposed changes: the adding of “sex” to the categories prohibiting discrimination.The current categories include race, place of origin, political opinions, colour, and creed, but exclude sex. The opponents of this amendment have construed the word “sex” as relating to sexual orientation, and have gained much traction in the eyes of the public by claiming the constitutional amendments are designed to permit same-sex marriage. If this Article is amended, their story goes, Bahamians will be giving the government permission to allow same-sex marriages to take place. These arguments obscure the principle of equality between the sexes and make this clause appear the most controversial—which also makes it the most threatened as the time for the referendum draws near.And there are other questions of inequality that have not been addressed. Most notable among them is the question of birthplace and its effect on the awarding of citizenship to Bahamian children. There are two elements at work here. The first is the fact that birth on Bahamian territory is no avenue to citizenship if neither of one’s parents is Bahamian. The most that a person born in the Bahamas is entitled to is the right to be registered as a citizen upon making application at the age of 18.The second, more difficult challenge, is the kind of citizenship one is granted if one is born abroad to Bahamian parents. One peculiarity of the current constitution which has not been put forward for amendment, is that children born to Bahamians abroad, even if they are classified as citizens, have no automatic right to pass their citizenship on to their own offspring. In other words, children born to Bahamians studying or working abroad, or giving birth in another country for reasons of health, may be classified as Bahamian citizens. However, if they themselves have children outside of The Bahamas, those children are not Bahamians at birth, and have no right to claim Bahamian citizenship whatsoever.The issue is complicated, and most Bahamians are not aware of this stipulation. Most of the discussion relating to citizenship and our constitution has focused on the next generation—on our children. We have not yet thought about our grandchildren. What the current situation does ensure, though, is that not one of us, whatever the outcome of the referendum and whatever amendments are made to the constitution, can be confident that our grandchildren will be Bahamians at birth.Let me bring this home. In my family, I have cousins who were born abroad because their Bahamian father was studying in the UK at the time of their birth. They are Bahamian. Their children, though, unless they are born in The Bahamas, are not.Similarly, I have a nephew who, once again, was born in Canada when his Bahamian father was studying. He is a Bahamian, but his children, unless they are born in The Bahamas, will not be.Finally, I have another young cousin who was born in Miami while his parents were there getting medical treatment for their older son. That cousin, even though both his parents are citizens, will not be able to pass on his citizenship unless his children are born in The Bahamas.And none of these issues even begins to address the question of statehood for the many children of undocumented immigrants (most of them of Haitian origin) in The Bahamas. Most of those children currently have no national status at all. It is a situation which must be addressed, but which has not been touched upon in the present referendum.So critical is this question of citizenship that a 2013 Report on the constitution recommended appointing a second commission altogether to focus exclusively on the issue of statelessness in The Bahamas, as the commissioners did not feel they could give it the necessary attention. No such move has yet been made.The constitutional amendments are long overdue. They will go some way to equalizing the granting of Bahamian citizenship to children, and to even out the distinction between male and female, married and unmarried, that currently exists. But they are only a beginning. Serious issues of inequality remain, and the climate in which the discussions regarding the referendum is taking place has grown fraught with misdirection. The popular interpretation that the addition of “sex” to the categories where discrimination is prohibited is an endorsement of same-sex marriage plays into a deep-seated homophobia in Bahamian society. But it’s also worrying for another reason: it is entirely possible that this relates to homophobia only tangentially, and is in fact a strategic move to campaign for constitutionally-sanctioned misogyny without openly admitting that fact.

#100things I want from government 11-20

More of what I want from government. I have not yet met/heard a politician willing to address even one of them. Not just mention them: address them. Build campaigns around them. Hold them close to their hearts. Will someone prove me wrong ?11. #100things I want from government: A little bit of bold originality. Let's not get the same things wrong tomorrow that we did yesterday.12. #100things I want from government: A little bit of courage. Specially when it comes to doing the right thing. Or even doing things right.13. #100things I want from government: Teaching our complex and remarkable history to the next generations so we can celebrate ourselves14. #100things I want from government: Teaching the next generations the crafts our ancestors mastered. Pride and income can go together.15. #100things I want from government: A lower cost of living. Affordable necessities will give everybody the chance to buy some luxuries.16. #100things I want from government: Mastering the art of waste disposal on limestone islands with porous bedrock & fragile freshwater lens17. #100things I want from government: Policies that foster economic equality for all residents: close the gap between well-off & poor18. #100things I want from government: A municipal government for my city to pay attention to little details like roadworks, garbage, traffic19. #100things I want from government: A walkable city. Not just downtown where we don't go anymore: all over the island.20. #100things I want from government: Real local government where islands get to keep their taxes to meet their needs & handle their issues

#100things I want from government 1-10

This week I began to write a series of tweets which, I hope, will break this pattern of silence that has fallen upon me since Boston. I find I can't engage with any public discussion happening in Nassau right now, largely because the disussions are without result. They are unproductive because they tread old ground incessantly so that they begin to resemble the path of white rats in lab mazes. I don't like feeling like lab rats or hamsters on wheels, so I have unplugged for some time.But one can't stay unplugged forever. So I'm trying to get at least some of the concepts that are crowding my mind down in 140 characters or fewer, hoping the discipline will be constructive. Here's how the series  began:

Been blocked/silent on big issues since I went to Boston. Maybe because the gap between life there & life here was so wide ...... not in experience but in possibility. And this is the opposite of what I felt when I lived abroad 20 years ago ...Living in the UK in the 1990s was like living in a coffin: rules everywhere & few rewards. Innovation? impossible. You emigrated to breatheToday Nassau feels the same, only without rules. So as we move towards elections the silly season has graduated to full stupidityAm going to start tweeting what I want to see from my next government. Prospective politicians, you want my attention? Bring it.

And so? The first 10 of the #100things I want from government:

1. #100things I want from government: Gender equality. Don't mind the noise in the man-ket. Women vote.
2. #100things I want from government: A citizenship policy in a constitution that makes sense. l'd like to be sure my grandkids are Bahamian.
3. #100things I want from government: An energy plan that makes sense. An energy plan that puts the power in my hands not some outsider's.
4.  #100things I want from government: Ideas and ideals for the good of the nation, not new letters and faces for the good of themselves.
5. #100things I want from government: Research that unveils the causes of crime PLUS programmes to address them not reaction to the symptoms
6. #100things I want from government: Some real democracy. No more vote once every five years & done. Want my MP to represent me not a party.
7. #100things I want from government: Protection of the humanity of all within our borders: justice for all regardless of age, sex, origin.
8. #100things I want from government: Facilitation of fresh ways of being/seeing, not frustration of everything different or new
9. #100things I want from government: Honour & a place at the table for youth. Elders deserve respect, not deification.
10. #100things I want from government: Devolution of power. Break up the rule of the 1% over the 400k.

Watching Baltimore Burn

The title says it all.I'm watching the burning on MSNBC right now, having started watching it on CNN, and I'm thinking of all the mistakes we have made over the past ten years, the past twenty years, the past forty years in our nation.For those of you who may be reading from outside the 242, when I say "our nation", I mean The Bahamas, not the USA. I may be resident in the USA for the next 10 weeks, but when I say "our nation" I mean our Bahamas.The first thing that I'm thinking of is our current crime wave in Nassau. As far as I can tell, the violence began to escalate in 2007, and it has been rising steadily ever since. Now I know that this is not a popular thing to say. The popular thing is to blame the Progressive Liberal Party for everything negative in our country, but the fact of this matter is that in 2002, the then PLP administration, led by PM Perry Christie, instituted a revolutionary programme for our inner cities. Urban Renewal as it was then conceived was based on three principles. The first principle was that the people who live in the inner cities are not all criminals. Even if criminality is prevalant in those communities, the majority of the residents, those mostly law-abiding people, who are our poorest residents and those people who are first and most often affected by criminal activity, deserve to be treated as citizens like everyone else. The establishment of Urban Renewal centres in those inner city communities (never mind that the communities themselves were artificially determined according to those absurd lines on paper we call constituency boundaries) recognized this, and those centres were not only inhabited by police; they also brought together various other government services which made it easier for the people in those communities to access government programmes. The idea was that those centres were one-stop shops where people who had limited resources, a shortage of transportation and a shortage of time, could pay their bills, see their social workers, and get the help and guidance they might need to make their lives easier, not harder. The second principle was that when it comes to crime, prevention is better than cure. It may be more exciting and more macho to invade communities with guns blazing and riot gear on, but the decision was taken to turn the police into father figures rather than warriors. The idea was that if you treat citizens as people and give them the chance to experience their own citizenry, by making the police their servants and their mentors and not their enemies, peace will follow. And the third principle was that you can't fix broken communities by breaking people. The Urban Renewal programme of 2002-2007 was an integrated programme based on serious and long-term research into transformative community activity, led by psychiatrists and community activists, a programme that forced a number of different agencies to cooperate and work together, using neighbourhoods as the locus of their action and people as their focus, rather than their far-flung, over-insulated offices and addictions to hierarchy. It provided counselling and mentoring; it provided alternative activities for inner city youth; it provided father figures and the sense that inner city residents mattered.This is what the discussion about Baltimore tells us is missing in that city, what lies behind the riots tonight.I believe that the rolling back of that programme in 2007, citing the "waste" of government resources, the frivolity of marching bands, the softening of the police, and the inefficiency of providing multiple services, is at least on some level responsible for the escalation of violence and criminal activity in the communities from which the programme was removed. Imagine you are a seven year old boy living in one of our urban centres in 2002. All of a sudden you are given the opportunity to meet policemen, to get to know them, to be taught music by them, to be treated by them as a young human being and treat them as mature human beings. Imagine joining a marching band and getting to travel and wear a uniform and have something to invest in and to feel proud of. And then imagine being that same boy in that same urban centre in 2007, only now you are eleven. Your band is disbanded. Your police friends leave the community. And the next time you see any police at all they are storming your neighbourhood with guns and insults. Is it any surprise to anyone that violent crime has been rising since? Like Baltimore, we have abandoned our most vulnerable communities, and strong men, bullies and thugs, are stepping into the space we have left behind.And the new Urban Renewal programme, which seems to be focussed on buildings rather than people, on small connected contractors mostly from outside the community rather than on building up human beings from within does not take us back. I am not sure that the damage done by the dissolution of UR 1.0 can be fixed; when trust is ripped apart by betrayal, it is twice, four times, ten times as difficult to built it up again. What we are calling "Urban Renewal" today, the so-called "Urban Renewal 2.0", is not worthy of the name. It is a cosmetic, hollow shadow of something that had roots and had begun to grow. It is a symbolic gesture, a suggestion that we are interested in our least fortunate citizens, but what it does is unsustainable. People who are built up can continue to build themselves; but when houses are repaired and derelict vehicles towed, it's only a matter of time before repairs and cleean-up are required again.So were are we now? Once again, we are fighting superficially, squabbling along party lines, worrying about the exercise of authority rather than the principles that ought to guide us. We are slipping into the exhiliration and competition that leads up to the election season, ignoring the fundamental problems. I have no problem with the bringing of rigour to the programme; I have no problem with the audit or the report or any of the criticism that has been levelled. This is criticism that, to me, has a place in a democracy; political and civic leaders should be called to account when they spend the public's money. But it seems to me that we're actually missing the point.The rigour and the attention that we are bringing to the spending of the public's money is all well and good, but where was that rigour when the first Urban Renewal programme, the one focussed on people rather than buildings, the one that won international awards for its community policing initiaives, the one that pulled the guns off the streets, the one that built relationships with the law-abiding people in our inner cities and made them feel comfortable in their neighbourhoods, where was that rigour when that programme was being dismantled? I'm left with the uncomfortable feeling that maybe, maybe we care more about money than people. That we are happy to allow our law enforcement officials to exercise their strength rather than demanding their compassion. That we are more comfortable with classifying one another as troublemakers than as fellow human beings. And so I watch Baltimore burning, and I suggest you do too, and listen to their discussions. Because we have made choices, and our choices have not been good. We are told that governments don't make stupid decisions, but we can see the deisions, one after another, that have been made over the past decade or so, and they don't look smart to me. I watch Baltimore burning, and know that there, there, but for the grace of God, go we.