May 1st, Labor Day. When I was growing up in New York it was called May Day and it was the day of celebration for Communists and socialist types like my mom and dad, so as a youngster I marched in several May Day parades. I don’t think May Day is celebrated in the same way any longer, although today has been a rallying point for US immigrant activists. When will governments learn that people will risk everything to acquire a decent standard of living for themselves and their families? The huge majority of “illegal immigrants” in America are not criminals: they are people just like you and me. I still maintain that if these immigrants had blue eyes and blond hair and came from Western Europe, there would be no “immigration crisis” in the US today.
A lot of Belizeans needed this day off, especially teachers. I don’t think that anybody who is not in the classroom in this day and age understands how hard, how frustrating yet how rewarding this job is. Speaking of teachers, big up and RESPECT to my colleagues at E. P. Yorke. Instead of bitching and moaning about the pay deduction that Maud Hyde and her associates imposed on us, we did something about it!
All of us got together and raised funds by cooking and selling barbecue to the community at large and to our students. Even teachers who didn’t participate in the protest, bought. A special big up to Ms. Rebecca Suazo and Ms. Maureen Faber, who invested their own money for chicken and other supplies. Guess what! On Monday, April 30th, every one of the fourteen E.P. Yorke teachers who went to Belmopan received an envelope with money to compensate for the hardship that the Minister of Education and his kind in the Ministry thought they could intimidate us with.
I hope that teachers who are union activists in other schools read this because they could have done the same thing. People have to learn to think for themselves and come up with solutions to problems without waiting for someone else to direct them, I mean, do we need “leaders” to direct our daily lives?
It appears that the Prime Minister will be back in the country in a couple of days, so the chances are that the fallout from the Universal deal will hit the streets after I make my deadline for this article, but the implications are enormous. Remember that the incident that caused the original G-7 revolt was that the Prime Minister signed a deal with Carnival Cruise Lines, a deal which appeared as though it was hardly to the advantage of Belizeans, while the Minister of Tourism who had that portfolio, and therefore the authority to negotiate tourism projects for tabling in the House of Representatives, the Hon. Mark Espat, was out of the country promoting tourism.
Senator Godwin Hulse is getting angrier by the day on KREM’s WUB. I, and a lot of other Belizeans can see why. Not only do we need constitutional reform, even the constitution that we have is being totally disregarded. Any potential financial commitment of this magnitude must be presented to the House of Representatives for debate. Then it must be approved by a vote of the people’s elected representatives. The Prime Minister and the Attorney General have no legal right to commit public funds on their own like this, and there is every possibility that this “guarantee” is null and void because it simply didn’t go through the proper constitutional procedure.
The irony of the present situation is that the PUP was not devastated in the recent Village Council elections in spite of the overpowering stench of scandal and corruption that stained this PUP government since 1998. The Leader of the Opposition, Dean Barrow, openly admitted that this week, commenting that the PUP “fought like hell.”
Now, this! I have some difficulty understanding the “reasons” that made the PM do this. The PM had to know that the era of secret GOB documents is long gone. He also had to know that doing something like this without any constitutional sanction would be revealed and would appear to expose him and the Attorney General in the worst way. Both of them also had to know that this “guarantee” jeopardized the entire debt restructuring agreement, which required that ALL debts owed by GOB had to be disclosed to Belize’s creditors.
I can only speculate in the following logical manner. Does the PM have absolute contempt for the Belizean people whom he was elected to serve or maybe, there may have been so many commitments to Lord Lightning that the PM could have felt that he had no choice? What if Lord Lightning decided to remove all his assets from Belize? What could that do to the Belizean economy, which is already none too healthy?
The point is that there is no such thing as a free lunch! X, in a recent column, traced the influx of huge sums of money used for political campaigns to the beginning of the 1990’s. Belize is just beginning to try to grapple with this situation, and even the mighty United States, which had to deal with this problem for a lot longer, can’t seem to come up with a solution. Politicians will not willingly turn off the cash fountain even if they publicly pontificate about the negative impact that it has on the integrity of the political process.
Those who have the money and the desire to spend that money in order to gain or to extend political power, are not exactly warm and fuzzy people. I often wonder if the politicians who fall head over heels for that kind of money realize what they are actually getting into. These guys can be very scary people. They know how to apply pressure to those on the hook, and they know nothing about concepts of mercy and forgiveness. Tony Soprano, the TV mobster, told one of his associates who had expressed the desire to quit the mob, “Y’know, there’s no retiring from this thing.”
One of the other things on my mind this week is the huge amount of work and sacrifice that is required for even minimal changes in this world. When my father, Frank Rhys, Sr., arrived in the United States in 1920, the country was mired in overt racism, the Ku Klux Klan was running rampant, and “Jim Crow” was the law in the South. Jim Crow’s more subtle incarnations permeated anywhere and everywhere. There is still undeniably an unacceptable level of racism in America, but all that work and all that sacrifice removed racism from the law!
Racial, ethnic and gender discrimination may probably never be removed from people’s hearts, Don Imus is the latest proof of that, but getting rid of Jim Crow laws has been a significant accomplishment. The fight for equality began long before my father’s and my mother’s generation. Now I carry on that work. One of my children is demonstrating the dedication and the fearlessness to push the envelope further. Whether it will ever end I don’t know. Maybe not completely, but trying validates our existence as part of the stream of life.
Nothing in this world happens because we would like it to happen. Socially conscious people work, work and work some more. Some of them are killed and others sacrifice everything because they have the courage of their convictions. That’s what it takes. It’s not a path for the faint-hearted or the weak. Those who think that it will get them fame and prosperity will find out, often too late, that the only reason to get involved is because you care about people other than yourself!
The only meaningful way to travel is to pay your dues. Don Imus never understood that people who are the targets of “racist humor” don’t find it funny at all! The only white comedian who was able to use the “N word” on stage without any backlash was the late Lenny Bruce. I was fortunate enough to be around when Lenny Bruce was doing his thing in his too short life. I was also privileged to be around when Redd Fox, Jackie “Moms” Mabley and others paved the way. It’s ironic, because Redd Fox and “Moms” honed their skills in black clubs; therefore they were not subjected to the same withering scrutiny that Lenny Bruce had to deal with. but I respect his thought process.
Every comedian who lives or who has died recently, no matter what color, has paid or pays his tribute to Lenny Bruce. This includes Chris Rock, George Carlin, Eddie Murphy, Roseanne and Richard Pryor, and no comedian, black or white, thinks that Lenny Bruce had a racist bone in his body. Those who didn’t pay their dues wind up being weak and shallow. This is true for every pioneer, whether it is as an activist, in music, the visual arts, poetry or other forms of creative writing. The dues give you depth and feeling. The point? Lenny Bruce paid the price so that others didn’t have to pay as much. That’s what it takes to create change, ever so slowly, with extreme effort and pain.
Look at the rejection that was heaped on Bird, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Miles, Coltrane etc. They played the way they played because that was where their lives and their experiences were leading them. I’m sorry for those who think that all that they have to do is to speak up and the world will change. If you are unwilling to sacrifice even a little bit, accept things as they are, because you will not be a contributor and you will never make a difference.