If the title of this piece reminds you of other questions that needed answering in other places and other times, that is intentional. There are a whole lot of questions swirling around last Friday’s demonstration that are unanswered, and I don’t know whether those who could provide at least some of the answers are that eager to do so. The March 21st Amandala carries an article entitled: “Teachers take a stand in Belmopan – but say colleagues left them out in the cold.” Indeed, there are issues with exactly what happened. Who knew what and when did they know it?
Let’s backtrack a bit. The Belize branch of the BNTU had an emergency meeting last Tuesday, March 13. The current President of the NTUCB, Rene Gomez, was there as well. Teachers who were present at that meeting expressed a willingness to move into an action phase starting with a demonstration in Belmopan later in that week, but there were some concerns. Those concerns revolved around the following issues: whether the demonstration would be well attended, and if the other unions in the NTUCB would give their support.
Many of us feel that small demonstrations are counterproductive. Yes, the party line is, “Don’t worry about the size of the demonstration. The fact that it occurred at all is meaningful in its own way.”
The party line doesn’t thrill me too much. The way I see it, and I’m sure I have lots of company, is that poorly attended demonstrations send a signal of weakness instead of a signal of strength, and please don’t tell me that I shouldn’t express this opinion publicly. GOB doesn’t need to read my articles in order to draw its own conclusions, and believe me, that’s exactly what they think!
The other thorny issue revolves around the question of support from the other unions. The BNTU is by far the largest union in the country. If a strike is going to be effective at all, the BNTU has to participate. That is a given, but in 2005 some of the other unions promised support that never came. More than a few teachers felt as though we were the ones who were hung out to dry. A number of teachers, including myself, brought this to the attention of the NTUCB president, Rene Gomez. Mr. Gomez assured us that support would be forthcoming, including buses of union members from the Northern districts.
Well, none of that promised support ever showed up. Neither were there many teachers from the BNTU. The media estimated the crowd as being between two and three hundred. The NTUCB estimated three to four hundred. It doesn’t matter. It was a small turnout, period!
The fact that only one of the fired workers from BTL, the event that jump-started this protest, showed up, raises a hell of a lot of questions. The previously-referred-to Amandala article quotes BCWU President, Paul Perriott, as questioning the wisdom of asking BTL and the other utilities to grant time off in order for employees to attend the demonstration.
He said, “When our forefathers were slaves and they wanted to protest, they didn’t ask for time off. They just did it.”
OK, but then he told the reporter that the BCWU employees could not legally have attended because BTL and the BCWU were already involved in binding arbitration, and the union had been advised that a walkout even for one day was a violation of the law when arbitration had already begun. Then in the next breath he blamed the letter that was sent to BTL and to the other utilities asking for time off to attend the protest. He said that when management is asked for permission and that permission is refused, not reporting to work to attend the demonstration is illegal.
Now brake for a minute. Which is it? We should have just done it, or we can’t do it because we’re already in arbitration, or if the letters to the utilities asking for permission weren’t sent, we could have done it? Forgive me for asking, but this doesn’t make much sense to me. Does it make any sense to you? If the BCWU leadership knew that the arbitration proceedings precluded their participation in the demonstration, did they disclose this information to anyone else in the NTUCB?
If they didn’t disclose this to any other union, why didn’t they? If they did tell anyone else, whom did they tell and when did they tell them? What I’m driving at is that when the Belize branch of the BNTU met on March 13, did Mr. Gomez already know that the BCWU couldn’t legally participate in the demonstration at the same time that he was assuring our members of full support?
The issue of Ms. Christine Perriott’s absence is a more delicate one. Ms. Perriott has obviously been under severe pressure recently. Getting fired from a high-paying job in the Belize of 2007 is no joke, even if she might have anticipated it and still chose to stand up. Everybody has bills to pay. Prices and taxes are sky high and there is no reason to anticipate better economic news any time soon. When half a family’s income suddenly disappears and the possibility that the other half might go too becomes very real, the tension and stress will be sky-high.
The problem I have is this. When Ms. Perriott was asked about what happened by the media, she was either unavailable, or in her appearance before the camera on the Channel 7 News on March 19, she was what I will charitably describe as “indirect”. I am not delving into these things to further stress anyone out, but all of us have to realize a few things. When we use the media to promote our cause, we can’t suddenly refuse to talk when the going gets tough. What I mean to say is that we can if we want to, but we have to be aware that there will be a cost, and that cost will be our credibility. The general public is not very charitable at all, and some of them are not at all on our side. They are waiting for the first slip so that they can have a reason to land on us.
Even many of our fellow trade unionists are wary. February 2005 is still very much remembered. I believe that there are some of us out there who are using the events of two years ago as an excuse to jump off the train, but it is hard to blame people for remembering. What happened back then was nothing nice! These are things we have to deal with, because our colleagues ask us some hard questions, and we have to answer those questions in a forthright and straightforward manner, or else we will lose them! Yes the media can be manipulative and less than kind, but I think that the best policy is to look straight at the camera and answer the questions as honestly as you can. Remember, it’s not the mistakes we make that hurt us, as much as what may be perceived as an attempt to cover them up!
Look, taking on an activist role is serious business. We are striking at the one thing that these guys love above everything else – their lifestyle that is fueled by the corruption we are trying to shut down! A person can get killed for an orange or for a few bucks. Those of us who are willing to take on the beast better know that it has claws and teeth, and it is more than willing to use them if it thinks that it’s necessary and that it can get away with it.
Everyone who goes out to demonstrate is taking a risk! A number of my close friends died in America fighting for civil rights and equality. I came damn close to getting myself killed a number of times! It could be as simple as a road accident. You take your life in your hands just traveling on our highways. There are no traffic patrols, and dangerous driving is the rule, not the exception. We saw a bus full of tourists that ran off the Western Highway on our way to Belmopan. Some radio stations had received erroneous information that it was one of our buses. It wasn’t, and fortunately, the tourists were not hurt, but it could have been.
Nobody knows for sure how the police will react to protests. There seem to be a number of things holding them back to a certain extent right now, but you can’t go to a demonstration or a march with the absolute certainty that everything will be all right. In 2005, they dragged non-violent teachers across the cement steps, sprayed pepper spray directly in people’s faces and assaulted them in the police station when they were already in custody. A lot worse happens in other countries, and if we think that a lot worse can’t happen here, we are living in a dream world.
What I am saying is that those of us who are willing to take those risks need to know all the relevant information. The generals in this fight have to be on the front lines, not somewhere safely in the rear. If teachers had been told that the BCWU would not participate, the majority of us would have gone anyway, because the issues are bigger than the BCWU, but if we are going to be on our own, we deserve to know that before we get there, not after. Please don’t promise full support that doesn’t show up. We are risking everything out there and each of us has to make that decision as to what we will or will not do. Accurate and truthful information is something that we deserve. Without it, we are going to have even more problems than we already have.