Outside children of the balisier

THE EDITOR: Please permit me to respond to Mr Wycliffe Morris What the “evil Thing” has done to us. Printed on 29 /09/04. As an ardent reader of your paper, I must first commend you for your balance in representing the various existing views. Ms Suzanne Sheppard’s piece was an excellent piece. One cannot  however say the same of Mr Wycliffe Morris. Some people seem to think that we are fools out here. In a desperate effort to promote himself and his hopelessly skewed view of the people of Laventille, he attempts to transmorgify a genuine newspaper article into some piece of scrappy  psuedo-socialist propaganda.

Mr Wycliffe Morris should note that he is a  prime example of that same PNM syndrome he so hates. laying of blame on someone else other than oneself, not taking responsibility for one’s destiny. Let me explain. Mr Morris said that he was a resident of Nelson Street etc etc. I know of many other residents of Laventille and surroundings who are far more successful than him in his “Former Director of Education, NUGFW” portfolio. Arthur Lok Jack, Gerald Yetming, to name two. It is hard for me to conceive a man in his position in a trade union talking this kind of rubbish in this day and age, but then, the NUGFW is/ was never a  progressive trade union. What is their Ideology? What is their philosophical underpinning? What is his view on capitalism and the wage system? (and  these fellas call themselves trade unionists!) No wonder black people in so much trouble. Marcus Garvey gave us an ideology, the Universal Negro Improvement Organisation, Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkurmah and company gave us Pan Africanism. Butler gave workers strength to stand up against oppression. What  has the NUGFW given black people? It is as bankrupt and hopeless as the PNM.

As a matter of fact, a lot of these union leaders are the “outside children” of the “heliconia stricta huber”, ie the baliser plant. As a former resident  of Laventille, I can say proudly that I own and operate my own business, all of my boyhood friends from there are also quite successful. We have one thing in common, we took our future and education seriously. It is high time black people stop their foolishness, Robert Nesta Marley once said, “Only a fool is thirsty in the abundance of water.”

DANE CHRISTMAS
D’Abadie