Extreme Measures

I maintain that there’s a fine line between stupidity and faith and God never helped anyone who didn’t help herself.

If one were to judge from the conversations on some of the local radio talk shows, we can easily sum up that things are bad. But we don’t need talk shows to indicate that. We just need to listen to the conversation on the roads.

The country is on a journey to hell in a big basket. Do not be fooled. This is not a basket that will go floating down a river to be saved by any potential foster parent. We are destined to defend ourselves.

What do you do when there is no metaphorical roof over your head and a secure gate? You come together to protect your kind. House, land and wealth notwithstanding, many citizens have no life worth calling “quality”, in the sense that we use the word — “affordable cost of living”, “security” etc.

What we are now is a result of consecutive governments’ poor management and our own lack of proactive behaviour, among other factors.

Crime doesn’t simply escalate overnight. It takes little incidents over the years that we ignored, in the same way that we are ignoring them now. We “let things run its course” as some people say.

Well why don’t you just allow the rats to overrun your house? One day they’ll evacuate. Live in the squalor. They’ll leave one day. Have faith.

Where we are at now is our fault. Prices rise and we still buy. Somebody gets murdered at IAM and everybody talking in their house about what really happened but we still patronise the place. Little things.

But enough is enough. This is becoming a heavy women’s issue now, this crime. And women, of all beings, have enormous power. Whatever fights for women’s rights we have had, we have had to do it ourselves anyway.

I do not identify with the radical feminist movement but justice is justice.

So why not add the fight against crime to the list of the women’s do-it-yourself tasks? Sex-trafficking, rapes, murders — why are we still waiting? When do we begin to realise that we have the power to change the state of things? If as the saying goes, don’t doubt the stupidity of a group of people, we also should not doubt the power of the group.

Our powerlessness is only a veil. It reminds one of the oppressed, let’s assume they were slaves, who, despite the fact that they outnumbered the slave master, didn’t think of revolting and burning down the Great House. But, in places that they recognised that they were powerful their perseverance brought them freedom.

After the Westminster attack last week, Muslim women came out and stood in solidarity on the Westminster Bridge in opposition to the hateful attack.

Women. Because we all know that if anyone holds the keys to change, it’s a community of women.

As much as many of our societies thrust upon women the responsibility for upholding traditions, it is not oppression unless others make it so. It is empowering and we can use it at will. It’s a classic case of using an assumed weakness as a weapon.

After all the kidnappings and the murders and the atrocities on women and children, why I ask are women not shutting down workplaces and taking to the streets here? This is not England where human chains on Westminster Bridge send a powerful message. It was only powerful because it is tied to a history of such events. Not in Trinidad. We never had a model for that. This is a place where respect must be demanded, not earned. Earning is a concept fit for societies where the image of revolution is ingrained in the collective consciousness of the national and international market. In Trinidad the reins of power have to be snatched.

I will support that movement.

Peaceful protests do nothing in a space like ours. We have no history of revolution that makes a non-violent march revolutionary.

We have nothing to lose. The cost of living is high already.

This government, like every other has failed. Forget the next three years. Two years is enough for us to note a trend.

So, what do women have to lose by shutting down workplaces? Complete mayhem — open gunfire and rapes on the street in broad daylight — might be the next step for our c o u n t r y .

Perhaps it’s time to claim the peace of mind that is rightfully ours.