(This article was first published by The Anguillian on 12th March 2004.)
The following words are etched in my memory:
Should I have known your life was so short
I probably would have told you get a fire burning
It only takes a spark.
And they usually evoke a tear. They were written by Marejah Smith (2003) in tribute for the life of 15-year-old Jamida Webster. Tomorrow Saturday 13th March makes one year since her gruesome murder. One year since someone ended her life before she could “get a fire burning.” I asked then: “Were you there when they crucified Jamida?”
And no one answered. That caused me to write that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who see evil and say nothing – who see evil and look the other way; that such places are reserved not only for Jamida’s killer but also for all those who have information about her killer and remain silent; that the hottest places in hell are reserved for a whole lot of us who remain voiceless while our society collapses around us.
Then I recalled the old Anguillian saying: “Today for me. Tomorrow for you.” And I warned, today is for Jamida and her parents. Tomorrow is for other young daughters and sons and their parents. Despite my admonitions, Anguillians slumbered on as if everybody had decided: why bother, it is not my daughter.
Not long after, while Anguilla slumbered – while its people closed their curtains not caring about what was going on around them – Pressure King was shot dead. Again the question: “Were you there when they crucified Pressure King?”
And no one answered. But I recalled the old Anguillian saying: “Today for me. Tomorrow for you.” And I warned, today is for Pressure King, his family and parents. Tomorrow is for somebody else’s son and parents. And would you believe that, with all the mayhem taking place around them, Anguillians slumbered on as if everybody had decided: why bother, it is not my son?
Come January 2004, while Anguillians slumbered Jeremiah Alexander (Sky) disappeared without a trace. I asked then: “Were you there when Sky disappeared?”
And no one answered. No one could. Everybody’s windows were closed. I again reflected on the old Anguillian saying: “Today for me. Tomorrow for you.” I cautioned, today is for Sky and his parents. Tomorrow is for somebody else’s son and parents. But Anguillians could not be bothered and they slumbered on as if everybody had decided: why bother, it is not my son.
As Anguillians slumbered, tragedy struck again (in February) when young Courtney Hodge, was cut down in a hail of bullets, high day. I then asked the question: “Were you there when they crucified Courtney?”
“Yes,” replied Courtney’s two co-workers who had to run for their lives, “but the gunman was masked.” His identity remains a mystery. Like the identities of the killers of Jamida and Pressure King.
It now appears that the sound of the gunfire which levelled Courtney has awakened Anguillians from their slumber. It took the death of a fourth young person, in less than a year, to make them realise that a keg of gunpowder was about to explode under them. This latest tragedy has said, “People of Anguilla, your house is on fire! Wake up!”
Our society is in serious crisis. Of course, people have been killed here before. But only once in a blue moon. The frequency of these recent killings is chilling. It is also chilling in light of the level of professionalism with which they have been carried out. There have been some real clean executions. Flawless. Indeed, we are witnessing new types of crime and new techniques in committing them. Anguilla is in trouble.
There is a heightened level of fear across the island and our first priority must be the apprehension of the criminals. But we are not helping ourselves when there are some among us who are hiding and abetting them. This is partly the consequence of our culture of silence. It is contributing to the destruction of our society. It goin’ lead to our ruination. We refuse to give the Police the evidence they need to apprehend those people terrorising our island but yet we turn around and blame them for not solving the crimes. Make no mistake about it. If we are to succeed in fighting this escalating cycle of crime, in which we are now engulfed, we all got to speak up. In fact, we all got to be Police together.
Having said that, I want to make the point that when criminals are apprehended, the guilty ones and only the guilty ones, must be punished according to our laws. I say this because sometimes when we catch the criminals and bring them to court the jury let them go. There have been several instances where the perpetrators have been guilty as charged but the jurors set them free to be further menaces to society.
Nobody wants to see an innocent man sent to prison. But too often our jurors have said “not guilty” when the evidence against the accused has been strong, convincing and overwhelming. Some years ago, I witnessed a case where there was no doubt to the many who heard the evidence that the defendant was guilty of manslaughter as charged. But the jurors said “not guilty.” The judge told the man he was free to go and when the jurors left the courtroom they all ran to the defendant and hugged and kissed him. They lifted him shoulder high. Regrettably, this practice continues and today we are paying a very high price for those hugs and kisses. I got de feelin, we ain’t see nuttin yet!
Then there was another occasion when, despite the overwhelmingly strong evidence, the jury returned a not guilty verdict. Afterwards, one of the jurors allegedly told people that they were not bringing in anybody’s son guilty because they had sons too – that they would not like anybody to do it to their sons. And that is part of our problem in Anguilla. We have problems catching the criminals and sometimes when we do catch them, the jurors let them go.
Yer know what all this tells us? Trial by jury in Anguilla is a joke and I am of the view that Anguilla is too small a society to have trial by jury. In an island like ours where everybody knows everybody, and where cases are tried and determined before they even reach to court, it is difficult to get convictions. If things continue this way, and if the situation gets worse, consideration may have to be given to replacing trial by jury with trial by a panel of three or more judges. For sure, Anguilla has a very poor history of justice through trial by jury.
But while sending people to jail takes some of the criminals off the street, it is no long-term solution to the spiraling rate of serious crimes. Neither will the problem be solved by building more prison cells. This makes me reflect on the mid-1970s. I remember the Anguilla Civil Service’s newsletter making fun of the fact that we had a jail but nobody was in it. It was empty. To quote the newsletter: “The jail lock up.” The situation was such that Ronald Webster was able to boast (1970): “You may say we have no law, but we have order.” Now we have the opposite. It is mind-boggling how we have reached this stage of social decay so rapidly.
By building more prison cells, increasing the size of the Police Force, installing more security systems and putting policemen at the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School and at street corners, we are treating the symptoms not the cause of our social malaise. One cause is joblessness among a significant number of our young people who expend their energies in different kinds of deviant behaviour. But a major cause is the erosion of our traditional cultural values and norms. Every society has a set of core values which it must pass on from generation to generation, if it is to enjoy social stability and avoid social decay. We have not been passing on those core values and have therefore reached the stage where, as I have written before, the man on US dollar notes is God; where we equate name brand clothes and shoes with love for children; where money for schoolbooks is diverted to Nike shoes and so on; and where our households are run by children and not by adults. We have reached the stage where children have come to regard television as parent, dancehall as church hall, car as house and drug-dealing as a well-paying profession. Thus the reason for the low priority in education, and why a large proportion of our young men is intellectually poor or brain dead.
The fact that we have not been passing on our society’s core values means that we have failed as parents. For this reason much of the criminal activity which we are now experiencing is a consequence of that failure – of poor parenting. The problem is compounded by the fact that we have too many children who are themselves parents.
Now that we know some of the causes we must come up with solutions. Firstly, increased employment opportunities catering to the various skills of our young must be given greater priority. Most often the system caters only for those who have made it academically but, as David Carty (1994) reminded us, “Not all the children coming out of school goin’ be offshore bankers. Some of them have to fish. Some of them have to lay blocks.” We cannot therefore continue to turn a blind eye to the needs of the less academically inclined.
Secondly, as a follow on from the point I just made, we should not fail to pass on to our children the value of a good education; and impress upon them its critical role in providing the skills necessary for their own advancement and that of the society in which they live. Right now most of our young men are so preoccupied with making a fast dollar, by whatever means, that they give education a very low priority. For this reason we have lost a generation or two and must now take steps to prevent the loss of future generations.
Thirdly, a major component of the solution involves the rejuvenation of, and return to, those fundamental elements of traditional Anguillian culture, like honesty, love thy neighbour and hard work, which stood us in good stead over the years. And since good parenting is crucial to this process, training in parenting should be given national importance with special attention being paid to teenage parents. Training in parenting should be mandatory for them and for other young parents whose children are involved in criminal activity. We must first rescue the parents if we are to rescue the children.
Fourthly, as a supposedly Christian society, with some forty churches all across the island, a solution to our malaise must involve the transmission of those Christian principles which were once an integral component of our social bedrock. Irrespective of what one thinks about Christianity, it has had a sobering effect on Anguillian society. I think it was Karl Marx who said religion is the opium of the oppressed. Whether true or false, it has contributed to peace and stability in many societies. With respect to Anguilla, Hubert Hughes observed (1994): “No government could do for the stability of this island as the church has done. We’ve had the church long before we had government and the strength of the society depends on our adherence to our Christian precepts and Christian consciences.”
Fifthly, we should give great weight to the legendary Peter Tosh’s song Equal Rights which said in part:
Everyone is crying out for peace . . .
None is crying out for justice.
Peter was making the point that we cannot have peace without equal rights and justice. Most of us would agree.
And most of us would also agree that there is no easy way out of the situation in which we now find ourselves. For sure, it did not develop overnight. The seeds were planted over many years. We sowed the wind and now we are reaping the whirlwind. And we must be prepared to expend considerable time and effort in strengthening our society’s foundation and walls to prevent us being swept away by the whirlwind. We have a fight on our hands and must prepare for the long haul. It calls for the involvement and commitment of all sectors of Anguillian society including the church, the government and civil society groups. It calls for a community approach or else we goin’ lose the battle.
