Bloggers Unite for Human Rights

Today I'm happily joining Bloggers Unite and writing to promote human rights for all people of the world. I dedicate these words to all the millions everywhere who struggle every day against enormous and powerful forces that perpetuate inequality, injustice, poverty, genocide, pandemics and war. They survive though they are denied basic rights like food, clothing, shelter, medicine, clean water, education, religious freedom, political opposition and sovereignty over their own bodies and their own lands. I am privileged to enjoy all of these rights at the moment, more or less, but I take none of it for granted. I am not comfortable in my privilege either, because I am not really free until we are all free.

Yes, We Can.

Many thanks to Helen Klonaris and the Bahamas Summer Writers Institute for including me in their discussion last night on the topic of blogging. The event got me thinking again about the enormous potential there is in blogging, and in blogging as citizen journalism especially, for making a real difference in the world. I've been remembering what drew me in and inspired me so about writing and publishing on the Web. Beside the fact that it gave me a global forum for my writing after a lifetime spent cast away and disconnected on the island, I was taken by the idea of the blog being a source of free flowing, woman-centered news, information and commentary in these days of elitist, media conglomerates, censorship, conformity and silence of the mainstream press with regard to women's issues. I was changed forever to think that I could write and publish blogs that would contribute to this new source of information, and that with a blog I could bypass all the afore mentioned obstacles and be heard. All these years later I'm still in love with the personal freedom and empowerment that writing and publishing blogs affords me, as a writer, as a citizen of the Caribbean and as a woman in the world. I'm still a believer in the power of the blogosphere to promote equality, justice and liberty for women and children. To this end I have joined up with the folks at Bloggers Unite, a community that attempts to "harness the power of the blogosphere to make the world a better place." Members ask bloggers to write on a particular day about an event or cause chosen or created in the hope that "a single voice can be joined with thousands to make a difference." On Friday, July 17, bloggers unite for human rights and I'll be joining them, gratefully, and hopefully. On Wednesday, August 26, I've promised to blog for Women's Equality Day. I invite all my blogging friends to join us. We can change this world. Yes, we can.

It Shows

The city of Nassau looks like hell. It looks as bad as we feel. The center of town is full of abandoned, derelict buidings, entire streets are in ruins. A sickening pall hangs over Bay Street, the old marketplace is a barren lot behind chain link. Potter's Cay is a reeking, ugly health hazard. Inland, poverty and willful neglect combine to crumble the walls and pile garbage on the sidewalks. Past that, hundreds of acres of pine forest have fallen to the developers' big machines and desolation is everywhere. When I see our thirteen year old son looking out of the car window at his hometown, watch his spirit sadden and shrink as he looks out at the shabby, dirty streets, my heart breaks, desperation begins to rise inside me. I am thinking, "This is my responsibility. This is my town, the home I have given him. Why is it like this? What can I do?" I think of my new baby daughter, how perfect and beautiful she is. I don't want to be ashamed to show her her hometown, I don't want to tell her, "That's just the way it is in the Caribbean once you get past the hotels." Or worse: "That's just Bahamian mentality." As if Bahamians were someone other than us. (This was my parents' explanation to me when I was a child.) Worst of all, I don't want to have to fall silent when she asks me what I ever did to make things better. I think about how the broken down appearance of Nassau is really a metaphor for all that is ailing her, it is the manifestation of our collective broken spirit. We the people are tired and it shows.

We have to rally.

We have to call on the government to crack down on the owners of all the abandoned buildings in the city and force them to restore them. We must restore and preserve the historic buildings that survive. We have to shut down the godawful mess under the bridge once and for all and put the fishmarket along the waterfront on East Bay Street. We must understand the connection between the rise of the mega hotel on Paradise Island and the decline of our quality of life as citizens on New Providence. We must forget about another gigantic straw market full of imported goods and instead plant that space with grass and trees, maybe a much smaller market with only truly native work. We need green parks so very desperately. We have to stop the deforestation, stop the destruction of the big trees. We must protect more coastline for Bahamians. As citizens we must all become more individually responsible for our properties, our neighbourhoods, our public spaces. We owe it to our children.

We have to restore Nassau so that we can restore ourselves.

Imagine

Sometimes a woman Member of Parliament in the island patriarchy has to FREAK OUT and disrupt the House when presiding men are attempting to silence her because she is making a plea for justice on behalf of the mother of the teenaged boy hanged in a police station cell. Sometimes she is removed from the chambers by police, shouting to be heard, everyone around her in an uproar. "Tell the truth about a woman's life and the world splits open," Muriel Rukeyser said. MP Glynnis Hanna-Martin told the truth about a mother's grief and desire for justice in the death of her son. She couldn't think about the Budget, she couldn't think about anything but her chance to speak to the most powerful people in the land about this most urgent issue of excessive force by Bahamian police, (if I'm understanding the story correctly) to speak on behalf of all the grieving mothers who have lost their children under suspicious circumstances involving police in our country. This is a mother's issue, a woman's issue. Meaning that it is of serious, fundamental importance to all of us. Imagine if the all the women MPs from both sides had joined Mrs Hanna Martin on the floor of the House, locked arms with her as sisters, women united against violence, now that would have been a groovy sight, all of them being trooped out together, it would have been our generation's mace-out-the-window, a real, Age of Aquarius, Obama moment, it could have been a herstory-making moment in Caribbean politics, it could have signalled hope to all the grieving mothers that the women elected to the Bahamas Government really do care about stopping the violence.

The Revolution Continues

"Where are the activists, where are the crusaders?" My friend, former journalist Marcia Reynoso asked. We are here. Bahamian Feminist writers like Marion Bethel, Helen Klonaris and Asha Rahming of the Bahamas are all writing and publishing the books they came here to write. Nicolette Bethel is writing and publishing good books too, and on the blogosphere she is a relentless voice for the Bahamian artist at home and in the Caribbean community. I have a new manuscript too, taking shape on the desk in front of me. I'll be reading from it at "Witness!", a poetry reading that is a part of the Bahamas Writers Summer Institute programme, along with Helen Klonaris and Obediah Smith, Saturday, July 25 at The Hub, Nassau. Poetry, Stories, they are so powerful, essential to the good revolution, writers are the small, troubled country's brightest and strongest hope. A call is out for submissions to the anthology of writing the Institute plans to publish and our country's most conscious and gifted voices will certainly be gathered up there. These are the places and spaces where the revolution continues, where excellent writing and social consciousness are webbed together, where the personal becomes the political, the political the personal. where our voices are freer and stronger and more transformative than ever before.

I Pray the Authorities are Telling Us the Truth

Reports are that the deceased Nassau baby did not die of traumatic injuries from rape, but instead of a respiratory illness and an allergic reaction to medication given to her to treat it. I hope to God that this is true. Of course, I am suspicious, this is the Bahamas after all, where rape is epidemic, but I pray the authorities are telling us the truth. If they are, and the parents are indeed innocent, then my heart goes out to them for their loss. In the meantime our community needs to continue now to talk about what we will do about saving the many children of our country who are in fact victims of sexual violence.

All I Can Do

A long time ago,
There was a poem beginning
With the line,
A woman’s life is not beautiful.
The poem is lost now but
I think of it now
Facing the newspapers:
A baby dead
Of rape,
A mother in court
For killing her newborn,
A mother grieving
Her teenage son killed
In police custody,
A mother grieving
Her murdered daughter
(they let her killer
out of prison
on the tenth of July.)

The island woman’s life
Is a war,
Combatants are disguised
As the beloved
Until the moment
All hell breaks loose.
Suicide bombers
Are advancing
In the hallways
Of our mothers’ houses,
Women duck
And cover
Numbed by
The falling fire,
Or they turn
Their broken backs
And get taken down,
Or they learn
How to kill,
While the streets
Remain silent and empty
As the Bahamian section of heaven,
All the protesters
Have gone home,
Leaving it to Jesus, poor bastard,
The pastors
Are feeling proud
Of their press release,
Editors are reporting
Sex scandals, not war,
And all I can do
Is write this poem in protest.