Campbell's Commentary - OF EQUAL RIGHTS, JUSTICE AND THE PANDEMIC

By Aubrey Campbell,

NEW YORK, NY. Tuesday, June 02, 2020 – My brothers and sisters, the month May is behind us, and June is ahead of us. Important for the fact that we will take the time to celebrate the contributions of persons of Caribbean heritage to the many facets of the American landscape.

June will be observed as Caribbean American Heritage Month and from the look of things pandemic and otherwise, it will be a June like no other.

High on the agenda will be disaster mitigation and management, political representation, and race relations, to name a few.

The events of the past week and certainly the first a quarter (Q1, will have everyone talking and hopefully, more listening!

Certainly, the time for action is now. A change is gonna come!

Ladies and gentlemen, I am still recovering from the events and images of the past week, the kind that has left us with death and destruction as sections of the population question its right to life and levity in these United States, where once again, black lives don’t seem to matter!

For crying out loud, we are in the midst of a pandemic that has shown beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the fight for equality and justice might very well be a pipe dream, a dream that died with our leaders of the 1960s and 70s.

And now, 30 years after Rodney King and Los Angeles, 6 years after Eric Garner and New York City, we come face to face with George Floyd and Minneapolis.

Clearly, nothing and not much has changed!

White police officers across this country do not care about black lives. For them, black lives matter only for the sake of promotion and making and meeting arrest quotas!

In the context of the pandemic, Black lives and Black-owned businesses are once again at the crossroads. It’s not the first time, so, will this be the last?

How do you call for change? How do you protest for attention and change…? For me, that is where the confusing conversation starts…!

Why the burning and the looting…?

 Is that the only way for attention and change…?

Are we stepping back to go forward? It would seem as if we are taking one step forward and two steps, backward. That is not progress!

As I said elsewhere last week, silence is not an option, but how long shall they kill our brothers and sisters and families, while we stand aside and look..?

The images are disturbing but as the governor says, they show, for all the world to see, another chapter of the continuing injustice and inequality in America!

This kind of injustice and inequality will not be corrected by the level of violent protest, witnessed last week.

It will take more than that!

It will take leadership from the highest levels, leadership with foresight, leadership beyond the narrow confines of black and white, red, brown and blue, leadership that is not vengeful, leadership that is not narcissistic, leadership that is not swampy and leadership that is intelligent beyond the 12th grade…!

This is America, these are the United States, a great nation and we deserve better!

What is frightening is that we seem to have an idea of what we want. We have an idea of the equality and the justice that we want but we are not united enough to make achievement possible in the present context.

From California, Texas, Georgia, Missouri, and New York, the pandemic in Minneapolis is yet another defining moment of our short lives, here in these United States…

We are still enslaved, shackled by the ‘crab in the barrel’ mentality. We are not trusting nor trustworthy, hence the change we seek now might still be a dream, lost in the color of our skin!

The other matter that came across my desk last week, and which I am still working on, has to do with the word ‘Bickle’.

Twenty-five years ago, Irwin Clare, Sr., and company established a welfare unit to benefit Jamaican and Caribbean student/athletes competing in less than ideal conditions at the Penn Relays Carnival in Philadelphia.

So, why would another Jamaican, in 2020 America, decide to name his business ‘Bickle’, if not to deceive and confuse?

I’m reminded of those freaking ‘dunce bats’ who, given a chance to copy, write down up to your name, instead of theirs!

Brethren, you need to cease and desist! Making headlines in a non-descript paper are not going to help your case.

Pandemic or not, your intent is devious and malicious!

Like I said, I am still working on it.

Stay tuned.