bigdrumnation

Reading Time 2 minsApril 21, 2020 Today, April 21st, 2020, marks the 50th Anniversary of the declaration of a State of Emergency in Trinidad & Tobago on April 21st, 1970. That State of Emergency (SOE) was imposed to suppress a growing rebellion sweeping T&T at the time.  While mass demonstrations (the “Black Power Revolution”) had started back on Feb 26th, 1970, the immediate series of events that sparked the declaration of the SOE were; the impending work stoppages on April 21 among sugar, transportation, and telephone workers, with the militant Oilfield Workers workers and their union guaranteed to move in solidarity. In addition, the… Read More »Remembering April 21, 1970 in Trinidad and Tobago: An Historic Marker – Roger Toussaint

Reading Time 4 minsFirst published, April 20, 2020. Republished March 8, 2022 “Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.”― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 I am stumped! There is no way to escape my meditation practice. No classes to teach on campus, no visits to the doctor for another month, no meetings with friends and acquaintances at my book group site, and no… Read More »Pandemic Meditation by Dr. Joanne Dowdy

Reading Time 5 minsApril 9, 2020 #BigDrumNation @BigDrumNation #COVID19Response The biblical parable of the stone that the builder refused is quite applicable in the present Corvid-19 crisis in regards to Caribbean immigrants. It is a cruel paradox that in a moment of xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiments stroked from Washington, D.C., and London, immigrants are proverbial frontline soldiers engaged in the pandemic wars. Caribbean immigrants and their counterparts from around the world have historically been the backbone of the health service industry in the United States of America, Canada, and the United Kingdom. In the US, people from the Caribbean and Latin American are second… Read More »Surviving in These Times – BDN Editorial

Reading Time 4 minsMarch 8, 2020 On #EachforEqual… [Valerie Gordan]: #EachforEqual urges me to do my part in the work towards gender equality and strengthens my own sense of who I am and what I can accomplish.  It also urges me to do my part in my family and work life as I engage with different genders – challenging others to become their best selves and recognizing achievements as they occur.  At the same time, it generates a sense and expectation of support from others, locally and globally for my own efforts.  I am encouraged. Strides In Gender Equity… [VG]:… Read More »Women: No Longer ‘In Service’ Of Men – Valerie Gordan

Reading Time 1 minsWhile March is celebrated as Women’s History Month in the United States since 2016, March 8 is a special day in this most special month. It is celebrated globally as International Women’s Day (IWD). Originally organized by the Socialist Party of America, the celebrations first took place in February 1909 and were called International Working Women’s Day.  What began as a suggestion in 1910 following an International Conference of Working Women in Copenhagen, grew into an international celebration by 1911. Today, IWD growing in popularity. Buoyed by women’s rights activism globally and the #MeToo movement, IWD is… Read More »#EachForEqual- BDN Editorial

Reading Time 2 minsMarch 8, 2020 Big Drum Nation [BDN]: We have seen lately a resurgence of International Women’s Day as a global movement. What does the International Women’s Day slogan, #EachForEqual mean for you in your work life? Keisha-Gaye Anderson [KGA]: I think it is time for us as human beings to see each other as equal in every way, uniquely positioned to contribute something that only we can contribute something to society and essential, and know that we are essential to our collective evolution.  BDN: Much of your work is centered on self-empowerment and self-determination. How does your… Read More »Each Contributing to the Whole – Keisha-Gaye Anderson

Reading Time 8 minsFebruary 20, 2020 Preface In the year 1976, being a History teacher employed with the Ministry of Education in my own Trinidad and Tobago, I was posted to Couva Secondary school in Central Trinidad to teach Caribbean History. At the same time, my friend and teaching colleague, Lance Heath, was posted to Tranquility Secondary school in Port of Spain to do likewise. One cool afternoon, in 1976, after drinking a few beers on Prince Street in Port of Spain, Lance informed me that he was taking his class to meet Tubal Uriah Butler at Filtration Road in… Read More »God, The Press and Uriah Butler – Hollis ‘’Chalkdust’’ Liverpool

Reading Time 2 minsFebruary 20, 2020 Feb 20th, 2020 marks the 43rd anniversary of the passing of Grenadian born Tubal Uriah Butler, central to the founding of the Oilfields Workers’ Trade Union and leader of the 1937 workers uprising in Trinidad and Tobago. Feb (26th) 2020 also marks the 50th anniversary of the 1970 ‘Black Power’ uprising in T&T. 2020 also happens to be a national elections year in T&T.  So, especially for T&T, it is entirely appropriate to reflect on where it all came from, where things are, and are headed. A direct continuum connects 1937, Independence in 1962, the 1970… Read More »Is Tubal Uriah Butler Relevant Today?–Roger Toussaint

Reading Time 3 minsFebruary 28, 2020. Peter Bate (Director). Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death (2004, English/French/Dutch with English subtitles). Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death documentary brings to the silver screen the unspeakable horrors of Belgian colonialism in the Congo. It begins with scenes of terror; Congolese children, men, and women without hands. Their hands were cut off by the colonizers and their puppet troops in a macabre system of accounting. Hands were severed because ‘workers’ didn’t work fast enough. Even children’s hands were chopped off as punishment for late deliveries of rubber. Units of mangled hands… Read More »Congo: Mangled, Severed, and Mined for Profits -Martin P. Felix

Reading Time 1 minsExcerpt of a February 5th cyber chat, on the meaning of independence, with Merle Collins,  the renowned Grenadian writer, in which she reflects on Kamau Brathwaite’s seminal work on ‘nation language.’  BDN: If the advancement of literacy was a key goal of the revo–and even today– why then should authors privilege creole/nation language in their writing?  MC: This is a great question to think about just at the point when one of the great advocates of nation language (Kamau Brathwaite), has passed on.  Brathwaite, a revered and thought-provoking Barbadian writer, died today, February 5, 2020.  Of what he termed “nation… Read More »Valuing Self and Celebrating our Own Creativity… (Excerpt)–Merle Collins