Reading Time 1 minsI protest because it is in my blood. I feel the strength of my father and grandfather with each step I take. I feel my voice get stronger as I think of their faces. I realize that they were not only fighting for themselves, but for their children and grandchildren. As I stand outside yelling, “No Justice, No Peace!” from the very depth of my being I realize that I am not yelling just for myself— I am demanding change for posterity, as well. How can I bring another brown child into this world without trying to make it a… Read More »Why I Protest–Auguste Leach

Reading Time 6 minsMay 25, 2020 “The truth is that any figure of Africans imported into the Americas which is narrowly based on the surviving records is bound to be low, because there were so many people at the time who had a vested interest in smuggling slaves and withholding data. Nevertheless, if the low figure of ten million was accepted as basis for evaluating the impact of slaving on Africa as a whole, the conclusions that could legitimately be drawn would confound those who attempt to make light of the experience of the rape of Africans from 1445 to… Read More »A Caribbean Reparations Lens on African Liberation Day — Martin P. Felix

Reading Time 5 mins#MothersDay #ILoveMyMom #HappyMothersDay #MotherLove May 10, 2020 “The baby monkey holds on to its mother who jumps from tree to tree. The baby holds on to its mother for life knowing for sure that a slip in his responsibility might become a fatal mistake. The kitten on the other hand cannot and does not make anything to protect itself. It continues to do just mewing letting the mother know its needs. Wherever the mother decides to take it to, sometimes on a nice cushy bed, and sometimes on a poor bed of haystacks, it has to accept that… Read More »My Mother’s MOTHER’S DAY — Dr. Joanne Kilgour Dowdy

Reading Time 2 mins#NationalNursesDay! #COVID19Response #st.kitts&nevis May 2, 2020 Like the king of destruction, the corona virus has ridden hither, thither and yon leaving a trail of death, anguish, and economic despair. The swiftness with which it has claimed thousands of lives, decimated communities exposing fault lines of health and economics, reminds us that “all humanity is as grass” and that “the grass withers and flowers fade.” Yet amidst the darkness and dismay there are many green shoots! Green shoots evidenced by citizens in New York opening their windows at 7 pm nightly for a musical tribute to health workers who put their lives on the… Read More »MESSAGE OF HOPE COVID19 By Dr. Thelma Phillip-Browne

Reading Time 6 mins#coronapandemic #IntWorkersDay May 1, 2020 Even if you have been around the block a few times, or you are a serial cynic – you are still left shaking your head, not so much at how the US government is using the pandemic to inflict further pain on working people but more at the fact that, thus far, they seem to be getting away with it. Shaking our heads that too many workers still have that ‘wait and see’ attitude to this real threat, not just of the pandemic but even more gravely, the government’s callous disregard of our rights and lives. Too many are… Read More »COVID-19: Stand Up And Fight!–Roger Toussaint

Reading Time 2 minsApril 25, 2020 What a morning it was on April 21st, 1970, in Trinidad and Tobago! Along Long Circular Road, just a stone’s throw from the St James Barracks–the Police  Training School–fire broke out at Camp Ogden, the military outpost, while the radio stations blared the news that at Teteron, T&T Defense Force Headquarters, some sort of insurrection was underway. As a matter of fact, my younger brother’s ranking membership in the Regiment and more so his posting at Army Headquarters added a great deal to my curiosity to find out the facts of the matter at… Read More »I Was There! — Duff Mitchell

Reading Time 2 minsBDN EARTH DAY EDITORIAL – EARTH DAY 2020 April 22, 2020 Today is Mother’s Day. No, not that mother, but our older, bigger, original, irreplaceable one – Mother Earth (with due respect!). Yes, April 22, is celebrated around the world as Earth Day. Established in 1970, Earth Day has now become an annual global event – a day that creates awareness, highlighting the unprecedented global destruction and rapid reduction of plant and wildlife populations which are most directly linked to causes driven by human activity with its far-reaching impacts: deforestation, climate change, trafficking and poaching, habitat loss,… Read More »Caribbean Earth Day! #ClimateAction

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