Dr Rad­i­ca Ma­hase

I al­ways con­sid­er June as T&T’s of­fi­cial “protest month.” It is a month that re­minds me that we are a na­tion shaped by labour strug­gles, the fight against in­equal­i­ties and strong lead­ers. His­tor­i­cal­ly, June stands as the month of re­sis­tance, un­rest and pub­lic ac­tion. It is a re­minder of what the col­lec­tive will of our peo­ple can lead to. Thus, I have nev­er been against the con­cept of protest as a move­ment for change. I mean, protest has al­ways been part of how or­di­nary peo­ple in T&T forced those in au­thor­i­ty to lis­ten.

Mar­tin Luther King Jr once said, “Every man of hu­mane con­vic­tions must de­cide on the protest that best suits his con­vic­tions, but we must all protest.”

That, for me, is the heart of the is­sue. The ques­tion is not whether cit­i­zens should protest. The ques­tion is what we are protest­ing for, and whether our protest is guid­ed by jus­tice, facts and moral clar­i­ty.

Let’s look at the Joshua Sama­roo/Ka­ia Sealy sit­u­a­tion. The 19 Bul­lets, 19 Protests Cam­paign start­ed off as a protest against the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions’ de­ci­sion to charge Sealy but has now shift­ed to a call for a na­tion­wide shut­down. Who ex­act­ly ben­e­fits from this? Are the or­gan­is­ers clear about what they want to achieve?

I make no apolo­gies for the fact that I can­not sup­port any protest that sup­ports an in­di­vid­ual or in­di­vid­u­als who run from the po­lice in a chase. Al­so, one would think that the DPP must have some kind of ev­i­dence to lay charges and, if that is the case, then sure­ly, we have to al­low this to play out.

Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t mean that cit­i­zens can­not ask ques­tions, de­mand trans­paren­cy or hold those in au­thor­i­ty ac­count­able. It means that we can­not re­place process with emo­tion and de­cide that be­cause some­thing sounds un­fair on so­cial me­dia, the whole coun­try must shut down.

This week was al­so the protest by the maxi taxi dri­vers. I do agree that some is­sues need to be ad­dressed. The poor trans­port fa­cil­i­ties, es­pe­cial­ly for maxi taxi dri­vers and com­muters, can­not be ig­nored. Many of our trans­porta­tion hubs are in ter­ri­ble con­di­tion. Dri­vers are ex­pect­ed to pro­vide a pub­lic ser­vice but are of­ten do­ing so with­out prop­er fa­cil­i­ties, se­cu­ri­ty or sys­tems in place. So yes, there are le­git­i­mate griev­ances.

But again, we have to ask: who los­es when pub­lic trans­port is dis­rupt­ed? It is the av­er­age work­ing-class per­son who can­not get to work. It is the stu­dent who can­not get to school in time to write an ex­am. It is the el­der­ly per­son and pa­tients who can­not get trans­port to make it to their clin­ic ap­point­ments. While the protest may be di­rect­ed at the State, very of­ten the first peo­ple to feel the pain are or­di­nary cit­i­zens who are al­ready strug­gling. So maybe we need to re­think how we protest.

I think back to ma­jor protest move­ments in our coun­try’s his­to­ry, the Labour Ri­ots and the Black Pow­er Move­ment, when the is­sues raised were well-found­ed and pro­test­ers were clear about their de­mands. They called for things that made sense: bet­ter wages, fair treat­ment, equal ac­cess to em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and re­spect for or­di­nary peo­ple. Some of the re­cent de­mands leave me won­der­ing. For ex­am­ple, the re­quest by maxi taxi dri­vers for the speed lim­it to be in­creased from 65 to 80 mph comes across, at least to me, as ask­ing for a le­git­i­mate rea­son to speed, giv­en the crazy dri­ving we al­ready see on the roads. But this is just my opin­ion.

Hon­est­ly, though, I feel like some­times our pri­or­i­ties as a coun­try are deeply trou­bling. We know how to get loud for some things but we be­come strange­ly qui­et about oth­ers. We can mo­bilise quick­ly when some­thing be­comes pop­u­lar on so­cial me­dia but we keep qui­et when we should re­al­ly be speak­ing out. Where is the na­tion­al out­rage when chil­dren are harmed? Where is the sus­tained anger when women are killed?

I think about An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie. A lit­tle girl who went to en­joy a day at the beach and nev­er re­turned home. She was killed af­ter a jet ski en­tered a bathing area, a place where chil­dren and fam­i­lies should have been safe. That should have shak­en us as a coun­try. That should have raised se­ri­ous ques­tions about safe­ty, reg­u­la­tion, re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty. Yet, as with so many oth­er cas­es, the pub­lic out­rage seemed to fade.

So, when we talk about protest, maybe we need to ask our­selves not on­ly why we protest, but why we do not protest. Why do some is­sues move us while oth­ers dis­ap­pear af­ter a few head­lines? Why can some caus­es gen­er­ate calls for na­tion­al shut­downs, while the deaths of chil­dren, vi­o­lence against women, un­safe schools and the lack of sup­port for spe­cial needs chil­dren do not al­ways re­ceive the same sus­tained out­rage?

There are many things in this coun­try worth protest­ing, but our protests must have pur­pose. It must be for jus­tice, ac­count­abil­i­ty, our chil­dren, the vul­ner­a­ble and the kind of coun­try we say we want to build. Oth­er­wise, protest it­self be­comes an­oth­er ex­am­ple of what we of­ten crit­i­cise in T&T —mis­guid­ed pri­or­i­ties.

As Fred­er­ick Dou­glass once said, “Pow­er con­cedes noth­ing with­out a de­mand.” The chal­lenge is to make sure that our de­mands are for the things that tru­ly mat­ter.