…on violence against women
On Sunday, there was a march against the endemic and escalating wave of violence against women, by the “Stop Violence Movement” (SVM). Now if there’s anything that’s past due in this benighted country, it’s that SOMETHING be done about this national shame. Now while the march wasn’t doing anything DIRECTLY against the violence, it’s important that folks could get themselves motivated to actually come out into the streets on a Sunday afternoon – against something that is so prevalent in our society that it’s been normalised.
Meaning, up to now, for most folks, violence against women is such a regular feature of their experience, it’s seen as “just the way things are”!! It’s like the air we breathe in – we don’t give it much thought, do we?? Even when it’s polluted!! It’s just there. But if our air supply’s actually cut off and we’re blue in the face and gasping for breath, you can be sure we’ll be looking to do something about it!!
So maybe…just maybe, the violence against our womenfolk has gotten so overwhelming folks might just demand some action. Maybe it’s just a fad of the times with all the publicity up north against rape and stuff in the post Weinstein/Cosby era? But what the heck? We’ll have to take the spurt of action and build upon it.
But if we’re to ever root out something so pervasive as violence against women…we have to at least look at the structural reasons that have made it so. And it IS structural since we just accepted “it was always like this” and we know it ain’t genetic. While there can’t be any single reason, we can do worse than start with the very symbolic Cuffy monument where the “SVM” chose to end their march. It began at Parliament Building where our laws are made.
Were the women marchers aware that when Burnham picked Cuffy as our National Hero, his favourite historian, PH Daly, supplied the rationale that was foisted on the nation? When it was pointed out that the revolutionaries had raped the white women after they took over the plantations, Daly explained – to Burnham’s approbation – that it was just a case of “do fuh do nah obeah”!!
According to our eminent historian Alvin O Thompson, Daly wrote of the act of rape: “the derogatory weapon of the triumphant underdog went into action. And thus sex in the Revolution was used penally. And thus the moral defilement of African women by white men for centuries was throbbed back into them, full measure, pressed down, running over and overflowing.”
Your Eyewitness hopes the “SVM” isn’t endorsing the PNC’s notion of “revolutionary rape”!
…on coalition politics
Talking about “domestic violence”, your Eyewitness is reminded about the status of the relationship between the PNC and AFC. We can now – without hyperbole – accept that APNU is PNC by another name, now that the WPA, the only coalition element that had some legitimacy, has been “mannered”!! One retired hurt (Roopnaraine), one thrown out on his ear (Hinds) and one in limbo (Thomas)…and more to come!!
We know the promise by the AFC leadership triumvirate to review the Cummingsburg Accord last Valentine’s Day – as mandated by its own terms – has passed: right after PNC Leader Granger said there was no need for any talks. Now there’s murmuring that the terms under which the AFC will be going into the next LGE joined at the hip with the PNC haven’t been revealed.
Are these folks nuts?? Have they forgotten the “legacy” of the PNC with its first coalition partner – the UF? When D’Aguiar threatened to quit, Burnham let him…and bribed the other MPs to stay with the PNC!!
Trotman’s already been bought!! Who’s next??
