hashtag SOE

i purposefully hadn’t bothered to comment on the trinidad and tobago government’s state of emergency all this time because i think it’s a load of crock and save for that, i really didn’t have anything constructive to employ in the conversation initially. who goes pulling states of emergencies all willy-nilly from out their backside like it’s nobody’s business? & sorry, but i also don’t trust the average local officer to not exploit the SOE — i feel like some might be gorging themselves on power, beating the pavement like giddy overlords drunk on the high of tossing alleged miscreants into the backs of pick-up trucks with no recourse. the whole thing just doesn’t sit well.

also, i’ve mused on crime & race before on here and though jack warner doth protest too much — images do tell a perspective, a slant, that is all. the whole discourse in parliament and outside is often full of fail. first of all, coming from the presupposition that black males in trinidad are posited, innately, as The Criminal — that in and of itself is a flickin’ problem! all the hand-wringing is coming from these problematic, patronising places from atop a moral high ground that makes some of us feel good about ourselves and meanwhile, root issues and inequity aren’t being solved. the kinds of insensitivities being spewed also makes me shiver to my core: “lock dem up” — “all ah dem” and things of that nature, when you don’t even know the hows and whys. bet your talk change when they come for you or someone you love though.

i don’t care if you ate a new born baby for breakfast, one of the hardest things to do is to extend people who do wrongfuckedupshit their full humanity. is it hard as hell to do sometimes most of the time? yes! but trinis going down that road, all too easily, man. since when you “know” people must have done something because they living on nelson street? that address in and of itself doesn’t define a person — and it shouldn’t. you judge people by their character–what they do (and, sometimes, what they say) and what they live and practice — not where they reside or come from or what you hear in a packaged soundbite.

the so-called “big fish” (trademark to mr. ramlogan and others) still exist and you bess believe that if i am on my grind and seeing top of the top shottas living life good and remaining untouchable in safe enclaves in certain parts of The Island — that gives me something to aspire to,  no? and the big, big, agouti in the room here is race & colour & class. no one is really saying shit about where these intersect and impact the criminality narratives. plus all the statistics — like crime statistics drop from the sky in trinidad from this neutral, impartial place — all serve agendas. people trot these out like god, allah — someone handed them down themselves.

most of the SOE narratives are bunk. most of them with regards to crime and criminality are intellectually lazy.  internalised racism is real, people. oppression exists. contextualise the images and lines fed to us. stop fucking around, like it can’t come back and chomp you in the nether regions (or where ever it’ll hurt). and please, above all,  be suspicious as all hell of damn near everything you hear. there’s too much skullduggery and bobol going on — and not just with the powers-that-be. that’s all i have to say in a nutshell. on the other hand, this track, “citizens arrest” sums some of it up quite nicely:

Tags: angry trini, black men, COP, island life, PNM, racefail, representations of black people, state of emergency, trinidad and tobago, trinidad politics, UNC, unchecked swag