PROTEST RALLY 1 PM TO 4 PM, 8 JUNE 2020 IN FRONT THE US EMBASSY IN L’ANCE AUX EPINES
AGAINST RACIST POLICE VIOLENCE AND THE THREAT OF US MILITARY FORCE IN AMERICAN CITIES
AGAINST GRENADIANS IN DIASPORA
Organised by lawyers at the Criminal Defence Bar of Grenada
From St George’s Grenada, at the gates of the United States Embassy we stand to bring a message to President Donald Trump through his government offices here: The violence he is asking for against people who protest racial violence and are angry over 400 years of American injustice and racial hatred that the call of the American president is immoral, it is unprincipled and has no place among the family of good governance by any nation anywhere in this world. The American President has put at risk the good relations between the United States and the people of the Caribbean if he continues to press for violent solutions to problems of racial injustice in his country.
Caribbean Americans commonly referred to as West Indians, have been part of the United States since that country was founded. Alexander Hamilton, one of the American Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1776 was born in St Christopher Nevis.
Throughout the history of the United States, West Indians have been in deep and strong alliance with African Americans in the fight for human rights and racial justice. From Jamaican Claude McKay of the Harlem Renaissance to Constance Motley-Baker the first female Federal District Court Judge in the United States West Indians have been wholly woven into the American national fabric. Motley-Baker’s cousin Bertram Baker was New York’s First Assembly Speaker. Dr Neil DeGrasse, the eminent physicist along with Hamilton, Cicely Tyson and the 2 Bakers mentioned all trace their parentage if not their actual birth to the small twin-island state of St Christopher and Nevis in the Caribbean.
General Colin Powell, former US Attorney General Eric Holder, Harry Belafonte, Stokley Carmichael, Malcolm X, Sidney Poitier, trades union leaders, current day pop culture icons Rihanna and Beyonce, Patrick Ewing of the NBA, Patrick Chung and Pierre Garcon of the NFL and too many to mention in America’s game, baseball, all of these men and women and so many notable others have left and are leaving an indelible mark on American life. Undoubtedly, they have experienced the pain of being Black in America.
Caribbean-Americans are 4% of the US population. That is equal to 13 million Black and brown souls resident in the United States of America today. And those are the documented ones. They know well the pain of American racial violence. Violent police officers and race haters in America do not ask for passports or green cards. All they see is the colour of your skin and their worse appetites for rabid racial violence are set loose.
Today, the human rights struggle to end police and other forms of racial violence have been joined by all Americans – white, brown, black, gay and transgender. With the notable and sad exception being the current American President and his surrogates. It is unspeakably offensive to us here in Grenada that the leader of the United States is calling for US military forces to be set loose on the Black people and people of goodwill in America.
But it is not only in Grenada, here in the Caribbean indeed people of goodwill all over the globe are standing in arrested solidarity with African Americans who have borne the brunt of the deadly knee of American racial violence.
From London to Lagos, San Francisco to Cape Town, Brooklyn to Brussels and from Washington DC to this small but proudly unyielding Caribbean island nation of Grenada where Malcolm X’s mother was born, we are all standing with all victims of racial violence and saying with one voice: ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
Grenada has one of the highest out migrations of any country in the world. Our people migrate at a stunning rate and most of them go to live, study or simply to vacation in the United States. We all have parents, siblings, friends and colleagues, white, black and brown who all reside in America. In zip codes 11203, 11236, 11226 in Brooklyn, in the village of Canarsie and East Flatbush over 25,000 Grenadians are documented as legal residents.
Tens of millions of dollars, essential to the upkeep and support for family here in Grenada are remitted from our families and friends who live in the United States. We are affected by what happens to them. For those who ask, this is an issue that hits home for us that is why we are going out and lending our voices to the global cry for justice for people of colour in the United States.
Here in Grenada members of the local law fraternity, trades unions, teachers unions, civil society and people of goodwill are standing with our African American sisters and brothers and all Americans who want a speedy end to racial violence. If not now when?
The leader of our Catholic community in Grenada was the first here to raise his powerful voice in support of justice, peace and to end that racial violence by police against African Africans.
And now, members of the legal fraternity have rallied with other Grenadians because lawyers everywhere are compelled to erect lawful barriers, to call out injustice before societies descend into anarchy and hate.
And so today 8 June 2020 the voice of the people of Grenada are raised in solidarity with the family of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, young Tamir Rice as West Indians have always stood with their sisters and brothers in the great United States for many, many decades.
From the founding of the nation to the Civil Rights era of the 1960s to the awakening today across the United States, Grenadians at home are standing in solidarity with members of the United States Congress, Black Lives Matters supporters, with members of the US judiciary even with the fearful members of Donald Trump’s government to say as Martin King Jr did, that, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
We have been asked to submit this Statement to Congress Members Hakeem Jeffries, and Yvette Clarke to be inserted in the United States Congressional Record. This statement is also being circulated to newspapers in New York City, London and Toronto and across the region.
Against Injustice. Toward Peace and Reconciliation in all societies and for all people Everywhere.
Totally blown up and fictional, the most racist people I know are black and I’m black by the way.
Racism and police brutality in the US have a context, which is capitalism, a socioeconomic formation which currently has billions of people worldwide “dominated” (Trump’s word) by whites and their self-serving ideologies that keep them in poverty, homelessness, starving, sick, involved in wars not of their making -eternal PTSD. Police brutality is only a small part of the problem: it’s the problem -capitalism- itself that must be eradicated. In Grenada, the problem manifests, not in police brutality, but in high youth unemployment, dropping out of school, teenage pregnancy, food insecurity etc. We can join hands with protesters in the US by protesting against those -it’s the same cause. Let’s call for a universal minimum wage, better schools, full employment, free healthcare, housing, free transport, etc right here in Grenada. George Lloyd died because he didn’t have those: the racist cop was only a minor detail.
Appreciate that remark Lennie, as an American married to and residing in Grenada the civil unrest and uproar regarding racism is long overdue. It’s systematic. I’m proud to be invested by union and overall acceptance here in Grenada. It is my belief that No matter where we as people of the diaspora are we must never accept the ungodly treatment of any human.
Good afternoon. As Americans now residing in Grenada, we wish to express our full support for our Grenadian brothers and sisters as they protest against the violence toward black people in the United States. We regret that we did not learn about the protest today at the US Embassy untill just now–otherwise we would have been there. We are part of the majority of Americans who believe in justice for all people, and indeed that ALL lives matter. We reject Mr. Trump and do not consider him to be our duly elected president. He is a failed human being who has divided Americans from each other and from the rest of the world. Everyday, we are horrified and distraught when we see what is happening in the US under the misquided and hateful behavior of Mr. Trump. We are so pleased and honored to be here in Grenada and have been welcomed by everyone. We love the island and its people. Thank you for accepting us. We join you in this global fight against injustice toward any people anywhere.
I am a Grenadian residing in Canada. I applaud all the people in Grenada who saw it fit to join hands in solidarity with our oppressed brothers and sisters in the United States of America.
Racism is a scourge that is responsible for the deaths of millions of people of African decent; the time has come for actions to be taken all over the world to make this scourge non existent wherever it exists in any part of the world.
Amen my island take a stand for we the African-American brown , BLACK of what ever colour they choose to call us .But Enough is Enough . I feel the pain and hurt for my people i wish I were home to join the match this is why I never I will never like America.I don’t live there and I could never live there . This fool trump call the Caribbean shit hole its America that is the biggest shit hole in the world full of rats and vagrants on the street every where America that is the big third world shit hole. Racists mother f………. That is America. God knows Enough is Enough from slavery time to now that’s A lot for us to still going Through and to keep Silence and pretend nothing is wrong. . I Cry for my people It been too long with knee on our neck ” I can’t Breathe ” . Mama I can’t Breathe help me :.this old rat dirty looking looking cops . They should of put they knee on his neck let him see how it feel. And eyes for and eyes Enough is Enough.I take a stand a knee above all I Stand for and with my People. You old shit face trump.f.. Off