TIGblogs - Dennis Dames

In Search of Social Justice

As a new year dawns we hope and pray that our people will begin that process that can lead them to turn away from their wicked ways.

Evidently, this is –as the old saying goes- easier said than done.

Such an effort of conversion requires –as an opening gambit – some open admission that they have erred.

Put even more simply: we make no progress –as a people – so long as our people [Bahamians] go out of their way to point the blaming finger against this or that imagined enemy.

We are all – each and every one of us – guilty of making this place what it is and for sure, for what it might yet become; and clearly each Bahamian who professes Christianity as their faith can and should be called upon to live up to its tenets – whether such calls on them to revere and preserve life or to love the neighbor as we love ourselves.

Were they to do so, this would be a more loving and more caring society – one where people pull together in an effort to help themselves and their fellows work for the achievement of the common good.

This so-called ‘common good’ finds itself defined and delineated in the quality of goods provided the society at large; with these including public access to education; access to clean, green and pristine places for their recreation; health-care; protection and all those amenities that conduce towards the sharing of the good life in community with others.

But even as we try to imagine such a more beloved community, we are rudely reminded that; as it has been for some time now; things are still so very bad in this place.

Today’s Bahamas is a sad, angry, suffering place. It is also that kind of place where individualism and greed are pervasive.

As a direct consequence of their deep involvement in this culture, very many people have no real desire to pull together for the achievement of the common good.

And so, in a land where practically everyone is apparently consumed with individual well-being, others who might have been helped are invariably left to fester and rot.

By way of deadly contrast, some others who might have suffered in silence have evidently decided that they would do whatever they have to do in order to survive.

On occasion, this calls for people to become ever and ever more consummate in the arts and sciences involved in tribalism and its attendant cannibalism.

Evidence for this is to be found in any of our nation’s newspapers – morning, noon or night; smack dab in the middle of police reports concerning crime run amok.

Indeed, things have gotten so very bad in our town that one or two politicians we know say that –on occasion- they fear that they could be mugged and robbed as they go about their business of seeking out and talking to some of the constituents.

We are also being told that there are very many small businessmen and women who routinely being ripped off by snatch and grab thugs; the types who would come into a business establishment, grab something or the other - and then flee the premises.

On other occasions, things do go awry and someone or the other is left either maimed or dead, often as a direct result of two-way gun-fire between the police and their feral quarry.

While we have written on this topic on various and sundry occasions, today there seems to be an emerging sense that things are reaching that point where no proffered solution seems good enough.

But bad as things are, the fact remains that this country’s rabid crop of angry young men and as angry young women are today little more than the living expression of some of yesterday’s plethora of failures and neglect.

We must –as a people- address this problem.

And so, while the instances of crime that routinely reach the attention of the public happen to be a major cause of concern; we are today quite certain that these numbers constitute just a fraction of the real total.

Sadder still happens to be the fact that despite any number of noble gestures, high degrees of both sincerity and motivation, things seem to be set on a certain path to even more deterioration and decay.

We also know that today’s troubles are little more than an expression of yesterday’s neglect; yesterday’s decisions to waste money on frivolity; and yesterday’s decisions to rip off the unsuspecting public.

We can and should do better by becoming more honest, more decent and more accommodating to the needs of our brothers and sisters.

And –of necessity – this involves the making of laws that are just.

By definition, this process demands that –in the ultimate analysis- we recognize that there are laws currently on the books that systematically oppress the poor.

January 05, 2011

The Bahama Journal Editorial

Caribbean Blog International