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“You are Involved” by Martin Carter, British and American Corporations, Corrupt politicians, Disillusioned voter, Foreign debt, Foreign reserves, Government, Police arrest, Republican and Democratic Parties
Source: http://www.flickriver.com
Last week, I witnessed an arrest outside my office in Los Angeles. The handcuffed adult Latino man sat motionless and subdued on the sidewalk. He did not appear drunk or on drugs. A small gray duffle bag, with a red formée cross, lay nearby. Was the cross a gang symbol? Was he a wanted criminal? Whatever his crime, I figured it must be serious to involve five cops, in three police motor vehicles and a motor cycle. For half-an-hour, they conferred with each other, spoke on their phones, and took photos. After escorting the man to a vehicle, they all left the scene.
The arrest disturbed me. I thought of millions of Americans who have lost their jobs and homes, and face hunger. They wait, handcuffed and subdued on the sidewalk, for our government to do its job of implementing solutions for our economic recovery.
I recalled my own helplessness as a young working mother in my native land, Guyana. When my friends in the civil service complained of compulsory donations to the ruling party and compulsory volunteer work at a government-run agricultural project, I had felt immune as a private sector employee. My time came when the Deputy Prime Minister visited the foreign-owned bank where I worked. During his two-hour speech, he reminded us of our role in nation-building. The tension in the bank’s lobby left me with a nauseous migraine headache, lasting three days.
With dwindling foreign currency reserves to pay our foreign debt, the Guyana government banned the imports of consumer goods, including wheat flour, and froze foreign payments for imports already shipped and awaiting clearance at the port. As a team member in the Foreign Exchange Department, I witnessed our clients’ devastation and loss of business.
Frequent blackouts, intermittent water supply, food shortages, and increased crime became the new order. Rice and sugar, valuable export products, became hard to get as our government strove to increase export sales and earn foreign currency to buy oil and other vital imports.
In Guyana, where the ruling party rigs elections to stay in power, our votes for change have little effect. In Brazil, voting is compulsory and becomes a tool for corrupt politicians who buy votes of the uneducated poor population and those of the working class seeking more secure government jobs. In the United States, millions of Americans do not exercise their right to vote. Some of you, like me, are disillusioned with both the Republican and Democratic parties governing our nation. Corrupt politicians pander to corporations – with US dollar reserves far greater than small developing nations like Guyana – that put them in power.
With the US government hijacked and handcuffed, we cannot sit motionless and subdued on the sidewalk awaiting our fate.
In the 1950s, while British and American corporations contrived to put the party of their choice in power in an independent Guyana, Martin Carter (Guyana, 1927-1997), in his poem “You are Involved,” rallied us with his words:
all are involved!
all are consumed!
Three Worlds One Vision 
Pingback: HANDCUFFED – By Rosaliene Bacchus « Guyanese Online
Thanks for sharing my post, Cyril. Much appreciated.
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Rosaliene Bacchus, I was “handcuffed” to your impressive piece of writing…short with a punch. Good job!
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Deen, thanks for your kind comment.
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Great Insight of Political realities! Well done Rosaliene Bacchus.
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Thanks, Aleem. We’ve got to keep working for change.
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Rosaliene Bacchus,
I too saw the banned goods in Guyana but not for long; I left and came to Canada in the early 70s. I wonder what you would say if you go back now to see the decay in that beautiful country. If you think it was bad then, go now. Take an honest, objective look and see who are the hand-cuffed and who are free. Look objectively at the handcuffed aspirations of certain sectors of our society.
Just like in your adopted country; a man tried to get involved, tried to bring hope, tried to unite, tried to bridge the great divide…race, that cancer, has permeated and lodged it tenacles so deep in our societies that many of our young will perpetrate the same…I hope it is not too late. I hope that by giving that man in your adopted country another chance to finish the good work he has started; you will have another view; we all will. How quickly we forget what a mess he had taken over.
For our own native land, I weep. I weep at the lessons not learned, I weep at the wanton corruption and short-sightedness, the ignorance of many who just see that cancer and embrace it. It is a pity that we and our leaders in our native land forget about the awesome opportunity we have to choose. Choose to fashion swords into plough shares, work for the common good and merge to effect a new dawn where there is no cancer or handcuffs.
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Thanks for sharing your concerns and pain, Joseph. I, too, weep for our native land. It’s the reason that I write. Oftentimes, I feel like a voice crying in the wilderness. My hope is that my cries will reach the ears of those capable of taking up the plow and transforming the wilderness to a fertile land of opportunities for all.
I believe that the President of my adopted country is a good man and that he truly has the interests of the people at heart. Sadly, like we the people, he too is handcuffed. Until we can free our government from corporate money, real change will remain a dream.
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Joseph, I believe that time has cultivated a well adjusted man. Like you, I have learned to live life objectively and have reinvented and adapted wonderfully in my adopted homeland. You know when we all left Guyana, we thought we were coming to the “Promised Land” but all that was a fallacy. Infact, many of us struggled through some really difficult times but came away alittle bruised but optimistic. So, when Rolaliene Bacchus used the narrative “handcuffed” as a analogy to social injustice in America, many things came to mind. First, I thought about President John Kennedy, who, in his inaugural address to the Nation, offered a memorable plea of self- sacrifice as his vision to get America moving again, when he delivered these words, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”. Like Kennedy, President Obama is also faced with the same economic and military problems today and is asking for our help to bring about the CHANGE for his vision for America.
Similarily, this was the same self-sacrifice Burnham has asked of us Guyanese, when he banned some products and asked the nation to give of their time to help move the country foward. Well, many of us thought he was a dictator and we all packed our bags headed for North America, believing that the grass was greener on this side. Even more so, many of us did jobs we would have never done in Guyana and are too ashamed to talk about it sometimes. Though, it may be impossible for some of us to understand the facts of running a country, it should give those with a deep sense of reasoning, something to think about. Sometimes the human spirit is so wrapped up in things unproductive that we at times are unwilling to accept the fact that government cannot do everything for us and at some times in our lives, we have to take responsibility for our own actions. “Hancuffed”
In short, “handcuffed” is not an enigma but truly a world wide social dilemma that has afflicted mankind. So, unless we as a people are prepared to work collectively, then we cannot achieve the Change or Dream President Obama or Dr. King talked about.
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Thanks for sharing, Tara.
Real change requires sacrifice and collective action, as you express so well. Are we up to the challenge or will be remain handcuffed by our own selfish needs?
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While I don’t think the US situation is quite as dire as Guyana’s but the parallels you draw are striking. The problem can’t be solved by the political parties alone; at least not in a short period of time.
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I agree. We are all involved.
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Awesome Rosaliene,
I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and your point of view.
The tragedies of Guyana’s horrific politics are remembered as some attempts to rehabilitate the political disasters called politicians in our beloved country. We see the economic mess in the United States as so many ovoid responsibilities by pointing fingers or by kicking the can down the road.
In the latest, much celebrated, unemployment report, the labor force participation rate had plummeted to 63.7%, the most rapid decline in U.S. history. That means that under President Obama nearly 5 million Americans have fled the workforce in hopeless despair.
The trick is that when those 5 million are not counted as in the work force, they are not counted as unemployed either. They may desperately need and want jobs. They may be in poverty, as many undoubtedly are, with America suffering today more people in poverty than in the entire half century the Census Bureau has been counting poverty. But they are not even counted in that 8.3% unemployment rate that Obama and his media cheerleaders were so tirelessly celebrating last week.
If they were counted, the unemployment rate today would be a far more realistic 11%, better reflecting the suffering in the real economy under Obamanomics.
Several observations come to mind in this world of blind mindless politics.
There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse.”
There is nothing that politicians like better than handing out benefits to be paid for by someone else.”
In politics, the truth is strictly optional and that also seems to be true in parts of the media.”
You have to have a sense of humor if you follow politics. Otherwise, the sheer fraudulence of it all will get you down.”
What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?”
If politicians stopped meddling with things they didn’t understand, there would be a more drastic reduction in the size of government than anyone in either party advocate.
Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default. … The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it seriously.
Ultimately take responsibilities for your own actions and life and expect nothing from politicians.
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Thanks, Dmitri.
I agree. Unemployment in the US is far worse than the official figures. When the politicians are not hiding the truth from us about the real state of affairs, they are spreading misinformation.
We elect politicians to fulfill certain functions in society. We have to hold them accountable for failing their responsibilities and, when necessary, remove them from office.
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I only now read this article which is dated Sept 12, 2012. Well the economy has turned around and unemployment I think is now under 6%. Amazing how things have improved. This piece on the Frank/Dodd bill need some clarification
“Congressman Frank and Senator Dodd wanted the government to push financial institutions to lend to people they would not lend to otherwise, because of the risk of default. … The idea that politicians can assess risks better than people who have spent their whole careers assessing risks should have been so obviously absurd that no one would take it serious ”
It affect only a few large banks. What those banks did was to make risky investments using depositors money in such things as derivitives in which only the banks benefit with the returns. If the investment fails then tax payers money will have to be used to bail them out as happened in 08. The bill required the banks to use their own money (and not risk public funds) for such risky investments. The issue is really not the risk but whose money is used for such a risk.
The republican controlled House has now repealed this bill. Whose side are they on….the working man or big business.
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Thanks for dropping by, Albert, and adding your thoughts.
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At the very least, we are still talking, still thinking, still (hopefully) listening – as American poet Jack Gilbert has said “Must we live without hope?”
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Angela, when the response to protests in the US are pepper spray and imprisonment, I doubt that our leaders are listening.
“Must we live without hope?”
I believe that…
Wherever there’s love, there’s hope.
Wherever there are people willing to risk their lives in fighting for justice and fairness, there’s hope.
Wherever there’s an acute awareness that we need to change course, there’s hope.
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I agree, Rose, that leaders are not, obviously, listening but I was really thinking of you and me and all the “you’s and me’s” of the world when I said “listen”. We need to see each other, hear each other, and take strength from each other’s knowledge and experience – and then “do” whatever, however we are able.
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Yes Angela M. Now, even the so called Leaders of the Democratic system, have become like the Tinpot Dictators, squandering Billions while their citizens live in poverty.
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Thanks for the clarification, Angela.
Yes, connection with each other is very important in bringing about change. I find this a real challenge in Los Angeles where we often don’t see or meet our neighbors. And when we do, our exchange can be very superficial.
Mobilization will have to come from our church, school, and other communities and organizations where people come together for a common purpose.
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