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Monthly Archives: May 2014

Memorial Day: Is Remembrance Enough?

25 Sunday May 2014

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Human Behavior, United States

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Fallen warriors, Memorial Day, National cemeteries, The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers, U.S. Armed Forces, Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Memorial Day at Alexandria National CemeteryCivil War headstones on Memorial Day
Alexandria National Cemetery – United States
Photo Credit: U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA)

 

Monday, 26 May 2014, is Memorial Day here in the United States. Every year on the final Monday in May, Americans remember and pay their respects to all those who have died while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. For those families who have recently lost a loved one during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the pain is still a raw, open wound. Lots of these families will be visiting national cemeteries and memorials across our nation. To mark our most solemn federal holiday, others will take part in thousands of parades.

As a nation honoring our fallen warriors, remembrance is not enough. We should also reflect on the scourge of war: on our families, our communities, our nation, our world. When it’s not our loved one out on the battle front, do we really care? When the war zones are far away in distant foreign lands, do we feel the pain, the fear, and the loss?

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Brazil FIFA World Cup 2014: Safety Tips

18 Sunday May 2014

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Brazil, Leisure & Entertainment, Urban Violence

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Brazil World Cup 2014, Brazilian street protests, FIFA World Cup 2014, Latrocínio, Safety tips during FIFA World Cup 2014, Urban Violence, Violent robbery

Brazil World Cup Poster 2014Brazil World Cup 2014 Poster
Photo Credit: Portal Brasil

 

While football (American soccer) fans in North America, Europe, and other regions worldwide prepare to travel to Brazil for the FIFA World Cup 2014, just twenty-five days away, Brazilians continue to protest in the streets.

Working class Brazilians are angry. The government has spent billions on preparations for the World Cup: money needed for schools, hospitals, housing, and transportation. Discontent is rife among residents of favelas (slums) in Rio de Janeiro where police and military forces are indiscriminately cracking down on criminal elements, to ensure the security of millions of tourists arriving for the games. Increase in rents in the neighborhood surrounding the new World Cup stadium in São Paulo is yet another source of conflict.

To prevent violent protestors from disrupting the games and counter any terrorist threat, the Brazilian government, with the assistance of American and other foreign expertise, has beefed up security. When deployed in the twelve host cities, the proposed 150,000 heavily armed police and military security forces will also serve to inflame the already angry local population.

World Cup fans can stay safe by steering clear of the street protests. They’re likely to turn bloody.

Latrocínio (robbery followed by death), a common crime in Brazil’s most violent cities, is another serious threat. In their safety guide, for distribution to tourists arriving at the airports, the São Paulo Civil Police warn: When robbed, “don’t react, scream or argue.” Robbers who are armed and under the influence of drugs, when countered, do not hesitate to use violence.

The case of the young woman, out jogging one morning along the seaside promenade in Fortaleza, left a lasting impression on me. She lost her life for refusing to hand over her running shoes to the robber.

Reduce the risks to your security by moving about in groups when visiting selective tourist attractions, night clubs and bars. Be alert when walking along city streets. Observe if you’re being followed. Get lost and you set yourself up for trouble. The person offering assistance may actually be part of a scheme to rob you that could end in violence.

Find more safety tips in an article published in the Diário do Nordeste of Fortaleza, Ceará, in March 2014.

Stay safe. Enjoy the games.

Bring Back our Girls: Mothers in Anguish

11 Sunday May 2014

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Family Life, Human Behavior, Save Our Children

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Boko Haram, Child abduction in the United States, Mothers, Nigeria

Bring Back Our Girls - Million-Woman March - Abjuja - Nigeria - 30 April 2014Bring Back Our Girls – “Million-Woman March” – Abuja – Capital of Nigeria
30 April 2014
Photo Credit: Gnomes National News Service

 

Mother’s Day. Today in the United States and in some countries around the world, we honor our mothers. We owe our mothers our lives and much more. But all is not rosy for mothers.

We women have been blessed or cursed, perhaps a bit of both, with Nature’s endowment of childbearing and child nurturing. Our role as child bearers is a labor of joy and sorrow, love and pain. We rejoice in our children’s achievements, however small; we suffer when they are sick or injured. If we could, we would take their pain. When they are bullied by their peers, we stand ready to defend them. When they are snatched from us, we find no solace.

For the mothers of over 270 girls kidnapped, almost a month ago, from their school in northeast Nigeria, this is a time of great anguish.

“It’s unbearable. Our wives have grown bitter and cry all day. The abduction of our children and the news of them being married off is like hearing of the return of the slave trade,” said Yakubu Ubalala (The Guardian).

Their 17- and 18-year-old daughters, Kulu and Maimuna, are among the girls kidnapped by the Boko Haram Islamic Fundamentalist group. The leader of the group has since threatened to sell them. In times of political unrest, our children, especially our girls, are easy targets for male aggressors.

In the United States, over a hundred children go missing every day, abducted by a stranger or slight acquaintance (Child Find of America). These children are either held for ransom, killed, or kept permanently.

This Mother’s Day I honor all mothers who grieve for a missing child, not knowing whether they are dead or alive.

Blessed are those mothers whose sons and daughters have not yet been touched by the evil impulses of our human nature.

“I am looking for you, Mother” – Poem by Lisa Alvarado

07 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Poetry, United States

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Chicano poet, Lisa Alvarado, Mother’s Day, Raw Silk Suture, The Housekeeper’s Diary

La Tierra Santa by Chicano Artist Cecilia AlvarezLa Tierra Santa by Chicana Artist Cecilia Alvarez
Photo Credit: Cecilia Alvarez

 

In honor of Mother’s Day on May 11, my Poetry Corner May 2014 features the poem “I am looking for you, Mother” by Chicano poet Lisa Alvarado. (Chicano poetry and literature is the term used for writing done by Mexican-Americans about their way of life in America.)

“I am looking for you, Mother” talks about a mother who is lost to drugs.

So you give the man the paper
and he gives you the pills.
The pills help you.
The pills have stolen you from me.

The following lines from Alvarado’s poem inspired my Haiku poem, “Mother”:

I wonder if you will ever hold me or tell me
I am beautiful.

“I am looking for you, Mother” is the final poem in Alvarado’s poetry collection, aptly titled, Raw Silk Suture. Her poems are like raw wounds stitched together with tenderness. Her six poems in the opening section, “The Bone House,” about childhood sexual abuse, best exemplify this.

In the opening poem, “R.E.M.,” the daughter does not understand how the sexual abuse happened. She knows only that she hates her father. Her old wounds of childhood are restored in “Journal Keeping,” the final poem in the section.

My body is a family album;
a record of where rage came to rest.
The task is now absorption,
transformation;
the quiet remaking of cells,
folding softly and strongly
into myself.

The section, “The Housekeeper’s Diary,” first drew me to Alvarado’s work. She not only calls our attention to the life of the Latina housekeeper, but also takes us inside the home of the rich American. Here, too, the poet throws us the raw bone.

In “Reason #1,” she writes:

Women clean
because
every time
they picked up a pen
every time
they danced
someone
broke their fingers
and
bound their feet.

In “Hand Laundry,” the intimate revelations of washing another woman’s underwear indicate the woman’s disregard for and trust in her Latina housekeeper.

I shouldn’t have to know these things…
What is important
is I fold
and store
her life
her sex
in the right place,
and keep my mouth shut.

The mother of the rich, white, Jewish family in “Sons of the Very Rich,” sees her nineteen-year-old son as a sweet boy, a good boy. The housekeeper sees a young man who is dirty and lazy. She knows the amount of dope he smokes and used condoms to be disposed of before his mother comes home.

The housekeeper’s “Home” reveals another reality: a place where she can come back to [her]self in the arms of [her] beloved.

Smells linger everywhere.
Not odorless and antiseptic,
like the place you call home,
the place I clean for you.
This is where I live.
In a place the size of your living room.

Read “I am looking for you, Mother” and learn more about Lisa Alvarado’s work at my Poetry Corner May 2014.

A Happy Mother’s Day!

Guyana: Rabbi Washington & The House of Israel

04 Sunday May 2014

Posted by Rosaliene Bacchus in Guyana

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Assassination of Walter Rodney, David Hill, Fr. Andrew Morrison SJ, Guyana History, Guyana Politics, House of Israel religious cult, President Forbes Burnham, Rabbi Edward Washington, Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry

Rabbi Washington of House of IsraelRabbi Washington of the House of Israel
Photo Credit: Guyana Chronicle Online

 

Thirty-four years after Walter Rodney’s assassination, the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry held its first session on 28 April 2014 at the Guyana Supreme Court Law Library. Comprised of a three-member team of top Caribbean attorneys from Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad & Tobago, the Commission’s task is to examine the facts and circumstances surrounding Dr. Rodney’s assassination. Of special interest is the perpetrator, the late Guyana Defense Force Sergeant Gregory Smith who supplied the bomb-rigged walkie-talkie that killed Dr. Rodney. Who was behind Smith’s actions? Who helped him to escape to French Guiana?

Several police files pertaining to the case have already disappeared. (Kaieteur News)

On Day Two, the testimony of Dr. Rodney’s older brother, Edward, implicated the House of Israel religious cult: a “hit squad” for the then ruling People’s National Congress (PNC) government. In early 1979, Edward had seen Gregory Smith wearing “the House of Israel black, red and green uniform.” (Guyana Times)

Karen de Souza, a member of the Working People’s Alliance, the party Walter Rodney co-founded in the 1970s, confirmed Edward’s testimony of the House of Israel’s allegiance to the PNC government and their role as political thugs for subduing the government’s political opponents and breaking up political meetings. (Caribbean Life News)

The House of Israel holds no ties with Israel or traditional Jewish religion. The cult was established by David Hill, an American Black Power fugitive who arrived in Guyana in January 1972. Using the alias Rabbi Edward Washington and claiming to be the Prophet Elijah, the religious leader attracted mainly poor and uneducated Afro-Guyanese. He preached that Jesus was a black man and that Africans were the only true Jews.

Forging ties with Afro-Guyanese President Forbes Burnham, Rabbi Washington propagated his racist message on the state-owned radio station. As the cult grew, claiming a membership of 8,000, they became tools of the oppressive PNC government. As Edward Rodney testified, a special cell worked in conjunction with the Guyana Defense Force. (Guyana Times)

After Burnham’s death in 1985, Rabbi Washington and his House of Israel no longer enjoyed impunity under the new PNC President. In July 1986, the Rabbi and three cult leaders were arrested and charged with a nine-year-old, in-house murder. Before completing his sentence, the Rabbi was released in August 1992 by the newly elected Indo-Guyanese government. The Rabbi left for New York, but, fearful of arrest in the United States, he returned to Guyana. Thereafter, he kept out of Guyana’s politics.

In 1997, the American Black Power activist, turned religious leader, returned to the United States. Eight years later, he died in New Jersey at the age of seventy-seven.

During an interview (1985-1986) with Fr. Andrew Morrison, S.J., then editor of the opposition newspaper, Catholic Standard, the fallen Rabbi confided about holding incriminating audio tapes and photographs of the “dirty work” he had done for the PNC government. [1] If such evidence does exist, will the Walter Rodney Commission of Inquiry bring it to the light?

The plot unfolds…

Learn More

[1] Fr. Andrew Morrison, SJ, Justice: The Struggle for Democracy in Guyana 1952-1992, Red Thread Women’s Press, Guyana, 1998, pp 167-175.
[2] Nishani Frazier, The “Other” Jim Jones: Rabbi David Hill, House of Israel, and Black American Religion in the Age of Peoples Temple, Department of Religious Studies, San Diego State University, USA, December 2013.

 


Dear Reader, my debut novel, Under the Tamarind Tree, is now available at Rosaliene’s Store on Lulu.com and other book retailers at Amazon, BAM! Book-A-Million, Barnes and Noble, Book Depository, and Indie Bound.

Learn more about Under the Tamarind Tree at Rosaliene’s writer’s website.

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