I thank Frank Parker, a former engineer and author of five self-published books who blogs from Ireland at http://franklparker.com/, for nominating me to take up the ‘Three Quotes for Three Days’ challenge.

The rules of the challenge are:

• Three quotes for three days.
• Three nominees each day (no repetition).
• Thank the person who nominated you.
• Inform the nominees.

Due to time constraints, I will not be posting my quotes on three consecutive days, but rather one a week on Sunday. In keeping with the vision of my blog, I will share quotes from a Guyanese, Brazilian, and an American.

My first quote is taken from the 1969 poem, “A Mouth Is Always Muzzled,” by the social-political Guyanese poet Martin Carter (1927-1997).

But a mouth is always muzzled
by the food it eats to live.

The young Martin Carter came to maturity as a political activist during Guyana’s struggle for independence from Great Britain. While campaigning for the colony’s first mass-based, multi-ethnic, democratically-elected government, the young poet used his street corner meetings to educate his listeners about their social and economic condition and to bring together workers of different ethnicity.

On October 9, 1953, the British Colonial Government suspended the Constitution and disbanded the 133-day-old local government. The British arrested and jailed Martin Carter together with four other leading members of the political party.

Out of the racially fractured party arose a new black political party to lead the country to independence in May 1966. Two years later, when the dream for national unity appeared within reach, Martin Carter accepted the position as Minister of Information.

But the poet’s hope for a unified Guyana was short-lived. In 1969 while the government paved the way to become a Republic and took its first stride towards absolute power, Martin Carter resigned as Minister of Information. He publicly expressed his reason for severing relations with the regime with his snarling poem, “A Mouth Is Always Muzzled.”

While we celebrate the victory of our President-elect Donald Trump or protest in the streets under the banner ‘Not My President,” Americans must continue to work to break the stranglehold corporate elites maintain over the elected representatives of our increasingly fragile democratic government.

[For] a mouth is always muzzled
by the food it eats to live.

I invite the following bloggers to take up the ‘Three Quotes for Three Days’ challenge:

• Guyanese Online Blog
• Gerald Stein
• Carol Hand: Voices from the Margins