No more heroes

Peta-Anne Baker, Contributor

How many of us will spare even a passing thought about the reason some of us will have the day off on Monday? Given the number of alternatives available, how many people do you think will spend even 15 minutes watching or listening to the presentation of national honours, unless they have a friend or family member who is getting one?

The prevailing environment being what it is - people fearful of losing their jobs if not their lives, the continuing disclosures, allegations and rumours about misconduct in the public and private sectors - made us cynical and full of mistrust. Yet if ever there was a time when we needed heroes, it certainly is now.

Although many of us will reluctantly agree that at least some, ifnot all our current collection of national heroes deserve their status, we will more quickly agree that their lives no longer seem to provide the challenge and inspiration that heroes' lives should. In fact, I suspect that a lot more people know about and are inspired by the lives of Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela than they know about or are inspired by the likes of Garvey or Bogle, whose agenda were essentially the same as Obama and Mandela. A small part of the reason might be that the former are still alive and their deeds are fresher in our memories, so despite the prison sentences or the bad press they have received, their accomplishments are accessible enough for us to arrive at our own conclusions.

Why the continued neglect?

We must, however, ask ourselves whether this neglect has anything to do with our underlying insecurity about whether one of our own could have done anything heroic, and our continuing discomfort with confronting the divisions which still exist in our society, including divisions due to race and colour. We have to admit that, except for the efforts of the likes of the Reverend Devon Dick and a few of the faithful, we have made only a passing attempt to help people understand the significance of Garvey or Bogle. My students are always astonished by the continued relevance of Garvey's ideas and the work of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). When they do take the time to explore the history, they discover many linkages with the goals and strategies of social work and social policy.

One of the many groups within the organisation, the Black Cross Nurses, did extensive youth-development work, and a notable aspect of Garvey's strategy was the creation of uniformed groups for youth and adults. These groups provided a framework for developing discipline, creating a sense of common identity, and serving the social, cultural and spiritual needs of their members. The Black Cross Nurses conducted community health-education programmes that focused, among other things, on educating parents about infant nutrition and child development, and assisted in addressing the welfare needs of members and the urban poor.

A recurring theme in articles in UNIA newspapers was the need to create and sustain black-owned business, a challenge many community-development workers continue to confront. Advertisements in the movement's newspapers explicitly encouraged readers to use the services of a UNIA member rather than taking their business elsewhere.

Talk about integrating teaching about Garvey into the school curriculum remains just that. In the meantime, the prime minister believes that producing thousands of copies of the Jamaica 2030 Development Plan and distributing them to schools will provide some kind of catalyst for action on the part of our youth.

Perhaps we should get a foreign donor organisation to agree to publish a school text about Garvey. This seems to be the most effective route for getting educational materials into the public domain. They could hire the consultants to do the research and organise the workshops to train people in the use of the materials. The only problem is they would have limited influence over whether this knowledge was actually used, and given that many of us, members of the teaching profession included, still believe that Garvey was nothing but a "tiefin' black man", some of his genius and accomplishments might get lost in translation.

From Garvey to windscreen wipers

The impact of the persistence of negative images of self and others came again to light with the recent announcement of the latest round-up by the police of the boys and men who seek to make a living wiping windscreens at the traffic lights in the city.

In a radio and television programme examining this move, which has been welcomed by many members of the public, journalist Emily Crooks responded sharply to the senior superintendant of police's depiction of the target of their efforts as "these people", a term we know is loaded with disregard, if not contempt. I sympathised with the officer as he sought to separate the term from its loaded cultural content, even as he reiterated his obligations as an officer of the law to uphold laws created more than half a century ago to serve the needs of the ruling elite.

However, the most powerful contribution to the discussion came from the no-longer-young man who had grown up on the streets. A man, who would cause many by looking at him to turn up the windows of their cars, gave testimony not just to his own life, which is so like the life of many others in a similar situation. The distinctiveness of Mr Campbell's story was reflected in his plaintive refrain that the termination of his ability to earn a living from the streets had resulted in his falling behind in the payment of his partner money, which in turn was having a negative effect on his ability to continue to care for the children he had (informally) adopted.

Ordinary people, heroic feats

This man, who as a child had lost his own parents and had been consigned to a life on the streets; this man, who had no biological children of his own; this man, had taken responsibility for two children whose mother had died from illnesses associated with AIDS. He was making sure that they were clothed, fed, and schooled. His arrest by the police and his desire not to endure a repeat of his confinement in a police lock-up meant that he was no longer able to pursue his usual livelihood, no longer able to serve the needs of his 'customers', no longer rising at five in the morning, having his cup of tea and setting out as per his schedule to work from six to 11 each day, plying his trade at the city's traffic lights.

It meant that he had less to prepare for an evening meal for "his children" when they returned home from school. It meant that in the height of the back-to-school period he has not been able to put together the resources to send his children back to school, to try to prevent them from falling through the cracks as he had done.

Mr Campbell is no bleeding-heart liberal. He knows the life of the streets and agrees that some, not all, of those whom we see at our major intersections are indeed dangerous. In fact, he could identify those intersections where the problem was most severe. He spoke openly of his willingness to help the police deal with this particular group of youth. The unspoken acknowledge-ment was that they were having a negative effect on his own business, and so like any businessman, he wanted the authorities to deal with the problem. Unlike some businessmen, he gave his public undertaking to work with the police to do so and pleaded for information about how best he and others like him could help.

I heard in Mr Campbell's argument, an eloquent plea to be seen as an individual, not as one of "those people", to be recognised for his own commitment to making his country a better and safer place to live. I heard the voice of an ordinary person doing heroic things. The problem is that neither he nor others like him will ever grace the lawns of King's House.

Thanks to the support and protection of former public defender, Howard Hamilton, he may avoid the full impact of his arrest. But will Mr Campbell be able to repay the debts he has incurred while being unable to pursue a living? Will he resume his place of honour as a member of the partner? As he patiently explained to Emily, who asked whether he could not get into farming (the fallback recommendation of our urban middle classes to the poor), he lives in the depths of the concrete jungle. There is no land there to farm, and, I might add, if we were paying attention to his story, he is one of many who did not "come from country", so he has no "country" to which to return.

I don't know about you reader, but I just found another reason to resist being overcome by despair.

Dr Peta-Anne Baker is the co-ordinator of the social work programme at the University of the West Indies, Mona. She may be contacted at pab.ja2009@gmail.com or columns@gleanerjm.com.