Environmental Crisis in Georgetown, Guyana: As Within, So Without

Hotep:
At this point in our lives as the global community celebrates the coming of light and illuminate sons/suns to the earth, many still are blinded to the importance of protecting, nurturing, cleansing and maintaining an environmentally harmonious earth community in land, waters, air and beyond! To hear that civil disobedience is required to stop genocidal environmental violations that are damaging human life and communities in 2010 going on 2011 is pitiful yet expected within the imperialist capitalist societies that claim freedom, justice and democratic equality for all. So, to have a wonderful "holiday" message shared with us on the eve of the seasons "to be jolly" reminds us of the realities of the helladays that are truly upon us with the false persona blasted in our global media machinery making the earth seem "alright" when she is not.

Consequently, Professor Wilkinson of the University of Guyana- Turkeyen campus shares the voice of the indigenous African spirit embodied within that region and how environmental genocide is permitted in select areas versus others less populated areas. This commentary by Professor Wilkinson could change regions and be applicable to thousands of other communities particularly with African people in resource rich regions. For the record, this happens all over the earth, especially where people of color, limited economic means and abject poverty are forced to reside. So where is the "joy to the world" and the "first Noel" in that? What are any of the leaders doing to listen and implement corrective measures that the people are demanding? Take time to read and review this commentary carefully as more research is on going within our global community to cease the environmental warfare willfully imposed by select chosen few upon others with minimal if any regard to the lives being jeopardized as expressed herein. Listen so we may do the right thing and LIVE Well and LIVE UP!
SHem Hotep

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AS WITHIN, SO WITHOUT
Dear Fellow Guyanese,
Greetings on this blessed season of joy and renewal.

The past week in Georgetown has been a drama of police arrests of two citizens engaging in civil disobedience in protest against human rights violations by the various agencies of the government of Guyana against the people of Guyana; of the comedy of a one dollar bail; of solidarity pickets by prominent Guyanese outside the Guyana High Commission in London; of appeals to the united conscience of Guyana: The focus of all these being the stinking atrocity and shame of our Garden City—the toxic environmental degradation that has never before existed in the history of this country.

The Creator has indeed dealt our Champion of the Earth a hand of hands. How will our Champion play? Does some anxious demon of political and racial arrogance and divisiveness and selfishness and greed and graft and corruption hold the trump card? If so, then our Champion may indeed end his political career as a hollow and pathetic third world dictator, facing the final mockery of a charge of assaulting mother earth and endangering the health of her inhabitants. Or will our Champion seize this moment to take immediate steps to divert the direction of the garbage coming by the hundreds of tons every single day to Le Repentir, and to address the matter of solid waste management as a dire national emergency?

And how will we, the people of Guyana play, when we examine our hand in this terror-filled game of the human conscience? Will we continue to live in our own hollow and pathetic shells, dodging each others’ eyes, denying that our garbage is really, at the bottom of it all, our responsibility, denying our complicity in the bringing or sending of plastics and styrofoam and discarded computers and televisions and scrap metal and much more dangerous forms of toxic waste from our homes and hospitals and shops and bars and restaurants from everywhere on this coastland and even interior areas and dumping upon fellow citizens? Or will we seize this moment to share a common anguish and move to the only right action there is—to stop resolutely and absolutely any further dumping at Le Repentir by any peaceful means, and cease the assault on the health of those communities huddled in despair on and around Savage and Princess Streets, of Cemetery Road and (Creator forbid!) Mandela Avenue.

The game is full of misery and terror because its rules are that the players exercise freedom of choice. They are either all winners or all losers. That is determined. It is a matter of choice.

If we live near the dumpsite, we can be preoccupied with living and bearing one terrible day at a time, examining the bumps on our babies’ skins for abscesses, praying that if the cancer invades our bodies it spares our children, hoping vainly for a miracle; or we can decide once and for all that we will sacrifice all for our children’s health and future.

If we only drive through it every day on a bus, or on occasion in a car, our options are to hold our noses and grimace, or to take full cognizance of the atrocity and determine to end it.

If we live far away from it, so that we only hear or read about it, we might try to dismiss it or deny it and get on with business as usual, or we might consider that we, also, may one day be affected because there is a law of reciprocity at work in the world, and the suffering of others might boomerang on us.

How will this awful game play out? Our children are watching. The world is watching. Perhaps the world doesn’t care. Is Guyana playing to win, or to lose?

Love and Light in this Blessed Season
Sincerely yours,
Certain Concerned Citizens from all walks of life

Charlene Wilkinson
Department of Language & Cultural Studies
Faculty of the Humanities & Education
University of Guyana
Turkeyen Campus
592-222-5501

Caribbean Publishers Ltd.
178 Sugar Cane Street
South Ruimveldt Gardens
Georgetown
592-218-1435
592-642-5119

It takes courage to become happy -- courage to remain true to one's convictions, courage not to be defeated by one's weaknesses and negativity, courage to take swift action to help those who are suffering. Daisaku Ikeda