Dear Editor,
There is an endless stream of individuals who pontificate in the letter columns and some in their own columns and in the blogosphere on the plight of the poor in Guyana, especially the plight of the Afro-Guyanese who have been subjected to second class citizenship in their own land.
What I find interesting is that most of the participants in this debate are from the intellectual class, and even though many of them do great service by sensitizing the rest of us to the issues of the day their efforts fail to move the bar, and at day‘s end nothing substantial is achieved in the fight for equality and human dignity. Having studied several models, I am convinced that there will be no progress on this front unless there is a radical move away from empty platitudes and a shift to more revolutionary and direct means of intervention.
The African Guyanese who are suffering due to the PPP/C regime’s failed education system or lack of equal access to opportunities (jobs, capital, etc) they don’t need rhetoric. These people need to first and foremost be organized. What is needed in Guyana is family focused community building and neighbourhood organizing campaigns. If these oppressed groups remain unorganized and underserved, then no amount of picketing and letters to the editors will alleviate their conditions. By organizing residents can learn to build communities from within and to own and guide the community development process. Furthermore, with an organizing capacity building component, the community can build the desperately needed political will and muscle to change policies that impede the progress of their communities or discriminate against them.
Empowerment must begin from within. The oppressed need to develop a new awareness of themselves as individuals, but also as people in a community context, who individually and collectively set and achieve goals. Women must be empowered and trained to lead these community groups. Mothers must be taught how to be good parents, then how to be good community leaders and organizers. Community leaders should be recruited from the ranks of the oppressed. Talk is cheap and writing about a subject highlights it to those who could read, but does nothing for the man who cannot even afford to buy a newspaper.
Editor our brothers and sisters who are suffering don’t need letters and beautifully written columns; they don’t need pickets, lectures and forums where great orators preside. They need to be organized at the grass-roots level. They need to be given the tools, and taught how to lead and bring their communities together to agitate for the change that is needed. They need to understand that with a superior level of organization they can be a potent political force, and they can then agitate successfully for the change that is needed.
Someone once told me, being poor is relying on people who don’t give a damn about you; being poor is people being surprised that you are not stupid; being poor is people being surprised that you are not lazy; being poor is having to live with choices you did not know you made when you were 14 years old. They don’t need words they need action; they need to be organized.
Yours faithfully,
Mark Archer
