Mario Deane and Robin Williams: Jamaica's Focus

A young Jamaican man died while in police custody.

Let that sink in. A man died. As in, he'll never go back home to see his family, work on a construction site or have rice and peas and curry chicken again.

That, my friends, is a human rights issue.

It honestly doesn't matter to me how he got into the lockup and why. It however matters a lot to the reformers who are trying to benefit from his death and make it an issue of marijuana law reform and to angle for changes in Jamaica's legislation so that possessing small quantities of weed is no longer an offence.

That's great. Except a man is dead. And the weed did not kill him.

Mario Deane was held in the custody of the persons who say that “[w]e serve, we protect, we reassure with courtesy, integrity and proper respect for the rights of all”. That's from the Jamaica Constabulary Force's website. Clearly then, it must be true. Except in this case, a man was EITHER severely beaten by the police OR fell off a bed in custody OR was severely beaten by inmates...in a police station...where the police could have stopped them. All those stories have made the rounds over the past few days.

Mario Deane after his time in the Barnett Street Police Station.

And let me be controversial: I don't give a flying johncrow why he was brought into custody. Some of the advocates that have come out against his death have maintained that he hadn't killed or raped anyone so he didn't deserve to die. That's the kind of 'eye for an eye' mentality that we are trying to avoid so I don't think it is useful . How about we support that nobody should die in police custody. How about we support the idea that proper respect for the rights of all includes the right to life? That not so new Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms in s. 13(3)(a) says that Jamaicans have "the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in the execution of the sentence of a court in respect of a criminal offence of which the person has been convicted". Yeah, it pretty much means that Mario's death, like the deaths of Michael Gayle and Agana Barrett (even though under the old constitutional provision) was unconstitutional.

I am friends with too many people, too many men in this country, to sit idly by while a young man dies in lockup. Who did it? There may have been specific hands and feet that led to that young man's death. However, lockups aren't vast fortresses where the guards are 10 miles away from the prisoners. The police must take some responsibility, even if they didn't strike the killing blow, for the death of a young man on their watch. Andrew Holness would like us to have our own Human Rights Commission. I think we just need to use every single body we already have. Like INDECOM. After all, many of the most noticeable breaches come from agents of the State.

Funny Man Robin Williams died yesterday. He was found in his house following an apparent suicide. He was amazing actor and a good bit of my childhood movie enjoyment came from him. R.I.P. good sir.

But I've seen more condolences going out to a man Jamaicans have never met than to Mario, a man who could have been any one of us. That, my friends, is Jamaica's focus.

The Power of Friendships

In the past few weeks, I have been overwhelmed with life. The number of tasks I have set for myself to complete has been burdensome. Necessarily so but still, burdensome. The tasks that have been set for me from outside sources has not eased either. The world really only cares about what you can do for them and they don't care if you are struggling to cope to do it all. That's fine too though, because I get by with a little help from my friends. My supportive network has made sure that I've been able to cope with these demands. And I am grateful for every single one of them.

The Caribbean is a small place. If you've travelled any at all in the region, you have made friends in various countries. And if you are lucky enough to travel, you take it for granted that you know somebody somewhere that can help you out. Whether it is to send you Chilly Moos and souse from Barbados or doubles from Trinidad, friends make life possible.

The reality of Caribbean life however is that "links run the world".  Jamaica doesn't even pretend otherwise. Neither does Trinidad and Tobago. And maybe I'm biased that My People are unapologetic about being corrupt. It is just understood that you will help your friend where you can and you can reasonably expect your friend to help you. Need a driver's licence but don't want to deal with the inconvenience of doing a driving test? We can do that! Supported the right party in the last election? We'll take care of you! The National Integrity Commission and their very un-Jamaican looking website can tell you more. It's just how life is understood.

It therefore SUCKS for you if you have no friends. And, even if you have friends, they need to be the right friends. Friends in powerful places or sleep next to them. Access to jobs, the good kind, the ones that you can pay rent, buy groceries and have a little left over, are insider knowledge. Most books on job-hunting make it clear that many jobs will never make it to the stage where the public is informed of the opening. But My People may just install their own friends or friends of friends in these positions.

Why is this a problem? Because the development of Jamaica and the Caribbean depends on the people we spend so much money to educate to university level. We make them believe that the debt they take on will be worth it, then spring on them that they don't know anybody to be able to get a "good" job. And so we will continue to lose bright minds who cannot say they get by with a little help from their friends.