Dear Isaiah, Joel and Haresh, thunder is rolling and sun is shining...

 

 

Dear Isaiah, Joel and Haresh, 

Thunder is rolling and sun is shining while I write this and think about you,. and wishing that I could have gone to your killers, and said, chop me instead,  kill me instead and may you drink my blood and find satisfaction.

In 2001, citizens killed 10 year old Mervyn Barran and his father in the Enterprise Backdam. You probably never heard of him or his father. In 2003, during another racial crime wave, citizens kidnapped and killed 16 year old Roy Bell. Red Thread had a vigil then afterwards.. and I now think that in the vigil then, it was for those children and adults killed and maimed in violence - from other citizens, from the police, , and for those to come, not yet born.

I don't know if any of those citizen killers voted, or if they are like me, they didn't vote. I don't know if they have killed before, or will kill again, it must be easy to chop children.

I have a cutlass which I keep just in case, and I hope that my hands could wield it for anyone coming to attack me. I have talked about it once to a man who lived next door who wanted to kill coolie people,  and I told him about not being caught for killing someone and he told me that he didn't realise that I was a pscyho. Psycho like all the voting citizens who are hurting others who are not their oppressors.

I want to take revenge on those who killed you.  I am not sure where to start, who to kill first .. whether the slave masters and colonisers, the politicians and intellectuals who help to fuel the madness, or those who think that justice is blood.

I aint know if killing your killers would stop the killing and beating, and that somehow we would be creating and healing and building.

 I think of your killers though, and I am not hating them. I learned a long time ago to survive in this place, that I had to say I am PNC, I am PPP, I am neither of them; I am you, I am the citizens who killed you.

And to create my own bubble. 

I was in a meeting when I heard of how citizens murdered Haresh. We paused for a few minutes. Then continued the meeting. 

I was in a minibus today. Coolie driver, coolie conductor, young woman and me. No talk about you. Coolie driver makes comments to the young woman. She reached her stop. I tell him to stop harassing women. Respect is the order. He looked vex, he might not pick me up again.

I come  home and read that a man killed Lunisa Peters  after citizens killed Haresh and after citizens killed Prettipaul Hargobin, 

I used to get angry and rage and want to burn down the place when men killed women, when I  hear that people abuse children. I went recently and asked a woman to call me and beat me instead of beating her children.

Nobody would protest for Lunisa Peters, or 75 year old Earl Peters. Citizen(s) killed him last Saturday but have not been found as yet. 

I am sorry that I could not prevent your deaths, or the deaths and violence which will come - racial violence, gender based violence, state violence, economic violence.

I can't take revenge for your deaths.  I can no longer offer my body to be chopped instead of yours.

I can only think daily, that I will keep connected to those around me. To keep the conversations going about justice and peace and healing. To know that there is evil out there, which is being nurtured for power.  And to know that evil, and to nurture goodness where it exists despite that evil.