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Looks like they support two different candidates in the PNP race.
Jawge the man tek Garvey and throw back inna you face. Him say is mental slavery why unoo support Sista P!
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jamaicaobserver.com
Subtle forms of mental slavery
MICHAEL BURKE
Thursday, August 14, 2008
In 1975, Michael Manley had his second book published, A Voice at the Workplace. In his chapter on the Sugar Story, Manley wrote about the Goldenberg Commission of 1959 headed by a Canadian lawyer by that name which was set up by Norman Manley as premier of Jamaica in 1959. The findings of that commission resulted in sugar workers receiving the best wages and benefits that they had ever received up to then.
William Alexander Bustamante founded the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union in 1938. His very popular trade union was made up for the most part of the sugar workers who literally worshipped him because he spoke on behalf of sugar workers. Indeed, they sang, "We will follow Bustamante till we die". Yet, according to Michael Manley in A Voice at the Workplace, between 1939 when the BITU was officially registered and the time of the Goldenberg Commission in 1959, all of the improvements in wages done by Bustamante only amounted to the sugar workers being able to afford to buy one extra pack of cigarettes per week.
It is certainly a subtle form of mental slavery where someone is loved for simply saying "Good Morning" and "Good Evening", and smiles with you as Bustamante did, on the one hand. Norman Manley, on the other hand, was considered to be "stand-offish", although all of his development plans were for the poor, starting with his founding of Jamaica Welfare in 1937. But although he was a man for the development of poor people, he was not charismatic and as a result, Bustamante enjoyed more political success than the elder Manley.
And now to the chapter on the Bauxite Story in A Voice at the Workplace. The bauxite workers, as a result of negotiations done by Michael Manley as a trade unionist, were the best paid manual workers in Jamaica with the most benefits and perhaps still are. Yet the bauxite workers were disgruntled.
Their American and Canadian bosses did not say "good morning" or "good evening". Nor did they ask them about their wives and children and how the little ones were doing in school. The bauxite workers preferred the canefields where "Backra Massa" pretended to show concern, but did nothing for them. This is another subtle form of mental slavery.
Now I am not downplaying the importance of good manners and the social graces. Indeed I am of the opinion that too many Jamaicans are coarse. But good manners are many times just a cover for a lot of sins. To this day, many employers underpay workers because it gives them more control when the workers have to go to them when they are in need. Many employees prefer to be patted on the head like a dog and receive starvation wages rather than to get proper benefits where one is paid properly for work, even if the employer is not in the habit of exchanging pleasantries.
When I was 16 years old, the late Winston Jones, a former minister of government (1961-62 and 1972-80) and a former president of the Senate, gave me my first lessons in the differences between rural and urban MPs. He drove into Jamaica College where I was a student and asked me, being the first student he saw, if I knew the whereabouts of his son Lucien Jones (now a veteran medical doctor). Pip-Jones, as we called him at school, had already left for the afternoon, perhaps because the A-level exam he sat that day had already been completed. This was in June 1970.
I asked and generously got a ride home as the elder Jones was going in that direction anyway. On the way home I asked the then MP for Central Manchester all sorts of political questions. He told me that a rural MP had to attend every wedding, every funeral and many times his car was used as the hearse at funerals. The MP was expected to attend every prizegiving (these days graduation is the "in thing"), and his constituency was 36 miles in length. An urban MP can simply go to his constituency office one day a week and attend to the people's needs, and that's it.
The rural MP who is not seen but gets things done is not usually the candidate who gets elected. Even if the MP's employed assistant gets the messages to him so that roads and water pipes are fixed, the people get employment and the children get to go to school, that candidate who might be the sitting MP, might not be re-elected. The candidate who does nothing but goes into everyone's kitchen and "jams" his fork into a pot of food and tastes the "bickle" will get elected. This is yet another subtle form of mental slavery.
Is there a parallel in the internal PNP contest for party president? I believe there is. One candidate is popular and likes to kiss and hug people, but is lacking in exercising leadership. The other has had to learn, like Norman Manley, how to smile and to remember to talk to people. Yet he is the one who has the leadership capabilities and the real concern for the poor. Whoever wins this contest will be a measure of how far we have to go to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery as Marcus Garvey implored us, and Bob Marley put to music in Redemption Song. Please remember that this coming Sunday will be the 121st anniversary of the birth of Marcus Garvey.
Jawge the man tek Garvey and throw back inna you face. Him say is mental slavery why unoo support Sista P!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
jamaicaobserver.com
Subtle forms of mental slavery
MICHAEL BURKE
Thursday, August 14, 2008
In 1975, Michael Manley had his second book published, A Voice at the Workplace. In his chapter on the Sugar Story, Manley wrote about the Goldenberg Commission of 1959 headed by a Canadian lawyer by that name which was set up by Norman Manley as premier of Jamaica in 1959. The findings of that commission resulted in sugar workers receiving the best wages and benefits that they had ever received up to then.
William Alexander Bustamante founded the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union in 1938. His very popular trade union was made up for the most part of the sugar workers who literally worshipped him because he spoke on behalf of sugar workers. Indeed, they sang, "We will follow Bustamante till we die". Yet, according to Michael Manley in A Voice at the Workplace, between 1939 when the BITU was officially registered and the time of the Goldenberg Commission in 1959, all of the improvements in wages done by Bustamante only amounted to the sugar workers being able to afford to buy one extra pack of cigarettes per week.
It is certainly a subtle form of mental slavery where someone is loved for simply saying "Good Morning" and "Good Evening", and smiles with you as Bustamante did, on the one hand. Norman Manley, on the other hand, was considered to be "stand-offish", although all of his development plans were for the poor, starting with his founding of Jamaica Welfare in 1937. But although he was a man for the development of poor people, he was not charismatic and as a result, Bustamante enjoyed more political success than the elder Manley.
And now to the chapter on the Bauxite Story in A Voice at the Workplace. The bauxite workers, as a result of negotiations done by Michael Manley as a trade unionist, were the best paid manual workers in Jamaica with the most benefits and perhaps still are. Yet the bauxite workers were disgruntled.
Their American and Canadian bosses did not say "good morning" or "good evening". Nor did they ask them about their wives and children and how the little ones were doing in school. The bauxite workers preferred the canefields where "Backra Massa" pretended to show concern, but did nothing for them. This is another subtle form of mental slavery.
Now I am not downplaying the importance of good manners and the social graces. Indeed I am of the opinion that too many Jamaicans are coarse. But good manners are many times just a cover for a lot of sins. To this day, many employers underpay workers because it gives them more control when the workers have to go to them when they are in need. Many employees prefer to be patted on the head like a dog and receive starvation wages rather than to get proper benefits where one is paid properly for work, even if the employer is not in the habit of exchanging pleasantries.
When I was 16 years old, the late Winston Jones, a former minister of government (1961-62 and 1972-80) and a former president of the Senate, gave me my first lessons in the differences between rural and urban MPs. He drove into Jamaica College where I was a student and asked me, being the first student he saw, if I knew the whereabouts of his son Lucien Jones (now a veteran medical doctor). Pip-Jones, as we called him at school, had already left for the afternoon, perhaps because the A-level exam he sat that day had already been completed. This was in June 1970.
I asked and generously got a ride home as the elder Jones was going in that direction anyway. On the way home I asked the then MP for Central Manchester all sorts of political questions. He told me that a rural MP had to attend every wedding, every funeral and many times his car was used as the hearse at funerals. The MP was expected to attend every prizegiving (these days graduation is the "in thing"), and his constituency was 36 miles in length. An urban MP can simply go to his constituency office one day a week and attend to the people's needs, and that's it.
The rural MP who is not seen but gets things done is not usually the candidate who gets elected. Even if the MP's employed assistant gets the messages to him so that roads and water pipes are fixed, the people get employment and the children get to go to school, that candidate who might be the sitting MP, might not be re-elected. The candidate who does nothing but goes into everyone's kitchen and "jams" his fork into a pot of food and tastes the "bickle" will get elected. This is yet another subtle form of mental slavery.
Is there a parallel in the internal PNP contest for party president? I believe there is. One candidate is popular and likes to kiss and hug people, but is lacking in exercising leadership. The other has had to learn, like Norman Manley, how to smile and to remember to talk to people. Yet he is the one who has the leadership capabilities and the real concern for the poor. Whoever wins this contest will be a measure of how far we have to go to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery as Marcus Garvey implored us, and Bob Marley put to music in Redemption Song. Please remember that this coming Sunday will be the 121st anniversary of the birth of Marcus Garvey.
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