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Longing for leadership
Published: Wednesday | July 20, 2011
Din Duggan
Some time ago when I was still misguided and naive, I thought politics could prove a powerful vehicle by which to effect meaningful change. In those days, I thought Portia Simpson Miller truly cared for the poor. I thought Bruce Golding - the one from the National Democratic Movement - sincerely cared about reforming Jamaica's political system. I even thought Peter Phillips possessed the ability to balance free market principles with the needs of the masses.
Stop laughing. I said I was young and naïve.
Now that I'm older and presumably wiser, I can no longer dodge the raw truth: the People's National Party and Jamaica Labour Party have failed Jamaica. The two parties have done absolutely nothing but run the country into the ground. Their bloodlust for power has resulted in our present crime epidemic and our unyielding economic malaise.
Jamaica has yet to recover from that dark era - more than 30 years ago - when philosophical dust-ups gave way to clouds of gun smoke and streams of blood. The collective legacy of our beloved political parties is a broken education system, rampant crime, an economy fundamentally incapable of meeting the demands of the global economy, and a generally wayward country.
Still, the parties have the audacity to expect that Jamaicans will continue to embrace them despite the seeds of hopelessness they have sown, nurtured, and allowed to germinate.
We Need New Drivers
We are on the precipice of catastrophe. A majority of adult Jamaicans would rather be ruled by a foreign power. Nearly three in five young people say they would migrate if given the chance. Even the packs of mongrel dogs roaming the streets seem to be trying their damnedest to find their way to the US Embassy.
Do we really expect that those who drove us to the brink of destruction can somehow steer us to safety? We need new transportation - the green bus keeps slipping out of gear and the orange one is still sitting useless atop cement blocks. We need new drivers - the current batch bought their licences way back when donkey carts were the preferred mode of transportation. The modern world has since left them behind. Now they face a severe capability gap and, as Clifton Brown can tell you, they "canna cross it".
The Altgeld Gardens Housing Projects in the tough South Side of Chicago is an unlikely place for the most powerful man in the world to cut his teeth. Its residents are overwhelmingly black, it is prone to sporadic outbreaks of gang violence, it's surrounded by abandoned steel mills, manufacturing plants and landfills, and, before Obama's arrival in the mid-'80s, it was severely contaminated with asbestos - a cancer-causing material.
It is in this den of hopelessness that Barack Obama, shortly after graduating from Columbia University, chose to pursue his first campaign of hope. While his peers were earning big bucks on Wall Street, he was a community organiser - hammering the pavement and inspiring Altgeld's poor and disengaged residents to grab control of their own lives by forcing the government to rid their neighbourhood of the deadly carcinogens that killed so many of their friends and relatives.
Metaphor for Jamaica
Altgeld Gardens, in many ways, resembles so many communities across Jamaica - riddled with social and economic hardships; devoid of effective leadership; abandoned by those with means and influence; simply existing as an expendable card in a never-ending game of politics. Yet, buried deep beneath the destitution and the abandonment lie the untapped passion and potential of a people awaiting the inspiration to pursue their true promise.
We face grave and innumerable difficulties in this nation. Politics won't solve them; politics caused them. These difficulties will, however, uncloak leaders who will inspire us to unlock our innermost majesty. After all, transformative leadership often needs turmoil as its catalyst. Gandhi needed violence.
Mandela needed apartheid. Martin Luther King needed racial injustice. Neo needed The Matrix. And Obama needed a feckless, contaminated community on the South Side of Chicago.
In Jamaica, as in Altgeld Gardens, our inspiration, the leadership for which we long, won't come from politicians. It will come only from men and women, working quietly, tirelessly and selflessly to stir ordinary people to make extraordinary efforts to revive their communities and, by extension, our country.
Din Duggan is an attorney working as a consultant with a global legal search firm. Email him at columns@gleanerjm.com or dinduggan@gmail.com or view his past columns at facebook.com/dinduggan and twitter.com/YoungDuggan.
Published: Wednesday | July 20, 2011
Din Duggan
Some time ago when I was still misguided and naive, I thought politics could prove a powerful vehicle by which to effect meaningful change. In those days, I thought Portia Simpson Miller truly cared for the poor. I thought Bruce Golding - the one from the National Democratic Movement - sincerely cared about reforming Jamaica's political system. I even thought Peter Phillips possessed the ability to balance free market principles with the needs of the masses.
Stop laughing. I said I was young and naïve.
Now that I'm older and presumably wiser, I can no longer dodge the raw truth: the People's National Party and Jamaica Labour Party have failed Jamaica. The two parties have done absolutely nothing but run the country into the ground. Their bloodlust for power has resulted in our present crime epidemic and our unyielding economic malaise.
Jamaica has yet to recover from that dark era - more than 30 years ago - when philosophical dust-ups gave way to clouds of gun smoke and streams of blood. The collective legacy of our beloved political parties is a broken education system, rampant crime, an economy fundamentally incapable of meeting the demands of the global economy, and a generally wayward country.
Still, the parties have the audacity to expect that Jamaicans will continue to embrace them despite the seeds of hopelessness they have sown, nurtured, and allowed to germinate.
We Need New Drivers
We are on the precipice of catastrophe. A majority of adult Jamaicans would rather be ruled by a foreign power. Nearly three in five young people say they would migrate if given the chance. Even the packs of mongrel dogs roaming the streets seem to be trying their damnedest to find their way to the US Embassy.
Do we really expect that those who drove us to the brink of destruction can somehow steer us to safety? We need new transportation - the green bus keeps slipping out of gear and the orange one is still sitting useless atop cement blocks. We need new drivers - the current batch bought their licences way back when donkey carts were the preferred mode of transportation. The modern world has since left them behind. Now they face a severe capability gap and, as Clifton Brown can tell you, they "canna cross it".
The Altgeld Gardens Housing Projects in the tough South Side of Chicago is an unlikely place for the most powerful man in the world to cut his teeth. Its residents are overwhelmingly black, it is prone to sporadic outbreaks of gang violence, it's surrounded by abandoned steel mills, manufacturing plants and landfills, and, before Obama's arrival in the mid-'80s, it was severely contaminated with asbestos - a cancer-causing material.
It is in this den of hopelessness that Barack Obama, shortly after graduating from Columbia University, chose to pursue his first campaign of hope. While his peers were earning big bucks on Wall Street, he was a community organiser - hammering the pavement and inspiring Altgeld's poor and disengaged residents to grab control of their own lives by forcing the government to rid their neighbourhood of the deadly carcinogens that killed so many of their friends and relatives.
Metaphor for Jamaica
Altgeld Gardens, in many ways, resembles so many communities across Jamaica - riddled with social and economic hardships; devoid of effective leadership; abandoned by those with means and influence; simply existing as an expendable card in a never-ending game of politics. Yet, buried deep beneath the destitution and the abandonment lie the untapped passion and potential of a people awaiting the inspiration to pursue their true promise.
We face grave and innumerable difficulties in this nation. Politics won't solve them; politics caused them. These difficulties will, however, uncloak leaders who will inspire us to unlock our innermost majesty. After all, transformative leadership often needs turmoil as its catalyst. Gandhi needed violence.
Mandela needed apartheid. Martin Luther King needed racial injustice. Neo needed The Matrix. And Obama needed a feckless, contaminated community on the South Side of Chicago.
In Jamaica, as in Altgeld Gardens, our inspiration, the leadership for which we long, won't come from politicians. It will come only from men and women, working quietly, tirelessly and selflessly to stir ordinary people to make extraordinary efforts to revive their communities and, by extension, our country.
Din Duggan is an attorney working as a consultant with a global legal search firm. Email him at columns@gleanerjm.com or dinduggan@gmail.com or view his past columns at facebook.com/dinduggan and twitter.com/YoungDuggan.
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