MARK A WIGNALL

LIKE most people who watched the TVJ video on the Joel Andem gang I was shocked at the reality of gunmen displaying their notoriety on camera. I was not surprised, however, as I have spoken with quite a few "fryers" or "shottas" in my time, young desperados short on self-esteem and big on seeking out avenues to build a case for them being somebody, a person, an important person.

Years ago, young men such as Joel Andem would first seek out the protection of the political turf which gave him birth, a destructive, parochial ideology and reason to defend his "position". Like those who went before him, he would be a rebel without a cause.

In this instance, one is not so sure that he has made claims to any of the political tribes among us, that is, the PNP and the JLP. In the video he has not hailed Patterson or Seaga, he has not called upon JLP or PNP. Indeed, Andem said little in the video allowing, instead, his underlings to ascribe greatness to him.

He is the "big man", the man to whom much respect must be given and the man from whom only his wrath and ferocity will be felt. In plain language, Joel Andem is seeing himself as the modern-day "revolutionary".

Years ago, when political polarisation ruled the roost, when one had a PNP commissioner of police and at another time a JLP commissioner of police, when Gleaner was said to be pro-JLP, when Daily News was all things PNP, when JIS was thought to be a clearing-house for PNP propaganda and the Social Science faculty of the UWI, Mona, was seen to be the extended verandah of PNP socialist theology, notorious gunmen could not exist without the blessing of PNP and JLP.

In recent years, however, the political feeding tree has not so much dried up as it has diverted its effort into keeping the political feedback dollar closer to home. In other words, why waste it on poor, ignorant, black people who are going to vote for me anyway when I can short-circuit its path back to me by passing it through lesser hands?

As the political dollar to the local goons dried up, young men blooded, groomed and versed in violence, death and a pathological fascination with hurting other people found reason to attach themselves to other more intelligent criminals who had found their way into the drug trade.

I have not fully researched Andem because, so far, everyone is tight-lipped. I have not seen any indication that he is being supplied by the drug trade but I would not be surprised if a few well-heeled drug traders have found reason to "keep him on retainer" for the times when his services are badly needed.

He and the men and women seen on the video were expressing moods of happiness but one sensed that they all knew that their time on this earth was going to be short-lived, much shorter than most of us are allowed by the fates. One sensed that Andem and his crew were revelling in this notoriety and, no matter the claims made as to how the video came to be in the hands of the authorities and TV, the Andem gang wanted their moments of glory to be shown on TV.

There is no such thing as the Jamaican dream. Ask any politician in this country what is this country's mission statement and he will stare you in the face and say, "Mission who fa what?"

In the dense inner-city areas of this city are young men with no human rights entitlements. Sure, the theory of the Jamaican Constitution gives them those rights but in practice their leaders have unleashed on them years of poor economic performance, sub-standard education and a militia prepared to break their skulls.

Add to that parents who are semi-literate and brutal in the upbringing of their children, a history of general criminality in the communities and, a middle class which earmarks the poor, black, inner-city young man as nameless and faceless and a recipe is created which churns out huge numbers of "soldiers" for the day when fully-blown anarchy dawns on us.

One must also add to that the convenience of Rastafari, the most compelling and influential socio-religious force in Jamaica in the last 50 years. Rastafari is to the poor, nameless black what Christianity is to the downtrodden, the displaced and those filled with despair.

Where the sad, the lonely and the forgotten will latch on to Christianity because it promises all which the present cannot and will never give, Rastafari gives to the poor black in Babylon (Jamaica) a sense of his displacement, his alien nature and a right to rebel against those who have allied themselves to Babylon.

Rastafari promises little for the hereafter and, in a sense, is more practical than the mythical Shangrila promised to the born-again Christians. It is not a surprise that all of our music icons have latched on to Rastafari creating a synergy in the ghetto as ghetto youth latch on to rebellious lyrics and the ideology of Rasta.

To the middle class I am talking gibberish simply because those making it up have never fully appreciated the influence of Rastafari among inner-city young men and the women who attach themselves to them. It is a reality when young men smoke ganja in open defiance of the law. That is rebellion. It is a reality when they ally themselves to Capleton's "bun-fire" lyrics and uptown and the authorities cannot do a damn thing about it.

It is a reality which sometimes become blurred between a rebellious act and common criminality when a gun is used to hold up an uptown household. Once it is taken further, much further, people like Joel Andem are given spaces to operate and are even worshipped by some of our young.

In the video we see then invoking the name of Haile Selassie. He is the god of rebellion, the god of repatriation and, to Andem and his crew, the god justifying their actions in Babylon.

AT all levels, religion can justify even the worst criminality. I will bet that Andem does not see himself as a criminal as much as he considers himself to be "the real revolutionary". I will bet that he expects to die soon and sincerely believes that his name will live on in the depressed communities for a long time.

Some people I spoke with said the video should not have been shown, that police intelligence should have dictated otherwise. I believe that once the video was shown panic would set in among the gang members and they would respond accordingly. This, I believe, is what the police are hoping would take place.

The downside is, too many of our inner-city young men have looked on and have seen a man getting respect, getting "big up", something which they themselves ache for. A gun, especially a long, automatic rifle can get respect even if it has to arise through a collective societal hate.

The police know that if Andem and his gang members are not liquidated, many more admiring youngsters will come on board the Andem train. It will be a bloodbath but, are there any other options?

Executive Class

Gardens with Gravel

Death to the Mullet!