This may be dubbed the Age of Denial by generations to come. We are so busy watching the news, reading the news, talking about the news that we forget that we are the news, and that we can very much decide whether our children will become good or bad news.

Jean Lowrie-Chin

Instead, we whip ourselves into a frenzy of fear, and place our talent and treasure under lock and key. Of course, we should be cautious, because there are those whose only occupation is to watch, wait and pounce.

But there would be fewer predators if more of us praying people showed interest in building the dignity of the less fortunate.
Dr Henley Morgan, Betty Ann Blaine, Sister Mary Benedict Chung, and the valiant soldiers of the Salvation Army walk the streets of Kingston freely.

If more of us do not join them and others like them in their work, those streets could become dangerous even for them.
Courage colours the ready smiles of those who choose to live and work in our inner-city communities.

We can learn a lot from them, we who become so gripped by bad news that we have little energy left to produce any good news. It is not that they have not had the threats and near-misses that are part of their edgy lives. It is that they can still see the good in others and are motivated not by a sense of duty, but a sense of family with their fellow human beings.

Henley Morgan has steered Fortune 500 companies, and is now sharing his life with the residents of Arnett Gardens, where he has based his office. We are on the phone discussing strategies for a mutual client when he gets a call.

BLAINE... passionate rather than disheartened

A good community man has died, two days after being shot. "Yesterday, I saw a family: mother, father, sister weeping as they threw themselves on the body of their murdered 20-year-old son," says Henley.

Betty Ann Blaine of Hear the Children Cry and founder of Youth Opportunities Unlimited (YOU) becomes more passionate rather than disheartened by the dire circumstances of the young people she has committed her life to serve.

It is true that well-thinking Jamaicans are in the majority, but well-doing Jamaicans are still in the minority. We are cringing at the news that one of the suspected London bombers, Germaine Lindsay, is of Jamaican origin. He joins the inglorious list of recent infamous Jamaicans, Malvo and the shoe-bomber. But even as we cringe, we refuse to acknowledge that by omission or commission, we had a hand in their fate.

I am therefore heartened by the overwhelming support the National Youth Service's "Camp Success" is getting from both the government and corporate Jamaica.

Rev Adinhair Jones and his team have put together a summer programme for 300 young people at risk. Henley Morgan is also planning a similar exercise at "No Man's Land", after he heard that 27 inner-city youth were facing expulsion from school.

"I cannot allow that to happen," said Henley. "We have to help these youngsters." Henley, busy executive that he is, is still prepared to give up the better part of his summer for what he considers a community emergency.

MORGAN... we have to help these youngsters

We who are wincing at the negative headlines had better understand that this is not just Henley's, Adinhair's, or Betty's emergency. This is our emergency. After 9/11, the Admissions Officer at a Florida University said that even though applicants from certain countries had satisfied financial and academic requirements, they were having difficulty obtaining visas.

Last week, after the news of the allged Jamaican bomber, one of our countrymen living in London was quoted on the news as being fearful of personal attacks.

We like to trumpet our motto "Out of Many One People", basking in the reflected glory of our famous achievers, but we dissociate ourselves from "those people", taking up a disproportionate amount of space in foreign jails.

Philanthropy is no longer a warm-and-fuzzy option, it is now the only way to rescue our runaway reputation - "Out of many, one reputation."

I remember the true story of a protective mother telling her "high brown" Jamaican daughter, many years ago, to describe herself as "white" on a Canadian immigration form. The officer at the Toronto airport looked scornfully at the young lady and asked, "If you're white, where did you get that curly hair?"

"Out of many, one DNA." People, we have been drinking from the same gene-pool for too long to deny our connectivity. A white Canadian friend said that she found the disrespect we had for each other positively embarrassing.

We keep wondering why our young people will not do certain jobs in Jamaica, while they will wait at tables to get a college education in America. I think it has to do with the way we treat humbler workers.

We like to criticise the manner of speech of those who, against all the odds, emerge as achievers from the inner city. I remember an interview with the late Louise Frazer-Bennett, pioneer of the Jamaica Sound System Association, the pain in her voice, caught between a shout and a cry, as she spoke of the challenges she faced in her hard, brave life.

This is why I am proud of Mayor Desmond McKenzie, Dr Orville Taylor and Dr Kingsley "Ragashanti" Stewart, brilliant products of our inner city and excellent role models for our youngsters. I hope they will help us to drop the political baggage which has split this country like a cruel earthquake, sending some of our most promising people into a chasm of despair.

There are so many grievances, still reopening old wounds, and exiling dysfunctional Jamaicans into the waiting arms of well-versed foreign criminals and fanatics.

It happened to Malvo and it probably happened to Germaine Lindsay. Our politicians can step in and stop it - this is not a case of crying over spilt milk, this is a case of demanding that whoever spilt it must find a way to clean it up.

The rest of us who have our political favourites must demand better from them - poor leadership is encouraged by blind "followership".

lowriechin@netscape.net

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