“All three areas (Tivoli Gardens, Arnett Gardens and selected enclaves of Spanish Town) were oriented to crime and depreciation of the value of life by the process which established them as garrisons. They have never recovered morally from the deliberate and methodical conscription of the urban poor into partisan political militia.” – Arnold Bertram

The Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms (Constitutional Amendment) Act, recently approved by both Houses of Parliament and soon to be signed into law by the governor general, has triggered debate concerning provisions which would make discrimination against specified groups unconstitutional. The debate has centred on whether patois speakers and gays and lesbians should be afforded special protection under the law to address proven biases in the culture that have the effect of limiting the enjoyment by these groups of freedoms enshrined in the constitution.

While the debate is raging I wish to make a case for arguably the most discriminated group on the island – the residents of communities identified as political garrisons. Described as zones of exclusion, states within a state, by the National Committee on Political Tribalism ( July 23, 1997), people residing in these communities suffer deprivations that go beyond the effects of being poor. In almost every area there is unequal treatment compared to “the other” Jamaica – in the collection of garbage, in the type of policing, in the provision of services by the state and in the quality of political representation. So severe is the problem that the Report of the National Committee on Crime and Violence (June 11, 2002) recommended a strategy that would demarcate these troubled communities as protected areas, as is commonplace in the environmental movement. In the area of employment, Recommendation Number 11 of the same report calls for the introduction of affirmative action in employment to redress a situation in which inner-city dwellers are “accessing educational opportunities in public schools at near the same level of well-off families, yet their absorption into the job market is significantly less”.

To be convinced of the need for special constitutional provision to eliminate the garrison phenomenon, one must first appreciate the evil that it is and the degree to which it has become institutionalised. People generally think of the Jamaican garrison as the atypical ghetto like Watts in Los Angeles, Soweto in South Africa or the favela in Brazil. While the garrison possesses the features of a ghetto, there is an aspect that is far more insidious. Operating at the level of the subconscious, the Willie Lynch syndrome is evident. (Note: Willie Lynch is reputed to have been a plantation owner in Jamaica who used ingenious methods to keep his slaves divided and subservient). The closest thing I see to the self-fuelling practice of establishing and perpetuating political garrisons is racism.

Even with a black man in the White House, the battle against racism in America is not yet won. It has been a long, arduous and costly task. The 13th amendment to the American Constitution banned slavery. The 14th and 15th amendments made it unconstitutional for states to take away inalienable rights of any group based on “race, colour or previous conditions of servitude”. The New Deal under President Franklin Roosevelt channelled huge public investments to the South to lift it from relative poverty and backwardness of a largely agrarian economy built on slavery compared to the fast-industrialising North. The decisive blow to

state-sanctioned racism in the United States came with the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education case in which the Supreme Court ruled that separate facilities (for blacks and whites) were inherently unequal. Obliterating the garrison phenomenon will take no less.

The sad reality – attending the death of more than 70 civilians in Tivoli during the police operations to arrest Christopher Coke, the subsequent 44 per cent decline in the national murder rate and the crowing of some politicians about the resulting reduction in crime – is that hard military and policing strategies, though necessary, do not constitute the dismantling of garrisons. The May 1, 2011 Sunday Observer in the story, “Tivoli operation a waste of time”, reports on a study conducted largely among tertiary students by University of the West Indies lecturer and radio talk show host, Dr Herbert Gayle. Quoting from the Observer, “University students – regarded as being among the brightest and best in Jamaica – hold out little hope that much good will come from the state operation in the inner-city community which up to May last year, was haven for former wanted man Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke. The students interviewed for the study said, among other things, that the Tivoli operation was ‘a waste of life’ and ‘made no contribution to the social change necessary for progress or violence reduction’.”

The perception, some may say cynicism, expressed by the students in the research should come as no surprise. In a 2006 survey probing Jamaica’s political culture, Lawrence Powell, Paul Bourne and Lloyd Waller of the Centre for Leadership Governance at the University of the West Indies, Mona, found that of a sample of 1338 people only 8 per cent said they trust political parties and 10 per cent said they trust politicians. The level of distrust between the governed and those who govern is a by-product of a process that has conscripted large numbers of Jamaicans to be pawns in a political process where the winner takes all, but never are the winners the residents of garrison communities; at least not yet in a pervasive, non-discriminatory and permanent way.

The actions required to dismantle the evil system of political garrisons are the moral equivalent of war. Doubting that our leaders will do what is constitutionally, politically, socially or economically necessary to end this evil, those committed to the struggle must continue the lonely travail against the odds. The words of the late emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie, put to music by the late Robert Nesta Marley, became the battle cry for black people attempting to overthrow the wicked apartheid system in South Africa, and more generally for people involved in liberation struggles worldwide. And now it must serve as the anthem to inspire us as in love, without violence or partisan leanings, we go about pulling down the man-made zones of social exclusion; liberating the citizens to experience a fuller, freer life.

“Until the ignoble and unhappy regimes that hold our brothers and sisters in Tivoli, in Arnett, in Flankers in sub-human bondage have been toppled, utterly destroyed; everywhere is war. There will be war in the east, war in the west, war up north, war down south, war and rumours of war. Until that day, Jamaica will not know peace; we Jamaicans will fight as long as we find it necessary. And we know we shall win as we are confident in the victory of good over evil.”

hmorgan@cwjamaica.com