EBONY

Ebony was something quite well known in my world, although I don't recall being personally intrigues by it. I've always had my own traumatized consciousness to deal with instead. And that led me to read different kinds of things. It led me away from anything "successful" I guess. I had an extraordinarily high minded and philosophical Scottish principal in HS that I must say changed my life, and he hired teachers who helped in that project. Perhaps I tended to lean on the white side of things. And perhaps that helps me now deal with the extraordinarily puzzling tangle of racial issues that Jamaica is a case study for. All of this seems to have made me come out very black and very white simultaneously. But Ebony figures in that tangle as it affects America, extending beyond it to the rest of the black world. Were standing atop an extraordinary pillar of achievement that I can't put any boundary around, but Ebony is only a part of it.. 

PLACE BEFORE RACE (Random Thoughts)

A respectable view in today's world is that there are not different races, only different ethnicities. And how these ethnicities are formed have more to do with place--climate, geography, community--than race.

If we govern our places immaculately, they will garner respect. If our place garner respect, so will our people who live in them.

If race is a social construct, for the convenience of a dominant group, we cannot just wish race away. As long as the social structure that created it remains--and we can't expect it to vanish overnight--race will remain as cogent a designation as when MMG addressed it. 

So, in relation to a global paradigm, a certain group of us, owing to geography, culture, appearance, etc. are lumped together as Africans. Physical features are a major way to identify us at a glance. And we are all regarded in pretty much the same light by global power regardless of where we originate

Our homeland is, inarguably, the African continent, but I doubt that MMG would object would object to looking at our African place as extending beyond the mainland. What about all the places where we are in the majority? Most of the Caribbean, for example? What if, through no fault of its own, Africa has now garnered additional territory--a sort of reverse colonialism--in the West? 

MMG spoke of an African empire. While he might reluctantly have thought of the usual ways in which empires are won (force of arms), what if our empire simply came to us by itself? What if our only responsibility is to recognize and own it? 

And then, what government structure would we need to administer it? In a place like jamaica, we have two political parties hell bent on slaughtering each other. Our economic and environmental situation is a catastrophe. Can we be as clever as our own Brother Anancy, and try to figure out a peaceful way to get around all our governance obstacles? Could we do some seemingly ridiculous thing like start a Facebook All Africa party? Incluse the UNIA. Include the political parties. But have such a clear and logical sense of mission that we are unlikely to be derailed?

I would propose that we attempt to govern each small jurisdiction in a decentralized fashion, and work online to bring needed resources to all of them--again, in a coordinated and systematic fashion. Would that be a reasonable approach to Garveyism in our modern time?

TOWARD A NEW ART MOVEMENT (Segment)

By Trevor Burrowes

Our open space along the Turquoise Trail is replete with macro and micro watersheds. It handles all the water that falls on it, and does not flood or require costly storm drain systems to maintain it.

LAND COMES FIRST

By Trevor Burrowes

With watershed planning, people tend to see reason. They tend, unless they are deranged, to get it that everybody in the watershed needs water, and so they are encouraged to think as a community. I really don’t see a counter to tribalism other than to put land first and people second.

Many "doomers," people who accept and fervently believe in Near Term Extinction (NTE) for humans, hope for a scenario where humans disappear, leaving the possibility for life for other species. They dream of humans exiting physically. But what if humans exited symbolically by substituting land centeredness for human centeredness? The flow and health of the land would come first, and how local people could make a life on it would come second. Nature gets her gas mask put on first, and humans' come after. Such a paradigm seems like the easiest path for resisting our untimely demise, but why can no one else see that?

With the extinction of 200 species per day, what makes doomers believe that humans would just be nice and exterminate themselves while allowing other species to survive? I contend that humans, within the current paradigm, will ignore, as we now do, the demise of other species as long as we can delude ourselves that this will not bring us down as well. But putting land first not only puts other species first, but also conceptually integrates people with these species. It is land use which determines the state of the environment. And we either see or we don't that ecologically healthy watersheds present the quintessential land use measure for erasing the planet-destroying detachment of human beings from the rest of nature.