Mahogany CoConut Blog

The Caribbean Is One Nation.                                                    Welcome, Comrade Toni Moore Toni Moore The Mahogany Coconut Group welcomes the new General Secretary of the powerful Barbados Workers Union (BWU), Comrade Toni Moore. She is the first woman to head what is probably one of the best organized workers unions throughout the Caribbean. It is a tribute to the Barbadian women, who have always been in the struggle for the betterment of the working class. Our faith in the younger Caribbean generation is fortified by Comrade Moore’s elevation at the young age of thirty eight. Comrade Moore takes over the union at a time when the workers in Barbados are under tremendous pressure as the government’s austerity program becomes more intensified and far reaching. The Transport Board, and other government statutory boards, have suffere...

The Caribbean Is One Nation.                                                                        Barbados Seeks to Update Domestic Violence Laws Nalita Gajadhar “Some of the recommended amendments to the Domestic Violence Act will see an expansion of the scope of the protection orders as well as the power given to officers of the Royal Barbados Police force to carry out their duties.” “The Proposed amendments would speak to how officers record each report and the application of a methodology for getting one of the partners out of the house for a specific period…” Acting Director of the Bureau of Gender affairs Nalita Gajadar, Nation Newspaper (Barbados) 8/18/14 We welcome the above sentiments and certainly hope that the proposed amendments to the Domestic Violence Act do not languish in somebo...

The Caribbean Is One Nation.                         Ferguson Tragedy: Flashes of 60's Michael Brown Once more the underlying racism has surfaced in America in Ferguson, Missouri with the death by police gun shots of an Afro American young unarmed teenager Michael Brown. While others are trying their utmost to discuss this act of law enforcement terrorism, with a quietness and almost apologetic tone, we at Mahogany Coconut cannot sincerely be that placid. For those who fought and protested America’s racism and socio-economic disparities between white and afro America, these images in 2014 or fifty years after the zenith of the civil rights movement in the sixties,  are really too much to bear. With the election of a black president, we thought that such terror would have subsided but that was just a dream. Preliminary examinations suggest that Michael Brown was shot six times with two of the bullets hitting hi...

The Caribbean Is One Nation.                                                           Caribbean Masses Place Hope In Faith As we continue to fearlessly monitor the travesties being committed by the political management class, we are convinced that our visionless and politically bankrupt politicians get away with their transgressions because the masses of the Caribbean are essentially Christian. The mainly black masses of the Caribbean, have taken all the broken post-independence promises and ad hoc approach to their developmental needs , with great patience and an unshakable belief that tomorrow will bring a brighter day. Having endured four hundred years of European engineered and executed: brutality, emasculation and depravity, they have never asked the political management class for too much and have settled for way too little! ...

The Caribbean Is One Nation.                Black on Black Crime: Caribbean Style Guns There was a time in the not too distant past, when the dreaded drive by shootings was standard occurrences in the inner cities of America. Black sociologists and criminologists described drives by and other violent crime involving blacks as: Black on Black crime. The graveyards of many inner cities are home to several victims. In the Caribbean, we are witnessing the drive by and other forms of violent crimes occur with unusual frequency. Unfortunately, youths throughout the region, appear seriously determined to wipe out each other via the bullet. Gone are the days of “throwing big rocks’ or “giving a fellow a cuff” or trying to wrestle your adversary to the ground. Gone are the cuss outs at the standpipe and the often frivolous village rivalry of four or five decades ago. Today, all disagreements among the criminal element are settled with a burst of f...

The Caribbean Is One Nation.                                                        Trinidad and Tobago  : Corruption On Steroids Anil Roberts. Once again, we are forced to briefly focus, on Trinidad and Tobago. The question now occupying our minds is whether there is any hope for the proper governance of the twin island state. For Trinidadians to pretend that the high level of open corruption is just a “Trini ting” is to inflict serious damage on their country and rob its future generations of any hope of living in a vibrant politically progressive society. Trinidadians are sipping   a diabolical cocktail  of government orchestrated corruption and a crime rate that is obviously out of control, where witnesses to crimes ,are executed almost daily ,before they can testify in court. Our concern today is focused on Mr. An...

The Caribbean Is One Nation.                                                             Emancipation Day and the Holocaust Emancipation Day Parade Trinidad and Tobago “ The same way no Jews will overlook the atrocities inflicted by the Nazis, Barbadians must never overlook the significance of Emancipation Day. Indeed, for us it must be seen as even more important than the observance of political independence.” Daily Nation (Barbados) Friday August 1 st . 2014 Sometimes words are just words. The editorial quoted above justifies this position. While the nation newspaper was lamenting the fact that Barbadians were generally ignoring the advent of Emancipation Day, the Barbados Today online journal, was wondering aloud, if the day really had any significance.  Barbados Today predicted that unless the national conscienc...