Seeing the images of violence and of dead bodies in newscasts on TV, the peoples’ anguish read in Letters to the Editor, and comments on websites and Facebook pages makes the heart cringe. On one side of the ‘big pond’, America is searching for its soul, on the other side, England is nursing the fallout from the referendum that saw the Leave side win. England’s exit from the European Union brings anxiety to the Goans holding Portuguese passports, and to the other immigrant communities. Obviously, the fate of these immigrant Goans is in the balance, though there’s a ray of hope that those already in Swindon and elsewhere in England will be safe and those queuing before the Portuguese consulate in Goa, day in and day out, wish they get their papers through and land in England before the drawbridge, a widely used word nowadays, is drawn up.
Prior to the tragedies in Orlando and the shooting of Black males in Louisiana and Minnesota, on two consecutive days of July 3 and 4 respectively, saw a massive protest against the police in Dallas where a sniper, said to be acting alone, shot dead five white police officers. Earlier to that, at least 49 were killed and at least 50 wounded in a nightclub, frequented by gays, shooting in Orlando. Hate-crime is back on the board — and on the streets — of America. Perhaps, it isn’t a happy picture to be in the land of the free, for freedom itself is in peril. Yet, many young Goans would give up their heart and soul to be in the US, as many who worked on the cruise liners jumped ship to go “underground” in the US. Today, the route is to the UK via Portugal even without having landed in Portugal. Goans were always known as world-wanderers.
The massacre in Orlando is a grim reminder of what happened in Gujarat during Modi’s reign as CM. It also relates to what happens to certain minorities in India, the burning of Christian churches and the killings and beatings of Dalits. A recent video showed men, said to be owing allegiance to a Hindu fundamentalist outfit, thrashing Dalit men with lathis. The suicide of Rohith Vehula, who was a PhD student at the University of Hyderabad, has been an example of how young Dalits feel frustrated at the current state of affairs in India. It doesn’t mean a thing for these lowly, poor and often impoverished people if the BJP chief honcho squats on the floor and shares a meal with a Dalit family. Such photo-ops will be seen in Goa too as the dates come closer to the election time. The Goa government has already lit the light of the day by giving three LED bulbs to the people, giving the opposition parties to cry foul and one new political outfit looking for options to file a case. Remember, the lowering of the petrol price just before the last election? Populism pays, asks Didi in West Bengal and Madame Jayalalitha in Tamil Nadu.
Populism is now playing in the US as the presidential race heats up. Now that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are officially candidates of the opposing sides, the former for Republicans and the latter for Democrats, there will be lot of fun and games in the US theatre of politics. Each of them will raise their tones to a higher pitch then seen so far. Though Trump has sobered down, he’s still seen as an enemy of not only Blacks and immigrants but of all sound-mined and ostensibly neutral Americans. If elected president, Trump has promised to build a wall to keep out the Mexicans from illegally entering the US while banning Muslins from stepping onto US soil. His boisterous boosting of the American spirit and Let’s Make America Great Again has no doubt won him admirers among the stout-hearted and red-neck Americans.
The US is currently fractious. There’s rage sweeping across the land. The legendary singer Woody Guthrie, who wrote This Land is Your Land, and which has a line, “… this land was made for you and me” must be turning in his grave. The Black/White divide is invisible to the naked lie, but it lies deep in the American soil. This folk song was written by Guthrie, said to be a communist, as a parody to Irving Berlin’s God Bless America, which is sometimes played or sung at a baseball match that’s gone into extra innings. It’s one of the famous American patriotic songs, often mistaken as the American national anthem.
Nowadays the Americans are wrapping themselves in the American flag as the national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, is played in the background. The psychosis of fear has gripped Americans as never before. After he cut short his visit to Warsaw, President Barack Obama came to Dallas to speak at the memorial for the fallen policemen. He was clearly moved by the events, the shooting of Blacks, and the retaliation by a Black man against white police officers. I shudder to think that racism has raised its ugly head when the head of the US is a Black man.
All this reminded me of the 60s, and brings to mind some of the quotes from Stokley Carmichael, originally Kwame Ture, the leader of Black Power. They are: “There is a higher law than the law of government. That’s the law of conscience”, “The secret of life is to have no fear; it’s the only way to function”, “Black power can be clearly defined for those who do not attach the fears of white America to their questions about it.”
In the last column I wrote about revolution as the need of the hour, and I have been reading about revolution in different forms in the Goan media, including a video Goenkarponn – The Revolution, and Revolution, the Konkani play. They all convey that a revolution must be set afoot to fight against the government that is trying to crush the NGOs, the environmentalists, and the human rights activists. To all those who think alike I suggest a book I am currently reading: The End of Protest – a new playbook for revolution, by Micah White, co-creator of Occupy Wall Street.
(Eugene Correia is a senior journalist)
