Does Anybody Care?

PRESS RELEASE

The back page of the Nation Newspaper of Monday 8th February 2010 reported the following horrific account of the murder of a young son of our nation:-

"A decision to stop at an open-air street party has left 28 year old Fabian Antonio Greaves dead...... The National Conservation Commission worker was killed about 2:40 a.m at Waterhall Land in St Michael after an altercation with another man led to his being gunned down by a group of men who walked up to him and opened fire. An eyewitness............ said Greaves went to the bar to buy drinks and got into an argument...... later, a group of men walked up and opened fire, and Greaves fell to the ground with at least six bullet wounds".

So, this is where we have reached in Barbados! We now live in a country in which a group of our fellow residents are capable of arming themselves with guns and coldly, callously and openly shooting a human being to death, simply because of a verbal altercation!

What does this mean? What does this say about our country? And why has there been no public expression of outrage, horror, shock, disappointment or even regret by our Church leaders, politicians, journalists, moderators and other sundry makers and shapers of public opinion? Other than the immediate family of the late Fabian Antonio Greaves, does anybody care? Is anybody even paying attention?

Barbados is such a small and intimate country that we should be existing and functioning like a family - a humane and well ordered family in which we share our collective resources, look out for each other, set individual and family goals, and take pride in assisting each other to attain such goals.

How could we have fallen so far from this ideal that we are now producing people who are so alienated from their fellow citizens, and so bereft of any conception of a collective national or family interest, that they are capable of such barbarity? And who or what is to blame?

Should any blame be ascribed to the politicians and political parties that crudely and crassly buy votes in elections, and that set out to systematically reduce our people to insensible, materialistic beings who only respond to the bribery of money and entertainments?

Should any blame be ascribed to the various pastors and priests who dilute the spirituality of the nation with their morally bankrupt, money based "Prosperity Gospel", or with their sterile status-quo and establishment oriented Christianity? And what about businessmen and women who see our Barbadian youth as merely a captive commercial market to be exploited and plundered and act in accordance with that vulgar conception?

And how about the educators who are content to maintain an educational system that herds thousands of low academic achievers into schools that are so lacking in the facilities, resources and spirit required to respond to the special needs of these children, that the eventual production of hundreds, if not thousands, of alienated, hopeless and angry young men and women is virtually guaranteed?

And why have all of us allowed the continued existence of a social structure marred by deep pockets of poverty and deprivation amidst a vista of comfort and plenty, and a capitalism based culture in which the American dominated media inculcates negative values of selfishness, individualism, lack of compassion and contempt for those who are considered to be different or unsuccessful?

Clearly, a major national effort is required to retrieve the situation. The Peoples Empowerment Party is ready to try. Are you?

DAVID A COMISSIONG
President