Plain Talk - Phillip Edward Alexander
"You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour.
And that there are things to be considered . . .."
All over the world people power is rising up and replacing autonomy and isolation. Everywhere you look people are joining hands and marching in union to common causes while we in Trinidad & Tobago remain divided and struggling against each other despite living in a land of vast and untold riches.
If we are ever to solve the problems that plague us we must unite against the common struggles of poverty, hunger, homelessness, despair and addiction; we must fight against the breakdown of the family and the community, and the destruction of our national identity.
Too many of our people are suffering and dying gruesome deaths and we as a people need to address this. Now is the time for people power. Not the people power of Egypt and Libya but the people power that raises up activists that builds and defends neighborhoods for the young and the old alike, that deals with community issues on a person by person level and contributes nationally for the greater good of all.
We need people power that understands the power of our combined spend and to use that power to encourage the banks and other lending institutions to offer mortgages at rates where every family can own their own home or they can no longer benefit from our business.
We need people power to make the government hear us as we insist on legislation that protects the weak from the strong and makes right out of wrong or they will be replaced.
We need people power to force State power into creating hope and opportunity for all, and to transform the frustration of desperation and 'making do' into land ownership through land reform and social support policies that work as well or better than any other nation in the world.
We need basic and humane living conditions for all our people as our base and starting position and we must make it so.
We need the established political order to know that we will not accept poverty and mediocrity anymore, not when our birthright is so rich and our inheritance so vast. We need to let them know that Trinidad & Tobago and all it contains belongs to all of its people and they must not be denied their rightful share any longer.
We who serve as activists do so because too many of our people are being trampled upon and left behind.
We see the pain and suffering of death due to gang violence, the orphaning of too many children to murder, poverty and disease, the abandoning of the working poor to their own devices, and the homeless and the destitute to war with the State for somewhere to sleep when night comes and we need all of that to come to an end now.
We live in enlightened times and we know the power of a united people to change the world; we have seen the promise of a people living the dream sharing the bounty of a beautiful land and this must be our goal.
My opening quote was from an Elder of the Hopi tribe, a people who believed in the power of the family, the community and the nation as provider and protector for all, the very same principles our country was founded upon.
He also said:
"The time for the lone wolf is over.
Gather yourselves!
Banish the word struggle from you attitude and your vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones we've been waiting for."
We are the ones indeed...
