BARBADIANS AND OTHER Caribbean people have been challenged to move their thinking to another level to avoid being mentally enslaved by outside forces wanting to control their sovereignty.
This was a message of Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley during her address at the Affinity Plus Credit Union-sponsored Commemoration Of The Day Of National Significance Crop Over Folk Concert at Golden Square Freedom Park in the The City on Saturday night.
Mottley, speaking to an audience that included members of the diplomatic corps and resident CARICOM nationals, developed her remarks based on the history of control by slave masters who browbeat emancipated workers on their plantations if they wanted to seek better wages elsewhere.
“You were prevented from going around and trying to see if you could secure a higher wage from a different plantation. I give context because many of our people need to appreciate that this is not some far away concept that we come together – first to give thanks that they (freedom fighters) had to [have] courage to do what they did because when we look around and contextualise it in today’s world, we ask ourselves who has the courage to stand out and defend where wrong needs to be repaired?
“They did, and in some instances they paid with the ultimate price – their lives,” said Mottley of those who fought in earlier rebellions.
The Prime Minister also noted that the journey now required more than a physical presence to take care of the tangible things.
“While we fight now for conditions of improvement, it was the mind more than anything else that must be the mission for us to emancipate,” she said, using the words of Marcus Garvey to build out her argument.
“I ask us how we will prepare ourselves as individuals, as countries, as a region to ensure that we are ready to withstand the continuous efforts to control our minds; how we see each other; our development.
“The new battles will not be fought with the armada and flotilla. It will be the control of the mind through the use of information and technology. We have to determine, even if we are generating our own information, how do we control the sovereignty of it?” Mottley asked, following remarks by regional
representatives on the impact of the 1930s rebellion in their countries.
She said the sovereignty of our information must be controlled so those who want “to pull the plug on us” still cannot determine our future.
“‘Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds’. Those words ought to be understood by all of our citizens across this region and become a lived reality if we are to withstand the new winds of the 21st century.
“There is nobody sitting down in the back room in Europe cutting up and carving out in the traditional way that they did in the late 19th century . . . . It is far more nuanced and complex. If we walk into the future blind to the risk, then we are liable to be recolonised in ways that will be far more difficult to be liberated from,” she said as she infused her address with quotes from Bob Marley And The Wailers’ Redemption Song.
Mottley also said “the lure and the sexiness of mainstream media have become an opiate; dulling our senses and our capacity to think for ourselves”.
Patrons also witnessed the laying of flowers at the bust of The Right Excellent Clement Payne by Mottley and some members of her Government and regional representatives.
The night also included a theatrical performance, written and directed by Angelo Lascelles, which highlighted the struggles of Barbadians in 1930s Barbados. (JS)
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