The anti-parking meter protestors and my sad life

Feb 19, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

This country needs to have a powerful, energetic, passionate, purposeful human rights entity. This is one, tragic, blighted, cursed nation where ordinary people are lost and lonely, because they have no one to turn to with the daily violations they face and endure.
My life in this country is a sad one. I persist because I have my friends who believe in me and I go home to two humans and two pets that make me happy. I cannot act on the myriad of complaints about the violation and brutalization of ordinary people that I get every day.
There is hardly a day that I do not receive a complaint. If you take it by the month, I would say I get twenty requests to seek justice for people who have been wronged. The list includes teachers, UG lecturers, civil servants, public sector workers, small business people, not to mention the ordinary folks.
What is my balance sheet? It is not an impressive one. What can one person do? This is a cruel country where people with authority, power, money and status are barefaced enough to tell you; “go to hell, do what you like.” I have written in these columns many times the phenomenon I experienced as a student at the University of Toronto. It is one of the world’s largest universities in terms of programmes, staff and students. When compared to my time at UG, Toronto has been a paradise.
Little UG with four thousand students and 250 employees was a hell hole during the 26 years I worked there. The violations of the rights of employees and students were unspeakable. The cruel administrators at UG may have few counterparts elsewhere. One of the persistent cries I have seen in my long human rights career came from sugar workers. It was clear to me back then that the sugar industry treated its workers worse than when Bookers owned it.
This country has been and is a volcanic crater of burning human rights violations, of which 99 percent of the depravities do not result in justice for the aggrieved persons. It is against this backdrop that the anti-parking meter protest becomes crucial. This protest has been one of the phenomenal positives to have taken place in social life in Guyana the past forty years. It is as if this country has finally found its voice.
I participated in the three demonstrations outside City Hall and the representation of national life was graphic. Every class component of the Guyanese society was there. Two dimensions stood out for me. Never in my long history of protest since Independence have I seen so many Portuguese Guyanese. And secondly, such a wide cross section of the female population.
Even the GUARD rallies during the Hoyte presidency did not bring out such a wide cross-section of the Guyanese nation. Being in that protest is like the country speaking to itself, demanding social change and human rights.
Can this beautiful thing last? If the parking meters die forcefully or through a natural death, will that moment that was born outside the City Hall disappear forever? It is not the protest that one wants to see continue. Obviously, if there are no parking meters, there will be no pickets. What one wants to see is the conversion of the impulse and passion that generated the protest into a defining human rights organism.
It would not be fair, right and acceptable for those who participated in the weekly picketing exercises to return to their comfortable niche and forget the victims of bestial violations that are taking place in this land. These people need the passion and the purpose that were on display outside City Hall. The anti-parking meter protest could be the catalyst for us to reclaim our humility and concern for the welfare of the Guyanese people.
I leave you with the lyrics of a song that swept my mind when I was very young. Sung by The Hollies, it is titled, “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s my Brother.”

The road is long
With many a winding turn
That leads us to who knows where
Who knows where

But I’m strong
Strong enough to carry him
He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

So on we go
His welfare is of my concern
No burden is he to bear
We’ll get there

For I know
He would not encumber me
He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother

If I’m laden at all
I’m laden with sadness
That everyone’s heart
Isn’t filled with the gladness
Of love for one another

It’s a long, long road
From which there is no return
While we’re on the way to there
Why not share

And the load
Doesn’t weigh me down at all
He ain’t heavy he’s my brother

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