From the outset, let me declare that I support all those who, in times past and present, have championed causes to alleviate the people’s plight. I also understand those who have given up the struggle for whatever reason or reasons, as I seek to awaken new energies in an effort to keep the spirits of those who have perished in the struggle alive. It seems as if a tranquilizing cloak has been placed on the ascendant spirits, but it is my hope that the following article will help to inspire the next generations of revolutionaries. I rest this claim in the will of the good spirits of the ancestors.
It would help to backtrack to the pre-colonial Dominica and trek forward for a better understanding of just how and probably why the fighting spirits of Dominicans have been transformed. When Africans were brought to Dominica and were forced to work for the system, many brave brothers and sisters resisted. They defiled the plantation owners, destabilized society, strengthened the resilience and called for fierce resistance against the oppressors. They did this in several ways and many of the “enslaved” Africans simply ran away.
The majority of those who ran away were killed, but even while they were being killed they were still running: peeling away the mortal remains and becoming the spiritual energies which took on new embodiment. Africans who were once docile suddenly became engaged and enraged with the spirits of protest and no one understood, but it was the spirits and energies of those who died which had strengthened them. The system, however, discarded them as being crazy – mad – insane and since then, many fighters for equity and equality suffer the same fate where the system, or people representing the system, discards those unusual activists as being of being clinically deranged of psychologically demented.
The Africans who survived the escape kept challenging the system. It is their resilience that informed the quest for liberation. England handed “independence” to Dominica, but before that, there were forces which were for and against the terms of independence. During the pre-independence movements, the Dominica Freedom Party (DFP), the then opposition party, favoured a public referendum. This was a public vote by the citizenry to determine whether they wanted independence. The Dominica Labour Party (DLP), which commanded the majority in government, was against this and the push for referendum was defeated.
This article is copyright © 2019 DOM767
