hol' em by dem neck!

In the second form, my high school started an anti-cyberbullying campaign in order to curb the high levels of cyberbullying within the school. They had people come in to speak of the harms of bullying and the trouble you can get in for cyberbullying and even had students work on projects to address the issue. Did this help the issue? Of course, it did not. 

I start off with that story as this entire post is about why you should bully. No, not talking about troubling some person on the side of the street because of which school they go to, or how they walk, you know high school stuff. I’m talking about bullying and holding our elected officials accountable. We have to hol’ em by dem neck. 

The inspiration for this post comes from personal observation of politics and the communities’ function in the last couple of months. This ranges from the US federal and local politics (here in Wichita, Kansas) to the various governments of Caricom nations to our own Sint Maarten government. A lot of the time, when someone that we “like” or can relate to holds a position, we tend to give completely different treatment to them than the ones our beliefs don’t align with. This is a major issue. We have to remember, no matter what type of relation or infatuation you have with an elected official, they are still an elected official. Their job is to serve the people, not for the people to bow down to them. We have to make sure that they are doing the job which they were hired (through votes) to do. 

This celebration of the politician in our current political system is an issue that stems down from monarchies, especially European ones. Monarchs, who controlled most of the functions of the countries, demand a level of reverence and idolatry to them from anyone that was “lesser” than them. With the “birth” of democracy in western Europe, this was slowly transcended into the parliaments and into all of the new world systems of democracy. Many people think this is an issue only within dictatorships but if we look at our own backyards, you can see the level of reverence that has to provide to these elected officials simply through the ceremonies that happen around them under the guise of “respect.” 

Now we have a mention, we can’t critique the “good ones.” Good ones being subjective to your personal views and understandings, but if you’re someone who tends to have left-leaning ideologies and you criticize an elected official that says they function on those same ideologies, apparently you are attacking someone that is on the same side as you. In a Caribbean sense, this can be seen as a problem if you come for a politician that is a part of the political party that your family, or community supports. While over the years this has led to violent outbreaks, today, it has resulted in back and forths across social media. 

Apparently, we cannot be mean to “ALL” of our officials, just some. 
My belief is that we should drag everyone from dem collar. 

We all live in cities, villages, towns, countries where there is a visible struggle for the people to survive. For years, these same elected officials have spoken about the change they will do in the positions. If these people who have had these positions for a pretty long time and not one change has happened, we must just sit and say “change will come?” 

Nah dawg, tings doh wuk like da. 

If my road had to fix since 2017 and it’s 2020, I will be making noise. Many people run on the notion of change and development and better living and many of us are living in worse conditions now. We have politicians in our parliaments that’s been in government longer than some of the younger and upcoming politicians have been alive. We have politicians that have other agendas other than the one present. And I must not bully? 

We also have to remember that is “we who got we” and no I’m not talking about the ones in these positions who look like us or we “relate” to. I’m talking about us as a community. It’s the community leaders that are teaching and feeding our children. It’s our community leaders that are knocking on these doors pushing and yelling for some type of reform. It’s a pity that I have to spend time helping young people draft up advice on what’s need to be done in our country, cities, villages, etc, to present to these officials who ran on “we going to fix this.” It’s a shame that a lot of us have to fight but if our officials ain’t doing it and we can’t technically hold dem accountable to do it, then I guess we got to continue the work. 

So here is a kind reminder to hol’ em by dem neck!

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