The Coming Storm...

"While they're standing in the welfare lines

Crying at the doorsteps of those armies of salvation

Wasting time in unemployment lines

Sitting around waiting for a promotion

Don't you know you're talking about a revolution

It sounds like a whisper"

Talkin' bout a Revolution - Tracy Chapman

Less than twenty four hours after our Commissioner of Police marked the proverbial line in the sand that this is where violent crime ends, someone killed someone else in almost the very same spot and the dead man's blood washed the Commissioner's line away.

A seventy one year old pensioner was shot dead in broad daylight, four hot bullets for his wife's three hundred dollars, blue notes, bullets and bawling - things that go to make up a life in paradise.

The incidents of brazen and violent crime taking place in the country on a daily if not hourly basis are a terrible omen, and they portend a time when bullets and blood will become our currency and our politics.

There is a saying that applies here - 'No one raindrop ever thinks of itself as having caused the flood.'

The banks will cause the revolution.

Greedy landlords and landowners will cause the revolution.

Money launderers and their impact on the economy will cause the revolution.

Unscrupulous food importers and supermarket owners will cause the revolution.

The unchecked capitalism without compassion will cause the revolution.

The overall culture of greed and advantage will cause the revolution.

The Government will cause the revolution.

The people are being cornered, abused and pressed back against each other, stripped of their dignity, robbed of their humanity and denied their share of their country. That is the very recipe for revolution.

Marie Antoinette was not being disingenuous when she said of the peasants (when told that they had no bread) that they should eat cake.

She could not fathom a world of such poverty that they had no food and unfortunately lost her head for the mistake.

How do we stop the violence from building momentum and gaining ground?

By treating ALL our people with respect.

With policies designed to empower all citizens with hope and opportunity, equity ownership in the country and equality of all persons before the State.

For example:

Mr. Winston Dookeran as Minister of Finance has the power to make a lot of the wrong things right.

Drastic measures are needed to make it possible for ALL who want to own a home to own one. Prices are being kept artificially high fueled by the proceeds of the drug trade, and some very greedy men have grabbed up for themselves too much of the country's most scarce resource, real estate.

This has to change.

I have said before only your principal home should be free of property tax. Your second home should attract a fifteen per cent per annum tax, and any residential property after that should attract a twenty five per cent tax per annum.

Why?

Because perpetual tenancy is a form of economic slavery.

Because water, air and land must be available to all and Government and State policies must guarantee it.

We need Land reform and Property reform to tax idle properties that would encourage land hoarders to sell. 

Secondly, if the Government cannot force the private Banks to offer mortgages and loans at decent and affordable rates, then the State needs to compete with those banks through its financial arms and offer mortgages to a ceiling of 1.5 million dollars at a flat ten per cent interest attached to the principle and paid monthly over twenty years.

This would put home ownership in the reach of many who are frustrated by the existing system and would force the private financial institutions to follow suit if they want to survive.

These steps outlined here alone would make such a significant dent in the crime situation the Government would be stupid to not steal this idea and implement it.

We need a Government willing to take a holistic look at what is taking place before we cross that line, even though some say the line has already been crossed. Home ownership, food prices and health care are more important than any other programs that the Government is trying to implement now, and if Kamla has half the sense I think she has, she will make this idea her own.

She needs to do something before it's too late, before they write her legacy into the history books in blood.

Poor people are gonna rise up

And get their share

Poor people are gonna rise up 

And take what's theirs

Don't you know you better run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run

Oh I said you better run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run

Talkin' bout a revolution...