Wasting Time (What David Abdulah Doesn't Get)

I attended the Movement for Social Justice's 'gathering' at the Diego Martin Community Center on Thursday evening despite having publicly said i would not go, just to have myself proven wrong, that this is NOT tired rhetoric, that the people ARE interested in the 'old time something' coming back again, that the best use for the labor platform is a rehash of the NAR and then COP's appeal to the disenchanted middle class, but sadly, no such luck.

That is not to say that the speakers are not enthusiastic or not making the effort to enunciate their vision, or that the few people gathered were not paying rapt attention, it is that this will not win David nor the MSJ any brownie points when the general election heats up in ernest and he HAS to know this if he has any political savvy at all. At best, at the very best if he continues along this path he may amass enough supporters to be worth tacking on as an 'appendage' similar to the United National Congress use of the Congress of the People, but then what of all this talk? Who knows better than David that when you're an appendage you show up for the camera ops, you smile and make nice and read from the prepared script, but other than that you work hard at not upstaging your host or you will find yourself exactly where David and the MSJ find themselves today, so what's the point of this exercise?

I looked around the room to see many of those 'professionally' opposed to the current regime uniting anywhere a competing tent is erected under the maxim that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but even these have 'traditional' homes and will return thence when the bell is wrung, so why is the movement being hobbled preaching to someone else's choir? My every interaction with David Abdullah tells me two things: 1) that he is an extremely intelligent person full of real vision and compassion and, 2) that while he is an excellent leadership member and would be a strong asset in the frontline of any organization, he is not leadership material, not in a world where all the bets are 'all in' all the time. For some reason he fails to understand that the change he wants that will make him valid will not come before the next election, so he will not see Office as the principle leader, so that those same changes he wants to enact will not see the light of day, and this 'Catch 22' seems to escape him in his 'Wizard of Oz' approach, that if we all could only just believe we could make all our wishes come true. It doesn't work that way.

David is failing to recognize the unique opportunity that he has at his disposal, the combined power of labor, forces that could be harnessed and repurposed now as a political machine, not used as an end to attract the same tired has beens that could not get the COP into Office. Who is advising him on this fool's errand? Clearly there MUST be someone in the ranks to say hey, there's another way, yes? One can only hope. We ALL know that there MUST be a challenge to ethnic voting for the damn to burst and facilitate the change we all know that is desperately needed, but where are those magical votes to come from? We've ALL sat in those meetings that tried to get the Ganges to flow into the Nile, to merge a tassa drum with a tenor pan but it just will not work. And we've all played the numbers games of the youth vote combined with the elderly, and the disenchanted, and the middle class, and one from Column 'a' and two from Column 'b' to make up numbers, ad nauseum. After the blatant lie that was the COP experience, does David really think he has it within him to upset the order and change the tribal masses in a straight up vote? Someone said bigger cocks than he has crowed and ended up in a pot of pelau and perhaps someone needs to share the recipe with him. No David, the last remaining constituency is labor. They alone have the numbers and the means to change the order, but you must have a vision for them and for the country as a whole. And it starts with manning up to the established order, and what better time to expose the indecency of it than in the soon to be held bye-election in Chaguanas West? As in all elections there are chances that you may or may not win, but what will the message be to those looking for something different, something new? When next will you get this much face-time opportunity to spread your message into homes across the land on the evening news? Or to use the fora of debates to challenge the script? The idea of a labor party is an exciting concept and in my view the only real avenue from which change can come, but looking on and listening to what THIS version of the MSJ is selling, we are nowhere near there yet.