Month: July 2014

Of Beaches, Farmers & Swans

#TRANSFORMATIVEADAPTATION

Thru Red, Gold & Green Spectacles

burwood beach Burwood Beach

TO SWIM ON OUR OWN BEACHES     The activist campaign being waged by Jamaicans to save the beaches where Jamaicans who are not tourists can swim, won a victory this week when the Tourism Enhancement Fund (TEF) announced it would be upgrading Burwood Beach in Trelawny.

      Burwood Is one of the few beaches now remaining around the island where Jamaicans have free access to the white sands and beautiful Caribbean sea, as the hunger for tourism development has led to the disappearance of more and more public beaches. In recent years disputes with persons who claimed ownership of Burwood Beach, as well as lack of action by the Trelawny Parish Council, left the beach an unsupervised, barren space for grateful locals to access the sea for various forms of relaxation, so the TEF announcement that it will upgrade the beach with sanitary and parking facilities, gazeebos…

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GANJA – The People’s Heritage

Thru Red, Gold & Green Spectacles

coptics Ethiopian Zion Coptic Church members

In  one of those discussions that happen when good friends get together, the topic rolled around to RASTA business, or the lack of it. My recent article on the Coptics had got a lot of attention, first from those who remembered that brave group of ganja warriors, and then from people who had never heard of their noble adventures 40 years ago to liberate the herb and make it a major source of Jamaica’s income.

The conversation turned to the current activity by government to legalize ganja (or is it just decriminalize medicinal ganja?) and we realized that none of us were happy with the proposals being put forward in the ongoing meetings being held or the committees being set up. Why? Because it turns out that none of us agree that Government should be in charge of ganja business.

None of us like the…

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Report on the Mission To Africa Report

rastafarithinktank

solomon

Barbara Makeda Blake-Hannah

Prof. Robert Hill Prof. Robert Hill

(First published August 29, 2010. Republished today in light of a recent Seminar held at UWI and in London by Prof. Robert Hill on the 1960 UWI Rastafari Report written by MG Smith, Rex Nettleford and Roy Augier)

Before writing a report on the UWI Rasta Studies Conference, I decided to take time to read the Report which the UWI said had formed the basis of, and reason for, the conference. I am glad I did, because what I read within the pages shocked me and caused me to question not only the reason and reality of the conference, but also to state that Rastafari has been cheated, tricked, frustrated and ultimately downgraded from its founding principles, turned instead into objects of scrutiny, as unjustly imprisoned and as scorned any caged zoo animals. Brethren and Sisters, this is what I found in the…

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