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Reading Time 10 minsDecember 20, 2022 THE BONAIRIAN PEOPLES’ STRUGGLE FOR SELF-DETERMINATION Link to Papiamentu Version INTRODUCTION Today’s challenges, such as climate change (global warming), lingering aftershocks of the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, rising authoritarianism and fascism, and the withering away of democracy, are severe threats to world peace. Yet, as the mainstream and social media platforms guide their audiences’ attention to these potentially apocalyptic narratives, a group of forgotten Caribbean peoples and nations are still strangled by Dutch neo-colonialism. These nations have not advanced beyond the residuals of the world’s main historical holocausts, the slave trade of… Read More »BONARIAN PEOPLES’ STRUGGLE FOR SELF DETERMINATION – James Finies

Reading Time 4 minsNovember 3, 2022 “…. she was the symbol of an empire built on genocide, slavery, violence, extraction, and brutality, the legacies of which continue in our present day.” Arabindan-Kesson, professor, Princeton University The Queen is dead. Is the long living façade of a kind and gentle monarchy also dead? Probably. Will the “sins” of the mother be visited upon her eldest child, King Charles III? Probably. Queen Elizabeth II reigned from February 1952 until her death in September 2022 for 70 years and 214 days—the longest of any British monarch. Fifteen British prime ministers served under her,… Read More »Queen Elizabeth II: Hiding in a Fairytale*–Carlyle G. Leach

Reading Time 6 minsAugust 23, 2022 BOOK SYMPOSIUM: Hilary McD. Beckles, How Britain Underdeveloped the Caribbean: A Reparation Response to Europe’s Legacy of Plunder and Poverty: Kingston, University of the West Indies Press, 2021, 292 pages: ISBN 9789766408695 (Paperback) One of the many striking features of this work is the clarifying critique of the 1833 Emancipation Act. According to the author, the British Government made clear that the Africans, our ancestors, were property for the first time. By implementing this act, the Government was taking away ‘property’ from its owners and fully compensating them for their property loss. The imperial… Read More »In the Tradition of Our Best Truth-Tellers–Kamau Odinga

Reading Time 7 minsAugust 23, 2022 BOOK SYMPOSIUM: Hilary McD. Beckles, How Britain Underdeveloped the Caribbean: A Reparation Response to Europe’s Legacy of Plunder and Poverty: Kingston, University of the West Indies Press, 2021, 292 pages: ISBN 9789766408695 (Paperback)   “It is the British who by their action in past centuries are responsible for the presence in these islands of the majority of their inhabitants, whose ancestors as slaves contributed millions to the wealth of Great Britain, a debt which the British have yet to repay.” Sir Arthur Lewis All four of my grandparents, like others throughout the Caribbean, took… Read More »GREAT EXPECTATIONS: GOING FOR THE WIN – CARLYLE G. LEACH

Reading Time 15 minsPresentation by former President of Guyana Donald Ramotar, featured Speaker on the occasion of the 43rd anniversary of the Grenada Revolution, Saturday, March 13, 2022. March 30, 2022 I would first of all thank the organizers for inviting me to share some of my views with you on this important 43 anniversary of the most profound Revolution that occurred in the English-speaking Caribbean. Allow me to greet all of you on this significant occasion. For me, the Grenada Revolution was a continuation of the movement for real change in this Region by many revolutionaries and movements in… Read More »Presentation by former President Mr. Donald Ramotar on the 43rd Anniversary of the Grenadian Revolution

Reading Time 7 minsAnother October, another sterling contributor to the Grenada Revolution to mourn and remember…  Like Maurice Bishop and all others who made the Revolution happen in 1979, the Coards’ contribution to the realization of everything behind the eternal theme ‘Forward Ever, Backward Never’ simply cannot be erased… Like the Revolution they helped build, their contributions will be better appreciated henceforth, more for what they were and still are actually worth, than what those still bent on diminishing them would have preferred to have been their lasting legacy…    Another October is here and there’ll be the usual revisiting of events that led to the various sins of commission and omission and the Grenada Revolution’s implosion; and… Read More »Phyllis Coard was always much more than a husband’s faithful wife! – Earl Bousquet

Reading Time 3 minsAugust is a time to remember. It begins with a heralding throughout the Anglo-phone Caribbean as Emancipation Day in which we celebrate the emancipation of slavery. We recall too Jamaica’s journey – leading the way of political independence on the occasion of its 58 year of political independence. It is also the month in which Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887 – 1940), philosopher and founder of the Pan-Africanism movement was born, August 17. Trinidad follows the trail to bookend this history-filled month of remembrance with the commemoration of this Caribbean republic’s 58 year of political independence on August… Read More »Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition – BDN Editorial

Reading Time 6 minsMay 25, 2020 “The truth is that any figure of Africans imported into the Americas which is narrowly based on the surviving records is bound to be low, because there were so many people at the time who had a vested interest in smuggling slaves and withholding data. Nevertheless, if the low figure of ten million was accepted as basis for evaluating the impact of slaving on Africa as a whole, the conclusions that could legitimately be drawn would confound those who attempt to make light of the experience of the rape of Africans from 1445 to… Read More »A Caribbean Reparations Lens on African Liberation Day — Martin P. Felix

Reading Time 7 minsBDN Interview Sunshine Founder Gil Figaro THE NOMINEES / INDUCTEES FOR THE SUNSHINE AWARDS Hall of Fame Frankie McIntosh – St. Vincent & the Grenadines Musician, Arranger, Producer and Teacher McIntosh, a national of St. Vincent and the Grenadines was introduced to music at the age of 3 by his father, saxophonist, Arthur McIntosh who founded the popular Melo Tones Orchestra Band in the 1950s in St. Vincent. By age 14, Frankie founded the Frankie McIntosh Orchestra which included some of his school mates. In 1968, Frankie migrated to the United States to pursue a degree in… Read More »List of Nominees/Inductees for Sunshine Awards Hall of Fame