Who is Jim Brown?
?
?
Last week this blog stated the following about Western leaders in general:
‘… All they signify is a resignation to deep seated inferiority, often displayed as cynicism, pessimism, nihilism and destruction.
Because of the stunted development of Western leaders and the billionaires they serve, they all fail to realise how happy they could be if they could experience trust. They haven’t a clue where to turn because all their relationships are fundamentally insincere except when causing suffering.’
They are words I stand by. Now we can look at particular significances of a few little examples.
I’m reminded of one day I was walking by Jamaica’s infamous Coronation Market, Downtown Kingston, when this brother approached me, 50-60 I’d guess, hails me in the street.
“Is Jim Brown!” he exclaims.
I lean in and ask him confidentially if this Jim Brown is a good guy or not. I don’t want to be mistaken for some everyone hates.
“Very good”, the brother assures me, all smiles, and we say some goodbyes and go about our business.
I didn’t know who Jim Brown was at the time. I do now.
Jim Brown was the Don of Dons stretching from infamous Western Kingston to islandwide. More powerful than the Prime minister. It’s important for us to understand how and why and what he signifies.
It was the 70s. Bob Marley was doing his Rasta Ambassador bit, turning the whole world on, getting jamaica noticed and the people felt it. And some of the people started to get ideas.
The ideas had been round for a while, ideas of freedom, justice, peace and love. Aspirational ideas based on ‘spiritual’ ‘humane’ values of human equality and unity.
This made certain yewess and yewkay interests uncomfortable. There was a worrying precedent just next door.
The bigger Spanish island next door had its overturning in 1959 because the place was being overrun by yewess gangsters. The people kicked them out! Didn't want their kids being funnelled into criminal service industries of sex, drugs and gambling, with most wasting, drowning, shooting each other, in a cesspool of surplus labour, garrisons with zero state infrastructure to support organised human life.
They wanted clean jobs instead, and a crime-free island not run by monster mobsters. And they wanted education for human liberation, like the model being developed in Brazil by Jesuit radical priest and liberation theologist Paulo Freire.
(Freire was lucky. They only put him in prison for teaching peasants literacy. Most of his fellow radical priests in Brazil were murdered by the Yewess backed fascist dictatorship. After the dictator fell Freire was released and appointed minister for education as well as World Council Of Churches Ambassador to the UN.)
Those Spanish islanders wanted these things because they believed deep down that they were decent people and that they deserved decent lives.
Yewess and yewkay interests were worried that might happen in jamaica next: people were looking at that big Spanish island next door and getting uppity, murmuring about wanting clean jobs and good education too.
Jim Brown was recruited as a pawn used to stop jamaica's drift towards Cuban influence. Too ignorant of political science to realise he was to be a star in a snuff movie featuring the death of Irie jamaica, the death of the influence (in jamaica) of Ubuntu through Rastafari and the Maroons and all other authentically anti-colonialist freedom fighters. His natural big-man leadership qualities were wasted, his legacy ruined by those who used him then put him back in the wooden box like all pawns eventually.
Himself degraded, tamed and diverted by those who carelessly used him, in a way Jim Brown is the one who degraded, tamed and diverted the whole tone of jamaican culture with his shower posse moves. The vibe and values of Jim Brown are reflected in dancehall music and that whole lowtal scene: Fallen from the world's brightest beacon of upful one-love liberation to a ghoulish counter-revolutionary black hole of nihilist materialism.
Thank goodness jamaica was saved by yewess gangsters, its people rescued from their own dread liberation by capitalist ‘freedom and democracy’, phew!
The average life expectancy for jamaican males in garrisons of Western Kingston, Mo Bay, Sav and the rest is now 23. Let. That. Sink. In! In all of Cuba’s residential areas it is 73.
The murder rate on one of these two islands is 4 per 100,000, well below the world average of 6 per 100,000. On the other island it is 61 per 100,000, the highest in the world! No prizes for guessing which island is which.
Nice one, Jim Brown. You sure helped save jamaica from something! To this day Jamaica has swallowed the whole colonial set of coding and values: hook, line and sinker: mass extreme poverty, violence and materialism all accepted as normal and unchangable!
Too many Jamaicans live in fear: Too many are distrustful of others and of themselves. All of this is because deep down they know their culture is lost as long as it follows west-livity, as long as it strays from the upful ital irie vibe of Rasta Maroon Ubuntu.
Ask almost any Jamaican today and they will still repeat the mantra: ‘Yewess style freedom goo-oo--oo-oo-d, Che Guevara style freedom baa-a-a-a-a-d.’
Maybe it’s all about maturity. As a kid I was hyper-attached to my only ‘parent’ figure, a junkie hooked up with junkie hookers. I thought he was amazing even though life with him was full of trauma for me. Maybe individual attachment issues like that are experienced en masse as well, by whole cultures and populations. I didn’t break free till my dad died. Looks like it will be the same for Jamaica
I see Jim Brown as a man like bagga wire who was the enemy of the pride of jamaican people: Marcus Garvey. He is the anti Nanny, the anti Samuel Sharpe, the anti Paul Bogle, the anti George William Gordon, the anti Bob Marley. The anti hero. Not covered in glory, but showered in shame.
I do not like being mistaken for the man Jim Brown became, but I would be proud to be mistaken for the man he could have been given the chance to get out from under yewess influence. I reckon he must have been a big man inside, but I don’t think he ever had the chance to grow straight. You need education for critical consciousness and jamaica does not educate in that way, but in the capitalist way: to make sure the people do not get any more ideas ever again about being anything like their old heroes or their Spanish island neighbours.
Jamaican culture must find its own way to its own mix of Afrocentric and Westlivity values. Bless those who keep it positive and conscious. But do not pity those who deal violence and slackness. Remember the words of Peter Tosh! ‘Sorry for maga dog, maga dog turn and bite you!’ Hold them to account in constructive ways every time for their slackness. And remind them of their true conscious and godly legacy of Afrocentric Maroon and Rasta livity. It is for man and man and woman and woman to live it out now. Wake up and dream! (Check the tune of that name on our debut album, Treesongs!)
For more on all topics to do with Abracadia and its work, don’t forget to check Abracadia’s weekly spoken word offering at the ‘Bit Of Soul Podcast’. Come and say hi, pass by for a try. Be great to see you there. Just roll up anytime to listen, chill and reason at the lush and refreshing oasis that is Abracadia.
Until such time - In Ubuntu
Remi