“They must be bro­ken; Keep the body and take the mind. In oth­er words, break the will to re­sist.” —James Lynch.

There are very re­al ten­sions in Trinidad and To­ba­go so­ci­ety. We un­der­es­ti­mate the im­por­tance of sit­u­a­tion and con­text in hu­man be­hav­iour.

The front page of the Sun­day Guardian blared “La Puer­ta cries out; Youth job­less youth forced in­to a life of crime; plead for jobs. The sto­ry writ­ten by Joshua Seemu­n­gal is a re­minder that for want of a nail, the war on crime, youth, gun and gang vi­o­lence, will be lost.

Last Fri­day, I at­tend­ed the Con­fer­ence on the 50th an­niver­sary of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion. A col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) SALIS­ES and the Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC).

The two-day event had knowl­edge­able pan­el­lists. All the pre­sen­ta­tions were in­for­ma­tive. In par­tic­u­lar, three pre­sen­ta­tions: Dr Tye­him­ba Sa­landy (Analy­sis of NUFF—Na­tion­al Union of Free­dom Fight­ers and T&T Rasta­far­i­ans), Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don (Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion Un­fin­ished) and Dr Preeya Mo­han (Black Pow­er and En­tre­pre­neur­ship in Trinidad and To­ba­go). Peo­ple who should have been in the room weren’t.

Fifty-three (53 years) lat­er the dots con­nect—youth vi­o­lence and gang cul­ture are it­er­a­tions of 1970, 1990 and oth­er so­cial up­heavals in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Young peo­ple were on the front line of the Black Pow­er Move­ment.

On sale at the con­fer­ence was a book­let en­ti­tled “How to Make a Slave”. The con­tent in­clud­ed an ad­dress made on the banks of the James Riv­er in 1712, by a slave own­er James Lynch, own­er of a plan­ta­tion in the West In­dies who was in­vit­ed by slave own­ers in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca to come and ad­vise them how they should deal with their slaves.

In his ad­dress, Lynch said: “In my bag here, I have a fool­proof method for con­trol­ling your black slaves. I guar­an­tee every one of you that if in­stalled cor­rect­ly it will con­trol the slaves for at least three hun­dred years. My method is sim­ple. Any mem­ber of your fam­i­ly or over­seer can use it. I use fear, en­vy and dis­trust for con­trol pur­pos­es. The black slaves af­ter re­ceiv­ing this in­doc­tri­na­tion shall car­ry on, and will be­come self-re­fu­elling and self-re­gen­er­a­tion for hun­dreds of years, maybe thou­sands.”

The Lynch play­book ar­tic­u­lat­ed in 1712 lives on down through the cen­turies. The dots con­nect.

Ig­no­rance is not bliss. Sports or­gan­i­sa­tions take note: the tur­moil of crime threat­ens the ex­is­tence, growth and op­por­tu­ni­ty of sports and sports stake­hold­ers. How­ev­er, the big­ger pic­ture is blurred as sports de­ci­sion-mak­ers fail to con­nect the dots while for want of a nail, the youth suf­fer and cry and the fu­ture of sport is lost.

Giv­en the sig­nif­i­cance of the Black Pow­er Rev­o­lu­tion in Caribbean his­to­ry, I looked around Daa­ga Au­di­to­ri­um and won­dered where were the stake­hold­ers of the sport. They missed out on the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have a con­ver­sa­tion with Dr Roy Mc­Cree, and ser­vant leader of NJAC Kwasi Mutema about the im­por­tant role sport must play in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

The dots con­nect be­tween 1970, 1990, NUFF, WOLF, Block four, Block five, the Black Pow­er up­ris­ing, the Mutiny led by Raf­fique Shah and Rex Lasalle, and the on­go­ing mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion of un­em­ployed and un­der-em­ployed young peo­ple.

“We must sac­ri­fice all that we have in or­der to teach and ed­u­cate our chil­dren, for the fu­ture is in their hands.” —Patrice Lu­mum­ba

From the ground up, sport is not just about cel­e­brat­ing medals it’s al­so lead­ing con­ver­sa­tions about hu­man­i­ty, bet­ter men­tal and phys­i­cal fit­ness, equal­i­ty and what it means to achieve with in­tegri­ty. Sports lead­ers must strive to change, in­no­vate and be a bench­mark in the way, we be­have.