00:00Shabaka Kambon, director of the Caribbean Freedom Project, is advocating for the removal of colonial symbols and monuments in the Caribbean.
00:10Columbus monuments are a form of speech that we need to address as a region.
00:17Remember, in the Bahamas in particular, the Bahamas is the location, the site on which Columbus invaded the Caribbean and began his genocidal occupation of the region.
00:30As Emancipation Day approaches, it is important, he says, to bolster that call.
00:35We have a long tradition in the Caribbean of trying to end this veneration of colonial violence, this casual celebration of colonial violence.
00:46And the authorities in the post-independence period have continued to just kind of drag their feet on the issue.
00:52Speaking on the MSJ Tuesday Talks program, Kambon says history was written to forget the true heroes and pedestalize the culprits.
01:01The only reason that Cipriani and Butler are celebrated, Cipriani with a statue in town, Butler with the Uriah Butler Highway and so on,
01:11is because of a concession by the PNM to the labor movement, because the PNM was constructing a version of our memory,
01:22which excluded anybody who had fought for our rights, fought for the rights we enjoy today during that dark night of colonialism.
01:33They had constructed, they were busy, and it's the labor movement that forced them to recognize Cipriani and Butler.
01:41And even here in the Caribbean, we fail to recognize local heroes like C.L.R. James.
01:47In London, you're having an event celebrating the actions of a Trinidadian 125 years ago, sometime this week or so, but nothing at all in Trinidad.
01:59In London, there is a building with a blue plaque on it, meaning you can't touch that building.
02:05And as a building, he stayed in while he was in London.
02:09The building that he grew up in, in Trinidad and Tobago, was unceremoniously destroyed just a few years ago.
02:17One of the local monuments the project is advocating for the removal of is anyone bearing the name Sir Ralph James Woodford.
02:27Woodford was the chief persecutor of one of Trinidad's greatest heroes, one of our real heroes.
02:35I'm going to get to that in a moment, but let's say, let me list for you what makes Woodford such a problematic figure.
02:43First of all, let me see if I can give you a quick list.
02:46Let me list his virtues.
02:49Incitement to racial hatred.
02:51He exhorted whites when he was in power to be extremely severe towards people of color
02:56and to disregard whatever rights or little rights they would have possessed while he was in power for 15 years.
03:03Ravishi Tomori, Rupnarai, TV6 News.
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