And then came President Obama, the Stone of Hope...

In October last year I was invited to the University of Miami to give a talk organized by Pat Saunders of the Department of English. They were launching their Caribbean art website and a whole series of activities had been planned around it. During my stay I was taken to the university bookstore where they had these beautifully packaged little dolls modelled on famous people such as Shakespeare, Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi and others. There was an entire shelf full of Obama dolls and a shelf full of McKain dolls. It was then that I realized that Barack Obama was going to win the US Presidential election by a landslide for the Obama shelf only had a handful of dolls left while the McKain one was practically full. And this in Miami, stronghold of Republican-leaning Cuban-Americans.

The three of us scrambled for the few remaining Obama dolls and I managed to get my hands on one. Manufactured by Jailbreak Toys the Obama doll was advertised as “An action figure we can believe in.” Brilliant, I thought. That is certainly the image one has of Barack Obama, that he is someone who believes in action rather than rhetoric. And today he will assume the most powerful position in the world—the Presidency of the United States.

What a day, what a day as someone once sang. Never before have people all over the world felt as involved and interested in American politics. I remember being taken aback at the response of David Lublin, Professor in the Department of Government, School of Public Affairs at the American University in Washington, D.C. when I asked if he was surprised by the extent of the interest worldwide in this last American election. He basically said that considering the dominance of the United States in world affairs it wasn't surprising at all (this was at one of those media discussions the US Embassy in Kingston kindly invites me to. Participating in them has greatly enhanced my experience of the election).

While Lublin's statement is quite true, it made me wonder if the Americans didn't fully realize how extraordinarily different it is this time. Lublin after all is a young, savvy, astute political scientist yet he didn't seem to be aware of the unique interest this particular election had aroused worldwide. For instance American might and power has never made me take an interest in their political system before. Yet once Obama showed that he was a force to contend with I started to be interested; how far would this unusual candidate get? What would his tactics be? How long would the American political system tolerate this challenge from a political nonentity? I'm sure there were millions like me all over the world. And trust me Barack hasn't let any of us down. And for a change neither has the United States, which has proved that its much vaunted democratic system of governance actually can and does work fairly. The Americans should be congratulated for that.

The following Facebook conversation sums up many of the hopes and doubts people all over the world are feeling as the United States installs its 44th President, Barack Hussein Obama.

January 19, 2009
Franka wonders if people realise that Barack can't walk on water or cure the sick...

SB at 11:29am January 19
Valid point Franka-More than 7 in 10 Americans think that the Obama administration will be able to improve conditions for minorities and the poor , increase respect for the U.S. abroad, and improve education. In T&T I think a lot believe he is swearing in as the next Prime Minister of T&T

Franka at 11:31am January 19
Girl... the topic of today's World Have Your Say programme is 'Are people expecting too much from Barack Obama'... need I say more?

KR at 11:37am January 19
Reality will set in after Tuesday...Obama will do great things..but he cannot turn water into wine...or rum!!!!

Franka at 11:45am January 19
He needs to sort that rum thing out though.. water into rum. He wld win wid dat!

CC at 12:29pm January 19
all might be true....but he is the first glimmer of hope people have had for a long long time. can he walk on water...NO can he cure the sick...not likely with his own hands....but he can and has restored hope where hope did not exisit and HOPE can cure....belief can.
As a canadian, we hope our political administration could show this type of progression.

Franka at 12:38pm January 19
I know what you mean Chas, but from where I'm sitting, the mania is a bit much. I get a feeling of lots of people will be sorely disappointed when he has to do unpopular things.

CC at 12:46pm January 19
maybe....but why we don't let the man start his new job first....

Cybele at 1:34pm January 19
I think part of the euphoria has to do with the fact that finally, you're seeing some one who apparently has some integrity. That, to most people accustomed to brazenly corrupt or hopelessly lethargic alleged public servants is a huge breath of fresh air. There is no doubt in my mind the opposition and disappointment will come. After all, we are dealing with fickle humans, and fixing Bush's mess will require tough, even harsh measures (LOL at Bush looking for absolution at this stage!). But I for one plan to give him a minute to sort himself: he deserves it and I believe my patience will be rewarded.

Amen to that! Only time will tell if President Obama will really prove to be a stone of hope carved out of the rock of despair that Martin Luther King talked about in his 'I have a dream' speech. Happy Inauguration everyone!

Reproduction Rights, Remembering Rodney and Ataklan's Sun Starts to Rise

Life happens. That’s what. And blogs have to take second place at times like that. A lot took place in the last few weeks. On the 10th I went to Miami at the invitation of Dr. Patricia Saunders to give a talk at the University of Miami on Entertainment Report as an archive of Jamaican popular culture. They were launching their website on Caribbean Art and Visual Culture "As Far as the Eye/I Can See" and celebrating the fifth anniversary of Anthurium, an online journal produced by the Department of English Literature.

I had with some difficulty managed to obtain copies of ER footage from TVJ but the quality was variable (much of the footage was unusable because the volume wasn’t consistent) and they had locked it so that I couldn’t go in and extract the clips I wanted to show during my presentation. Fortunately I had enough material to cover the gaps where I had intended to play the clips and the talk was a great success. I understand TVJ’s legal department’s zeal to ensure that their footage is not abused in any way but I think they are penalizing the wrong parties in the process.

I mean how likely is it that someone who writes asking for permission to use video clips in a presentation at an academic institution, providing all the supporting documents necessary, is going to turn around and sell the footage and violate TVJ’s copyright? Even if that had been my intention the quality of what I was provided would have been enough to render it useless for such purposes. Meanwhile I hear that multiple DVDs of TVJ’s hit series Rising Stars are freely available on the streets of downtown Kingston. A case of misplaced zeal and priorities?

I would recommend that the legal eagles at TVJ and other media entities take advantage of the fact that the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations (IFFRO) is holding their 37th Annual General Meeting at the Ritz Carlton in Montego Bay from Oct. 26 to the 31st, next week to be precise.

Now the ‘Reproduction’ in their name is not a reference to biological reproduction or cloning but ‘reprography’ or the legal reproduction or copying of copyrighted works whether textual, artistic, musical or any form of creative content. Their mission statement explains it best: “IFRRO works to increase on an international basis the lawful use of text and image based copyright works and to eliminate unauthorised copying by promoting efficient Collective Management of rights through RROs to complement creators' and publishers' own activities.”

JAMCOPY, the Jamaican Copyright Licensing Agency (on the board of which I sit), is the local organization responsible for organizing this prestigious international meeting here. All week long international policy for the licensing of musical works, newspapers, visual material, digital products, amongst other things is going to be discussed and signed off on right here on our shores. One hopes that the local legal and media fraternity will take this opportunity to bring themselves up to date on these issues of intellectual property; IP as it is called for short is one of the most important products of the twenty first century and its licensing and regulation are going to be key components in the future welfare of nations.

I returned to Jamaica just in time for the Walter Rodney conference that was held from October 16th to the 18th. Rodney as many of us know was a Guyanese historian who taught at the University of the West Indies in the 1960s. What made him unique was his activism, his insistence on making education available to the poor, his focus on rehabilitating pride in things African. As Wikipedia has it:

Rodney was sharply critical of the middle class for its role in the post-independence Caribbean. When the Jamaican government, led by prime minister Hugh Shearer, banned him, in October 1968, from ever returning to the country, because of his advocacy for the working poor in that country, riots broke out, eventually claiming the lives of several people and causing millions of dollars in damages. These riots, which started on October 16, 1968, are now known as the Rodney Riots, and they triggered an increase in political awareness across the Caribbean, especially among the Afrocentric Rastafarian sector of Jamaica, documented in his book, The Groundings with my Brothers.

The conference, organized by the Institute of Caribbean Studies in collaboration with the Centre for Caribbean Thought at UWI, was held to mark the 40th anniversary of the Rodney Riots. One of the stand-out moments came when the floor was opened for discussion after Honorary Professor Edward Seaga, a former Prime Minister and leader of the Jamaica Labour Party which had been in government when Rodney was made persona non grata made his presentation. Mr. Seaga held forth for 45 minutes instead of the prescribed 20 and talked about Garvey and Rasta and everything it seemed but Walter Rodney, disappointing those who thought they were going to hear a personal aside on the events of the late 1960s. While he did eventually touch on the subject of the conference Professor Horace Campbell of Syracuse University and author of the book Rasta and Resistance got up during the discussion period to say that had Mr. Seaga been one of his students he would have given him an F. To his credit Mr. Seaga accepted the criticism graciously.

Another memorable moment for me was the opening talk by Pat Rodney, Walter’s widow. Walter Rodney was killed in Guyana in 1980 by a bomb disguised as a radio transmitter. He was attempting to run for political office there. For many on the African continent and elsewhere Rodney was a figure of the stature of Malcolm X. For instance my friend Achal Prabhala, read his writings in Bangalore, India and was moved to go all the way to Guyana to find out more about him. Read his “In Search of Walter Rodney” which appeared in Transition magazine.

Surely a Rodney memorial at UWI is overdue? I visualize a beautiful mural by Ricky Culture on one of the blank walls at UWI.

Finally I returned to find that Ataklan’s song Sun Starts to Rise (Ataklan is one of the most nonconformist, critical voices in Caribbean music today), complete with music video is now available on YouTube. Apart from being inspirational and simply brilliant, it has special meaning for me because it was born in my house about six years ago. I was hosting Klan on his first visit to Jamaica from Trinidad and woke up to hear him belting out the first few lines of the song. When he mentioned that his dream was to do a song in Jamaica I took him to Mikie Bennett at Grafton Studios where the initial production was done. It’s taken a while (at periodic visits to TnT I’ve had the pleasure of being treated to intermediate stages of the song) but Klan has finally got it off and it really is a beauty. The video is minimalist but eloquent. Do watch it.