AT­TIL­LAH SPRINGER

Vic­to­ry is cer­tain

Cer­tain as the sun shine in the sky

Vic­to­ry is cer­tain

All free­dom lov­ing peo­ple will say so

Oh I ,Oh I

Oh I, Know I

I be­lieve

–Vic­to­ry is Cer­tain, David Rud­der

There is a woman with blue hair sit­ting next to me. She's prob­a­bly the coolest woman I've met since be­ing in Eng­land this time.Not just be­cause her hair is blue. I mean, like a prop­er ward-off-maljo shade of blue that is so elec­tri­fy­ing.We're in a sun­ny room in the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sus­sex, an in­ter­est­ing bunch of aca­d­e­mics and ac­tivists talk­ing about how and where these two worlds can meet.

The blue-haired woman, whose name is Lucy, speaks about the Oc­cu­py Sus­sex move­ment, where stu­dents have be­come in­volved in con­test­ing the uni­ver­si­ty's at­tempts to pri­va­tise ser­vices like cam­pus se­cu­ri­ty.She speaks about the protests and the re­sponse of the State and the re­sponse of the po­lice to these most­ly white, mid­dle-class young peo­ple flaunt­ing their priv­i­lege in their faces.

She speaks about the chal­lenges of be­ing both aca­d­e­m­ic and ac­tivist. Of how the vi­o­lence of be­ing ket­tled by po­lice is some­times no dif­fer­ent from the tyran­ny of knowl­edge of aca­d­e­m­ic in­sti­tu­tions. She asks ques­tions that res­onate with me.

And I'm kind of ner­vous be­cause I am up next. I still feel like a cock­roach in fowl par­ty when I end up at these sorts of events. It's the Tri­ni way. You nev­er re­al­ly feel like what you're do­ing is le­git­i­mate un­til you timid­ly share your sto­ry and then have peo­ple come up and say that the sto­ry of your lit­tle is­land is an in­spi­ra­tion.I tell sto­ries. Of Yvonne Ash­by and the women of Chatham whose con­cern made the whole coun­try stand up.

I tell the one about how they said we were out­siders be­cause we were tak­ing an in­ter­est in na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.I tell the one about the politi­cians who walked with us in Chatham and Ves­signy and now are in Cab­i­net act­ing like peo­ple don't mat­ter.I show them pic­tures of my dear­ly missed friend and com­rade Nor­ris De­onar­ine walk­ing on the beach in Chatham. And the chil­dren of the Hin­du Prachar Kendra in the Mar­i­anne Riv­er call­ing for Hin­dus to show en­vi­ron­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty at Gan­ga Dhaaraa.

I tell them the leg­end of the Pitch Lake. The one about the chief's daugh­ter who de­mands a cloak of hum­ming­bird feath­ers. And the priests who say no. And how she in­sists. But when she gets her cloak the anger of the gods pun­ish­es the vil­lage by swal­low­ing them up in a lake of pitch. I tell them that in this now time we are still con­fronting the self­ish­ness of a cer­tain few who are un­in­ter­est­ed in the fact that their ac­tions are de­struc­tive.

I spend the day half in Sus­sex and half in Trinidad. Won­der­ing where our rad­i­cal aca­d­e­mics are. Aside from Wayne Kublals­ingh, who shocked the coun­try with his ex­treme ac­tions, I can't think of any who put them­selves on the line for a cause.In the land of plen­ty food, it is easy to for­get an ema­ci­at­ed man once his hunger strike is over. You breathe a sigh of re­lief and re­turn to stuff­ing your face in peace with­out that lit­tle voice in the back of mind ask­ing you: what did you do to­day to make your coun­try bet­ter?

I tell them that this is my fear for us. That we are still so self-ab­sorbed that we can't see the dam­age we do. Not just en­vi­ron­men­tal. The lack of so­cial con­scious­ness that starts in the Par­lia­ment and drips through the uni­ver­si­ties and the pub­lic sec­tor and the pri­vate sec­tor.

I ex­plain that I can't be an aca­d­e­m­ic be­cause I can't be ob­jec­tive. I can't be rea­son­able and un­emo­tion­al about Trinidad. I want to re­main part of that lu­natic fringe. That shouts and screams and asks for an­swers to ques­tions that no­body wants to hear. I can't dis­tance my­self from the knowl­edge and I can't dis­tance my­self from my feel­ing for the place.

But the place is not just Trinidad. The place is earth. The place is a lit­tle blue plan­et, blue like my new friend-in-sol­i­dar­i­ty Lucy's hair. I hold back tears for Trinidad in Sus­sex. I tell our sto­ries be­cause they are uni­ver­sal, even if we don't think they are.

In the land of peo­ple who love to live in the box­es cre­at­ed for them by oth­er peo­ple paral­ysed by fear of dif­fer­ence, where are our aca­d­e­mics? When was the last time a lec­tur­er went and held a rea­son­ing in a com­mu­ni­ty, a la Wal­ter Rod­ney? Shar­ing knowl­edge free of charge. Learn­ing how to syn­er­gise com­mu­ni­ty in­for­ma­tion with what dis­tor­tions of us ex­ist in books.

When the peo­ple are not the oth­er. When more than a hand­ful of lec­tur­ers and so­cial com­men­ta­tors and in­tel­lec­tu­als are will­ing to be on the front­line.Where are they when we need them to be there for us, quan­ti­fy­ing the strug­gle and feel­ing moved enough by the things they find that they lead their stu­dents in­to bat­tle?Now more than ever we need we need aca­d­e­mics who are not afraid to speak our lan­guage.