DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

The sight of Trini­bad artistes Kashif “K Man” Sankar and Meschach “Plumpy Boss” Em­manuel per­form­ing to­geth­er, bump­ing fists and shar­ing the stage, has been wel­comed by res­i­dents of com­mu­ni­ties long di­vid­ed by gang vi­o­lence, who say the mo­ment sig­nals a re­turn to a time when peo­ple could move freely with­out fear.

The two artistes, who had been bit­ter ri­vals, ap­peared to­geth­er at Sum­mer Stage in Port-of-Spain on Sat­ur­day, af­ter meet­ing ear­li­er that day at the con­stituen­cy of­fice of Tu­na­puna MP and Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der.

For res­i­dents, the sig­nif­i­cance went be­yond the mu­sic.

Beetham Gar­dens res­i­dent Aki­do Williams wel­comed the col­lab­o­ra­tion but said peace must be ac­com­pa­nied by op­por­tu­ni­ties for peo­ple in af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties.

“We glad for what we see with the Sum­mer Stage and thing, al­so, and we just want the Gov­ern­ment to re­lease some work and thing on the ghet­tos and the com­mu­ni­ties and thing nah boy,” Williams said.

Sea Lots res­i­dent Mer­cedes An­drews said the peace has al­lowed peo­ple to re­con­nect with rel­a­tives, friends and com­mu­ni­ties they had been un­able to vis­it safe­ly.

“With this peace now, every­body could come to­geth­er and see each oth­er...I find this is one of the best things that could hap­pen for this time,” An­drews said.

She al­so called for the ben­e­fits of the peace to ex­tend across com­mu­ni­ties, sug­gest­ing that pro­grammes be de­cen­tralised so all res­i­dents of the cap­i­tal could par­tic­i­pate.

“Yuh have to put it open­ly (and en­sure) that it is not for one area; it should be for any­body and every­body that will­ing. It will be a very good thing,” An­drews added.

Mean­while, Beetham Gar­dens res­i­dent Dail Richards said main­tain­ing the peace would re­quire sus­tained in­ter­ven­tion to pre­vent a re­turn to vi­o­lence.

“We need some­thing to main­tain the peace. And if we don’t get some­thing to main­tain the peace, what go go on? Wah go go on? The same thing go­ing and hap­pen all over again, just in a dif­fer­ent way. So with the peace, they need to send some­thing to main­tain the peace. Sta­bil­i­ty we talk­ing about. Sta­bil­i­ty we talk­ing about,” Richards said.

The dis­play of uni­ty comes against a his­to­ry of vi­o­lence sur­round­ing parts of the Trini­bad mu­sic scene.

Trini­bad artistes from ri­val com­mu­ni­ties had pre­vi­ous­ly held peace talks in 2020. How­ev­er, the fol­low­ing years saw the deaths of sev­er­al per­form­ers, in­clud­ing Kyle “Rebel Sixx” George, N’Kosi “Fari Dan” Bovell and An­to­nio “Wacko Dan” Reyes.

George was killed in Ju­ly 2020, while Bovell was killed in May 2022. Reyes was shot dead in St Ann’s in May 2023.

The vi­o­lence prompt­ed re­newed scruti­ny of the links be­tween Trini­bad mu­sic, gang ri­val­ries and vi­o­lent lyrics.

Laven­tille West MP Ka­reem Mar­celle wel­comed K Man and Plumpy Boss com­ing to­geth­er but said their per­for­mance was not the be­gin­ning of the peace be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced in East Port-of-Spain.

He said rel­a­tive peace had ex­ist­ed across much of East Port-of-Spain for more than two months. He linked the de­vel­op­ment to a June 3 “Walk for Peace,” which was dis­persed by po­lice and mil­i­tary, say­ing res­i­dents sub­se­quent­ly be­gan mov­ing be­tween com­mu­ni­ties they had avoid­ed for years.

“How­ev­er, there still re­mains some splin­ter groups with­in the East Port-of-Spain com­mu­ni­ty that con­tin­ue to en­gage in this sense­less war. We have seen it in re­la­tion to the Chi­napoo, Mon Re­pos, Mor­vant. Those killings re­cent­ly, the triple mur­der we had. So those con­tin­u­ing wars con­tin­ue to have an ef­fect, but it could have been much worse if a wider cross-sec­tion and wider com­mu­ni­ties would have been in­volved,” Mar­celle said.

He said the artistes could use their in­flu­ence to re­in­force the mes­sage of peace among young peo­ple, and said K Man and Plumpy Boss had the tal­ent to pro­mote love, to­geth­er­ness and com­mu­ni­ty rather than vi­o­lence.

Scot­land: In­vest in youth

to pro­tect peace

For Port-of-Spain South MP Kei­th Scot­land, sus­tain­ing the peace al­so means cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for young peo­ple.

“I chal­lenge this Gov­ern­ment. I chal­lenge them. Put the mon­ey where your pho­to ops are. Give these pro­grammes to these young peo­ple. Let them feel that they can be a part of this coun­try, be­cause the ini­tia­tives by this Gov­ern­ment, most of it harms the most vul­ner­a­ble, and some of them live with­in my con­stituen­cy. And for there to be a last­ing peace, as the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, I chal­lenge this Gov­ern­ment to in­tro­duce one pro­gramme...not a pho­to op alone,” Scot­land said.

Scot­land said pro­grammes such as Mi­LAT and the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps, which he said were in­tro­duced un­der the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, had been can­celled. He called for their re­in­state­ment or the in­tro­duc­tion of al­ter­na­tive pro­grammes that would en­gage young peo­ple and give them op­por­tu­ni­ties out­side crime.

Youth ac­tivist: Peace is about liv­ing with­out fear

Youth ac­tivist Aleem “King of Kings” Med­ford said the cur­rent peace is root­ed in the de­sire of res­i­dents to live with­out fear.

“I see peace come and go. I see peace ac­ti­vate and was bro­ken. But this peace will last for a life­time. Be­cause this was the dream of the el­ders—for granny to walk down the road and go in the su­per­mar­ket with­out some­one snatch­ing she purse, for un­cle to ride he bike down the road, for the youths and them to play foot­ball with­out any shot bussing,” Med­ford said.

He warned politi­cians against at­tempts to ex­ploit the peace for fi­nan­cial gain.