The Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee (ESC) wish­es to make it clear that an ar­ti­cle which ap­peared in the T&T Guardian on Sat­ur­day June 29 gross­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed the views of pan­el­lists at the Kwame Ture memo­r­i­al lec­ture on June 27 at the Na­tion­al Li­brary.

The top­ic of the night was Steer­ing our Youth away from Crime and a full hall heard crim­i­nol­o­gist Re­nee Cum­mings, so­cial ac­tivist David Muham­mad and drama­tist/play­wright and po­et, Ein­tou Pearl Springer bring in­sights in­to what fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties could do to ad­dress the is­sue.

The ESC, which does not cen­sor the views of its pan­el­lists, feels that jour­nal­ists, like lis­ten­ers, who may agree or dis­agree with opin­ions ex­pressed, should chal­lenge what is ac­tu­al­ly said and not use the cov­er of re­port­ing to at­tack by wil­ful dis­tor­tion. We wish to make it clear that at no time dur­ing the night did any of the pan­el­lists state or in­fer that "a Hin­du gov­ern­ment and Chris­tian­i­ty" were "caus­ing young black men to com­mit crime" in T&T, views bold­ly at­trib­uted to "the pan­el­lists" by the head­line and open­ing para­graph of the ar­ti­cle.

It is un­for­tu­nate that a pan­el rich in con­tent was so mis­rep­re­sent­ed. This pan­el, so im­por­tant for the per­spec­tives it ad­vanced on the crit­i­cal is­sue of crime fac­ing our so­ci­ety, should not be dis­tort­ed to feed di­vi­sive­ness and de­ny those who were not present an op­por­tu­ni­ty to un­der­stand the views of peo­ple with ex­per­tise and in­sight­ful ex­pe­ri­ences.

Ms Cum­mings, in a com­pre­hen­sive and tech­ni­cal pre­sen­ta­tion, ad­vised the au­di­ence that the best pre­dic­tor of fu­ture vi­o­lence was ex­po­sure to past vi­o­lence. She warned of the cur­rent fas­ci­na­tion with vi­o­lence.She delved in­to the com­plex re­la­tion­ships be­tween vi­o­lent crime and oth­er so­cial fac­tors, in­clud­ing pover­ty, men­tal ill­ness, abuse, mar­i­tal vi­o­lence and high­ly stress­ful sit­u­a­tions. She al­so in­di­cat­ed that vi­o­lence took dif­fer­ent forms, all of which need­ed to be ad­dressed.

She pro­vid­ed guid­ance about signs that fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties should look for, par­tic­u­lar­ly among at-risk youth. She ad­vised that it was nec­es­sary to make com­mu­ni­ties more re­silient to vi­o­lence through ac­tions such as child-pro­tec­tion train­ing, com­mu­ni­ty me­di­a­tion pro­grammes and com­mu­ni­ty ser­vices and coun­selling. She em­pha­sised that in­creased polic­ing alone would not solve the prob­lem.

Mr Muham­mad re­mind­ed the au­di­ence that al­most 8,000 young black men were picked up dur­ing the last state of emer­gency, stat­ing that such a sit­u­a­tion should not be al­lowed to take place again.Among the caus­es of crime he iden­ti­fied bro­ken fam­i­lies, neg­a­tive peer group pres­sures and gangs, all of which are in­creas­ing in scope in the con­text of the eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al de­pri­va­tion af­fect­ing our com­mu­ni­ties.

His es­sen­tial mes­sage was that we our­selves must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for our so­cial, spir­i­tu­al and moral well-be­ing. He chal­lenged men to play a greater role in the up­bring­ing of their sons.

Muham­mad al­so spoke about the di­rect en­gage­ment and house-to-house out­reach by him­self and mem­bers of his or­gan­i­sa­tion in mar­gin­alised and stig­ma­tised com­mu­ni­ties such as Beetham, Sea Lots and oth­er ar­eas of East Port-of-Spain, and called on oth­ers from out­side of these com­mu­ni­ties to fol­low the ex­am­ple of reach­ing out in what­ev­er ways they could to help re­store col­lec­tive well­be­ing.

Ein­tou Springer shared with par­tic­i­pants her own ex­pe­ri­ences as she sought to em­pow­er young peo­ple through in­ter­ven­tions in schools in so-called hot spot com­mu­ni­ties util­is­ing dra­ma, po­et­ry, mu­sic and all as­pects of cul­ture. She spoke about the pos­i­tive im­pact of in­tro­duc­ing African drums in the schools and us­ing Car­ni­val char­ac­ters and folk­tales as teach­ing tools for moral­i­ty, iden­ti­ty and aca­d­e­mics.

She be­wailed the fact that au­thor­i­ties are of­ten blind to the val­ue of us­ing in­dige­nous and oth­er non-Eu­ro­pean cul­ture in ed­u­ca­tion. She raised con­cerns about cul­tur­al in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty in a school cur­ricu­lum that on­ly pro­vid­ed for In­di­an dance, and re­lat­ed her own ex­pe­ri­ence in a school which ap­plied for African drums and in­stead re­ceived a dho­lak.

She warned about the dam­age that ill-pre­pared ed­u­ca­tors can do to young minds when they do not un­der­stand the im­por­tance of cul­ture and eth­nic iden­ti­ty as core el­e­ments in shap­ing chil­dren's self-es­teem.Ein­tou gave a spe­cif­ic ex­am­ple of a teacher whose ex­pressed opin­ion was that Chris­tian­i­ty was the on­ly iden­ti­ty need­ed and that African chil­dren should not see them­selves as African.

In talk­ing about the im­por­tance of reach­ing our chil­dren in the schools and the com­mu­ni­ties to trans­form the neg­a­tive re­al­i­ties, Ein­tou stressed love as one of the most pow­er­ful tools for change.She said we have to love our chil­dren, our­selves and our com­mu­ni­ties more deeply.

Khafra Kam­bon

Chair­man–Eman­ci­pa­tion

Sup­port Com­mit­tee

�2ED­I­TOR'S NOTE: The T&T Guardian stands by its sto­ry pub­lished on June 29, p A7.