Derek Achong

The sounds of car horns blar­ing filled the air out­side the Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Port-of-Spain for sev­er­al hours yes­ter­day, as hun­dreds of cit­i­zens heed­ed the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ)’s call to join world­wide protests over po­lice bru­tal­i­ty and racism in that coun­try. 

Armed with plac­ards bear­ing the slo­gan “Honk Your Horn for #black­lives”, a hand­ful of the MSJ’s mem­bers led its chair­man Gre­go­ry Fer­nan­dez and po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah stood at the side of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah and en­cour­aged dri­vers to par­tic­i­pate. 

“We are ask­ing peo­ple to blow your horn and send a mes­sage through the em­bassy to Wash­ing­ton,” Ab­du­lah said in a brief in­ter­view. 

Ab­du­lah ex­plained that the ini­tia­tive was a show of sol­i­dar­i­ty to US demon­stra­tors who were spurred in­to protest ac­tion fol­low­ing the death of George Floyd. 

Floyd, a 46-year-old African Amer­i­can man, was killed in Min­neapo­lis, Min­neso­ta, last Mon­day. The four po­lice of­fi­cers in­volved in his death, which was cap­tured on cam­era, have since been charged. 

 He claimed that his or­gan­i­sa­tion came up with the ini­tia­tive as a method of avoid­ing breach­es of cur­rent pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions bar­ing group gath­er­ings due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. 

Ab­du­lah took aim at con­tro­ver­sial US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and his (Trump) re­sponse to the na­tion­wide protests, which Ab­du­lah de­scribed as un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic.

“We are here to let Mr Trump’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Trinidad (US Am­bas­sador Joseph Mon­del­lo) know that we ob­ject to­tal­ly to Trump’s racism, misog­y­ny, and neo-fas­cist threats,” Ab­du­lah said. 

Ab­du­lah al­so said the po­lit­i­cal par­ty was al­so seek­ing high­light lo­cal in­stances of in­jus­tice, dis­crim­i­na­tion, and in­equal­i­ty. 

While a news team from Guardian Me­dia was present at the scene, a large group of po­lice of­fi­cers in tac­ti­cal gear ar­rived on the scene and kept a close eye on the MSJ team and mem­bers of the me­dia, who came to cov­er their protest. 

One se­nior of­fi­cer was heard cor­dial­ly ad­vis­ing Fer­nan­dez and Ab­du­lah to ob­serve the pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions, which pre­cludes pub­lic gath­er­ings of more than five per­sons.  At the time, there were six MSJ mem­bers, ap­prox­i­mate­ly a dozen me­dia per­son­nel and over 16 po­lice of­fi­cers.