Shane Su­perville

Se­nior Re­porter

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt

Mu­sic pro­duc­er and pod­cast­er Khalif “KG” Greaves says that while com­mu­ni­ties ap­pear will­ing to con­tin­ue ob­serv­ing a cease­fire fol­low­ing an ap­par­ent truce led by Trini­bad artistes Kashif “K Man” Sankar and Meschach “Plumpy Boss” Em­manuel, it is im­por­tant for man­age­ment teams and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to help keep res­i­dents on the path of peace.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia via Zoom over the week­end, Greaves, who has worked close­ly with sev­er­al artistes as a pro­duc­er and in­ter­viewed many of them on his pod­cast, said he re­mains op­ti­mistic that all par­ties in­volved are gen­uine­ly com­mit­ted to end­ing the vi­o­lence.

Greaves said he wit­nessed first­hand the re­laxed at­mos­phere be­tween mem­bers of pre­vi­ous­ly war­ring com­mu­ni­ties while back­stage at the Sum­mer Stage dance­hall con­cert at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah last month. De­spite ini­tial scep­ti­cism, he said he be­came con­vinced there was a sin­cere de­sire to help cre­ate safer com­mu­ni­ties.

“I was in a tent with men from the Sixx side and men from the Sev­en side, so this time I made a con­scious ef­fort to ob­serve the en­er­gy of the peo­ple and see if these peo­ple were gen­uine. When I looked around and ob­served the en­er­gy, you could tell these peo­ple re­al­ly want peace,” he said.

“It goes be­yond the artistes. It goes back to the shop­keep­er, the man sell­ing at the side of the road, the moth­ers, the fa­thers, the chil­dren. Every­body wants peace.

“Go­ing to Sea Lots, go­ing to St Paul Street, every­thing is just dif­fer­ent. You can feel the en­er­gy and at­mos­phere is much lighter, and it wasn’t like that all the time.”

Re­spond­ing to re­cent re­ports that a pro­tec­tive de­ten­tion or­der (PDO) against Beetham-based Trini­bad artiste Joseph “Medz Boss” Ol­livierre, known as had been re­voked, Greaves said he was hope­ful the de­vel­op­ment would fur­ther strength­en peace ef­forts and im­prove pub­lic safe­ty in com­mu­ni­ties af­fect­ed by vi­o­lent crime.

He said the move could en­cour­age artistes to play a more ac­tive role in up­hold­ing peace agree­ments and pro­mot­ing pos­i­tive change.

“I al­ways knew that Medz Boss was ready for peace and even though he’s locked up, I know he’s ex­cit­ed to be out,” Greaves said.

“Every­body is on the same page. It doesn’t mat­ter where they are from or who they are. It’s amaz­ing for me to see be­cause I’ve want­ed this to hap­pen for so long. I nev­er thought it would have hap­pened so fast.”

Greaves said the artistes them­selves must ho­n­our their com­mit­ments by pro­mot­ing peace and pos­i­tiv­i­ty both in their mu­sic and per­son­al lives. How­ev­er, he stressed that man­agers, friends and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers al­so have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to hold them ac­count­able.

“Any­body around these youths has one of the biggest re­spon­si­bil­i­ties,” he said.

“We, as the old­er ones, whether man­agers, pro­duc­ers or even friends, need to re­mem­ber that the words and mes­sages we give them will re­main in their heads. So please don’t push any neg­a­tiv­i­ty in­to their hearts and minds. We need to mo­ti­vate them. If we see them falling short, we need to sup­port them and re­mind them, ‘Ay, don’t for­get why we said peace.’”

Mean­while, speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the launch of a re­silient youth out­reach and en­gage­ment cam­paign at the Radis­son Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre on Fri­day, Di­rec­tor of the Com­mu­ni­ty Sup­port and Pol­i­cy Of­fice at the Min­istry of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty, Za­heer Ali, al­so ex­pressed op­ti­mism that the ges­ture be­tween the artistes could con­tribute to safer com­mu­ni­ties.

Ali said while both men may have faced crim­i­nal charges, their ac­tions re­flect­ed a will­ing­ness to change course and em­brace a dif­fer­ent fu­ture. He al­so em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of com­mu­ni­ty-lev­el en­gage­ment in ad­dress­ing crime.

“When you can have two peo­ple re­al­is­ing that get­ting in­volved in crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty was a mis­take and now recog­nis­ing there is still time for re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and an op­por­tu­ni­ty to turn in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion, this can send a pow­er­ful mes­sage to young peo­ple who may be in­clined to think that crime pays. It can be a very im­por­tant ex­am­ple for us,” Ali said.

Ali al­so re­ferred to a re­cent case in which an in­di­vid­ual charged with lar­ce­ny was able, through in­ter­ven­tion from the Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er sup­port­ers, to find a cre­ative out­let for his mu­si­cal tal­ents. He said such ini­tia­tives demon­strate the val­ue of restora­tive jus­tice.

“It is very clear that when peo­ple run afoul of the crim­i­nal law, we need to look at those sit­u­a­tions very care­ful­ly, Ali said.

“Things like restora­tive jus­tice and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion have to be prop­er­ly im­ple­ment­ed. This psy­cho-so­cial ap­proach we’re tak­ing is re­al­ly about ad­dress­ing the mind, build­ing re­silience and let­ting young peo­ple know they must make prop­er choic­es, while un­der­stand­ing the con­se­quences that can arise if they do not.”