One Year of Clash!
When Clash! debuted on Emancipation Day one year ago, we tempered our manifesto for a Caribbean federation from below with a more modest aspiration to “be dynamic in establishing a consensus of what everyone knows but is not prepared to say.” Indeed, this continues to be why we write, today.
But writers and thinkers are not the same. Many writers are not thoughtful at all; many thinkers who say or do extraordinary things go unrecorded. And many of the most insurgent actors do not wish to be recorded at all to avoid state repression or danger.
When broken glass is everywhere (after ecological disasters or popular rebellions) and the police and security forces retreat, Clash! will be a friend to those who refuse to reconstruct the old domination. We aspired, and still do, to recognize half-hidden instincts, record their meanings, and provide information that would fan the flame of the Caribbean radical democratic heritage — that is, the search for popular and direct self-government. We recognize no radical tradition that justifies minority rule of bureaucrats and proxies above society.
As we transition from one generation to another, one thing we know for sure. The children of the radical tradition are not those who believe they are part of royal families or bloodlines that cannot be questioned or somehow have inherited wisdom or an ethic they obviously do not possess. We do not prostrate at the altar of those named James, Rodney, Hector, Andaiye, or Fundi. Those who genuinely inherit this tradition must have the capacity and embrace the methods to fight today.
We were, and continue to be aware, of the so-called specialists who in their madness have unilaterally decided, for personal advancement, that we live in a historical epoch of political and economic retrogression. Some tell us that our faith in ordinary people is misguided. Yet somehow they insist that Caribbean people in 2024 lack the revolutionary capacity that they held in 1979, 1970, 1951, 1937, 1881, 1865, 1804, 1801, 1791, and so on. This is nonsense, of course. But more so, we should question and expose those who preach revolution while disparaging and downpressing the toiling masses of the Caribbean today.
Next year and the coming years will be enough time to expose and confront those who mamaguy the people of the Caribbean in the name of a radical tradition. Clash! has made some great leaps forward in a Caribbean and global environment where some thinkers wax poetic about past moments of rebellion only to falsify the images of Aunty Mia, Comrade Ralph, and Doctor Rowley as the inheritors of a tradition of Caribbean liberation. Any genuine criticism must not merely look backward. It must resonate with those in barrack yards, dungles, garrisons, bottom houses, and those who toil in fields, factories, industrial estates, and kitchens.
At a moment when many Caribbean thinkers have succumbed to, or been captured by, government agencies and transnational NGOs, the practice of independent thought cannot be found in academic journals and institutions of higher learning. When insights do surface in these venues, it is an exception rather than the rule. Rarely have the region’s most original thinkers been found among professionals or the formally educated. It was the revolt against elite theories and frameworks, the overcoming of them that pushed the Caribbean forward.
Though wisdom is plentiful among the masses of the Caribbean, there is much that everyone knows but does not say for fear of losing lives or livelihoods. Though we count teachers and scholars among our collective’s ranks (alongside trade unionists, elders, the unemployed, workers of many trades , and caregivers), Clash! has served as an arena for political criticism of a different fashion. And it must remain so.
We set ourselves apart from other venues of Caribbean thought by ruthlessly condemning the rulers of the region — Mottley, Browne, Gonsalves, Mitchell, Ali, Holness, Rowley, Drew— regardless of nation or party. We rubbish their petty masquerades in which they clamor for climate justice and reparations while demonizing and disparaging the working people who toil in the most downpressed and vulnerable corners of the region. We make clear that, despite their campaigns of misinformation and masquerades of progress, they are scandalous in their collaboration with the empire of capital.
We are sometimes told that CARICOM’s legacy is conflicted — that it has sometimes been a force of good — when at its inception it was a counter-revolutionary project against those who advocated a Pan-Caribbean international in the form of a Caribbean federation from below. We will pick apart the fraudulent pillars of the Caribbean radical tradition that only justifies nationalist-capitalist accumulation schemes of peripheral rulers (in CARICOM and otherwise), and make clear the old, calcified ideas will not subvert them.
Clash! will not subtly offer Caribbean politicians and technocrats advice while we claim to build movements for social justice in and beyond elite parliamentary politics. Rather, we proliferate ideas and designs for the new society that may be advanced by those in search of their own mission and purpose. We will leave it to our readers and friends to render a verdict on the merits of this project to date. But the very existence of our friends, those who have found and supported Clash! throughout the Greater Caribbean and its diaspora is a testament to the strategic necessity of this work.
We are heartened by those who engage us for no reason other than a shared commitment to bring about a new society directed by ordinary working people in the Caribbean. That our friends ask nothing more than our sincerity in exchange for their support is the clearest evidence of the cooperative ethic and spirit of autonomy that persists in our region today. This generosity has graced us with volunteer writers, translators (including the brilliant Papiamentu translation of our founding statement), and earnest readers and supporters. As always, the masses of Caribbean people outpace the stale and putrid designs of our ruling classes and governments.
Our resolute defense of Caribbean working people has introduced us to many friends and caused the breakdown of some associations. Some, mistakenly believing Clash! to be a purely academic exercise, express solidarity while serving as consultants and advisors to CARICOM member states and the aspiring rulers queued behind them.
We have made no effort to profit from this platform or parlay its visibility into dialogue with elite power brokers. Clash! will always remain independent of regional governments, parties, nonprofits executive regimes, and managers of servile life. We know that those not professionally educated or credentialed are the true architects of Caribbean civilization. Our allegiances rest with the working people themselves, not their self-proclaimed leaders, representatives, union chiefs, or other proxies. This we promise, if nothing else.
On this Emancipation Day, we invite reflections from our community of readers, followers, and friends on the past year and the years ahead.
Touch di road! Jump up! None shall escape!
