Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer
Pastor Desmond Robinson, incoming head of the Adventist Development Relief Agency at the Gleaner's Editors' Forum with church leaders last week.Desmond Robinson, Contributor
I take this opportunity to respond to those who have taken me to task over my pronouncement reported in the headlines of The Gleaner on Tuesday, December 6, 2005.
As I listened to the various reactions, I sense that few have really understood the implications of my statement.
These persons have interpreted 'Out-give' to mean becoming amere handout channel, a source of giving that is bigger than the don's. That approach would be depraving the poor rather than empowering them. No church or charitable organisation should be encouraged or supported along such lines and I would certainly abhor such a plan of action. 'Out-give' means:
1. Placing resources for sustained development in these challenged communities, and ensuring that such development is reaching the people who need it most.
2. Using our resources to research the conditions of and to elevate the very poor.
3. Helping where possible to bring relief to immediate needs in a manner which is not merely switching dependency from the don to the church and, or the business community.
4. Using our resources to bring back dignity to people by improving the conditions in which they live and lifting their
environmental condition, 'Out-give' is not merely in quality and sustainability.
Various media have taken me to task on the same misguided interpretation of the term 'out-give'. Today's inner-city poor faces a new reality and a different type of depravity. Being poor in some remote past wont qualify you to speak for the inner city today. Being poor in a rural district is different from being poor and cashless in cocaine-filled, gun-filled inner-city communities. Before you assume to be spokesman for the poor, allow me to take you to a class inner-city 101.
When one has walked, lived and ministered in an inner-city community, there is a clearer picture and another side to the story.
Let's go into parts of Spanish Town and Kingston. There, before your eyes, will be parts of a different Jamaica. Live in those parts of Jamaica and you will see lady justice not just blind but dumb, deaf and retarded. remember, without justice there will be no people.
Law having its course naïve
The law has not lost its teeth; it sold them to the dons. Ask the people of Spanish Town why dons wanted by the law drank at the same bar with the law. Information to crime fighters will not come when residents of the inner cities see the don as the king of charity. The puritan idea of the law having its course is fraught with naïvety. The law has long been off course. The statement to Jamaica inner-city crime problem must take a menu approach.
The menu may take several years to take effect but shooting gunmen, beating bad men, imprisonment, a larger police force, mixing police with the army, laying the young on hot asphalt, creating crime squads, even bombing the "bad ones" won't work.
Now for 'The Menu'
Resources: Place resources from a well-researched stand point in the inner city. Even the good Samitarian had to have something to be helpful. If we are to pick up those who fall by the wayside in today's society, robbed by decaying social structure, we must use combined resources.
Respect: Until the residents of Rae Town, Hanna and Trench towns, Tivoli Gardens and Arnett Gardens, Jones Avenue, March Pen Road, are treated by the law in the same manner as those in Cherry Gardens, Beverly Hills and other upper St. Andrew communities, there will always be Jamaicans who believe that it is not their responsibility to build Jamaica. There will always be Jamaicans who behave in an 'I have nothing to lose' manner. If we say 'to hell with them' they will say "to hell with you", preachers and all.
Belonging: Family gangs are families formed for the security of the vulnerable, unprotected by parents, community, the law etc.. Let us ensure that those who are not yet in gangs, not yet gunmen, find refuge in something wholesome. Give them love; shelter them; give them a home; give them hope. Create homework centres, give scholarships, warm meals make them belong.
get The Law back on track
Law in today's Jamaica is like a train on a badly-damaged track, and to glibly say "let the law have its course" is tantamount to saying "let the train continue to run in spite of the dangers ahead". Get the law back on track, restore the police force to responsibility, restore confidence in our justice system and enforce the law as if there is one Jamaica. Teach a law officer that a culture of beating people in his custody is not in his bet interest. The day may very well come when he reaps the culture he created either by engaging in or by being silent when others practise it.
Spiritual
For those who think that a church leader should mention the spiritual, as a first item, everything I have mentioned thus far is spiritual. If your brother is in need, help him.
Amid the many calls for prayer, I do not only call you to pray but I call you to practise righteousness, "Let righteousness run down like a mighty stream". "Do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy god".
