Being on The Breakfast Club

HAVE YOU ever wondered what it's like to be on The Breakfast Club, especially when they're doing "In The Mind of a Murderer" interviews? Let me tell you. Perhaps because half my ancestors come from Scandinavia, where the strong, silent type is mythologised - the Swedish film director Ingemar Bergman created entire scenes without a spoken word - I suffer from a terror of public speaking. So becoming a member of a radio talk show is akin to being visited by one's worst nightmare on a regular basis. Still, one does feel obliged to conquer one's fears, rather like taking that dive off the very highest board at the Olympic pool just to prove one can do it and survive.

I should tell you that being on The Breakfast Club affords one some unexpected experiences, including the opportunity to watch Beverly Anderson Manley in action. I have never been a fan of her political persona, but I believe in giving credit where credit is due, and she is an incredible media person. Her ability to segue smoothly from one topic and speaker to another, to take disparate threads and effortlessly weave them into a seamless whole is remarkable, especially when you get to sit there and watch the facial reactions to speakers' comments or the notes being written and passed around the table, and witness the gestures giving guidance to producers and technical staff - simultaneously keeping the conversation flowing - it's nothing short of watching a maestro conducting a symphonic orchestra, in other words, a work of art. Not that Anthony Abrahams doesn't play a role, but he deserves another article.

What I really want to share with you is the unexpected experience of talking with a murderer, that is, knowingly doing so. The Breakfast Club introduced the series, "In The Mind of a Murderer," to more fully help people understand how some human beings come to murder other human beings, obviously with the hope that this understanding will benefit all Jamaica and not as a sensationalist ploy to boost ratings, as the more cynical might be inclined to assume.

The individual with whom we spoke said he was fifteen when he went to prison and had been there for seven years. Never knew his father, mother died, leaving him to be raised by an uncle. He ended up on the streets with other youth rather than attending school and could neither read nor write. His only "family" was the gang of fifteen men who worked for uptown drugsmen from the Barbican or Papine areas. The gang earned between $30,000 to $50,000 on an average week, being paid by their boss, who told them that he in turn did work for some politician.

The prisoner knew their boss, but not the "Big Man." Sometimes they earned $100,000 in a week depending on the work, which had included shooting people for ballot boxes or killing those who were a threat to their boss or the big man. Otherwise they robbed if money was short. Most of what they earned went for cocaine which they used before going to carry out a job. Ganja wouldn't give the same impetus to be merciless in killing, but coke was vital to their work. If they were told to go to a house and kill two people there, if they'd had enough coke they would just kill all six people, is how he described the effect.

Even in prison he could obtain cocaine and had had some already that morning. A pleasant sounding man, despite his occupation, when he started to speak of cocaine and its effect, his voice became agitated. You could almost feel it taking over an otherwise rational human being.

Trevor Munroe, filling in for Manley that morning, was taken by surprise to hear that of the fifteen gang members, six were JLP and nine PNP. Their gangs started to linkup in 1991 when they both needed ammunition, met and developed ties. Now they work for either party, doing whatever jobs they're given. Their own boss knew this, but the "Big Man" didn't realise their affiliation.

When asked if money went to their children, he answered vaguely that the baby mothers got some, but their deepest loyalty was to each other within their gang. This was his family. He'd been caught only when the police thought they looked suspicious and had signalled their car to stop. They opened fire on the police and were apprehended. If he were to leave prison, he would resume the same lifestyle, he said. His cellmate tried to teach him to read, from the Bible, but no other rehabilitation was available.

It was a starkly unsettling experience. You could imagine that little boy on the street, learning the ways of violence to be part of something strong and protective, offering him a sad kind of security. But when he spoke of the hold cocaine took, you could hear mayhem emerge in his voice. Towards the end of the 20-minute interview, he revealed that sometimes in his sleep he'd see the faces of people he'd killed, so yes, if he could learn to read and kick the drug habit, learn a skill, maybe he would try something else. But you know that isn't going to happen the way things are today. For a few thousand dollars and a short period of feeling powerful, the whole country is slowly being destroyed by men used as tools by others.

Teenagers having babies without providing the nurturing they need, the breakdown in basic education, a dismal economy, police or warders not receiving proper pay for the hazards they face, all of these problems need to be tackled simultaneously, but if The Breakfast Club does nothing more than to force government to clean up prison conditions and provide rehabilitation for those already incarcerated - half of whom are going to be back on the streets anyway - then The Breakfast Club would have accomplished a great deal. I refuse to believe what my friend Simon du Quesnay tells me: "Laura, don't you know the whole country belongs to NATO: No Action, Talk Only?"

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